Gala: inner faith in interfaith

Dialogue deemed vital

Sep 26, 2008

by Lori Van Ingen

Lancaster Online

As about 100 people of many different ethnicities and religions sat at circular tables to eat Turkish food at Millersville University on Thursday night, keynote speaker Leonard Swidler couldn't have been happier.

Swidler, professor of Catholic thought and inter-religious dialogue at Temple University, said he was appreciative of the work of Red Rose Intercultural & Educational Foundation and its interfaith banquet.

"I wish I would have brought the Fulbright Scholars (at Temple) to Millersville instead of New York City," he said.

When Swidler began "dialoguing" with Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars in 1978, he could find only 10 or 12 Muslim scholars in the world who were able and willing to engage in talks.

Then came Sept. 11, 2001. Out of that tragedy, good came, Swidler said. Now there are not just 10 Muslims around the world willing to dialogue, there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, he said.

"This type of gathering would have been impossible 15 years ago and maybe even 10 years ago," Swidler said.Dialogue, Swidler said, is not just conversation or an exchange of a little information.

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Transcending Race and Religion to Rebuild the Ruins of Baltimore

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Samuel G. Freedman

Published: September 5, 2008

BALTIMORE

One weekday morning in 1981, when he was new to Baltimore, Arnold Graf descended into the basement of the Enon Baptist Church. The steps took him into the midst of 60 skeptics. They were the black ministers whom Mr. Graf, a white Jew, was trying to persuade to join him in community organizing.

Even among a loquacious crowd of preachers, conversation stilled at Mr. Graf’s arrival. “I don’t know if we should be talking about this stuff with an outsider here,” one minister said, as Mr. Graf recently recalled the meeting.

Then the Rev. Vernon N. Dobson, one of Baltimore’s legendary civil rights leaders, replied. Alone among the dozens of ministers, he was already a member of Mr. Graf’s group, Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development. Alone among them, Mr. Dobson had already gotten to know Mr. Graf during the organizer’s brief months in the city.

“He’s with me,” Mr. Dobson said. “And who’s blacker than me here? The man is my brother.”

Nearly 30 years later, Mr. Dobson’s judgment on Mr. Graf has been ratified and redeemed. Mr. Graf, 64, has built a striking track record of crossing the borders of race and religion to organize among black Christians. His current effort has brought together millions of dollars from black churches and Jewish philanthropies to build or repair up to 1,200 homes in the ruins of East Baltimore.

In his work — both for Build, as the Baltimore group is known, and for its parent organization, the Industrial Areas Foundation — Mr. Graf has breathed new life into the black-Jewish alliance that flourished in the first decade of the civil rights movement before bitterly rupturing over black nationalism and affirmative action.

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Three faiths, three friends

August 26, 2008

Three faiths, three friends
Seattle's interfaith amigos
by Amy Frykholm, The Christian Century

The third annual interfaith Passover Seder meal at University Congregational Church in Seattle was a "bring your own wine" event. Tables for 300 guests were impeccably set with goblets and fresh flowers; two kinds of charoset (a pasty blend of fruit and nuts prepared according to both the Ashkenazi and Sephardic styles); two kinds of horseradish (raw and sauced); and baskets of matzo. The tables buzzed with lively conversation.

Rabbi Ted Falcon stood at the front with a guitar player and two singers. He is a trim, white-bearded man who is constantly making jokes, but he also has an air of underlying seriousness, intensity, even melancholy.

"OK," he said. "We'll begin on page 22 of your handout." After two days of watching Falcon lead services, I had learned that he never begins on page one. He is likely to start on page 22, continue on page 11 and move on to page two.

"The Haggadah takes us on a spiritual journey," he says. "We learn to be freed from our inner pharaohs, travel in our wilderness and form our own dreams of the Promised Land."

The participants at this event—which sold out three weeks before—were Jews, Christians and Muslims. Many came from Bet Alef, Falcon's "meditative synagogue" that meets in one of Seattle's suburbs. Some belonged to University Congregational Church, which was led by Pastor Don Mackenzie until his retirement in June. Others belonged to an experimental congregation led by Sufi Muslim teacher Jamal Rahman and known as the Interfaith Community Church. (Rahman calls it a church, he says, for "lack of a better term"; it's for people who meet on Sundays to explore their "spiritual paths" together, he explains.)

Falcon not only invited members of these three congregations to the Seder but asked Mackenzie and Rahman to speak. And Falcon didn't want generic spirituality talk from them; he wanted Mackenzie to mention Jesus or Paul and Rahman to refer to Muhammad and the Qur'an.

This kind of interfaith gathering is an increasingly common phenomenon across the U.S. Interaction between people of different faiths is hardly new, but a qualitative shift occurred after September 11, 2001, says Kathryn Lohre, assistant director of Harvard University's Pluralism Project. "There was a strong interfaith resurgence, driven by the desire of many people, perhaps Christians especially, to get to know their religious neighbors."

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Pluralism At It's Best: A Jew Has A Buddhist Epiphany

Posted July 30, 2008, 09:53 AM EDT

Larry Gellman, The Huffington Post

One of the many outstanding things about leaving Arizona to spend the summer in Aspen is the opportunity to meet, talk to, and learn from the amazing people who come to speak and teach at the Aspen Institute.

Last week was Aspen at its best. On Monday we got to hear King Abdullah of Jordan and a few days later I participated in a three-day symposium that featured His Holiness the Dalai Lama and several of the most highly regarded masters of Tibetan Buddhism in the world.

What better place for me--a self described student and proponent of Jewish wisdom--to put the notion of pluralism to the test. As my readers know, I have identified pluralism as the key to addressing virtually every religious, political, and personal problem in the world.

I came into this group knowing absolutely nothing about Buddhism other than the fact that I have come to resemble Buddha physically to a distressing extent in recent years.

But that changed very quickly. During the first day and a half before the arrival of His Holiness I had the opportunity to study with two amazing Buddhist masters.

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