History of CHQ Dialogues

From its beginnings in 2011, the Chautauqua Dialogues Program has been a work in progress. The Department of Religion created it to enhance community engagement and education. Originally participants focused on the 2:00 interfaith lectures. These lectures were initially designed to explore the Abrahamic Traditions in an effort to foster mutual understanding, appreciation and respect both among religious practitioners and non-practitioners alike.    
 
The Department of Religion designated this program as “Interfaith Dialogues.” It has grown broader over the years. It now offers an opportunity for dialogue on all issues and ideas from all the lectures presented at Chautauqua, while welcoming religious perspectives in all its understandings and manifestations. It has evolved out of various iterations of programs that the Religion Department began at Chautauqua and fostered elsewhere.  
 
The Community Interfaith Dialogues concept of celebrating religious diversity, has many antecedents at Chautauqua. It grew out of the Abrahamic Initiative that had its beginning in 1998 under the Rev. Dr. Ross Mackenzie. It took programmatic form at Chautauqua in 2005 under the Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell and Maureen Rovegno. 
 
Those who developed the program at Chautauqua hoped that the participants would take the program home to their various cities around the country. One successful result was the dialogue program which the Rev. Susan McKee and Hal Simmons introduced in Denver.    
 
By 2008 the Department of Religion refashioned the concept into a program called Communities in Conversation, led by Emilie Barnett and held during the Season. It grew into year-round programs in local libraries, primarily in the Cleveland area, but also as far as Chicago.   
 
By 2010, the format had become a daily week-long seminar during the Season. It replicated what the Communities in Conversation Program, drawing on the Abrahamic Traditions, was doing in libraries throughout the year over a five-day period, with a different focus each day,  
 
Communities in Conversation throughout the year was a network of community-based interfaith study and discussion groups co-sponsored by the Chautauqua Institution and local libraries.  Individuals from different faith communities held informal discussions. They were based on the readings provided in a Study Guide developed in 2009 and revised annually through 2011. In this way, the participants learned about each other’s beliefs and practices.     
 
In 2011 Roger Doebke, of the UU Fellowship, and his wife, Judy, joined with Lynn Stahl and her husband, Rabbi Samuel Stahl, of the Hebrew Congregation, and Subagh Khalsa and his wife Linda Winkelstern, of the Mystic Heart Program, to form the Chautauqua Dialogues. Roger had been involved as a group leader in 2010 and Rabbi Stahl had served as the facilitator on Jewish day for Communities in Conversation.  
 
Ultimately, Roger Doebke and Lynn Stahl expanded the program to include far more facilitators to accommodate the increased number of dialogues offered. The facilitators go through a thorough training with on-going enrichment and discussions. The meaningful discussions take place Tuesday through Friday each week. The focus of the Dialogues now includes discussions of all of the programs offered each week at Chautauqua. The sponsors are the Department of Religion, the Department of Community Relations, and the IDEA Office.  Denominational Houses and the Institution provide the venues, which offer hospitality, enhanced community engagement, and a value-added experience.