World Religion Day is celebrated all around the world by all religions on the third Sunday in January each year. Its stated aim is to “Celebrate the oneness of religion and its role in human society”. It promotes understanding and peace between all religions, encouraging people to learn about other faiths and their followers. One of the reasons I have been blogging about interfaith festivals. Now I have created a new subsection under articles so people can find things more easily.
The day was initiated in 1950 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the United States.
The Bahá’í faith was founded in Iraq in 1863. Bahá’ís believe that every religion has common features and all religions should be respected. They believe that all religions believe in the one God and that only the name differs. . Followers of the Bahá’í faith believe all humans were created and are born equal. We all have the same human rights regardless of race, colour or the religion or creed we choose to follow. Having read all the current major religious texts I can certainly attend that the underlying messages are extremely similar and it is only different interpretations which create and still create our religious differences today. Even each religion has their own different branches. Buddhists have Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana which derives from Mahayana which then also branches out into other subsections such as in Tibet to what are known as the Red Hat, Yellow Hat and Black Hat observances.
Christian Unity Week.
World Religion Day always falls within Christian Unity Week which aims to bring the various fractions of the Christian Church, together. Christianity also has its various branches. Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants who subdivide into Anglicans, Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutherans, Seven Day Adventists, as well as all the newer forms of worship such as Relational Mission Churches and churches such as the New Covenant Church
The Power of Prayer
People often talk about the power of prayer and scientists have been looking into whether this actually has a physical effect in our world. They have discovered so far that not only does prayer bring peace and tranquillity to those praying but it does also affect our physical world. With experiments done in America when 1000 people prayed for peace the crime rate in the town dropped measurably.
There is strong scientific evidence indicating that faith and prayer may help us with experiencing greater health physically, mentally and psychologically. Many studies have been published in both medical and psychological journals supporting the positive effects of prayer and faith.
Meditation has been found to produce a clinically significant reduction in resting as well as ambulatory blood pressure, to reduce heart rate, and results in cardiorespiratory synchronization. It has proved to alter levels of melatonin and serotonin, to boost the immune system response, to decrease the levels of reactive oxygen to reduce stress and promote positive mood states, to reduce anxiety and pain and enhance self-esteem and to have a favourable influence on overall and spiritual quality of life in the terminally ill. Interestingly, what has been found in these experiments is that meditation combined with spiritual belief ie Prayer has been found to have a greater effect than secular meditation. So the power of prayer has, I feel, been proven.
Today lets join millions of people worldwide in their effort to bring religious unity and peace to our world.