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COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
He told the crowd, famously, that he had a dream that day. A dream “that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
Today, National Religious Freedom Day, commemorates the January 16, 1786 adoption of Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. The document’s title reads simply: “An act for establishing religious freedom.”
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
On November 30, as part of its LA vs. Hate campaign, the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission launched its celebration of United Against Hate Week to “not just raise awareness about the dangers of hate and the need for respect and civil discourse, but to help community members build stronger connections and foster deeper engagement.”
TOLERANCE
Religion is the “final frontier” of personal prejudice, with attitudes to faith driving negative perceptions more than ethnicity or nationality—that was one of the conclusions of a recently published two-year study of attitudes toward ethnic, national and religious diversity in England and Wales.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
October 27, 2020 marks the 22nd anniversary of the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRF Act), described by the U.S. State Department as “landmark legislation that—for the first time—made promoting and defending international religious freedom a specific focus of U.S. foreign policy.
MEDIA & ETHICS
“When you interview an anti-Semite, you will get an anti-Semitic narrative. It is no different with Scientology. That such religious bigotry would ever be allowed on television is a disgrace, and public figures like Dr. Oz have a responsibility to exercise far greater discretion in selecting whose ‘information’ they put before their viewers.”
TOLERANCE
While it is not a day that often makes headlines and isn’t known for heroics, it does have its individual stars.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
Many Muslims, for example, put forth the idea that science and Islam are compatible in most ways but acknowledged a conflict when it came to the theory of evolution—a conflict shared with many members of the other Abrahamic faiths, Judaism and Christianity, which hold in common with Islam the belief that God spontaneously created the Earth and Adam and Eve.
TOLERANCE
The 10-day period encompassing Rosh Hashanah (the New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) is a time for reflection and a facing of one’s deeds over the past 12 months. It is a time as well when one resolves to be better in the coming year—to be kinder and more respectful of one’s loved ones as well as strangers.
