• Introduction
  • Point 1
    A Call to Christians and Christian Communities to Combat Religious, Racial, and All Other Forms of Antisemitism – Biblically, Liturgically, and Catechetically.
  • Point 2
    A Call to Christians and Christian Communities to Promote Interreligious Dialogue with Jews
  • Point 3
    A Call to Christians and Christian Communities to Develop Theological Understandings of Judaism that Affirm Its Distinctive Integrity
  • Point 4
    A Call to Christians and Christian Communities to Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem
  • Point 5
    A Call to Jews and Jewish Communities to Acknowledge the Efforts of Many Christian Communities in the Late 20th Century to Reform Their Attitudes Toward Jews
  • Point 6
    A Call to Jews and Jewish Communities to Acknowledge the Efforts of Many Christian Communities in the Late 20th Century to Reform Their Attitudes Toward Jews
  • Point 7 and 8
    A Call to Jews and Jewish Communities to Differentiate between Fair-Minded Criticism of Israel and Antisemitism and to Offer Encouragement to the State of Israel as It Works to Fulfill the Ideals Stated in Its Founding Documents, a Task Israel Shares with Many Nations of the World
  • Point 9
    A Call To Both Christian and Jewish Communities and Others... to commit ourselves to the following goals and invite Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with all people of faith and goodwill, always to respect the other and to accept each other’s differences and dignity.
  • Point 10
    A Call To Both Christian and Jewish Communities and Others... to commit ourselves to the following goals and invite Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with all people of faith and goodwill, always to respect the other and to accept each other’s differences and dignity.
  • Point 11
    A Call To Both Christian and Jewish Communities and Others... to commit ourselves to the following goals and invite Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with all people of faith and goodwill, always to respect the other and to accept each other’s differences and dignity.
  • Point 12
    A Call To Both Christian and Jewish Communities and Others... to commit ourselves to the following goals and invite Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with all people of faith and goodwill, always to respect the other and to accept each other’s differences and dignity.

Opening Reflections

1947 Seelisberg Conference particitpiants & commissions

The questions a photo can pose

Who were they? - This is what we may think to ourselves when reading for the first time of the religious leaders who crafted the Seelisberg declaration. And we may want to see a photograph of them. Here they are before us.

And the faces of these Christians and Jews may remind us of that key question - the truth that is the most important of all the truths one can, as Bob Dylan sings, "tell and think and speak and breathe - reflecting it from the mountain so all souls can see it."

We mean the question of why some members of one of the cultures of our human species care and feel responsible for the well-being of the members of cultures, even of religious traditions, not their own.

What is it in the personal experiences of these good people in this photo that set them on their caring path to Seelisberg?

Where does active compassion and social responsibility for the stranger in need come from?

And then there is another question we are asked: "Is it worth risking oneself for this? And if so, how and to what extent?"

Reflect on an experience when you were impressed with someone's compassion or concern for another person, esp. if the other person was different in some way.

"I met one man who was wounded with love,
I met another man who was wounded with hatred."

Bob Dylan - from "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" - in the album The Freewheeling Dylan (1962) & in Bob Dylan Live 1964.

[ Twelve Berlin Points Forum ... ]