A.T. ARIYARATNE(born 1931) “We build the road — and the road builds us.” Ahangamage Tudor Ariyaratne, better known as A.T. Ariyaratne, stands the trickle-down approach on its head. He advocates for and practices “development from the bottom up.” Ariyaratne has an academic background, but he has put his beliefs into practice to such […]
Harbhajan Singh Khalsa Yogiji
(1929-2004) Harbhajan Singh Puri was born in 1929 in the part of India that is today Pakistan and was still a teenager when he was called initially to serve as a heroic leader to his own people. In 1947 during the violence associated with the partition of Pakistan from India, he was only 18 but […]
Patricia Smith Melton
(b. 1942) Hope is based as much in stubbornness as it is in dreams. Don’t let anyone take it away from you. —Patricia Smith Melton In January 2002, six women gathered for a three-day forum on the topic: “What is peace, and how can women be empowered to bring it in?” The women were from […]
Karim Al-Hussayni, Aga Khan IV
(b. 1936) This Muslim Prince of Pakistani origin has lived most of his life traveling around the world. As a person with global exposure since childhood he has become a leader in a worldwide educational movement to equip people to live in a diverse world rather than give in to the fears of a “clash of […]
Thich Nhat Hanh
Peacemaker and author Daniel Buttry profiles Vietnamese Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh, including his exploration of ways of reconciling Christianity and Buddhism.
Corrie ten Boom
(1892-1983) You say we could lose our lives for this child. I would consider that the greatest honor that could come to my family. —Corrie Ten Boom During World War II a 50-year old single woman had a brick wall built through her bedroom to create a “hiding place” for Jews and other fugitives from the […]
E. Stanley Jones
(1884-1973) Peace is a by-product of conditions out of which peace naturally comes. —E. Stanley Jones A Christian missionary evangelist as an interfaith hero? A man who held open-air evangelistic meetings with thousands of people in a predominantly non-Christian country, called the “Billy Graham of India,” as a role model in learning from other faiths? […]
King John Sigismund & Isabella Jagiellon
(1540-1571) & (1519-1559) Each person [should] maintain whatever religious faith he wishes, with old or new rituals, while we at the same time leave it to their judgment to do as they please in the matter of faith, just so long as they bring no harm to bear on anyone at all. —Isabella Jagiellon Transylvania has […]
Ashoka
(304-232 B.C.E.) One must not exalt one’s creed discrediting all others, nor must one degrade these others without legitimate reasons. One must, on the contrary, render to other creeds the honor befitting them. —Ashoka Ashoka was the Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty whose religious conversion to Buddhism led to such a transformation that the one who […]
Juliet Garretson Hollister
(1916-2000) Juliet Hollister was “just a nice little mother,” in her words, when her life was transformed by a vision born over peanut butter sandwiches at her kitchen table. It was 1960, and the Cold War was at its height with nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union and the United States aimed threateningly at each […]