Objectives

The Institute for Religious Tolerance, Peace and Justice was founded to promote religious tolerance, coexistence, and interfaith dialogue. By promoting interfaith dialogue and universal respect for different faiths, we seek to minimize the conflicts that are shaped by religion and employ religion as their excuse. We seek to disarm the religious intolerance that is often the cause and underlying root of oppression and warfare.

We seek to educate the general public — through a variety of methods — about the diversity of religious beliefs around the world in an attempt to combat religious oppression, intolerance and violence. We highlight the commonalities shared by all peoples as a stepping stone to the peacemaking process. By tackling religious intolerance as the root problem of many of our modern difficulties, we will be better able to handle them.

We seek to have far reaching and long lasting effects in helping the world to mature to a more peaceable, tolerant and just place.

Rationale

While there are many other organizations currently in existence which promote interfaith dialogue and religious tolerance, it appears that most of these are linked to a particular faith or denomination. Also, most of these focus their efforts on dialogue between clergy and scholars of those particular religions.

While this is a noble and effective tack, we have found that what is missing today is a focused effort to reach the general public and create a grass-roots movement to further interfaith dialogue. It is the average citizen and adherent of the various world religions who most need to hear the message of religious tolerance and interfaith dialogue. It is this sector of the community that we most actively target.