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Public Events
Upcoming Public Events at SJU
God and Religious Diversity: A Contemporary Muslim Perspective
Presentation by Amir Hussain
Monday, February 13, 8:00 p.m.SJU Alumni Lounge, First-floor Quad
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As the last of the Abrahamic religions, Islam comes into a world that knows Christianity and Judaism. This means that Muslims have to have a theological understanding of both Jews and Christians in their relationship to God, and of God in relationship to the people of all three monotheistic faiths. As Islam expands out of Arabia and into Asia, it also has to make sense of Buddhism and Hinduism. Professor Hussain will discuss how Muslims understand their relationship to God given the fact of religious diversity and how they might think of religious diversity in relation to God's will.
Amir Hussain, Ph.D., is professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University, a Jesuit university in Los Angeles, where he teaches courses on world religions. A Canadian Muslim who specializes in the study of Islam, his academic degrees are from the University of Toronto, where he received a number of awards, including the university's highest alumni award for outstanding service. He is the author of Oil and Water: Two Faiths, One God, an introduction to Islam and Muslim-Christian dialogue, and more than two dozen book chapters and scholarly articles about Islam and Muslims. He is also the editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the premier scholarly journal for the study of religion. An appointed fellow of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, he has appeared on the History Channel and has given interviews to numerous newspapers and magazines, including Beliefnet.com, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Toronto Star, and The Washington Post.
Free and open to the public
Meditation: The Art of Recognizing Awareness and Awakening Lovingkindness and Compassion
Presentation by Edwin Kelley
Wednesday, February 29, 4:15 p.m.
Quad 264, Saint John's University
According to Buddhist teaching, awareness, lovingkindness, and compassion are innate qualities of our mind and meditation is a powerful tool for connecting to these qualities of mind in an ongoing way, anywhere, anytime. Edwin Kelley will expound upon this teaching and explain how, as our skill in meditation grows, our mind becomes more calm and peaceful and our heart more joyful and open, which modern scientific studies are increasingly affirming.
Edwin Kelley attended his first meditation retreat in 1975 and has practiced meditation in both the Theravada and the Tibetan Buddhist traditions. He has a postgraduate diploma in Buddhist studies from the University of Sunderland in the United Kingdom and was executive director from 1996 to 2003 of one of America's best known meditation retreat centers, the Insight Meditation Society, in Barre, Massachusetts. He is a long-time student of the well-known Tibetan Buddhist meditation master Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and co-director of Tergar International, the organization that oversees Rinpoche's activities around the world.
Sponsored by the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith in collaboration with the CSB/SJU Buddhist Meditation Club
Free and open to the public
God and Politics: A Spiritual State of the Union
Presentation by Rabbi Sharon Brous
Monday, March 12, 8:00 p.m.
SJU Alumni Lounge, First-floor Quad
Recent years have witnessed a dangerous resurfacing of racial tension, religious intolerance, and political divisiveness in American life. Outbursts of venomous anger, often expressed in the name of God, have produced an ugly new standard in public discourse. At the same time, Americans, often inspired by their faith in God, have seen through racial, religious, and national fault lines and have responded courageously and contributed generously to others in the wake of disasters at home and abroad. In this presentation, Rabbi Sharon Brous will reflect on how different views of God serve to foster different types of public discourse, action, and culture.
Rabbi Sharon Brous is the founding rabbi of IKAR, a Jewish spiritual community in Los Angeles whose mission is to promote the integration of soulful prayer, serious learning, and social justice. A graduate of Columbia University with a B.A. in history and an M.A. in human rights and conflict resolution, she was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, where she received several awards in Talmud and homiletics. She has been named to The Jewish Daily Forward's list of the 50 most influential American Jews and to Newsweek's list of America's leading rabbis. Rabbi Brous is a frequent contributor to The Washington Post's "On Faith" and she has been a guest on Krista Tippet's National Public Radio program "Speaking of Faith." She serves on the board of Rabbis for Human Rights, on the rabbinic advisory board of American Jewish World Service, on the regional council of Progressive Jewish Alliance, and as a member of the Task Force to Advance Multireligious Collaboration on Global Poverty.
This presentation is part of the Jay Phillips Center's Rabbis-in-Residence program supported by a grant from the Brenden-Mann Foundation.
Free and open to the public