InterfaithNews.Net

For the occasion of World Environment Day (June 5th), I asked Dave
Randle to send an update on the status of the Call to Global Healing. While
the Call is rooted in environmental consciousness, you will find that it
has moved well beyond and has led the Utah URI Cooperation Circle into the
heart of conflict in working to provide aid and support to people in
need.

The Archbishop of Canterbury warns that the price of our continued failure
to protect the earth will be violence and social collapse

In his April letter, URI Executive Directory Charles Gibbs writes
"I refuse to live in an 'Age of Terror' … I choose… to
live in an 'Age of Transformation'." Please read on for more
of this beautiful and inspiring message.

Rev. Paul Chaffee of the Interfaith Center at the Presidio (and of the
InterfaithNews.Net Advisory Board, among other affiliations), writes about
the Interfaith Family Circle, "a new kind of model for generating and
supporting interfaith relations in any local community."

Bishop William E. Swing of California has written the following
reflection to honor Roman Catholic Archbishop William J. Levada of San
Francisco, who on Friday, May 13, was named prefect of the Vatican's
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Many initiatives were born or carried farther forward at the Second
Inter-Faith Action for Peace in Africa Summit, which took place in
Johannesburg, South Africa, in late April. Personally, I found the story of
the "Mother's Cry for a Healthy Africa" the most compelling
of these — calling for African women to "unite against
war." Please read on for the full story; broader coverage of the event
can be found at

Christian Today.

In a beautiful statement, religious leaders in Albania — one of the
poorest nations in Europe, and one of the last released from Communism
— proclaim the importance of religious harmony and shared values while
carefully enunciated their own distinctness. The preservation of the belief
in uniqueness of one's own religion is one of the most difficult public
relations issues faced by the interfaith movement. Here we have an amazing
model of how to achieve this while emphasizing the need for cooperation.
"Let us treat others as we would wish them to treat us."

A new study from the Global Health Council cites collaboration between
religious and secular groups as enabling a more coordinated and rapid
expansion of HIV/AIDS programs and services. As of 2003, 40 million people
worldwide were estimated to be living with HIV; 3 million more are thought
to have died from HIV/AIDS that year, leaving behind orphaned families and
debilitated infrastructures