Kinds of Membership
Interfaith Center at the Presidio is a set of relationships that begins in the Bay Area in northern California and reaches around the world. Its constituency comes from the thousands who visit and use the Main Post Interfaith Chapel, the Center’s home. And thousands more, near and far, drawn to interfaith activity and the promotion of peace in and between religious, spiritual, and cosmological traditions. Most members are nearby, but a number of members stay connected from far away.
Interfaith groups are qualified to apply to be Sponsoring Organizations, the ‘voting members’ that elect the Center’s Board of Directors. Non-voting membership for individuals – as Associates - and for organizations – as Affiliates – provides ways to become engaged in this work at your own level of comfort and interest. An annual donation of $20+ for individuals and $100+ for groups helps keep the system running and connected.
WHAT DOES
INTERFAITH CENTER
MEMBERSHIP MEAN?
Interfaith Center at the Presidio is dedicated to nurturing peace and friendship among religious, spiritual, and indigenous traditions who are neighbors today. The Center’s stakeholders, called Associates and Affiliates, are individuals and organizations who support the Center’s mission and activities.
SPIRITUAL DIVERSITY & SHARED VALUES – The Center is a network of relationships, not a new religion or a congregation. We delight in our diversity while seeking the shared ethical wisdom that grounds us all, championing the Golden Rule, the dignity of every human being, and peace & justice for all.
LOCAL & GLOBAL – At home in the San Francisco Bay Area, our relationships reach globally to millions who share the vision of a peaceful, vibrant interfaith culture. Hope fuels our collaborative efforts to heal the Earth and end the violence and grinding poverty so many suffer.
OUR GROUND-RULES – When we gather, we do so in mutual respect and good will, creating the safe space necessary for healthy, collaborative relationships.
AN INTERFAITH HOME – Unlike thousands of other interfaith groups, the Center is blessed to make its home in a beautiful interfaith sanctuary and a set of meeting rooms, the Main Post Chapel, also known today as the Interfaith Chapel. It is safe sacred space for all visitors, whatever one’s spiritual inclination. The Chapel is a home secured by the commitment and support of the Center’s Associates and Affiliates, each of whom has a voice in the Center’s activities.
The Benefits
of Interfaith Center Membership
- Staying informed about dozens of faith and interfaith activities around the Bay Area
- Connections to any part of the faith and interfaith communities in the Bay Area
- Easy access to major global grassroots interfaith networks, their leaders and their news
- A place to promote your own faith and interfaith activities
- Invitation-only events for Interfaith Center stakeholders
- The joy of helping engender a vital, healthy interfaith culture in our neighborhoods, nation, and the world
Sponsoring Organizations
Interfaith Center Sponsoring Organizations are groups, largely from the Bay Area, that have an interfaith constituency and purpose. Sectarian groups are welcome participants at the Center, but an interfaith identity is what characterizes Sponsoring Organizations Sponsoring Organizations gather once a year or more to elect the Center’s trustees and to hear about its programs and the programs of the various Sponsors.
Current Sponsors include:
Bay Area interfaith groups interested in a sponsoring relationship with the Interfaith Center are invited to contact executive director Paul Chaffee (paul@interfaith-presidio.org).
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Associate Members (individuals)
Interfaith Center Associates are individuals who support the Interfaith Center vision and wish to lay personal claim to the Center’s activities, local and global, its pioneering achievements, and its magnificent site.
Members commit themselves to honesty, mutual respect, the safety of all, and a willingness not to proselytize at Interfaith Center activities.
Members define their own level of engagement in the Center, getting involved according to their particular interests.
Associate Membership dues, on a sliding scale of $20-100+, go to sustaining the Center’s operations. Besides becoming partners in this work, Associates receive the monthly e-newsletter Bay Area Interfaith Connect and periodic updates sent to supporters. They are invited to invitation-only events for Interfaith Center stakeholders.
Please fill out an Associates membership form if you wish to join. Please also fill out this short questionnaire indicating your particular interests.
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Affiliate Members (groups)
Interfaith Center Affiliates are groups and organizations that support the Interfaith Center’s mission and wish to participate in a networked relationship with like-minded Bay Area groups and individuals.
Since its incorporation in September, 1995, the Center has never taken an official position on any legislation or public policy. Conceivably it could in the future, but it would not happen without the full vetting and agreement of the Center’s Sponsors, Trustees, Associates, and Affiliates.
Affiliates commit themselves to honesty, mutual respect, the safety of all, and a willingness not to proselytize at Interfaith Center activities.
Affiliate leaders are interviewed to identify their own mission and their interests in the Center and Chapel. The most tangible benefit of affiliation is being networked with the Bay Area’s multi-faith community, with a platform for promoting your own programs.
The Center is usually able to advertise Affiliate programs and, when appropriate, co-sponsor particular projects. The Center is widely networked within the Bay Area’s multi-faith community and able to provide references and resources to Affiliates.
Affiliate dues, on a sliding scale of $100-1000+ a year, are received as a sign of being an Interfaith Center stakeholder and having a voice in its activities. Affiliate dues go to sustaining the Center’s operations.
Please fill out an Affiliates membership form if you wish to join. Affiliates are able to add their members to the Center’s monthly e-newsletter, Bay Area Interfaith Connect. Affiliate members are invited to invitation-only events for Interfaith Center stakeholders once or more times each year.
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Global Connections
The Interfaith Center at the Presidio is a member of the North American Interfaith Network (NAIN), an organization of grassroots interfaith agencies in Canada and the United States. Staff and board members from these organizations meet for an annual summer conference. The Interfaith Center led in planning the NAIN’s 20th anniversary annual conference in San Francisco in 2008. NAIN can be contacted at www.nain.org.
The Interfaith Center is also affiliated with the United Religions Initiative (URI) as a "cooperation circle." This networks the Center with over 400 similar circles in over seventy countries, a figure that grows each month. The purpose of URI is to promote enduring, daily interfaith cooperation, to end religiously motivated violence and to create cultures of peace, justice and healing for the Earth and all living beings. URI can be contacted at www.uri.org.
At the 1993 Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago, dozens of leaders from different religious, spiritual, and indigenous traditions joined hands and signed a statement called Toward a Global Ethic - An Initial Declaration. The Center has participated with the Parliament’s Partnership City since its inception and will be sending a ten or more representatives to the Parliament in Melbourne, December 3-9, 2009.
The Center stands firmly within the shared commitment of the Global Ethic, which states in part...
We are interdependent. Each of us depends on the well-being of the whole, and so we have respect for the community of living beings ... We must treat others as we wish others to treat us. We make a commitment to respect life and dignity, individuality and diversity, so that every person is treated humanely, without exception...
In the broadest sense, the Interfaith Center is connected to all faith and interfaith communities who share these convictions.
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