Thoughts on Interfaith Dialogues and Alliances?

What are your opinions or interfaith alliances and dialogues, designed to create understanding between different religious groups? Do they benefit the regular people out living their lives, or is it only useful for leaders in the religious community? I've heard about them but I don't know what their impact has been, so I was wondering if any of you had any experiences with interfaith alliances or groups, dialogues, etc.
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Dear CathIncote - I was invited to one of these interfaith alliances in Princeton New Jersey. My nephew graduated from Princeton last year and participated in these dialogues. As far as i know it's leaders of various religious groups and some participation by students / common people. It doesn't benefit the regular people. I believe for us SIKHS to create awareness amongst the local population is do SEVA ( it can be at Thanksgiving Day Parade, Veteran's Day Parade or 4th of July Parade here is US ......) SEVA can anything from free Drinks at the parade and distributing pamphlets on SIKHI. I see vendors making money at the parades. If we give free water we can easily generate their interest in why we are doing it ? Get as many Gursikh volunteers as possible and be ready to answer ?s
By the way my nephew did LANGAR Seva at Princeton University last year for the first time. There was lot of interest amongst students and they did presentation on SIKHISM - answered questions by the audience. At the end it was GURU KA LANGAR...........

Cathlncote ji great first post and welcome to SPN.

In my years on this planet, I believe that I have seen news about various attempts at alliances or working together.

On a long term basis, these are very hard to sustain as sooner or later the needs and good motives that bring groups together get replaced by differences that divide them. So one suffers from "Good intentions aside, ...." scenarios. So long term alliances I believe are virtually impossible to sustain.

On a short term basis it may be possible to do joint projects on commonality between the faiths or commonality of purpose. But these will be limited rather than global in scope.

The most exciting type of alliances are in the category of "strategic or tactical". For me and I have always thought that we as a Sikh community can have great operational learning from the Jewish community. There are many cultural and religious aspirations that are similar,

• Experiences of Genocide
• 'Saint - Soldiers" in that the Jewish people do not turn the other cheek either
• Community service in Kibbutz settings versus Sevaa (service concept) in Sikhism
• Per-capita propensity of learned people in science, technology and business

I believe it will be wonderful for Sikhs to learn operational aspects of,

• Jewish Defense League
• Operational support models to help rank and file through preferred loans, business relationships
• Press and Media affairs management to protect your rights, address mis-information and propaganda by Sikhism enemies
• Jewish religious community being also one of the smaller ones considering world religions will perhaps also fit well in terms of operational models

Just some thoughts for dialog.

Hope it helps.

Sat Sri Akal.

The concept is fantastic but I rarely see the effects filtering down. Often people involved in these already are open minded and are not the ones that need to be targeted.

Have any of our members been involved in interfaith events or been affected by interfaith initiatives either directly or indirectly? Please share your experiences. Does anyone know of interfaith initiatives that have had an impact on their local environment? How did it work and who was involved?