Richard Berti built a decades-long career as a certified public accountant, founding Richard A. Berti, CPAs in 1963 and leading the firm for more than 26 years before retiring. Throughout his practice, he provided financial reporting, tax preparation and planning, and auditing services, while also advising client companies on budgeting and forecasting strategies designed to improve profitability.
Beyond his accounting work, Richard Berti dedicated significant time to education, teaching accounting courses at Santa Barbara City College and Westmont College and introducing financial literacy concepts to students at El Puente School. He also taught photography at the Westside Boys and Girls Club and supported organizations such as the Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse and the Endowment for Youth in Santa Barbara. In retirement, he has pursued photography, pottery, and woodworking, interests that reflect the same discipline and care for community he showed as an accountant.
Despite differences in teachings, ritual, and history, the world’s major religions converge on a similar set of values. This convergence is a testament to religious pluralism, facilitating interfaith understanding. The overlap, far from erasing theological uniqueness, provides common ground that has repeatedly served as a foundation for dialogue between adherents.
The most frequently cited example of shared values is the Golden Rule, the principle of treating others as one wishes to be treated. Interfaith researchers have documented versions of this principle across nearly every major tradition.
Buddhism instructs adherents to avoid treating others in ways one would find hurtful, and Hinduism frames it as the sum of duty. The Golden Rule is central to Christianity as it appears twice in the Bible (Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31). There are comparable formulations in Judaism, Islam, the Baha’i Faith, and Jainism.
The wording differs by tradition, but the underlying ethic of reciprocity recurs with notable consistency.
Convergence of the world’s religions isn’t only the observation of scholars. Religious communities have formally recognized it themselves.
In 1993, the Parliament of the World’s Religions, a global interfaith gathering, adopted the Declaration Toward a Global Ethic, which identified a small set of ethical boundaries. Among the ills the Declaration prohibits are killing, stealing, lying, and sexual betrayal, principles common among major religions, the differences in the reasoning behind them notwithstanding.
Compassion and care for the vulnerable form another recurring thread. Interfaith projects that trace the Golden Rule’s presence across scripture have also noted its close relationship to broader teachings on compassion. A rule built on reciprocity naturally extends into obligations of charity, kindness, and concern for those in need across nearly every religion.
The shared emphasis on compassion has moved beyond scripture and principle and into organized interfaith action. Thousands of people worldwide have signed the Charter for Compassion, launched to put the Golden Rule into practice across faith communities. The charter has partnered with hundreds of interfaith organizations and cities.
The initiative is part of a broader shift in international affairs. It seeks to reframe and recognize religious and interreligious efforts as substantive contributors to peacebuilding rather than peripheral to it.
Universities have also built practical infrastructure around shared values. Take, for example, Harvard’s interfaith engagement programs. They are designed around the premise that traditions can find common ethical ground even while maintaining distinct theological identities.
The campus programs that encourage students to participate in events across multiple faith communities are a testament to religious pluralism.
Shared ethical language doesn’t always resolve into identical practice or belief, nor should it. Even within a universal concept like the Golden Rule, there are differences in how adherents practice reciprocity. There are differences in how the reciprocity principle interacts with other virtues, such as justice, forgiveness, or law.
Religious scholars have compared various frameworks, seeking points over which they may converge. Two major religions have come under the spotlight: Christianity and Buddhism. Of particular interest is how such shared moral boundaries can coexist with very different foundations.
On the Christian side is the command to love one’s neighbor as oneself, a teaching tied to an external, law-based structure. Buddhism, on the other hand, roots reciprocity in Karma and dependent origination rather than external law. This, according to scholars, gives the Buddhist Golden Rule more flexibility and contextual tolerance in how adherents apply reciprocity.
Karma seems to add a dynamic sense of personal responsibility.
Finding common ground between religions is a never-ending quest. It helps build tolerance while rallying the support needed to overcome shared modern challenges, from humanitarian response to community relations. For communities seeking to work across religious lines, that shared vocabulary of compassion, reciprocity, and care for others continues to offer a starting point that doesn’t require agreement on deeper theological questions.
About Richard Berti
Richard Berti is a retired certified public accountant who founded Richard A. Berti, CPAs in 1963 and served the Santa Barbara business community for more than two decades. A graduate of Woodbury College and the Brooks Institute of Photography, he also taught accounting at Santa Barbara City College, Westmont College, and El Puente School. His community involvement included support for the Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse and the Endowment for Youth, Santa Barbara. He now enjoys photography, pottery, and woodworking.
