The 2018 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Toronto drew 8,324 individuals from 81 countries, collectively representing 118 different spiritual and secular traditions. In a week’s worth of varied programming, they gathered together to pursue “understanding, reconciliation, and change,” in line with the parliament objectives.
“It was stunning,” said Judy Trautman, one of a handful of locals who participated. “They’re all there together, celebrating peace and harmony and working for the betterment of our planet and our communities. That’s so uplifting.”
Toledoans will experience a taste of that atmosphere beginning Sunday, when the MultiFaith Council of Northwest Ohio opens the Parliament of Northwest Ohio Religions at Warren AME Church. It’s a smaller-scale meeting of hearts and minds that unfolds at various venues through Thursday, according to Ms. Trautman, who’s the co-founder of the MultiFaith Council. Local Christians, Buddhists, Baha'is, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, and Sikhs are set to participate, reflecting in daily programming on the theme: “What is my Piece of Peace?”
The Parliament of Northwest Ohio Religions is organized in line with the fifth anniversary of the region’s designation as a Compassionate Community, a title that was formalized when local government officials signed the Charter for Compassion on April 25, 2014. It also comes in the same year that the Greater Toledo Compassionate Community set a new record in what’s perhaps the most visible manifestation of compassion.
The Compassion Games quantify global compassion annually, putting a metric on elements like volunteer hours and numbers of individual served in a weeklong recording period, as reported by each of the organizations or communities that participate around the world.
Compassionate Toledo was “off the charts this year,” Compassion Games co-founder Sommer Joy Ramer said, recording 6,451 volunteers, 125,972 hours served, 1,536,165 people served and $171,550 raised in the recording period between Sept. 11-22.
“This is way more than any team has reported around the world,” she said.
Ms. Trautman is proud to say that’s just a week like any other in northwest Ohio.
“It isn’t really counting anything extraordinary or invented for the games,” Ms. Trautman said. “It’s indicative that we do a lot.”
Compassionate Toledo
When then-Mayor Michael D. Collins, along with other local officials, signed onto the Charter for Compassion in 2014, Toledo and northwest Ohio became the 39th city and first region to do so — a relatively earlier adoptee among the more than 400 communities to have signed as of this year, according to Marilyn Turkovich, who is the executive director of the nonprofit organization behind the document of the same name.
The Charter for Compassion itself was unveiled in 2009, a document envisioned in a 2008 TED Talk that won that year’s TED Prize. In her impactful presentation earlier, Karen Armstrong, a scholar of religions, had traced a core value of compassion through all religious traditions.
“It was really seminal in that she as a scholar of religions concludes that at the core of all religions and philosophical thought through the years has been compassion and the Golden Rule,” said Ms. Trautman, an admirer of Ms. Armstrong. “In the face of all the discord, which was already happening then and now has just gotten worse, she called upon religious leaders of all types to send ideas for a Charter for Compassion.”
Initially individuals and organizations showed their support by signing onto the charter. When civic leaders in Seattle affirmed the charter in 2010, a precedent was set for Compassionate Communities.
A Compassionate Community looks different from community to community, in that those involved in the movement look specifically at the needs surrounding them, Ms. Turkovich said. In India, for example, a focus might be water conservation and sanitation. She was speaking from Austin, Texas, where she was helping in an effort addressing homelessness.
“Toledo was one of the first efforts in the U.S., and it’s been very, very consistent in the work that it’s doing,” Ms. Turkovich said. “It’s very concerned with promoting dialogue between people, having those difficult conversations that are essential for a community to work together.”
The MultiFaith Council has taken up Compassionate Toledo as a major initiative, working toward its goals and values in numerous ways aside from the annual Compassion Games. After an initial convention in 2014, in which organizers brought together many of the city’s nonprofits and aid organizations, they’ve been organizing forums on various themes each year.
Ms. Trautman said another objective is to tell the untold stories of compassion, as they do through the Heroes of Compassion that they recognize each year at the MultiFaith Banquet. Honorees are added to a plaque that’s housed with the Lucas County Commissioners.
“I’m really proud of our community,” Ms. Trautman said. “Yeah, we have our warts and we have our problems. But I think communities like ours can be a comfort in a world where the main news is so horrible. The quiet folks are still here, and they’re quietly doing the work of compassion in their local communities. We must not forget that.”
Parliament in Ohio
To recognize the five-year anniversary of Compassionate Toledo with a Parliament of Northwest Ohio feels appropriate to Tarunjit Singh Butalia, who’s set to be one of the keynote speakers at the opening ceremony on Sunday.
Mr. Butalia, of Columbus, the executive director of Religions for Peace USA.
The first-ever Parliament of the World’s Religions took place in Chicago in 1893, he pointed out, in line with the Chicago World’s Fair. So representatives from the East Coast would have traveled through northern Ohio to attend, in some cases stopping en route to lecture in Cleveland.
There’s also a rich history of religion in Toledo, which, for example, is the site of the first mosque to be constructed in the traditional Islamic style in the country. That’s the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo in Perrysburg. Ms. Trautman, for her part, credits the region with an impressive diversity of religious traditions and an admirable engagement among them.
The Parliament of Northwest Ohio Religions opens with an opening ceremony and compassion forum at Warren AME Church, 915 Collingwood Blvd., beginning at 5 p.m. Sunday. It continues with luncheons and evening programs each day through Thursday.
Noon luncheons are at First Congregational Church, 2315 Collingwood Blvd., on Monday; Hindu Temple of Toledo, 4336 King Rd., Sylvania, on Tuesday, Islamic Center of Greater Toledo, 25877 Scheider Rd., Perrysburg, on Wednesday and Our Lady, Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, 2535 Collingwood Blvd., on Thursday.
Evening programs are a Universal Worship Service at Zoar Lutheran Church, 314 E. Indiana Ave., Perrysburg, at 6 p.m. Monday; Sacred Music Concert at the Lourdes University Franciscan Center, 6832 Convent Blvd., Sylvania, at 7 p.m. Tuesday; Forum on Becoming a Disability-Friendly City at First Unitarian Church of Toledo, 3205 Glendale Ave., at 7 p.m. Wednesday; and Food Sufficiency Forum and Re-Commitment Ceremony at Epworth United Methodist Church, 4855 W. Central Ave., at 7 p.m. Thursday.
For a full schedule of events, including registration information, go to multifaithcouncil.org. Cost of registration varies for each event.
In advance of the opening ceremony, Mr. Butalia reflected on the theme of the parliament, “What is my Piece of Peace?”
“As my perspective is to be a person of faith, or to be a religious person, you have to be compassionate,” he said. “That is the foundational ethical norm for peacemaking.”
Compassion doesn’t entail agreement with another point of view, he said, but it does require a person to empathize with others, a point that becomes especially important in religious communities in conflict. People of faith are called to be righteous, he said, but should be wary of self-righteousness that prevents them from recognizing the humanity in others.
“Compassion is what we need as people of faith, and compassion with people we disagree with, in particular,” he said. “It comes back to compassion.”
First Published November 1, 2019, 11:46 p.m.
