Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
Claremont Lincoln University near Los Angeles is a
new graduate school for religious education. It
hopes to change the way religious leaders in the
United States are educated. The school will train
Muslim, Jewish and Christian clergy together. It
offers master's degree programs in interreligious
studies and Muslim leadership. Administrators think
this is the first "interreligious university" of its
kind. Three institutions founded Claremont Lincoln.
One is the Claremont School of Theology, where the
university is located. The other founders are the
Academy for Jewish Religion, California, and the
Islamic Center of Southern California. Students from
one institution may take courses at the others. The
Islamic school is just beginning its programs. The
founders hope to begin training imams sometime next
year. David Lincoln is chairman of the board of
Claremont Lincoln. He and his wife, Joan, donated
fifty million dollars to the university. He says "In
a lot of places now, [religions] fight each other,
and if the religions could encourage solutions to
the problems, then the problems would be solved and
we'd all be better off."Reverend Jerry Campbell,
president of the Claremont School of Theology, says
teaching religion this way will strengthen society.
"If we can't love our neighbors who are not like us,
if we can't love them being who they are, how can
our country hang together?" Jihad Turk is director
of religious affairs for the Islamic Center of
Southern California. He says this way of educating
religious leaders will show that in the United
States, "there is great support from private
institutions, from the public at large and by the
government, as well, that recognizes that Islam and
Muslims are on the side of peace."Ebrahim Rasool,
South Africa's ambassador to the United States,
spoke at the university. He says interfaith
cooperation is a way to balance extremism. "Anyone
can step into the breach and claim to be speaking
for God, and unless the middle ground is able to
establish what is God's purpose, we will cede more
and more ground to the fundamentalists."Reverend
Campbell says he hopes to bring more religions to
Claremont Lincoln, including the Bahai faith. An
International School of Jain Studies will offer
short-term exchange programs and seminars on
Jainism, a religion from India. Reverend Campbell
says the goal is to unite people to promote religion
as a source of healing, compassion and peace.For VOA
Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
