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Religious Leadership
in a Multi-Religious WorldJoin the national conversation about interfaith leadership and seminary education
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Become a Contributing Scholar
Join State of Formation
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My Neighbor's Faith
Stories of Interreligious Encounter,
Growth, and Transformation
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Dr. Jennifer Howe Peace
Co-Director of CIRCLE
Delivers Singh Lecture in Comparative Religious Thought and Culture
Click here to watch.
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Rabbi Or Rose, Co-Director of CIRCLE
Contributes Book Chapter to Jewish Megatrends
on American Judaism and Interreligious Engagement
Learn About Our Mission
Founded in 2008 with a generous grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, CIRCLE is a joint initiative of Andover Newton Theological School (ANTS) and Hebrew College (HC). CIRCLE’s mission is to help prepare religious and ethical leaders for service in a religiously diverse society. The work of CIRCLE is rooted in the cultivation of authentic relationships across lines of difference. It is our conviction that through study, dialogue, and joint action, we can help to heal and transform the world. CIRCLE engages seminary and graduate students, academics, and communal leaders locally and nationally through our in-person and online initiatives.
History
In 2001, Hebrew College (HC) moved from Brookline, Massachusetts to a new hilltop campus in Newton it would share with Andover Newton Theological School (ANTS). Two years later, Hebrew College, which began in 1921 as a secular cultural institution, created a rabbinical school. For the last ten years, the staff and students of the newest Jewish seminary and the oldest Protestant seminary in the country—Andover Newton’s roots go back to the founding of Andover Seminary in 1807—have formed a partnership that has changed the way both schools think about their educational goals and the nature of their communities. Newton’s “Institution Hill,” named for the other ancestor of Andover Newton, the Newton Baptist Institute, has become “Faith Hill.”
Support CIRCLE
You can help
Inter-religious leadership has to be cultivated, fostered, and supported. Please help support CIRCLE educate a new generation of inter-religious leaders across the country.
Latest Articles
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Blitzer, Vitsmun, and Authentic Interfaith Dialogue
Wolf Blitzer – prized journalist for CNN – made what some are affectionately referring to as a ‘teachable moment’ when he asked an atheist survivor (Rebecca Vitsmun) of the Moore, OK tornado: ‘You've gotta thank the Lord, right? Do you thank the Lord for that split-second decision?’ ‘I – I’m actually an atheist,’ Vitsmun replies. Noticeably tripped-up, Blitzer [...]
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Home
Home is a concept that has little to do with a physical building, but everything to do with the emotional, psychological and spiritual space that we each occupy. We live in this space no matter where we are geographically, and no matter what dwelling we inhabit. Still, there is something to be said about the physical structure [...]
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Theological Matrix: Worldviews Exposed
Welcome... What is "the matrix?" The matrix is the space that we as humans develop culturally. We are all human social beings, we are born into community, a world that exists beyond us, yet we influence it as we choose. The matrix is inescapable. To exist in isolation biologically the human would die off. To [...]
Current Journal
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Issue 12
in this issue, we explore issues of ethics and bioethics, particularly as they are played out and reflected in our religious and faith traditions and practices. These are often the questions that keep us awake at night, or around a dinner table, or at our own desks, studying, and pondering. What does a particular tradition’s text have to teach us about abortion, for example? What are our religious or ethical responsibilities to animals, or to the elderly, or to the dying? As an inter-religious publication, we are also interested, of course, in comparing what different traditions might say about the same topic. We welcome additional discourse—in letters to our editors, in our comments, and in future submissions—from you as you continue to compare, consider, and challenge understandings about ethics.
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“Clothed With Glory: Sacred Underwear and the Consecrated Life,” by Alonzo Gaskill
There are three ritual acts that pre-modern religions traditionally have in common: eating, washing and clothing. Ancient peoples engaged in rites of communion, wherein covenants with God and/or man were made and renewed through the partaking of food. Similarly, among most of the ancients, ceremonial washing was a requisite rite of passage with salvific connotations. [...]
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“Religious Diversity Within the Limits of Radical Neo-Enlightenment,” by Mark Manolopoulos
This paper begins by briefly sketching a ‘return to universality’ with what the author calls a ‘radical neo-Enlightenment’ that is driven by a revolutionary rationality. As part of this delineation, the essay discusses how this rationality is itself delimited, and how the apparently ‘unlimited’ figure of divinity is itself also delimited. The work then sketches [...]