Interfaith Conversation with Rev. Dr. Guibord
The Reverend Canon Dr. Gwynne Guibord currently serves as the Officer of Ecumenical and Interreligious Concerns for the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles as well as the Theological Consultant for Interfaith Relations for the Episcopal Church USA. She serves on a number of boards including: Trustee of A Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions. She is past President of the following boards: The Interreligious Council of Southern California, California Council of Churches; The Interfaith Alliance National Board; and Progressive Christians Uniting. Interfaith dialogue initiated by Dr. Guibord on behalf of the Diocese of Los Angeles are the Hindu Community, the Sikh community, the Buddhist Community and The Christian – Muslim Consultative Group. On behalf of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy in Washington, DC and the Islamic Studies Centre in Syria, Dr. Guibord was in Damascus two years ago for faith-based reconciliation and peace talks with Syrian Muslims. She recently returned from Cyprus with talks with Syrian and Jordanian Muslims. Dr. Guibord co-chairs The National Muslim – Christian Initiative Dialogue on behalf of The National Council of Churches in Christ USA as well as the NCC’s National Buddhist-Christian Dialogue.. She is an award winning preacher and much sought after public speaker.
Pacifica Institute Interfaith Conversations hosted Dr Guibord on the topic of commitment of the Episcopal Church on Interfaith and Ecumenical Relations. Dr Guibord started by thanking the Pacifica Institute and mentioned Fethullah Gulen’s ideas which has encouraged many people to be involved with interfaith, to build bridges of understanding and turning walls into tables. She said that Gulen has dedicated his life to interfaith dialog and Gulen mentions that interfaith dialog is a must in our contemporary world. Dr Guibord gave the example of the earth which is seen from outside space that looks spectacular. She went on to say that when you looked at the earth from outer space, you could see continents but no heavy black lines on them that separate one from the other. That’s the will of the Creator who mentions this in all of the Holy Scriptures one example being Koran that says “We created the humans in different colors, races and languages so that you may know and understand one another.”
She added that this earth is a gift and each person is a gift and there is nowhere else to go other than this orbit of life and that we have to struggle together. She said that she likes to think that our dialog is like Abrahams tent. Abraham liked to welcome the people to his tent where he invited everyone to come in and go who they are meant to be.
Dr Guibord continued her talk by saying that there are 88 million of Anglican community and 2.3 million in the United States. She also mentioned the difference between interfaith and ecumenism. People think interfaith dialog is dialog of religions whereas ecumenical dialog is being in dialog with other christians. She said that it had taken them years to uphold the rationale to be in dialog with people of other faiths. She also said that one of the primary issues is that how we maintain our creed while we maintain our dialog and that dialog depends on mutual understanding and it is not an opportunity of conversion.
An excerpt of the Episcopalian Global Conference on Interfaith Dialog of the document reads:
“Therefore, we commend to all our members: dialogue for building relationships, the sharing of information, religious education, and celebration with people of other religions as part of Christian life,
1. dialogue begins when people meet each other
2. dialogue depends upon mutual understanding, mutual respect and mutual trust
3. dialogue makes it possible to share in service to the community
4. dialogue is a medium of authentic witness by all parties and not an opportunity for proselytizing.
We believe that such dialogue may be a contribution toward helping people of different religions grow in mutual understanding and making common cause in peacemaking, social justice, and religious liberty.
We further encourage dioceses, congregations, and other organizations of The Episcopal Church to initiate such dialogue in partnership with other Christian Churches and in consultation with other provinces of the Communion, where appropriate.”
She mentioned the dialog with the Jewish community and the Buddhist community where Dr Guibord is the co-chair of both. She says that the people should know the joy of our life and should have the conviction that they are less likely to do harm to one another and finally we should all be in the right direction to save the world. She also mentioned the efforts of their dialog with the Indian community where they declared that they would not be taking up conversion of the Indians in India and this received a lot of coverage in India.
She added that the dialog with the Müslim community is also very critical and that led to the action of Standing Together. She said that we all understood that especially after the unfortunate attacks of September 11, Moslem community had Been demonized. She finally said that with the Moslem community in the past two years they have have been working together to and compiled their study into a document. The more we get together the more we learn from each other amazingly. She added that we have a lot of work to do to contribute to global peace.