Charter for Compassion to unify, inspire and bring compassion back into the hearts of society update 1-7-10

Compassion manifests itself in the world not by thinking but by doing. People around the world are acting compassionately, yet separately. Help connect them with one clear message.

People around the world are acting compassionately, yet separately. Help connect them with one clear message.Add your name today. Share the Charter with your networks. Each additional name makes the compassionate voice a more potent force in the world. Let us make the silent majority a challenge to extremism and hatred. www.charterforcompassion.org

Charter for Compassion

A call to bring the world together…

The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.

It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others—even our enemies—is a denial of our common humanity. We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion.

We therefore call upon all men and women ~ to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion ~ to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate ~ to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures ~ to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity ~ to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings—even those regarded as enemies.

We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensible to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.

Add your name today. Share the Charter with your networks. Each additional name makes the compassionate voice a more potent force in the world. Let us make the silent majority a challenge to extremism and hatred.  http://charterforcompassion.org/

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People around the world are invited to submit examples of compassion in action. Several are featured on the home page at any time. When I logged onto the web site on January 7, 2010 I was delighted to see an event I had submitted: Annual Thanksgiving Feast at the American Indian Center - Mpls/MN/USA. No one can remember how many years volunteers have hosted this gathering for our community. Over 100 volunteers contribute and prepare food, then serve a feast to everyone wants to come, always several hundred of our neighbors. 2009-11-27 17:24 Phyllis Stenerson

About the Project

The Charter for Compassion is the result of Karen Armstrong’s 2008 TED Prize wish and made possible by the generous support of the Fetzer Institute. It was unveiled to the world on November 12, 2009.

Why a Charter for Compassion?
The Charter of Compassion is a cooperative effort to restore not only compassionate thinking but, more importantly, compassionate action to the center of religious, moral and political life. Compassion is the principled determination to put ourselves in the shoes of the other, and lies at the heart of all religious and ethical systems. One of the most urgent tasks of our generation is to build a global community where men and women of all races, nations and ideologies can live together in peace. In our globalized world, everybody has become our neighbor, and the Golden Rule has become an urgent necessity.

The Charter, crafted by people all over the world and drafted by a multi-fath, multi-national council of thinkers and leaders, seeks to change the conversation so that compassion becomes a key word in public and private discourse, making it clear that any ideology that breeds hatred or contempt ~ be it religious or secular ~ has failed the test of our time. It is not simply a statement of principle; it is above all a summons to creative, practical and sustained action to meet the political, moral, religious, social and cultural problems of our time.

We invite each of you to adopt the charter as your own, to make a lifelong commitment to live with compassion..

About Karen Armstrong
Karen Armstrong is one of the most provocative, original thinkers on the role of religion in the modern world. Armstrong is a former Roman Catholic nun who left a British convent to pursue a degree in modern literature at Oxford.  She has written more than 20 books around the ideas of what Islam, Judaism and Christianity have in common, and around their effect on world events, including the magisterial A History of God and Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today’s World. Her latest book is The Case for God. Her meditations on personal faith and religion (she calls herself a freelance monotheist) spark discussion — especially her take on fundamentalism, which she sees in a historical context, as an outgrowth of modern culture.

The Charter for Compassion To add your signature to the affirmation, click here

Affirmers:
H.M. Queen Rania Al Abdullah
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu
Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah
Islamic scholar
Peter Gabriel
Musician
Dr. Helene Gayle
President and CEO, CARE
Jody Williams
Winner, Nobel Peace Prize
Isabel Allende
Author
Dr. M. Din Syamsuddin
President, Muhammadiyah
Sir Richard Branson
Founder, Virgin Group
Forest Whitaker
Actor
His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Dr. Abdul Sattar Edhi
Founder, Edhi Foundation

Contact / Partnership
The Charter for Compassion is not a new organization. Our partners around the world already work tirelessly in the name of compassion and interfaith dialogue. They will continue to celebrate the Charter and compassion in their efforts as the Charter seeks to raise the profile of their important work.
global tolerance, the team developing the Charter partner network, has prepared an FAQ which details what partnership entails.
Review it then email partner@charterforcompassion.org. We look forward to hearing from you.

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The Charter for Compassion is launched (update 11/28/09)

Karen Armstrong, noted historian and theologian, unveiled the Charter for Compassion, a “single document crafted by people from all walks of life, nationalities, beliefs and backgrounds with the intent to unify, inspire and bring compassion back into the hearts of society” on November 12.

'The Charter proclaims a principle embraced by every faith, and by every moral code. It is often referred to as The Golden Rule. Not simply a statement of principle, the Charter is above all a summons to creative, practical and sustained action to meet the political, moral, religious, social and cultural problems of our time. The Golden Rule requires that we use empathy -- moral imagination -- to put ourselves in others' shoes. We should act toward them as we would want them to act toward us. We should refuse, under any circumstance, to carry out actions which would cause them harm."

"...In more than two decades of studying and writing about world religions, historian Karen Armstrong was repeatedly struck by the emphasis that all the great traditions place on compassion... [Armstrong is] author of A History of God...The Case for God ...and The Great Transformation, which traced the history of the ‘Axial Age’ (c900-200 BCE), when all the great world faiths either came into being or had their roots, where compassion and nonviolence were so essential...

So when she won the prestigious TED Prize in 2008, and with it was granted a wish for a better world, she proposed a Charter which would restore compassion to the centre of attention, could challenge the voices of extremism and hatred, empower people to demand compassionate speech/action, and make compassion audible in our troubled world." (excerpt from "To counter hate, a more compassionate world" by Chidanand Rajghatta, Times of India, November 12, 2009)

For a year thousands of people from all walks of life and faiths, from all over the world, worked to craft the Charter. The Council of Conscience, a multi-faith, multi-national group of religious thinkers and leaders, reviewed and sorted through all the world's contributions to craft the final Charter.

Among the 18 councilors are Sister Joan Chittister, Benetvision; Sheikh Ali Gomaa, Grand Mufti of the Arab Republic of Egypt; Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Islamic Studies; Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp, Rabbi of the Reform Jewish Community of The Hague; Rev. Peter Storey, Former Methodist Bishop from South Africa; Tho Ha Vinh, International Committee of the Red Cross;  Tu Wei Ming, Professor of Chinese History and Philosophy and of Confucian Studies; and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Former Archbishop of Cape Town. 

The Charter for Compassion is beginning to build its partnership network with organizations around the world. It's not clear just how the vision will become reality but Armstrong says, “Without compassion, we cannot build a just and viable world.”  To date, 218 events have been uploaded with an approximate attendance of 33,581 people.

Click to get more information, read the Charter, find events,  add your signature to affirm the Charter  (all information from Charter for Compassion website) 11/28/09

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11/23/08 summary by Phyllis Stenerson 

The Charter for Compassion is a collaborative effort to build a peaceful and harmonious global community. Bringing together the voices of people from all religions, the Charter seeks to remind the world that while all faiths are not the same, they all share the core principle of compassion and the Golden Rule. The Charter will change the tenor of the conversation around religion. It will be a clarion call to the world.

Over the next months this site will be open for the world to contribute to Charter for Compassion. Using innovative group decision-making software, people of all faiths, from all across the globe, will contribute their words and stories on a website designed specifically for the Charter. A Council of Sages, made up of religious thinkers and leaders, will craft the world’s words into the final version of the Charter. The document will not only speak to the core ideas of compassion but will also address the actions all segments of society can take to bring these ideas into the world more fully. The Charter for Compassion will then be signed by religious leaders of all faiths at a large launch event, followed by a series of other events to publicize and promote the Charter around the world.

The Charter for Compassion will not be a new organization. There are hundreds of existing organizations around the world already working tirelessly in the name of compassion and interfaith dialogue. Our goal is to highlight these groups in effort to raise the profile of their work.
The Charter will show that the voice of negativity and violence so often associated with religion is the minority and that the voice of compassion is the majority. Through the participation of the grassroots, people around the world will expect more out of religious leaders and one another. In doing so, the Charter will shift conceptions of religion for all people.

The Council Of Sages is a multi-faith, multi-national group of religious thinkers and leaders. They will gather together and sort through all the world's contributions and mold the final version of the Charter for Compassion from those words.

The Council continues to grow - the first eight members: Ali Asani - Professor of the Practice of Indo-Muslim Languages and Culture at Harvard University, Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell - Director of the Department of Religion at the Chautauqua Institution, Sister Joan Chittister - a Benedictine Sister of Erie, PA., Chandra Musaffar - President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), a human rights advocacy organization in Malaysia, Baroness Julia Neuberger  - a rabbi who served the South London Liberal Synagogue for twelve years, Tariq Ramadan - Professor of Islamic Studies at Oxford and a Visiting Professor at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp - rabbi of the Reform Jewish Community of The Hague, and rabbi of the Union of Dutch Reform Jewish Communities, Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Eight core ideas on compassion Compassion as empathy not pity.
Compassion as concrete action.
Compassion as a lens for scripture.
Compassion’s role as a spiritual tool and its relation to belief.
Compassion as fundamental to all faiths.
Compassion as an urgent global need.
Compassion as concern for everybody.
Compassion and the Golden Rule.

Karen Armstrong is a former Roman Catholic nun who has written more than 20 books around the ideas of what Islam, Judaism and Christianity have in common, and around their effect on world events, including the magisterial A History of God and Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today’s World. Her latest book is The Bible: A Biography…In the post-9/11 world, she is a powerful voice for ecumenical understanding.

In 2008, Karen Armstrong won the TED Prize, awarded annually to three exceptional individuals who each receive $100,000 and, much more important, the granting of "One Wish to Change the World.".

Video of Karen_armstrong_making_her_TED_prize_wish_-  The_Charter_for_Compassion

Video of Karen Armstrong introducing Charter for Compassion

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) brings together people from those three worlds whose annual conference brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes). TED.com makes the best talks and performances, the ideas worth spreading, from TED available to the public, for free.