Fetzer Institute

The Fetzer Institute is proud to be the primary sponsor of the Charter for Compassion, a “call to the world” for people of all faiths, and the nonreligious, to come together and help build a more peaceful and harmonious global community. Our work at Fetzer has a long history of supporting this ideal as we engage with people and projects around the world to help bring the power of love, forgiveness and compassion to the center individual and community life. 

Current Fetzer projects that compliment the Charter for Compassion include:

The Abrahamic Family Reunion (AFR)

A network of organizations bound together by the notion that all peoples seek and deserve dignity. The project offers ways to use psychological and spiritual approaches in reconciling conflicts among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the United States. AFR emphasizes shared values of compassion and justice, explores positive historical precedents, and acknowledges collective traumas to foster reconciliation and healing. 

The Campaign for Love & Forgiveness 

The Campaign for Love & Forgiveness is a community engagement initiative that encourages people to bring love and forgiveness into the heart of individual and community life. Through facilitated conversations, television documentaries, and online resources available for anyone to use, the Campaign has touched thousands of people since its launch in 2006. 

Healing Across Religious Divides: Stories of Interfaith Friendships that Have Defied History 

This multi-media project shares the transformative stories of five pairs of spiritual peace builders in the Middle East who have developed loving friendships despite being of different faiths, backgrounds, and against all odds. 

The Welcome Table: An Era of Dialogue on Race

The Fetzer Institute and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation have partnered with the Winter Institute, located within the University of Mississippi, to launch their program, “The Welcome Table: An Era of Dialogue On Race,” a community-based effort to deepen relationships and communities across the state by providing safe and authentic space for community conversations about race.

Forgiveness and Religious Leadership

This program supports research and deep dialogue among world religious leaders and scholars. “The Future of Religious Leadership,” a conference for religious leaders in Haifa, Israel, is set to take place October 21-24, 2009. Consider Forgiveness, a series of videos that explores each faith’s approach to forgiveness and how it relates to justice, love, compassion, retribution, revenge, and empathy is available on Fetzer.org.