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Summer/Fall 2005 |
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inSpire Interactive
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Our congregation has been involved in interfaith ministry composed of Jewish and Catholic communities dating from the late 19th century, Orthodox and Evangelical communities established in the mid-20th century, and Protestant communities that date back to the American Colonial era. Some years ago, our communities felt the need for fellowship. Soon fellowship transformed into ministry: an ecumenical food bank, a chapter of Habitat for Humanity, artistic presentations, and ecumenical celebrations of World Communion Day, Ramadan, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Reformation Day. We know religious action will transform our community in love, tolerance, peace, and justice.
Amaury Tãnón-Santos (M.Div., 2005)
White Plains, New York
Representing the Presbytery of the Palisades, I serve on the board of the North Jersey Christian-Muslim project, along with Roman Catholics and Episcopalians. Our primary Muslim partner is the Islamic Center of Passaic County in Paterson, New Jersey. We sponsor forums twice yearly, alternating the site between the churches and the mosque, with presentations by a Muslim and a Christian speaker on topics such as giving thanks, approaching the end of life, violence, and peacemaking in the lives of believers. The presentation is followed by a break for prayer (Christians and Muslims separately) and a question and answer session, concluding with refreshments.
I find Muslim prayers from the Qur’an compelling for their rhythm and intensity, and wonder how the prayer life of Christians might be transformed by a commitment to set times throughout the day for prayer, and involvement of the entire body in praising God.
Jane Tanaskovic Brady (M.Div., 1999; Th.M., 2001)
Franklin Lakes, New Jersey
At the airport gate in Charlotte, he was agitated and in need of help—but with language problems. The gate agent tried, saying, “Atlanta…Charlotte,” placing her hands to show the locations. This was not very helpful, since Atlanta is really farther than eight inches from Charlotte. Finally the man came over to a little alcove in the gate area, took off his shoes, unrolled a little rug, and knelt and bowed his head. Four feet from me.
It was prayer-time, with an urgent need to know the direction of Mecca.
Afterward, I could not help but say, as best I could, “Salaam aleikim,” about half of the Arabic I know. He said something in return that also had “Salaam” in it, and we engaged in brief and hilarious un-conversation. We traded names, whereupon he thought I was from Houston, and told me that’s where he was heading.On reflection, I thought it would be wonderful if Presbyterians had a way of identifying themselves to others like my Muslim friend’s “Salaam” greeting. If we had something like that, maybe we’d be blossoming, not fading.
Houston Hodges (M.Div., 1954)
Huntsville, Alabama
Just this week I had a wonderful conversation with a woman who works in an office in the neighborhood of our church. Originally, she came from Iran and confesses to being a secular Muslim. I offered her a translation of Martin Luther’s Small Catechism in her native Farsi language, which was prepared just recently by a mission society in northern Germany. The woman told me that her husband is Protestant and their children are being raised with no affiliation, but that both she and her husband wanted the children to be religiously educated to make their own decision. So we had a dialogue about Persian and German culture and literacy, and religious teaching, and she gladly accepted the brochure with the catechism. I am thankful, and wonder what God will make from this conversation.
Pfarrer Johannes U. Oesch (Th.M., 1998)
Korb im Remstal, Germany
I met by chance a patient from the Near East in a hospital room. During the conversation, he said “Pastor, I have kidney stones and am waiting for them to pass. I pray to God it won’t be painful.” I responded, “Since you are praying, would you like me to pray with you?” He agreed, saying, “We Muslims believe in a universal God.” I replied, “Jews, Muslims, and Christians trace our faith back to Abraham.” I continued, “Why don’t we say a prayer to the God of Abraham?” He agreed, we held hands, and I formulated a prayer addressed to the God of Abraham, giving thanks for our common heritage, that through providence we met, that the doctors and nurses might be inspired to do the right things, and that God guide the process of passing the stones without too much pain. A week later I received the most heartwarming letter of appreciation, thanking me that I had prayed with him to the God of Abraham.
Gerhard Grau (M.Div., 1970; Ph.D., 1976)
Atlanta, Georgia
My work as a psycho-social mentor with nine first-year medical students at the George Washington University Medical School generates dynamic interfaith dialogue as one mainline Protestant, two Catholics, two agnostics, two Muslims, one Mormon, one charismatic Christian, an orthodox Jew, and I grapple with spiritual life in the healthcare setting. Our often heated, always surprising conversations reveal powerful spiritual impulses that transcend religious conventions while remaining richly informed by our particular traditions. I am an amazed witness to the resonant, permeating work of the Spirit in the dynamic crucible of the healthcare setting.
Greg Finch (M.Div., 1997)
Washington, D.C.
Built in 1777 (the year of the Battle of Princeton) for the pastor of nearby St. Mary’s Church (Lutheran since the Reformation) in the German university town of Göttingen, this manse has housed ministers for more than 200 years. In the 1990s, St. Mary’s reduced their staff to one full-time pastor and thus had no use for this gorgeous historical building, which needed major repairs.
At that time, the small Jewish congregation of Göttingen faced two major challenges: after much debate, the council decided to join the conference of liberal Jewish congregations of Germany, thus allowing women and men to pray together and women rabbis to lead worship. At the same time, a significant number of Russian immigrants arrived in town, many of Jewish ancestry but not familiar with their faith or rituals (nor with the German language for that matter). The congregation had lost numerous members to emigration during the Nazi era, some of them famous professors like James Franck, Max Born, Richard Courant, and Emmy Noether, and the wife of Herrman Weyl, who came to Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study in 1933.
The congregation decided to welcome the new members arriving from Russia, but needed more room for new activities. Some of their friends in the local society for Jewish-Christian dialogue had heard about St. Mary’s wanting to sell the old manse. The Jewish congregation was able to move in to the second and third floors in 2004. The parlor, which saw many a Lutheran minister saying grace before a meal, now serves as the prayer room. In 2005, the local round table of Abrahamite Religions (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) held its first meeting in the old manse.
Reinhilde Ruprecht (Ph.D., 1997)
Göttingen, Germany
In Vietnam in 1967 I had a profound experience. I was a chaplain to the 3rd battalion, 5th Marines. Humping over rice paddies and through jungles for a solid night, under cover of darkness, without sleep, the battalion reached its destination the next morning, a remote Vietnamese village. We were tired and hungry. Our mission was to be a blocking force for the 7th Marines, who were operating across the river—that is, we were to block any enemy unit trying to escape across the river.
I noticed a Buddhist monk, bald and wearing saffron robes. Introducing myself, I told him I was the spiritual leader of these Marines. He understood no English, I understood no Vietnamese. We played charades for ten minutes as I tried to explain my identity. Suddenly, his eyes lit up, his face beamed, and we embraced. It was in that embrace, seemingly timeless but lasting just seconds, that somehow we transcended nationality, race, ethnicity, language, and religion. Even the word “God” seemed superfluous, as names and teachings would have inhibited the moment. For that moment, good and evil were meaningless words. After embracing, we celebrated “communion”—the monk mixed his rice with my C-rations, and we shared a meal together.
Eli Takesian (M.Div., 1960)
Reston, Virginia
Members of Grace Presbyterian Church in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, have participated in the Glenside Interfaith Dialogues since their inception in July 2004, when an ecumenical lay organization called the Glenside Lay Auxiliary Delegates (or “GLAD”) sponsored the first, four-week dialogue on Genesis. The Genesis dialogue drew some 150, mostly Christian, members of the community into conversation around stories of Genesis (and related passages of the Koran) with a panel of local clergy and scholars of the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic faiths. The Genesis dialogue was followed by two dialogue programs in which representatives of the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic faith traditions proposed their own answer to the question, “Who is Jesus?” and engaged the, again, mostly Christian audience in answering the question for themselves. Grace Presbyterian and GLAD are now organizing a fourth dialogue, to occur sometime in the first half of 2006, but this time the organizers and audience will include members of a local synagogue and mosque. The goal is to use dialogue around holy texts as a context for building authentic relationships and understanding among worshipping communities of the Abrahamic faiths.
Steve Garstad (M.Div., 1978)
Lansdale, Pennsylvania
Our church council is working closely with a local synagogue whose attempts to help the homeless are being thwarted by an intransigent city council. We have a hearing in Federal District Court, and have discovered along the way that Christians and Jews have many common beliefs about care for the needy, and that in unity, we can express these truths to those in power.
Sanford Brown (D.Min., 1997)
Seattle, Washington
College of Preachers’ Abrahamic Fellows Confront Religious Violence
by Joe Montville
The College of Preachers at Washington National Cathedral organized and hosted an unprecedented Abrahamic residency for three scholar-theologians June 14-25. The task assigned to Bishop Krister Stendahl, former dean of the Harvard Divinity School, Rabbi Marc Gopin, Laue Professor of World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University, and Abdulaziz Sachedina, Ball Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, was to plumb the doctrinal, historical, and psychological depths of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam to discover sources used to justify religious violence and develop approaches to counteract them.
In an intellectual, moral, and personal relationship that became increasingly close as their days in residence together progressed, Stendahl, Gopin, and Sachedina concentrated on finding ways to appeal to practicing Christians, Jews, and Muslims by reaffirming traditional religious identities and interpreting the holy writings of each tradition in ways that encourage caring relationships with all human beings. They purposely avoided the interfaith dialogue tradition of appealing to universal values. Instead, they focused on the religious authenticity of their respective work as a Christian, a Jew, and a Muslim through statements directed to their own communities.
In the following Joint Statement, each Abrahamic Fellow offers the beginning of a work in progress aimed at removing any religious legitimacy for political murder. As the Joint Statement makes clear, the commitment of Stendahl, Gopin, and Sachedina to serve an urgent mission is firm, and they intend to continue their collaboration with each other and with the College of Preachers.
Joint Statement
Violence in the name of God and religion calls for passionate and reasoned refutations. Our three Abrahamic traditions have their share in that sacrilege, both in history and in the present. In our respective languages, speaking from within our communities, we recognize that we are different as Jew, Christian, Muslim, and we treasure our differences as a richness. We recognize even more strongly our common call to honor and preserve the dignity and sanctity of human life.
From Krister Stendahl
There is a crisis in the Abrahamic family. Religious zeal is increasingly spinning out in hatred and acts of violence. Decades of interfaith dialogues and statements seem ineffective. People die.
For me as a Christian, it is now important to recognize that urgent action is called for. As a biblical scholar, I know well the texts of Scripture that work for peace, as well as all those words that have aided and abetted Christian teachings of contempt for Jews and Muslims.
But the present urgency brings to mind my great teacher St. Paul. In Corinth, he found conflicts among the faithful and faith-filled. Their different theologies and practices seemed to ruin the community, and so he wrote—or recited— an ode to love. It ends with the words, “so faith, hope, love abide, but the greatest of them is love.” Imagine, Paul, the apostle of faith, lets faith be trumped by love!
To privilege ethics over theology— that takes a good theologian and a keen awareness of urgency. That is where we are now in our diversity, in our common humanity, in our Abrahamic family, where we share so much in various ways, ways that should enrich us rather than separate us.
In my Bible it says: “Anyone who says I love God and hates his brother is a liar.”
From Marc Gopin
Ancient Jewish history is replete with moments of emergency, times when prophets and rabbis had to make fateful decisions in order to preserve the possibility of a better future. In so doing, these courageous leaders had to calculate the complex priorities of sacred traditions of Torah, they had to decide on halakhic, Jewish legal/spiritual, priorities to be considered in facing emergencies. Always those priorities favored pikuah nefesh, saving lives, preventing the unnecessary loss of life, and working with tradition in a way that maximized kiddush ha-shem, the sanctification of God’s name on this earth by the Jewish people whose primary task is to live up to, as best as they can, the idea of being an or la-goyim, a light unto the nations.
There are many challenges facing the global community of nations today in terms of its survival, in terms of discovering a way to live in balance with the earth’s resources, for example. But all of those challenges cannot be successfully confronted by other halakhic priorities such as ba’al tashchit, minimizing waste and destruction of God-given resources and sentient life, if we end up in a war of civilizations within the family of Abraham, as it is represented by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
We know the challenges. We know that these three children must come to a place of absolute respect, equality, and a recognition of friendly boundaries between loving neighbors. We know that there are halakhic and spiritual resources within Jewish tradition, such as the mitzvah of redifat shalom, pursuit of peace, pesharah, the art of compromise, hakem takim imo, helping others in distress—even enemies, teshuvah, acknowledgement of harm done and commitments to a better future. Above all, however, there is the mitsvah to save human life. Even at a level of pure self-concern, the Jewish people must face the reality of needing coexistence in peace and justice, rather than in terminal violence with billions of Christians and Muslims.
This requires halakhically and ethically unprecedented efforts to reach out to others, to learn from everyone’s wisdom and to share our own on how to coexist with other religions without war, and even with deep respect. Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac, and Ishmael would want no less from us. They all wanted children to survive and thrive on this God-given earth, and we owe them our best efforts theologically, halakhically, and ethically, at this critical hour of human history.
From Abdulaziz Sachedina
The world community is looking at the Muslim community and its religious leaders to provide Koranic guidelines that speak to the urgent need to stop meaningless violence in the name of Islam. Both Muslim and non-Muslim lives have been threatened and destroyed in the crossfire of sectarian and religiously justified nationalist movements.
There is no shortage of Koranic passages that teach tolerance and respect of other religions. As I read the Koran, it becomes obvious to me that Muslims are required to engage in instituting the good and advancing justice for all humans, as humans. God has honored all the children of Adam and Eve with nobility and has endowed them with the ability to make this earth a stage for just relationships (K: 17:70). This honor, as the Koran teaches, has been extended with special blessing to Abraham, who has been promised leadership among his children who will commit to uphold justice. Hence, Jews, Christians, and Muslims are called upon to bear witness to God’s mercy and establish justice and peace among all nations of the world as part of their moral-spiritual commitment.
Today this message is in danger because political ambitions of some militant groups have led them to abandon the message of just relationships taught by the Prophet’s tradition (Sunna) and the Koran. The endless violence committed against any human being, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, makes it urgent for the Children of Abraham—that is, Jews, Christians, and Muslims— to engage in creating partnerships in “competing to do the good” (K: 5:48) and spreading the ethics of just relationships.
Joseph Montville directed the Abrahamic Fellows project for the College of Preachers at Washington National Cathedral, which was made possible by a generous grant from the William and Mary Greve Foundation. He is senior fellow, Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University, diplomat in residence at American University, and senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
College of Preachers at Washington National Cathedral
3510 Woodley Road, NW
Washington, D.C. 20016
202-537-6380
www.collegeofpreachers.orgThe above was contributed by Dean Steffey McDonald (b 1974)
Washington, D.C.
On December 6, 1989, a disturbed male student went on a shooting rampage on the campus of L’Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, which ended in the assassination of fourteen women students who were killed because they were women. On response to this tragedy, the Canadian government has declared December 6 to be a National Day of Remembrance and Action Against Violence Against Women. People don a white ribbon to demonstrate solidarity with the objectives of this day.
Last year, as the United Church of Canada chaplain, I initiated a service of worship at Simon Fraser University on top of Burnaby Mountain in Vancouver to honor this day. The vision was that this would become an interfaith service. We held the service in the open air of Convocation Mall where Jewish, Islamic, and Christian groups gathered united in worship. The service was well-attended by students and faculty in spite of the heavy snowfall, something unusual for Vancouver. The white of the snow, however, underscored the symbolism of the day and provided a peaceful note to our message of remembrance and hope. We gathered around a table adorned by one large white candle, a bouquet of fourteen white roses, and fourteen framed photographs of the slain women. The service included readings from the Torah, the Koran, and the Christian Scriptures accompanied by prayers in French and English and statements of each religion’s opposition to violence against all women.
This service of worship was a first for Simon Fraser University. The planning committee included students and chaplains from Hillel (Jewish students), the Islamic Student Association, and The United Church of Canada. We had worked together to promote the aspirations of the day and to model that religion is also a unifying and positive force in society.
R. Douglas Throop (D.Min., 2003)
Montreal, Canada
Presbyterian-related Macalester College has as a hallmark 14 percent of its student body arriving from more than 88 nations of our globe. With this remarkable international representation as well as an amazing domestic diversity in its student body, the chaplaincy at the college interacts daily in multifaith dialogue with more than 25 religions traditions and denominations represented. One of the longtime student legacies is the Council for Religious Understanding, a student organization that hosts monthly dinner discussions on topics such as “How diverse religious voices understand the afterlife” and “Dating across religious traditions.” Another experience of multifaith engagement is student organizations participating and supporting others during their holy days and fast days. Jewish and Christian students prepare the Ramadan breakfast for Muslim students. Muslim students attend Open Shabbat and bake cookies for the Christmas candlelight service and cookie break. And the biggest event of the year is the interfaith Capture the Flag game where students from any religious tradition compete wildly on the field!
Lucy Forster-Smith (M.Div., 1979; D.Min., 2001)
Saint Paul, Minnesota
We at the Fanwood, New Jersey, Presbyterian Church host a Reform Jewish synagogue in a rental arrangement while they are looking for property on which to build their own place. So far, after two years, it is working surprisingly well. We rent them permanent office space and they use our dining room as their worship area on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings. We share rooms for other meetings. We have a lease and review it annually. We make sure we maintain good communications. They use our main sanctuary for the high holy days and, with adequate notice, for a few bar/bat mitzvahs a year. We haven’t worshiped together, but the rabbi and I preach in the other’s service once a year.
Paul Rack (M.Div., 1981)
Fanwood, New Jersey
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