12 May “Power & Piety” Follow-Up Series
For the past several months, our congregation has been exploring the intersection of religion and violence. Most of that conversation has been internal to Christianity, to personal relations, and to ourselves. Starting this Sunday, we begin to look outward. Scott Young, President of Culture Connection, will be leading us in a two-week Follow-Up series discussing the intersection of Christianity with the other Abrahamic traditions on the issue of religion and violence.
May 15th – “Seismic Shifts in Interfaith Dialogue” (Wesley Room)
Presented by Scott Young, co-founder (with Reg Gipson of WUMC) and current President and Programmer for Culture Connection. A career campus chaplain/religious adviser serving several local campuses, he was Executive Director of the University Religious Conference at UCLA from 2011-2014. He has been involved in interfaith/multi-religious activities throughout his professional ministry and also as adjunct faculty at a number of universities.
May 22nd – “Religion & Violence: Perspectives and Prospects” (Fellowship Hall)
Moderated by Scott Young will moderate a trialogue featuring:
Dr. Amir Hussain, professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University, the Jesuit university in Los Angeles, where he teaches courses on Islam and world religions, and specializes in the study of contemporary Muslim societies in North America. Dr. Hussain is the author or editor of five books as well as over 50 scholarly articles and book chapters and is currently finishing Muslims and the Making of America, a book about how American Muslims have woven themselves into the fabric of American life. From 2011 to 2015 he edited the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the premier journal for the study of religion. In 2008 he was made a Fellow of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities at USC.
Rabbi Ilana Grinblat, Vice President of Community Engagement for the Board of Rabbis of Southern California at the Los Angeles Jewish Federation. Ordained a Conservative rabbi at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in 2001, she served congregations at Temple Beth Shalom in Long Beach and Temple Ner Maarav in Encino. She holds a Master’s degree in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from UCLA, and another rabbinic ordination from the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies. She now teaches Midrash (biblical interpretation) to rabbinical students at her alma mater and leads monthly services at Open Temple in Venice, CA. The author of two books, Blessings and Baby Steps: The Spiritual Path of Parenthood and Catch: Spiritual Lessons Children Teach Us, she also blogs at www.parentstorah.com. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.
Dr. Reinhard Krauss, lecturer at the Center for the Study of Religion at UCLA, where he teaches courses on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He is also on the faculty of the New Theological Seminary of the West, and of Bayan Claremont, a Muslim graduate school in Southern California. A native of Germany, Dr. Krauss was ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and was active in congregational ministry in the Midwest and in California from 1992 to 2013. As an academic translator, he was one of the main contributors to the new English edition of the works of German theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Dr. Krauss has served as President of the Academy for Judaic, Christian and Islamic Studies at UCLA, Harbor Interfaith Services, and the South Coast Interfaith Council.