Jonathan Granoff at the Parliament of the World's Religions

religions like many of our modern institutions have become preoccupied with how and they've forgotten why um business which is uh which is a way of providing good services and helping to build communities has become preoccupied with its how of amassing capital rather than its why and this problem of forgetting the why and be becoming preoccupied with the how uh becomes extremely debilitating in the area of religion so you have religion the why of which is to improve human qualities and to inspire Transcendent experiences that's the why has now become preoccupied with the how the how is by building communities the how is by rights rituals doctrines and practices religions that return to the why which is to uh raise human human qualities uh capacity to receive the divine inspiration of unconditional love and the power of compassion have the essential role to play but in so far as they forget that why and utilize their house to emphasize their distinctions they become extremely destructive now the dialogue of interfaith understanding as a way of comb in exclusivism within religions I think has penetrated the intelligency of the world but it will wither unless it's brought into action so well what it means is the heart without the hand is hollow and Withers and the Hand without the heart is dangerous so the when if there's an inspiring Insight such as Interfaith dialogue that's not brought into action then it will become merely aesthe and it will fade it will be Hollow but there are a number of problems that the world faces that can only be dealt with with a universal Collective Global ethically based um uh passionate service and work and religions have a role to play collectively in that for example if one nation opts out of a global regime on dumping in the oceans All Nations will dump through that therefore to protect the Global Commons whether it's the oceans the ozone the rainforests we require a global commitment and a global regime there are a number of global problems that uh deal with the commons of our environmental uh security and religions have the capacity to call people to a global transnational uh calling for life itself so religions have a have a duty to work collectively toward environmental sustainability so uh it it is I Believe essential that religions now bring into practice a collective assertion of human unity and ethics and address the global the address the global threats that we share are are religions changing in time to kind of meet those challenges as you're Ling know I was at a millennium peace Summit at the UN in which there were you know about a thousand of the world's religious leaders and most the mainstream churches whether it was the mainstream of Hinduism the mainstream Catholics the mainstream Muslim groups were all the world Muslim League the I was at a meeting with the head of the world Muslim League and the chief Rabbi of Israel and the Pope's representative and uh I am very very confident that if there are enough forums to develop this and that's why I have uh made a proposal to create conflict uh prevention centers and a conflict prevention center at the United Nations that would utilize uh the the uh the resources of religions they simply need a place and a forum in order to do this and it's not an idea that uh in in various uh various aspects of it people have been putting forward so I think the the momentum is there now with respect to the uh the islamists M or the Christian so-called Christian fundamentalists the wahhabis uh uh the the Buddhist bkus in Sri Lanka who are so adamant in their position the hindutva and many of the other groups that have this exclusivist tendency they're not going to uh be transformed very quickly but they have a right to their ideas what they don't have a right to is to claim political power when they claim political power then then they're no longer religions and in my opinion they should be evaluated as whether they're whether they're effective political parties or not and if they're political parties then are they political parties that are beneficial to the whole or are they political parties that are only beneficial to their uh to their constituency and it appears to me that the uh that the uh exclusivist isolationist attitudes of fundamentalists whether it's the Messianic Jewish Community or the Christian fundamentalist Community or the islamist or the Hindus that they are not advocating benefits for the whole but mainly for the people that agree with them and that's a fairly impoverished political perspective and to do that and claim the universal blessing of the of the creative mystery at the source of all life as your political basis needs to be challenged and because if you're going to claim the universal Source then you have to serve all creation and all Humanity if you're going to say we're a political party fine then let's debate political issues you but so to hide a political agenda in the Garb of religious language I think is somewhat disingenuine and I think we need to to uh debate them I don't necessarily think that this that that they that they want a dialogue if they wanted to dialogue they'd be at these kinds of forums those kind of people don't like the United Nations system whether it's the wahhabis or the Christian fundamentalists because it says the Human family is one and we need to live together we either have uh we either recognize our common Destiny or we have no Destiny and this is the challenge for uh humanity and particularly religions for the 21st century we either have a common Destiny or no Destiny you're uh articulating the challenge of that very well you know and I think it is exactly the challenge and um do you feel optimistic about that or do you feel that that we that we can work around those challenges with with those kinds of issues you're asking a spiritual aspirant about about optimism and so I have to you know I have to as a personal this this is not a geopolitical analysis this a personal question so I have to answer from where I from where I said about optimism uh I don't think that I'm going to survive in this world forever so from a Optimist pessimist point of view I would be pretty pessimistic about my physical immortality however however I'm very optimistic uh that human integrity and my personal human Integrity is extremely valuable and based on that for the short period of time that we're here I want to serve and give as much of what I believe to be good as possible and I believe that the same um Power that puts that desire in me that I it's a great mystery to me why why I have love in my heart how that happened how God's grace um is given and it's a great mystery to me how I feel um so privileged to have love as as something in my life that I have a lot of confidence that that that that same power that put the power of the destructive power in the atom has also put the power of conscience the power of wisdom The Power of Love in many hearts and that if that power of uh mystery and love wants this school of the world to survive then I'm confident that it will okay