News and Updates
The message from the Prime Minister of Australia on the occasion of the 300th Anniversary of the Investiture of Sri Guru Granth Sahib as the Eternal Guru of the Sikhs.
Click here to download the PDF.
The fifth Parliament of the World’s Religions will be held on December 3-9, 2009 in Melbourne, Australia.
First held in Chicago in 1893, the Parliament of the World’s Religions brings together the world’s religious and spiritual communities, their leaders and their followers to a gathering where peace, diversity and sustainability are discussed and explored in the context of interreligious understanding and cooperation.
Since 1993, a Parliament of the World’s Religions has convened every five years in a major international city (Chicago 1993, Cape Town 1999, Barcelona 2004). Sponsored by the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions, the 2009 Parliament will take place in Melbourne, Australia. A multi-religious, multi-lingual, and multicultural city, Melbourne offers an ideal location for the 2009 Parliament. Culturally vibrant and global in vision, Melbourne and Victoria are home to indigenous and Aboriginal spiritualities as well as the major world religions – Baha’i, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism among others. Over 10,000 participants will come to Melbourne for the Parliament. The Parliament will run for seven days with approximately 450 events including keynote addresses, dialogues, workshops, panel discussions, religious and spiritual observances, training sessions, concerts, artistic performances, exhibitions and more.
The theme of the 2009 Parliament, Make a World of Difference: Hearing each other, Healing the earth, underscores the opportunity for religious and spiritual communities and all people of good will to act on environmental concerns and take responsibility for cultivating awareness of our global interconnectedness.
Submit a Program Proposal
The Program Committee for the 2009 Parliament invites people from around the world and from every religious and spiritual tradition to submit a program proposal to present a lecture, dialogue, workshop, panel discussion, religious or spiritual observance, workshop, training session or artistic performance. See Program Areas and Topics below.
The submission deadline for program proposals is December 31, 2008.
How to Submit a Program Proposal?
Please follow the following steps:
(You need a PDF Reader installed on your computer Download Adobe PDF reader here)
- Download and read the Call for Programs Document
- Download and fill out the Program Submission Form
- Save the form, print it out for your records, and email or mail it to us.
Please read the Call for Programs and Program Submission Form carefully before submitting your proposal. Click here for Frequently Asked Questions or email your questions to program@parliamentofreligions.org
The Program Management Committee and its specialized working parties will be reviewing all program submissions and are seeking program proposals in four main programming areas:
- Religious and spiritual observances
- Intrareligious programs expressing religious identity and issues internal to each religion.
- Interreligious programs, likely to be dialogues between two or more religious traditions.
- Engagement programs focusing on religious social action, including panel dialogues and other presentation formats.
The program will address the following topics from religious and spiritual perspectives:
- Healing the Earth with Care and Concern
- Reconciling with the Indigenous Peoples
- Overcoming Poverty in a Patriarchal World
- Securing Food and Water for All People
- Building Peace in the Pursuit of Justice
- Creating Social Cohesion in Village and City
- Sharing Wisdom in the Search for Inner Peace
Additional topic clusters will be built around proposal submissions, and we anticipate programming on:
- Youth Leadership
- Women’s Leadership
- Religion and Sport
- Chaplaincies
- Religious Education
- Religious Arts, Architecture and Media
- Science and Religion
- Confronting HIV/AIDS across the World
- The Internet and the Mobile: Religious and Moral Perspectives.
For more information refer to: www.parliamentofreligions.org