Center for INTERFAITH RELATIONS

Many Faiths, One Heart, Common Action

Festival
of
Faiths

Nov. 4-10, 2007

The Center for Interfaith Relations (CIR) in Louisville, Kentucky presents its 12th annual Festival of Faiths, November 4-10, 2007. This interfaith event has received international acclaim and has been recognized by the Parliament of the World’s Religions, the World Conference on Religions for Peace and the U.S. Senate, for its ability to build bridges that connect the region’s diverse houses of worship and foster an environment in which people of faith come together and work for the betterment of the community. The Festival of Faiths has attracted over 60,000 visitors in the past eleven years and has featured such speakers as H.H. the Dalai Lama, the 102nd Archbishop of Canterbury, the late Lord Runcie, Deepak Chopra, Muhammad Ali, Huston Smith and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

The 2007 Festival of Faiths marks the second of a four-year series of Festivals that center around the different stages or passages of life. This year’s theme is Birth and Creation through the Eyes of Faith. In 2008, the theme will be Coming of Age, and in 2009, Marriage.

This year’s theme will be explored in an exciting array of ways including: Birth of Faith Traditions, Birthing as a Spiritual Experience, Birth of the True Self, Birth of Creation and Artistic Expression as a Birthing Experience.

The mission of the Festival of Faiths is to celebrate the diversity of our faiths, to express gratitude for our unity and to strengthen the role of faith traditions in society. The Festival creates an opportunity for real people of many different faith traditions who represent the religious diversity present in our community to come together, share meaningful dialogue, and identify commonly held beliefs while working on a project that addresses commonly shared issues we all face.

CIR’s Festival of Faiths is the means to an end: the promotion of interfaith interaction and dialogue leads to interfaith understanding within communities and ultimately manifests itself in common action to address shared concerns.