Julia Neuberger

Julia Neuberger

Chair, Commission on the Future of Volunteering in England

Baroness Julia Neuberger is an ordained rabbi and member of Britian's House of Lords. The "On Faith" panelist also is a trustee of the British Council, Jewish Care, and the Booker Prize Foundation, as well as founding trustee of the Walter and Liesel Schwab Charitable Trust. She has served as Chairman of Camden & Islington Community Health Services NHS Trust and Chief Executive of the King's Fund—a major independent health charity. Currently she chairs the Commission on the Future of Volunteering in England . In the House of Lords, she is a Liberal Democrat member and in early 2006 she was Bloomberg Professor at Harvard University Divinity School . Neuberger writes, speaks, makes trouble, and has published several books, of which the latest is The Moral State We're In (2006). She is working on a book about old age, and thinking about a new book on death and dying, as well as one as a counterblast to Richard Dawkins on why religion is so important in the rather godless United Kingdom. Close.

Julia Neuberger

Chair, Commission on the Future of Volunteering in England

Baroness Julia Neuberger is an ordained rabbi and member of Britian's House of Lords. The "On Faith" panelist also is a trustee of the British Council, Jewish Care, and the Booker Prize Foundation, as well as founding trustee of the Walter and Liesel Schwab Charitable Trust. more »

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An Enlightened Approach to Faith

Questioning one's faith is absolutely essential.

There is a growth- very unattractive and worrying-in a religious position across the faiths that wants to forget the Enlightenment ever happened, and does not believe we should think for ourselves, use our God-given intelligence to work out, question and generally use the evidence from scientific research, to think for ourselves how to interpret the traditional religious views of how we came to be where we are, and what we know about human life and death.

A creative modern approach to religion requires of us to question, discuss, ask, answer, and listen to others. It also requires us to use the knowledge that exists everywhere around the world in all fields of human endeavor both to question our faith and to strengthen it, for only by questioning and testing one's faith can one be sure it is robust and worth defending.

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