Mutually sharing religious difference, the Congregational Leaders Fellowship brings together clergy and lay leaders from mosques, synagogues and Christian congregations to learn about each others’ traditions and explore how each tradition strives to bring about a sense of belonging and flourishing for all people.
Is your congregation looking for a way to deepen its interreligious understanding and capacity for interreligious dialogue? Do you want to build relationships with other religious communities?
If so, consider the Congregational Leaders Fellowship.
At a time of polarization and partisanship, we need to cross divides between communities—even our own religious communities. Now more than ever, we need religious leaders (both clergy and lay leaders) who are willing to engage and mobilize across religious divides.
The Congregational Leaders Fellowship (CLF) is a 6-month cohort experience for leaders from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish congregations to build understanding and relationships across those divides. Fellows learn about each other’s religious traditions, discuss the foundations of interreligious work, and collaborate on an intercongregational project.
The fellowship is directed by Christine Krieger with support and instruction provided by ICJS scholars.
The next fellowship cohort will begin in January 2024.
There is a sense of hope and urgency in my experience with the ICJS Congregational Leaders Fellowship. The focus and openness have allowed me to be profoundly aware that I, along with a small group of others who have faith traditions that may be quite different yet related, are able to worship, work, listen, learn,…
Growing up, I developed a friendship with a child playing on the playground. As we grew older, we continued to gravitate to each other, noticing that we shared similar values. We didn’t allow ourselves to be negatively influenced by others. We both were stable and firm enough in our values that when peers attempted to…
Exodus 18 contains the powerful story of Yitro (Hebrew for the name “Jethro”) and Moses coming together, sharing from personal experience, celebrating each other, offering meaningful outside perspective, and being comfortable with separateness. So, I would like to share my reflections on the ICJS Congregational Leaders Fellowship based on this powerful model of interfaith communication.…
“Interreligious experience” is an incomplete—and even ambiguous—phrase. The experience itself can take many forms, from having a respectful, open-hearted dialogue with someone of a different faith to experiencing spiritual growth that comes from worshiping together and sharing our beliefs and traditions. But the term interreligious experience can also captures tense moments of misunderstanding between people…