"Why Interfaith?"
From an Interfaith Panel Discussion on May 6, 2017
Shalom....
Asalaamu alaikum… Shanti… Peace be to you all.
I thought
I’d start with a little history. Some
of our local religious communities have been involved for years in interfaith
endeavors. So much of our interfaith
work has been about relationships, so I’d like to talk about my experience with
this.
The
congregation I serve--Littlefield Presbyterian Church-- has been involved in
interfaith work since the late 1970’s. At this point, it’s one of the few
remaining Protestant Christian churches in east Dearborn.
In the
beginning, almost 90 years ago, it was a neighborhood church, in an area that
was predominately Catholic. Over time, the neighborhood changed due to white flight and new neighbors moving in. Most of
the new neighbors were Muslim. The
congregation could have moved to the suburbs or closed, which is what some other churches did. But they did a
mission study and decided they were called to stay where they were and be good neighbors to the people who were moving
in, and to witness to God’s love where they were planted.
Littlefield
called the Rev. William Gepford to help them in their “ministry of reconciliation”[1] and to
build mutual respect and understanding among Christians and Muslims, and over
the years. Dr. Gepford was one of the pioneers in interfaith work in the metro
Detroit area and beyond.
In the
early years, Littlefield invited their Muslim neighbors to a series of a
gatherings, during which people got to know one another over meals and
conversation. Over time, they built
relationships in the community and worked together on projects like the annual
holiday food baskets that served up to 100 needy families. Dr. Gepford worked with a team of interfaith
leaders to plan the first interfaith Thanksgiving service, a tradition that
continued many years until a number of communities were holding their own
interfaith services.
I was
called to be the pastor of Littlefield in 1997 and became involved in the interfaith work. When 9/11 happened, it gave many of us a
renewed sense of urgency about
nurturing our interfaith relationships.
Those first few days were fearful times. The church put up a sign on the doors that
said, “This is a Hate Free Zone,” and some of our neighbors asked if they could
come in and pray. We went to one anothers’
houses of worship to show our support.
We
continue to visit back and forth between churches and mosques, attending
worship and meals and other events. We
offer one another care and support. Our
Muslim neighbors invite us to break the fast at Ramadan iftar meals. We invite them
to join us for our Christmas Eve Lessons & Carols service.
On the Sunday in September closest
to the International Day of Peace, we hold a service of Interfaith Prayer for
Peace. We encourage people to practice
“respectful presence,” which means that we participate in the parts we can, and
listen respectfully and learn in other parts.[2] We typically have a Jewish cantor, an Imam,
and a Christian pastor, and we’ve also occasionally had someone from the Sikh
or Buddhist community. We experience
elements from each tradition, and we pray together “with one voice” in a litany
for peace in our communities, our nation, and the world. We make new friends
over refreshments following the service.
Because
Littlefield has worked to build relationships in the community, our Muslim
neighbors trust us and send their
kids to our annual Peace Camp in the summer. The kids build a neighborhood of
peace and justice out of cardboard boxes, they sing songs of peace, and learn
some peace-building skills. And we all make new friends.
Our Dearborn Area Interfaith Network
builds relationships and works together on some events. On the first Thursday in May, we hold our
annual National Day of Prayer Interfaith Prayer gathering. Each January we sponsor an interfaith
convocation in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King.
Some years
ago, when Terry Jones came to town to protest what he wanted to see as “sharia
law” in Dearborn, he wanted to protest outside the Islamic Center of
America. Religious leaders from around
the metro area gathered and encircled the mosque to show our support.
At a
committee meeting a few days after our most recent interfaith service, several
of our members talked about how grateful
they are to live in Dearborn, to be
neighbors and friends with people from Lebanon and Palestine and Bosnia and elsewhere.
As one of
them said, “Isn’t following Jesus really all about love?”
I believe
that’s true. My Christian faith teaches
me that “perfect love casts out fear.”[3] When we get to know our neighbors, when we
grow in understanding, we don’t need to be afraid
of one another.
When we get to know each other, we discover how much we have in common.
As children of Abraham, Jews,
Christians, and Muslims all worship the same God-- the God of mercy and
compassion. We are all taught by our faith to love God and neighbor. We worship the God who is one. We are all "people of the book." The "family tree" of our faith
makes it apparent that we are family.
We're connected, all the way
back to Adam and Eve, and we trace our ancestry back through Isaac and Ishmael
to Abraham.
When we study history, we are aware
of how each of our faith traditions has had a tendency to be exclusivist, and to believe that it has
the only path to God. But there have always been valued streams of
thought which are very respectful of
the religious behavior and ideas of other faith traditions. I am glad to be a part of that movement.
I’ve read a
lot of helpful books on interfaith work. One I read recently is helpful: The
Interfaith Alternative: Embracing Spiritual Diversity. [4] The
author, Steven Greenbaum, talks about the concept of “right belief,” which he
says has been an organizing principle of
our spiritual paths for a very long time.
If a religious community believes that we have the only way, that we are
the only chosen people, and that we follow the only right spiritual path, the
result can be distrust, hatred and violence.
Greenbaum offers an interfaith alternative, which respects each spiritual path and
recognizes what we all share in common: the call to love and to be loving and compassionate.
He suggests “Maybe dividing
ourselves into righteous pockets of spiritual belief is not the best way to
bring about love.” We humans are great at building walls between ourselves and those who
are different in some way. For too
long, too many of us have been stuck in a paradigm that demands that we search
for or protect the one “right belief.”
I think Greenbaum is right when he
says “Who has the right belief?” is
the wrong question, and that we need to be more concerned with a different question: “How do we live as a result of our beliefs?” We
need to stop arguing about which religious tradition is “best” or “right” or
“true,” and find ways to be in conversation
with one another and to work together to honor God/Allah/Hashem or whatever
we call the One God we worship, through works of compassion, mercy, and
justice.
How many of you know the story of
“The Blind Men and the Elephant”? It’s an Indian fable. We had a picture book version at our house when my
son was young, and I bought a new copy recently. The story originated in the Indian
subcontinent and is widely known in many traditions, including Buddist, Jain,
Hindu, and Sufi Muslim traditions.
In various
versions of the story, a group of blind men (or people in the dark) are led to
an elephant to touch it, so they can learn what an elephant is like. Each person feels a different part. In some versions, their differences lead to violence, as each one is convinced he
has it right and tries to dominate. In some versions of the story, they stop
shouting, start listening to each other, and work together to “see” the whole
elephant.
I think
it’s time we all become more conscious and more intentional about this. It’s time we stop trying to defend our one
right truth and find ways to be in conversation with those who may have
experienced a different truth? We need
to heed the common call of all our religious traditions, the call to love and
compassion.
As we come to understand the depth
of our neighbors' relationship with the God we both worship, we learn to
respect and value their faith, even while we recognize and affirm our different
paths.
For those of us who long for a
better, more peaceful world, it’s painful to see so much of what’s going on-- to see the racism,
Islamaphobia, and anti-Semitism in our world. We live in such a fearful time,
and political rhetoric has magnified it. Fear breeds animosity and hate. Hatred breeds more fear. It’s a vicious cycle.
It can feel overwhelming.
Because I follow Jesus, whom I know
partly as the “Prince of Peace,” I believe I am called to be a
peace-maker. That means I need to be
working for reconciliation and justice. Working
against racism… working to alleviate poverty… working to promote understanding
between all God’s people.
The more we come to know one
another, the more we understand that we have common ground. A few years ago, a
large number of Islamic scholars and leaders signed a document, A Common Word between Us and You, which
affirms what we, as people of the book and children of Abraham, share in
common.[5]
A
Common Word affirms the “Shema,”or the "Great Commandment" to love God completely and to love our neighbors as an important value we share
in common. Wherever we
find such common ground, it can help us find ways for us not only to live
together, as good neighbors, in peace. It can help to deepen our friendship and
help us to find ways to cooperate with one another and to work together in the
public square for the common good. And we can
leave a more just and peaceful world for our children and grandchildren.
[1] 2
Corinthians 5
[3] 1 John
4:18
[4] Steven
Greenbaum, The Interfaith Alternative: Embracing Spiritual Diversity.
(SkyLightPaths, 2015)
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