Mark Tully talk in City

The event has been organised by the Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue (BIRD), an organisation of theologically and socially interested people, which has attempted to be a forum for people of different religions to talk things over in times of strife and peace over the last decade.

In a press release, BIRD said Dr Samartha, an ordained priest of the Church of South India and theology teacher from Karnataka was the first director of the inter-faith dialogue programme of the World Council of Churches in Geneva (1970-81).

Samartha is known as the ‘Christian prophet of religious pluralism’, who famously declared himself a  Hindu by culture, Christian by faith, Indian by citizenship and ecumenical by choice.