Parliament Of The World's Religions To Host 2015 Conference In Salt Lake City

Huffington Post | September 9, 2014

The Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions has news it hopes will excite interfaith advocates and religious activists around the world. The Parliament will host its 2015 conference in Salt Lake City, the first time the Parliament has met in the United States for 22 years.

"America is the home base of the interfaith movement and it's about time the Parliament come back home," Parliament Chair Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid said in an announcement.

On Tuesday Mujahid was joined by Executive Director Dr. Mary Nelson, Dr. Arun Gandhi, Andrew Himes of the Charter for Compassion International and Sande Hart of United Religions Initiative for a press conference at the Calvin L. Rampton Salt Palace Convention Center -- where the conference will be held on October 15 - 19, 2015.

"Salt Lake City and its people are very hospitable," Mujahid told HuffPost. "There is a big interfaith network there, which came into being when the Winter Olympics were being held -- and they've sustained themselves since."

The conference will engage participants and speakers on several themes, Mujahid said, including climate change, the wealth gap and global violence.

"We selected these issues because 10 to 15 thousand people show up to the Parliament, and they are not just lay people," Mujahid said. "They’re activists. These people have by and large influenced what gets said from the pulpit, and people speaking from the pulpit are in a good position to influence the longterm solutions."

Mujahid said he could not yet comment on next year's speakers but referred to previous Parliament guests who have included the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, President Jimmy Carter, Nobel Peace Prize Winner Dr. Shirin Ebadi, Queen Noor of Jordan, Dr. Jane Goodall, Dr. Karen Armstrong, Swami Vivekananda, Rabbi David Saperstein, Dr. Hans Kung, Deepak Chopra, and Amma the Hugging Saint.

With a focus on the environment, Mujahid suggested that conference-goers can expect climate experts and scientists to be in attendance.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/09/parliament-of-world-religions-2015-salt-lake_n_5681852.html