Earth and humanity and the Bahai tradition

The Feast of the Assumption - August 15

To-day, in the Catholic traditions of the Christian Church, is a major feast day.

It is the Feast of the Assumption or, in terms of the Orthodox tradition, the Dormition.

An editorial note: 

The Editor was raised in the Roman Catholic tradition

in a time when feasts and fasts were solemnly kept.

In fact, the picture above, is the same picture

that hung in the home of the Editor's grandmother

for a lifetime.

In the post-Vatican II era, the Editor came to look at many things about her faith.

One of them was attitudes to Mary, the Mother of Jesus.

To get an idea of teaching on Mary, please go

here and here.

The Editor's thoughts are that much of the beliefs and doctrines that have sprung up around Mary - and the doctrine of the Assumption is not the only one - have their derivation in a male dominated religious structure in which, for the most part, women were very much down the human hierarchy.  The Eastern tradition may be different because it has a married priesthood.  

While there are claims that the doctrine of the Assumption goes back to the earliest days of Christianity, this is doubtful.  All sorts of ideas have sprung up around the purity of Mary and the fact that she had to be pure and without any stain of sin (including Original Sin) to be the mother of Jesus. From this idea, we get the other doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. 

In The Editor's view, these two doctrines are evidence of "facts" being conjured up to fit faith.  

What The Editor does find significant though is how often these types of thought processes take-over and all but eliminate the very humanity of people like Jesus and his mother, Mary.  And it is their very humanity that makes them so significant in the human story.

IMA Women's Only Morning Tea with Professor Marcia Langton at the Islamic Museum of Australia

Islamic Museum of Australia

Have you purchased your tickets for the IMA Women's Only Morning Tea? Join us for a morning of stimulating conversation with our guest speaker Professor Marcia Langton, Chair of Indigenous Studies at The University of Melbourne.

With an array of delicious treats, engaging performances, entertaining games and prizes - this event is not one to be missed.

Tuesday September 12
10.30am - 12.30pm
$40 Per Person

Book your tickets online: https://islamicmuseum.org.au/tickets/?ee=88

Hurry - tickets sell out fast!

JEWISH VOICE FOR PEACE : BDS & antisemitism - Live on Facebook

Take heart and never stop taking heart.

One of the most welcome pieces of writing that drops into The Editor's Gmail comes from Michael K Marsh, a priest in the Episcopal Church in the USA.

Michal writes a blog called Interrupting The Silence.

To-day, he has written in a heart-breaking manner of the 

violence and loss of life in Charlottesville, Virginia in the USA 

stirred up by neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.

Please read Michael's blog post

which he concludes by saying

What do you see when you look into your heart?

Are you afraid? I sure hope so. 

I hope you and I are always afraid, afraid enough to take heart, 

to take heart again, and to never stop taking heart.

“Take heart, it is I,” Jesus says. 

Hear his words again, “Be courageous, I Am/am.”

Will we be?

Crowd funding - Muslim style - comes to Gaza and its communities.

Walid Mahmoud 

During a workshop in Gaza city, I talked about my success on the
LaunchGood funding platform and the impact which I made in the community.
I was invited by a local charity association.

For a long time now, I have been a Facebook Friend of Walid Mahmoud. Walid lives in Gaza - a very troubled place, a teeny-weeny strip of land in the world caught between two competing Palestinian political factions, the Israeli Government and the West Bank Jewish Settlers.  It is not a placid place. It is a place to test your survival skills each and every day.

So I am pleased to hear of Walid's initiative and wish him well and hope that it is able to bring brightness into the lives of down-on-the-ground Palestinians.

Christianity is on its way to becoming a minority religion in Australia?

From Matt Wade in The Age

During my lifetime, the share of Australians without a religious affiliation has gone from one in 100 to about one in three.

That's what you call a momentous social change.

The latest census data has been collected and analysed. Here's a snapshot of Australia shown as a group of 100 people.

The spike in people opting for "no religion" was one of the big stories to come out of the 2016 census results released in June. More than 7 million Australians said they have no religious affiliation, a 46 per cent increase on the previous census in 2011.

Given that trend, you might expect the share of the world's population with no religion is also on the rise.

The experience of Western, Christian-majority countries is not necessarily the global experience.

Most Americans think so. A recent US poll found 62 per cent of respondents believe the share of people with no religion will increase between now and 2050. My guess is the share in Australians making that assumption would be even higher.

But long-term population projections by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre show the global reality is quite different to what's going on in Australia and other Western nations.

"The experience of Western, Christian-majority countries is not necessarily the global experience," said Conrad Hackett, a senior demographer with Pew Research who visited Australia last week.

"There was perhaps this sense in the 1960s that religion might be on its way to extinction … but that just hasn't played out."

Pew's report says about one in six of the world's people now has no religious affiliation. But that's forecast to shrink to just one in eight of the global population by 2060.

Why? Because those who opt for "no religion" on their census forms are heavily concentrated in places with ageing populations and low fertility, such as China, Japan, Europe, North America and Australia. The majority of the world's "religiously unaffiliated" are in China (61 per cent) and Japan.

By contrast, populations in places with many religious adherents – mostly developing countries where birth rates are high and infant mortality rates have been falling – are likely to grow strongly. Much of the worldwide growth of Islam and Christianity, for example, is expected to take place in sub-Saharan Africa.

The trend for people to switch to "no religion" in Western nations like Australia is likely to continue, mostly at the expense of traditional Christian denominations. But that won't be nearly enough to offset population growth in places where people are still happy to be affiliated with a religious faith.

The Pew report describes this as the "demographic challenges of the religiously unaffiliated".

Between 2015 and 2020, the total fertility rate for women with no religion is projected to be 1.6 children per woman while the rate among women with a religious affiliation is forecast to be 2.5 children per women.

Pew estimates the world's "no religion" ranks will grow by a paltry 3 per cent between now and 2060. That compares with projected growth of 70 per cent for Muslims, 34 per cent for Christians and 27 per cent for Hindus (the global population is forecast to grow by 32 per cent in that period).

As a result, the share of the world's population identifying with a religion is set to rise from 84 per cent to 87 per cent between now and 2060, the Pew study predicts.

Australia might be losing its religion, but the world isn't.

Music for a Warming World - an event of Melbourne's Greenfaith-ARRCC

Nivy Balachandran	10 August

Dear friends,

Check out the event below for one of our fellow CCs Greenfaith 

"Music for a Warming World", taking place on 13 August 2017 in Melbourne.

Try Booking site for this event

Thanks Jonathan and Andrea 

for sharing this with us and for inviting us along.

Do get a long and check it out, 

and please share with your networks!

(Please email me if you have events you'd like to share with the URI network).

Kind wishes

Nivy

Nivy Balachandran

Regional Coordinator, 
Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands 
Part time - Office days are Wednesday and Friday.

Phone: +61 433 238 406 | Skype: nivy.bala | www.uri.org 

Women in the Russian Orthodox Tradition

There are some feisty, feisty women in the Russian Orthodox tradition. Here is one from the long,long ago. To-morrow, I will have one from more modern times - and noted, even though she was wearing, a nun's habit, for smoking!!!

‎Elijah Borek‎ to Ask About The Orthodox Faith

Yesterday at 05:31 · 

St Olga Equal to the Apostles

Saint Olga, renowned for her wisdom and sobriety, in her youth became the wife of Igor, Great Prince of Kiev, who ruled during the tenth century. After her husband's death, she herself ruled capably, and was finally moved to accept the Faith of Christ. She traveled to Constantinople to receive Holy Baptism. The Emperor, seeing her outward beauty and inward greatness, asked her to marry him. She said she could not do this before she was baptized; she furthermore asked him to be her Godfather at the font, which he agreed to do. After she was baptized (receiving the name of Helen), the Emperor repeated his proposal of marriage. She answered that now he was her father, through holy Baptism, and that not even among the heathen was it heard of a man marrying his daughter. Gracefully accepting to be outwitted by her, he sent her back to her land with priests and sacred texts and holy icons. Although her son Svyatoslav remained a pagan, she planted the seed of faith in her grandson Vladimir (St Vladimir Equal to the Apostles), the Baptizer of Rus'.

Saint Olga left our world in 969. Prince Vladimir placed her incorrupt relics in the Desyatinnaia cathedral. It was the first time that sacred relics were revealed in Russia. Later (before the Mongol invasion) God glorified the relics of the Princess Olga with miracles and she was canonized a saint.

"LGBT Inclusion In Faith Communities" Parliament of the Worlds Religions...

LGBTI Inclusion in Faith Communities
Please note: The music on this vid takes quite a while to 
play through before you get to a speaker.
Thanks to Brandan Robertson for uploading this to the net
for The Editor of Beside The Creek to discover.

This video is from a discussion at the Parliament of the World Religions,
a worldwide interfaith organisation.
It has nothing to do with the event promoted below -
except that it is on a similar topic.
The video is on the USA situation.
The event below is the Australian situations.

The Victorian Government is holding a forum about LGBTI Inclusion in Faith Communities. The Forum will address the role that faith and community leaders play in fostering inclusive environments for LGBTI people of faith. 

Thursday 17 August, 2017
9.30 am – 3.15 pm: 
LGBTI Inclusion in Faith Communities

Guest speakers will include Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Robin Scott MP; Minister for Equality, Martin Foley MP; leaders from diverse faith communities; and LGBTI people of faith. Participants will have the opportunity to share best practice approaches, including the provision of pastoral care to LGBTI people of faith, the use of inclusive language and interpretation of scripture. We invite you as a faith and/or community leader to contribute to a sensitive and respectful conversation to support positive mental health and well-being outcomes for LGBTI people of faith. 

Please advise of your attendance, including any accessibility and dietary requirements, to shoshana.silverman@dpc.vic.gov.au by no later than 8 August 2017. The Forum will be held at Woodward Conference Centre.

Here are details borrowed from a different function

with details of how to get to the Woodward Conference Centre