On Monday night my wife and I had an Orthodox rabbi and scholar from Jerusalem as an overnight guest. As Toronto-based Roman Catholics, we have had the privilege of gracious encounters with persons of other faiths. And in our work and writings, my wife and I both have been active in inter-religious learning and dialogue. Still, the experience of having a rabbi eating with us, and sleeping in our guestroom study, involved a degree of familiarity that was at once a great honor and adventure.
The Rabbi and I had set up this meeting to continue a conversation that began in Amman, Jordan two years ago. Now face-to-face, we wanted to explore possibilities for extending the dialogue that is occurring between faiths in pockets around the world to include the business community. Very simply, the idea is to draw upon the vast wisdom from the world’s religious traditions as a resource for energizing thoughtful, ethical management. In the course of several hours we laid out a conceptual framework for testing this hypothesis, recognizing that there are many obstacles to such a conversation, but confident that the effort and risks would be worth it, given that so many of the social and environmental expectations for corporate performance now involve inherently moral considerations. (more…)
Tags: corporate diversity, corporate peace-keeping, interfaith dialogue, religious resources for business ethics.
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