Dialogue Resource
Generations of Faith: An Interreligious and Intergenerational Gathering (2012)
Forming Future Leaders of the Interreligious Movement: In 2010 and 2012 the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs organized two weekend events which brought together religious leaders and active young adults from within their communities in an across-tradition dialogue on religion in a pluralistic society.
The objective of both of these events was to bring up-and-coming leaders of religious communities into an interreligious forum with seasoned experts in the field, granting them an interreligious experience in a spirit of mutual dialogue seeking understanding, respect, and collaboration. The purpose of such an experience is to create a new generation of leaders across all religious traditions in the United States who see their interreligious counterpart as friend and neighbor rather than adversary or foe.
Generations of Faith (GoF) aims to create a small, close environment between youth leaders and religious leaders in which an engaging exchange of ideas and conversation can take place. Therefore GoF tries to maintain a 1:5 ratio between religious leaders and youth, maintaining the total size of the group between 20-35 people. The programming consists of a series of conferences given by either experts or young adult leaders on specific topics relevant to the interreligious facet of our modern culture, time for large and small group reflection on the given topics, personal testimonies, cultural or religious presentations by the different traditions present, and times for shared meals and social interaction. GoF is highly participatory, and the religious leaders and young adults come to the table on an even playing field, seeking to explore topics and engage in dialogue together with members of other religious communities. So far the USCCB has attempted GoF between one to two full days in length.