From our EVP & CEO, Joyce Dubensky: The Multicultural Forum in Minneapolis isn’t just another conference. All the people there are focused on acknowledging the breadth – and beauty – of our many identities. It means that in your workshops the discussions are nuanced, and people are immediately engaged with the issues in ways that usually take a long time to get to.
At Mark (Fowler) and my workshop, there was head nodding and a lot of sharing. And interesting things happened. One was at the very beginning. When we started with ground rules, one participant offered that he could only speak for himself, not for all Christians, even though he himself is Christian. How right on that is! When you look at the US, one of the things that is striking is the diversity among our religious traditions and practices; no single practitioner can be the spokesperson for an entire tradition. For us, his comment was really rewarding – because Tanenbaum is always promoting that very idea. And it is exactly what we planned to discuss – but at the end of the session!
It was also great to see some of the top experts in the field, and to see members of our Advisory Council. One of them, Frank McCloskey, was doing a session on issues involving how religion plays out at work – it was wonderful to see this important issue getting the attention it deserves.