Bishop Christopher Epting relates the story of three faiths in search of common ground - real ground. A Synagogue, a Mosque and an Episcopal Church work together to share land and build common space.

From Epting's blog That We All May Be One

They are now looking for property on which to build three worship sites and a “middle building” tentatively called “Abraham’s tent” which can be a gathering space, coffee shop, educational and outreach center for the larger community. They are clear that each community needs to tend to its own internal needs of formation, nurture, “life cycle” issues like births and marriages and funerals and more.

Read more »

The Archbishop of Canterbury's important Building Bridges conference has been cancelled at the last minute by the Malaysian government. Abp. Williams has called together several previous conferences to promote Muslim-Christian dialogue. The Malaysian Council of Churches is asking the government for reconsideration of the decision.

Ruth Gledhill, religious correspondent for the The Times, UK. reports:

Christian and Muslim scholars from around the world had bought air tickets, written papers and begun to pack their bags for the Building Bridges conference, the sixth in a series intended to foster dialogue between the two religions. It was cancelled with just two weeks notice.

The three-day conference was set up in the wake of September 11 and meant to be an annual get-together of Christian and Muslim academics in an attempt to find theological understandings that might help prevent future terrorist attacks.

At the first conference, at Lambeth Palace in London six years ago, Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, fêted Tony Blair. In return, the Prime Minister invited the Muslim and Christian scholars to a high-profile reception at Downing Street.

Since then the scholars have met in New York, Qatar and Sarajevo. This year’s seminar in Malaysia was to signal a breakthrough in Muslim-Christian relations in a region where they are particularly delicate.

Ecumenical News International is reporting:

The Council of Churches of Malaysia has appealed to the country's government to reconsider a decision to withdraw support for a Christian-Muslim seminar that was to have been chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.

More from Episcopal News Service

UPDATE, 15 May: Malaysian churches ask government to reschedule conference.

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Bishop John Bryson Chane of the Diocese of Washington is on his way home from the two-day Oslo Conference on Religion, Democracy and Extremism. (He's in favor of the first two and against the third.)

The Conference was convened on Tuesday by The Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights (OC) and The Foundation for Dialogue among Civilizations (FDC) in collaboration with the Club de Madrid (CdM) and sponsored by the Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway.

The Norway Post has a preliminary report. Former president of Iran Mohammad Khatami, co-chair of the conference, spoke to the press on Tuesday.

Despite having a faith tradition different to the predominant Christian traditions in the United States, Muslim Americans share much in common with other US religious groups, including white evangelical Protestants, a new study has found.

"Although Muslims constitute a small minority in the United States, and their holy book and many of their religious rituals are distinctly their own, Muslim Americans are by no means 'the other' when it comes to religious life or politics in the United States," said the study's authors, Robert Ruby and Greg Smith of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

"In many ways", say the two researchers, "[Muslim Americans] stand out not so much for their differences as for their similarities with other religious groups."

The Pew study - "How Muslims Compare With Other Religious Americans" - found that though Muslim Americans generally tend to be more politically liberal than white evangelical Christians, the two groups share similar conservative positions on a number of social issues, including that of homosexuality.

Some 61 percent of Muslims and 63 percent of white evangelicals agreed that "homosexuality is a way of life that should be discouraged by society". By contrast, only 36 percent of white "mainline" Protestants and 31 percent of Roman Catholics agreed with this statement.

Read it all.

The Washington Post/Newsweek "On Faith" blog devoted last week to hearing from twenty-two Muslim scholars and leaders from around the world to answer three questions on violence, religious freedom and women’s issues. The editors of the blog, Sally Quinn and Jon Meacham, summarize the resulting dialogue:

Several months ago “On Faith “(jointly published by the Washington Post and Newsweek) held a symposium at Georgetown University on "What it Means to be Muslim in America." During the discussion, panelists were asked why Muslim religious leaders around the world didn’t speak out against violence.

The Imam on the panel replied that they did. The problem was that nobody listened to them, that the press didn’t report about it because it wasn’t sensational.

So we decided to devote a week on our site to give Muslim leaders a chance to speak out. We posed three questions -- on violence, religious freedom and women’s issues -- and invited more than 50 Muslim leaders throughout the world to respond. Twenty-two people from 13 countries chose to reply to the questions. . . .

It was an unprecedented and ambitious undertaking, and we learned a lot. Overall we have received thousands of comments, some positive, some negative. Many of the comments affirmed that different cultures have a long way to go before reaching common ground. But many others suggested that if you reach out, others will reach back. A couple of examples: Ali Gomaa of Egypt and Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah of Lebanon, two controversial Muslim leaders often seen as radical, spoke out strongly against suicide bombings and killing women, children and non-combatants. Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, and others rejected the idea that apostasy is a punishable offense. In some Muslim countries, it is punishable by death.

. . .

The most surprising thing we learned is how many Muslim organizations already are trying to combat violence and views that Islam is a violent religion. King Abdullah and Prince Ghazi of Jordan conducted a panel on “True Islam” in 2005 on this very subject and issued a report now referred to as the “Amman Message.” It became very clear that there is power in numbers. The more who speak out, the more others will do so, too.

We are pleased with the results of our “Muslims Speak Out” venture, but we realize that it is just one small step. There is so much to be done in interfaith dialogue, not just on Islam but among all faiths and nonbelievers as well. This is just a beginning for “On Faith.” We want our audience and our contributors to know that their thoughts and their comments will always be welcome.

As it says in the Qu’ran, “God made us different nations and tribes so that we may know one another."

One question that bothered the editors was why less than half of those invited to participate chose to do so. The answers were varied:

Some felt that the questions were too negative, that they had a “When did you stop beating your wife?” tone to them. Others who were invited, we were told, were suspicious of an American owned media company and didn’t know whether they could trust us to print what they said accurately without being edited, or they feared that their remarks would be misused, opening themselves up to hostile comments. As it turned out, they were right about that second concern. There were a number of unacceptable and abusive comments.

Others of more moderate beliefs were afraid to speak out, either for political reasons or safety reasons. And interestingly, some who were known as moderates did not want to go on the record with their more controversial points of view. One of them said he writes his defenses of Islam under a false name. Two women accepted being on the panel and then dropped out with no explanation.

Some who have spoken out often against the violence said they were tired of explaining themselves.

We were told by our Muslim colleagues that even though most of the respondents were names that the average American or European may not have heard of, many of these people are hugely important in their own countries. They are constantly in demand and called upon to participate in so many things that they simply were too busy.

Read it all here.

The opening prayer at the U.S. Senate usually doesn't generate a lot of controversy. But on July 12, 2007, when chaplain Rajan Zed of Reno, Nev., became the first Hindu to deliver an opening prayer in the U.S. Senate, he was interrupted by Christian protesters. There's a video clip here that, when it surfaced on the blogosphere, generated an outpouring of commentary.

Zed has responded in the Newsweek/WashingtonPost blogzine On Faith. He writes:

Many of us won’t accept it, but religion is a complex component of our lives and it encompasses much more than our own particular tradition or personal experience. We all must take religion very seriously as it is the most powerful force. The challenge today is to seek unity that celebrates diversity.

Bhagavad-Gita, one of the ancient Hindu scriptures, says: “In whatever way and path, humans worship Me, in that same path do I (meet) and fulfill their aspirations and grace them. It is always My Path that humans follow in all their different paths and journeys, on all sides.” It further says, “Whatever form (of the Divine) any devotee with faith wishes to worship, I make that faith of his steady.”

All of us are looking for the truth. Dialogue brings us mutual enrichment. We may learn from each other as we are headed in the same direction. We should at least cooperate in the common causes of peace, human development, love, and respect for others.

There is a hymn in Guru Granth Sahib, sacred Sikh scripture:

"The world is burning in the fire of passion
Save it, O Lord, by Thy grace;
Save it the way Thou consider best."

Read the whole thing here.

Evangelical and Pentecostal representatives will join an August 8-12 consultation on conversion with the World Council of Churches and the Vatican in Toulouse, France. The joint Vatican-WCC study process on religious conversion is moving closer to its goal of a common code of conduct in seeking converts to Christianity, according to Ekklesia.

Kicked off in May last year at a meeting that affirmed freedom of religion as a "non-negotiable" human right valid for everyone everywhere and at the same time stressed that the "obsession of converting others" needs to be cured, the three-year joint study process moves now into its second phase.

Intended as an intra-Christian discussion - whereas the first encounter featured participants from different faiths - the project's second phase will consist of a high-level theological consultation entitled "Towards an ethical approach to conversion: Christian witness in a multi-religious world".

At the consultation, some 30 Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Pentecostal and Evangelical theologians and church representatives will aim to articulate what a common code of conduct on religious conversion should look like from a Christian viewpoint.

"Conversion is a controversial issue not only in interreligious relations, but in intra-Christian relations as well", says Rev. Dr Hans Ucko, WCC's programme executive for inter-religious dialogue and cooperation. "In Latin America it is a source of tension between the Roman Catholic Church and the Pentecostal movement, while in other regions Orthodox churches often feel 'targeted' by some Protestant missionary groups.

Read it all here

Scholars for years have focused on what Christians have thought and said about Jews throughout history. It is not a pleasant story. Very few scholars have asked an equally interesting question: what do classical Jewish texts say about Chritianity? Peter Schäfer has published a new book, Jesus in the Talmud, that examines this question.

David Novak, professor of Jewish studies at the University of Toronto, offers a favorable and illuminating book revew in the New Republic:

This process of rereading the texts of one's own tradition that talk about a close neighbor, an other, demands the very best scholarship. Peter Schäfer is certainly one of the most prominent and most formidable Christian scholars engaged in the new enterprise of looking at Judaism in relation to Christianity. He may well be the most distinguished non-Jewish scholar of classical Jewish sources in the world today. Which is to say, he may be the individual most qualified to deal with a very delicate question that inevitably arises out of the inquiry into what Christians say about Jews and Judaism in their classical sources: what do Jews say about Christians and Christianity in their classical sources? The question becomes more focused when it is directed to what the Jewish sources say about Jesus.

. . .

Schäfer's book tells a fascinating story. We need to appreciate how subtle that story is before we can properly ponder its larger implications for the new Jewish-Christian discussion, implications that are more than academic. What Schäfer calls "the Talmud" is the whole corpus of rabbinic literature that was written between the first and the seventh centuries of the Christian Era. Some of that vast literature was written in the land of Israel (then called "Palestine")--first under pagan Roman rule, then under Christian rule after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century--and is known as the Palestinian Talmud. Even more of that vast literature was written in Babylonia, then part of the Persian Empire. When most Jews say "the Talmud," they mean the Babylonian Talmud, called the Bavli.

There were far fewer Christians in Babylonia than there were in Palestine, and those Christians did not pose the political threat to the Jews that the Christians in Palestine did, and so all scholars interested in Jewish views of Christians and Christianity have regarded the Babylonian treatments of the subject to be historically worthless. They have preferred to concentrate their efforts on discussions and allusions in the Palestinian sources. Those sources alone seem to be talking about a real historical phenomenon, which, when we decode it, tells us much about how the Jews saw the Christian community in Palestine, with whom they had real conflicts.

. . .

Schäfer builds his argument about Jesus in the Babylonian Talmud on a largely overlooked fact: that "whereas the Palestinian rabbis' (few) statements reveal a relative closeness to the emerging Christian sect ... the Bavli's attention is focused on the person of Jesus." But how can what the Talmud says about Jesus be of any significance if the Babylonian rabbis were even further removed from the historical Jesus than the Palestinian rabbis before them? Schäfer's answer is that the Babylonian rabbinical texts are dealing not with the historical Jesus, but with the character of Jesus as it was presented in the New Testament, especially in the Gospel of John, which seems to present the most anti-Jewish Jesus of the four Gospels. These treatments are what Schäfer calls "a literary answer to a literary text."

Whereas the Palestinian anti-Christian texts are responding to a threatening social reality, the Babylonian texts are talking about the basic document (the New Testament) of a Christian community that is no longer a threat to the Jews of Baby- lonia, the Babylonian Christians being as much (if not more) of a marginalized minority as the Jews. Thus, in Schäfer's view, Babylonian Jewish statements about Jesus could be more direct than the Palestinian statements, and they could be nastier. Schäfer shows all this with dazzling erudition and critical insight. He also shows how these Babylonian sources condemned and ridiculed the New Testament accounts of Jesus's birth, powers, and supposed innocence at his trial. Since the local Christians in Baby- lonia were as far removed from the historical Jesus as the local Jews, having only the Jesus of the New Testament, the Jewish criticism of Jesus in Babylonia could attack Christians at their most vulnerable point. In the end, the political power of Christians over Jews made a huge difference in the ways Jews could conduct their anti-Christian polemic.

. . .

But why did the Babylonian Jews go to the trouble of denying the veracity of a text that mattered only to a small Christian community that had no power over Jews (no power of the sort that Palestinian Christians came to enjoy once Christians became members of the official religion of the Roman Empire)? Schäfer gives two answers to this question. Unlike his analysis of the literary evidence, where he has some important data at his disposal, the causal explanation involves much more speculation on his part. Yet Schäfer is not a hasty or arrogant historian; he says only what he believes the evidence entitles him to say. Would that more historians were as modest.

Schäfer's first answer to the question is psychological and political; more precisely, it concerns the influence of the political environment upon psychological motivation. In his view, the Jews of Babylonia could say about Christianity, in the person of Jesus, what their Palestinian brethren could not say because of the dangers involved. Schäfer calls the Babylonian declaration "a proud and self- confident message," one quite different from the "defense mechanisms" that the Palestinian rabbis had to employ in their political prudence. It was a "proud proclamation" of "a new and self-confident Diaspora community."

Schäfer's second answer to this question is more concretely political. Here he notes that in the Persian Empire, both Judaism and Christianity were minority religions--islands of monotheism in a sea of Zoroastrian dualism (which affirmed a good god in conflict with a bad god, as opposed to the one good God affirmed by Judaism and Christianity). The two monotheistic religions were highly suspect in the eyes of the polytheistic Zoroastrian Persian or Sasanian rulers. Indeed, older polemics of Roman pagans against Jews and Christians castigated them both for their monotheism. From these political facts, Schäfer speculates that the anti-Christian polemics of the Jews might be part of "a very vivid and fierce conflict between two competing religions' under the suspicious eye of the Sasanian authorities."

Read the entire review here.

What can such a close review of what the classical Jewish texts said about Jesus tell us about our own faith today? And what can it tell us about the history of the relationship of Jews and Christians?

The signing of a declaration between a group representing Muslims and a leading Christian body in Norway, which supports the mutual right to convert between faiths without harassment, is the first pact of its type in the world, the two bodies have announced. Ekklesia reports:

The Islamic Council of Norway and the (Lutheran) Church of Norway Council on Ecumenical and International Relations jointly declared that everyone is free to adopt the religious faith of their choice, at a gathering on 22 August 2007.

"As far as we know, this is the first time that a church and representative national Muslim organization have jointly acknowledged the right to convert," said Olav Fykse Tveit, secretary general of the church council.

He continued: "By issuing this declaration we hope to contribute to the international process on this important matter."

After signing their agreement, the two groups said in a statement: "We denounce and are committed to counteracting all violence, discrimination and harassment inflicted in reaction to a person’s conversion, or desire to convert, from one religion to another, be it in Norway or abroad."

Read it all here.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons has directed the departments chaplains to purge their libraries of all religious books which are not on list approved developed by the Bureau. According to a New York Times report by Laurie Goodstein, the move is supposed to prevent inmates from getting relgiously-based terrorist ideas.

Traci Billingsley, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, said the agency was acting in response to a 2004 report by the Office of the Inspector General in the Justice Department. The report recommended steps that prisons should take, in light of the Sept. 11 attacks, to avoid becoming recruiting grounds for militant Islamic and other religious groups. The bureau, an agency of the Justice Department, defended its effort, which it calls the Standardized Chapel Library Project, as a way of barring access to materials that could, in its words, “discriminate, disparage, advocate violence or radicalize.”

The list, which has reduced religious libraries to a list of 150 approved books and 150 multi-media for each of 20 religions or religious categories, does not ban liturgical texts, prayer books or scriptures.

The lists are broad, but reveal eccentricities and omissions. There are nine titles by C. S. Lewis, for example, and none from the theologians Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth and Cardinal Avery Dulles, and the influential pastor Robert H. Schuller.

Chaplains already watch out for materials that promote violence or disparage groups or classes of people, so, they say, the effort is unnecessary. The department has not provided funds for Chaplains to purchase the approved materials. This means that many prison library have simply been cleared of materials.

This effort has managed to displease nearly everyone: evangelical Christian groups have found their materials banned as well as Jewish and Muslim groups. Already some prisoners have filed suit.

If bureaucrats are concerned about radical ideas that are infectious, they may want to have another look at those Gospels.

Read the rest here including a multi-media description of the banned materials.

Ramadan began yesterday at sundown, and the Washington Post reports that "U.S. Muslims are stepping up holiday charity toward non-Muslims to counter anti-Islamic sentiment since the Sept. 11 attacks."

Key edicts of Ramadan, which began yesterday at sunset, are to fast and promote good conduct. The devil is said to be shackled, making it easier than during the rest of the year to perform good deeds and give charity.

Although some Muslims have always had a broad interpretation of these tenets, there has been a shift in recent years to look beyond the Muslim community for where one gives. This is the result both of a more mature Muslim American social service infrastructure and of a drive to counter anti-Muslim rhetoric since 2001, experts say.

"For decades, Muslims were internally focused, and I think September 11th accelerated the natural process of becoming more externally focused," said Ihsan Bagby, author of several studies of Muslim worship trends in the United States. "It's not like the impulse to do good is some new idea in Islam; concern for the poor, the weak is throughout the Koran. It's just that Muslims in this country hadn't implemented it very well. Now a wave is starting to form."

Community service events planned in the region during Ramadan include feeding day laborers, fundraising for city shelters and helping to organize nonviolence and interfaith projects.

Discussion about the shift also reflects the enduring question at the heart of Ramadan: How can one best do good? The impact of good deeds is said to be multiplied during Ramadan, which marks the period when the Koran began to be revealed to the prophet Muhammad.

Read the whole thing here.

Other items of note in the media about Ramadan:

It is a particular quirk of Ramadan that while the Muslim holiday revolves around fasting, it is also a celebration of food — Bosnian cevapi, Indonesian babi guling, Bangladeshi boti kababs, Malaysian kuih, Tunisian chakchouka.

For the next month, Muslims will fast from dawn to sunset each day. Fasting, or sawm, is one of the five pillars of Islam. Each evening during Ramadan Muslims, will break their 13- to 14-hour fast with a frequently festive communal meal called the iftar. The end of Ramadan is celebrated with a feast called Eid ul-Fitr.

That story is in St. Louis Today, here.( John Chilton who sent along this story, and who lives in the United Arab Emirates observes that Ramadan "is like Lent all day and Easter all night.")

And from the "Let Freedom Ring" department, various media outlets are reporting that the U.S. government is releasing between 50 and 80 Iraqi detainees during the holy month. Found here.

About.com has information about the nightly Taraweeh Prayers, including a link to the broadcast of the nightly prayers at Mecca (coverage begins at 5 pm GMT), here.

Finally, check out Hungry for Ramadan - My American Ramadan Blog by Shahed Amanullah, a frequent Beliefnet contributor. It is at once touching and informative. Don't miss it if you are at all curious about the significance of Ramadan, or the lives of American Muslims.

Yom Kippur—the Day of Atonement—began at sundown yesterday. Jews today are fasting and praying as God decides each person's fate in the coming year. One of the metaphors that comes out of this is that of "writing the book of one's life." Those of us that contribute to blogs regularly have come to know many of the virtues and pratfalls of perpetually and compulsively scribbling.

Jim Solllish, writing in the Washington Post, notes how his writing career does indeed help him understand this highest of holy days in the Jewish faith:

On Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, each of us is asked to reread our manuscript of the past year and make revisions. We are tasked with asking such questions as "What could I have done differently?" and "What were the effects of my choices on others?" When I realized these were the questions novelists ask of their characters, it became easier to ask them of myself.

Writing is a process of making choices. Thousands of them. The act of writing an opening sentence is the result of more choices than I can count. Every word a character speaks or swallows is a choice. Every action or inaction, more choices. It's so easy to get them wrong. Or at least to see that another choice would have made more sense.

Read the whole thing here:

The Christian Science Monitor puts an ongoing conflict in Myanmar (Burma) into a global and historical perspective.

Revered for self-sacrifice, Buddhist monks in Burma are standing up to the guns of a selfish regime. But these holy men in saffron robes are serving more than a people's desire for freedom. The protests also serve as a reminder of religion's historic role in shaping the kind of moral concern for others that is the root of democracy.

Democracy, after all, is simply the best way to bestow legitimacy on the few to rule the many for the care of all. In Burma (also known as Myanmar), any legitimacy of the military to govern ended long ago. Decades of repression, rather than caring, have left poverty and fear.

Last month, when the junta was forced by its bungling to double fuel prices, the people's economic suffering was intimately observed by the monks, who daily interact with the faithful in acts of humility and kindness. Their natural legitimacy has propelled them to lead nonviolent demonstrations aimed at withdrawing support from the regime and to demand democracy. Worldwide, religious leaders from the Dalai Lama to South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu have offered moral support.

Events in Burma are a model, repeated throughout history, of religious movements helping overthrow colonial powers and dictators. Protestant clergy helped spark the American Revolution, with one British commander complaining that "sedition flows copiously from the pulpits." The Vatican II changes of the Roman Catholic Church in the 1960s helped followers in many countries stand up to tyranny. Catholic nuns and priests were on the front line of a "people power" revolution in the Philippines that overthrew a dictator in 1986. Pope John Paul II helped his native Poland lead the way to free Eastern Europe of communism. Soviet dissidents were spiritually nurtured by a few Russian Orthodox priests, helping bring about the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. In Indonesia, a 30-million-strong Islamic group called Nahdlatul Ulama gave moral support for the 1998 overthrow of dictator Suharto.

The whole thing is here.

The Times UK notes that this is not the first time the estimated 500,000 monks have stood up for their homeland in this piece.

Read more about the conflict, and in particular Monday's protests, here.

It is almost 1 p.m., time for noon prayers, and Abdul Malik Mujahid, 55, is in his office on the second floor of Chicago's Downtown Islamic Center, preparing for his sermon. On his desk are a Koran, a pad of paper and a Blackberry. A telephone rings in the next room as people hurry through the corridors.

Soon Mujahid takes the elevator to the fourth floor, carrying the text of his sermon under his arm. The 200 men waiting for him in the prayer room are dressed in jeans and in suits. They have slipped away from their offices for lunch, removed their shoes and staked out their spots on the carpet. Now they want to hear Mujahid's Friday sermon.

He nods to the congregation. Mujahid is a short, elegant man. His gray beard is carefully trimmed and he has a smooth voice. He turns toward Mecca and recites the Fatiha, the opening Sura in the Koran. Then he quickly gets to his point: "My brothers, we can all contribute to reducing our energy consumption," he says. "That must be your very own jihad, your fight against global warming."

When he speaks he sounds like Al Gore, the former vice president of the United States and the man who is now leading America in the battle against climate change. "This wonderful country," says Mujahid, "depends on its immigrants. Show that you are good Americans and good Muslims."

Read it all. Hat tip: Arts and Letters Daily.

Matthew Weiner, the director of programs at the Interfaith Center of New York, had some interesting observations about the growing interest of conservative religious leaders in ecumenical activities:

There is an assumption by commentators on the right and the left that as far as religion goes, it is liberals who work--and care to work--across faith lines. Interfaith activity is understood as a politically and theologically liberal enterprise. This stems in part from the fact that the most widely recognized examples of interfaith cooperation have occurred on the left. Martin Luther King Jr.'s partnership with Abraham Joshua Heschel (the prominent Jewish theologian and civil-rights leader) is probably the most famous. Other figures who have reached across religious lines include The Very Reverend James Parks Morton (former dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine) and international icons like Gandhi, the Dalai Lama and Bishop Desmond Tutu.

But during my years at the Interfaith Center of New York, a nonprofit organization devoted to fostering interreligious civic relationships, I found that the stereotypes about who is willing to form partnerships were wrong. When the center first opened, we received enthusiastic support from liberals and were ignored by conservatives. Our programs looked diverse, and they were, religiously speaking. But participants were homogeneously liberal.

The more conservative religious folks were not interested in talking about spirituality, peace-building and social justice. So we refocused our programs to include seminars and information sessions on issues such as domestic violence, health-care access and immigration rights. Suddenly, every kind of religious leader came, including conservatives. Their religious perspectives did not change, but our assumptions did.

Sheikh Musa Drammeh, an African lay leader who runs an Islamic school in the Bronx, first came to a retreat we held on immigration issues. Sheikh Drammeh believes that Islam is the one true path, that premarital sex is not moral and neither is homosexual behavior. He runs a school that teaches Muslim children these values. In preparation for opening the school in 2001 he introduced himself to local pastors and rabbis, inviting them to come observe his classrooms. He attended a week-long program on religious diversity to better understand the other religious groups in his community. He also works with a Latino Pentecostal minister on the Bronx District Attorney's clergy task force. For him, interfaith partnership is critical for good citizenship and safe neighborhoods. "The more friends we make," he says, "the less likely we are to shed blood."

Rabbi Emmanuel Weizer is another one of our regular participants now. An ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Rabbi from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, he is the vice president of Congregation Beth Yitzthock. Rabbi Weizer strongly believes Orthodoxy is the right path (for Jews) and strongly disagrees with the theology of nonmonotheistic faiths. He will not participate in interfaith prayer services, nor will he enter another religion's worship space. But he has worked across religious lines for years, for example, on our interfaith mediation team, a program of the New York State court system that includes Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Sikhs.

Interestingly, it was the liberal leaders who had problems with our new conservative participants. Some wondered aloud "who let them in." Others wanted us to advocate for positions that would keep some conservatives out, like opposition to the war in Iraq and tolerance for homosexual behavior.

Instead of excluding conservatives, though, we adopted a different understanding of interfaith activity. It is not an understanding based on the idea that with a little conversation we can iron out all our theological differences. Rather, it is one based on the idea that religious beliefs are distinct, deep-set and deserve to be taken seriously. On that point, it turns out that Rabbi Weizer and Sheikh Drammeh understand each other well.

Read it all here.

Reuters is reporting on an "unprecedented" letter, signed by 138 Muslim scholars, sent to Pope Benedict, leaders of Orthodox Christian churches, Anglican leader Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the heads of the world alliances of the Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist and Reformed churches. The letter's authors represent the Sunni, Shi'ite and Sufi schools of Islam, and state their belief that they represent the vast majority of Muslims.

... [The] scholars said finding common ground between the world's biggest faiths was not simply a matter for polite dialogue between religious leaders.

"If Muslims and Christians are not at peace, the world cannot be at peace. With the terrible weaponry of the modern world; with Muslims and Christians intertwined everywhere as never before, no side can unilaterally win a conflict between more than half of the world's inhabitants," the scholars wrote.

"Our common future is at stake. The very survival of the world itself is perhaps at stake," they wrote, adding that Islam and Christianity already agreed that love of God and neighbor were the two most important commandments of their faiths.

Relations between Muslims and Christians have been strained as al Qaeda has struck around the world and as the United States and other Western countries intervened in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The article runs with a London dateline, and as such includes comments from Archbishop Williams:

Williams said he welcomed it as "indicative of the kind of relationship for which we yearn in all parts of the world."

"The call to respect, peace and goodwill should now be taken up by Christians and Muslims at all levels and in all countries," he said.

A Vatican official in Rome said the Roman Catholic Church would not comment until it had time to read the letter.

You can read the story here.

The open letter is available here at Islamica Magazine.

The full response of the Archbishop of Canterbury is here.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has responded quickly and positively to an open letter from moderate Muslim leaders saying that it is a call to righteousness and mutual respect under the One God.

An open letter from 138 Muslim leaders to Christian churches warns that "the future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians." The moderate imams, ayatollahs, grand muftis, sheikhs, and scholars calls for Muslims and Christians to find common ground in the teachings and principles of the two faiths, and seeks to be a alternative voice for the radical Islam that dominates the western media.

The two faiths account for more than half the world's population, the letter notes, and with "the terrible weaponry of the modern world; with Muslims and Christians intertwined everywhere as never before, no side can unilaterally win a conflict.... Our common future is at stake."

The 29 page document, "A Common Word Between Us and You," was immediately received by the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and other Christian leaders in Great Britain.

Williams said,

“The theological basis of the letter and and its call to “vie with each other only in righteousness and good works; to respect each other, be fair, just and kind to another and live in sincere peace, harmony and mutual goodwill”, are indicative of the kind of relationship for which we yearn in all parts of the world, and especially where Christians and Muslims live together. It is particularly important in underlining the need for respect towards minorities in contexts where either Islam or Christianity is the majority presence."

The Archbishop said that the letter’s emphasis on the fundamental importance of belief in the unity of God and love of neighbour is welcome. He said ”the letter rightly makes it clear that these are scriptural foundations equally for Jews, Christians, and for Muslims, and are the basis for justice and peace in the world.

Dr Williams continued:

“There is much here to study and to build on. The letter’s understanding of the unity of God provides an opportunity for Christians and Muslims to explore together their distinctive understandings and the ways in which these mould and shape our lives. The call to respect, peace and goodwill should now be taken up by Christians and Muslims at all levels and in all countries and I shall endeavour in this country and internationally, to do my part in working for the righteousness which this letter proclaims as our common goal."

The Rev Mark S. Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and president of the Lutheran World Federation, Geneva, has responded positively to letter sent to him and several global Christian leaders by 138 Muslim world leaders, according to Ekklesia.

Hanson wrote:

"The letter attests to both the love of God and our shared heritage of true hospitality to one's neighbor. These commandments convey prophetic witness for mutual and vital co-existence that Christians and Muslims must embrace in one another. The letter further references how the commands to love God and neighbor are linked "between the Qur'an, the Torah and the New Testament." I encourage everyone everywhere to read the beauty of these passages found in the sacred texts of the Abrahamic faiths, which signify God's vision for how and whom we love in a broken world. This common vision for Jews, Muslims, and Christians signifies fidelity and fellowship in a world where conflict offends our common heritage as children of God.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that while the document is a message to Christians everywhere, it's also a message to Muslims. The letter states that "justice and freedom of religion are a crucial part of love of the neighbor." To those who "relish conflict and destruction," it warns that "our very eternal souls are at stake if we fail to sincerely make every effort to make peace...."

Read: The Christian Science Monitor: Moderate Muslims Speak--To Christians

Also read: Ekklesia: Archbishop of Canterbury responds to "A Common Word."

And: Ekklesia: Lutheran world chielf welcomes Muslim peace letter.

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter has stirred up the debate on what Christians believe regarding the place of Judaism. In an October 8 appearance on CNBC’s “The Big Idea” Coulter said that what Christians ultimately want is for Jews to be “perfected” into Christians.

Gabriel Sanders in The Jewish Daily Forward writes:

The notion that God’s covenant with Christians came to replace his covenant with Jews — a concept known as supersessionism, or replacement theology — informed centuries of Christian thought. It was a central idea for both the early church fathers and the leaders of the Reformation. It was also embraced, and expanded upon, by the German Idealist philosophers of the late-18th and early-19th centuries.

In the decades after the Holocaust, however, as Christian denominations were forced to rethink the nature of Christian-Jewish ties, many reconsidered, and ultimately repudiated, the concept. In 1988, the Episcopal Church endorsed a new set of guidelines governing Christian-Jewish relations. Supersessionism’s repercussions, the guidelines read, had been “fateful.” Rather than being a “fossilized religion of legalism,” as the Judaism of Jesus’ time was long thought to be, the church’s revised position held that “Judaism in the time of Jesus was in but an early stage of its long life.”

But not all Christian denominations have followed the Episcopal Church’s lead.

Read it all here.

Thanks to epiScope.

The Boston Globe reports on the Sabeel Conference on Palestinian rights held at Old South Church in Boston. Both Israeli and Palestinian supporters pledge to work together locally but protestors denounced the comparison of apartheid with the treatment of Palestinians.

Hundreds of advocates for Palestinian rights gathered inside a Back Bay church yesterday as pro-Israel demonstrators denounced them from across Boylston Street in Copley Square, in an illustration of how the Mideast conflict has roiled relations between leaders of the Jewish and mainline Protestant communities in Boston.

Inside Old South Church, about 700 advocates of Palestinian rights launched a two-day conference, provocatively titled, "The Apartheid Paradigm in Palestine-Israel." The meeting will feature a keynote speech today by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa.

The pro-Israel demonstrators, who numbered about 200, furiously denounced the use of the word apartheid to describe Israel, as well as what the Jewish community said were anti-Israel views espoused by Sabeel, the Palestinian Christian organization that put together the conference.

But both sides also said they are determined to work together locally.

The president of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ and the senior minister of Old South Church both issued statements expressing support for Israel and opposition to terrorism, even as they defended the decision to rent the Old South building to Sabeel. And the executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council defended the free speech rights of Sabeel and concern for Palestinian rights, even as she denounced the conference as "an effort to demonize the state of Israel."

The three officials gathered on a sidewalk in front of the church to talk between the protest and the conference and said they have planned a meeting of Jewish and United Church of Christ leaders next week..

Old South has, over its three-plus centuries in existence, repeatedly hosted gatherings by groups championing controversial points of view, including abolition and women's suffrage and gay rights. Its senior minister, the Rev. Nancy S. Taylor, said the decision to rent the sanctuary to Sabeel represents an idea that is "at the heart of a free and vital democratic nation."

Read is all here

Earlier this week the Pope met with the King of Saudi Arabia. Their conversation included discussion about the treatment and tolerance of Christian people living in Saudia Arabia. The issue is one of increasing importance because it is thought that Christians will soon become the majority in at least one arabian state, and are increasingly present in Saudi Arabia as well.

The site Chiesa online has a series of articles about the effect this is having:

"Three months ago to the day, on May 31, the Holy See established diplomatic relations and exchanged ambassadors with the United Arab Emirates.

Few noted the fact that the United Arab Emirates has the greatest Christian presence of any Islamic country.

And it is a new and growing presence. Exactly the opposite of what is happening in other regions in the Middle East like Iraq, Lebanon, the Holy Land, where Christian communities of very ancient origin actually face extinction.

The United Arab Emirates is a federation of seven emirates – Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, and Umm al-Quwain – situated along the middle of the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula. The capital is Abu Dhabi. Almost all of the citizens belong to the official religion, Islam.

But there are many more immigrants than citizens. Foreigners now make up more than 70 percent of the more than 4 million inhabitants, coming from other Arab countries, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, the Philippines.

More than half of these foreign workers are Christians. Adding up the figures, Christians account for more than 35 percent of the population of the United Arab Emirates. Around a million of them are Catholic. And it's not only in the UAE – in Saudi Arabia, too, it is estimated that there are already about a million Catholics from the Philippines. "

Read the rest here.

Christian scholars, religious leaders and laity are reaching to Muslims to create a dialog based on what the two faiths share in the hope of overcoming misunderstanding, mistrust and violence that arises out of an unfamiliarity with the two faiths and the two cultures, publishing a full page ad in yesterdays New York Times and issuing a statement of confession, reflection and vision about the future of Muslim-Christian relationships.

The Yale Center for Faith and Culture has organized a response to a letter last October from 138 Muslim scholars called "A Common Word Between Us and You." The document called Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to 'A Common Word Between Us and You.' says, in part:

As members of the worldwide Christian community, we were deeply encouraged and challenged by the recent historic open letter signed by 138 leading Muslim scholars, clerics, and intellectuals from around the world. A Common Word Between Us and You identifies some core common ground between Christianity and Islam which lies at the heart of our respective faiths as well as at the heart of the most ancient Abrahamic faith, Judaism. Jesus Christ’s call to love God and neighbor was rooted in the divine revelation to the people of Israel embodied in the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18). We receive the open letter as a Muslim hand of conviviality and cooperation extended to Christians world-wide. In this response we extend our own Christian hand in return, so that together with all other human beings we may live in peace and justice as we seek to love God and our neighbors.

The statement begins with an honest word of confession:

Muslims and Christians have not always shaken hands in friendship; their relations have sometimes been tense, even characterized by outright hostility. Since Jesus Christ says, “First take the log out your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye” (Matthew 7:5), we want to begin by acknowledging that in the past (e.g. in the Crusades) and in the present (e.g. in excesses of the “war on terror”) many Christians have been guilty of sinning against our Muslim neighbors. Before we “shake your hand” in responding to your letter, we ask forgiveness of the All-Merciful One and of the Muslim community around the world.

The stakes are high. Together Christians and Muslims make up over half the world's population, the statement says. Without peace between the two religions, peace in the world is jeopardized.

Recognizing that the two religions share the fundamental command to love God and to love neighbor, the writers of the Christian response propose that

...our next step should be for our leaders at every level to meet together and begin the earnest work of determining how God would have us fulfill the requirement that we love God and one another.

Some of the signatures in the New York Times full page ad included The Very Rev. Sam Candler of the Diocese of Atlanta (a contributer at Episcopal Cafe), Episcopal bishops Lee and Johnson of Virginia, Beisner of Northern California and Gulick of Kentucky as well as Richard Mouw of Fuller Seminary and others from Fuller Seminary and Wheaton College also signed.

You can read about "A Common Word Between Us and You" here.
You can find "A Christian Response to 'A Common Word Between Us and You" here.
Read more about "A Common Word" in the Cafe here and recall the Archbishop of Canterbury's response here .

Several weeks ago, 138 Muslim scholars, sent a lengthy letter entitled 'A Common Word Between Us and You,' to Pope Benedict and other Christian leaders. Last week, numerous American Christian scholars responded positively with a letter of their own. In these clips from Voice of America and National Public Radio, Episcopal Bishop John Bryson Chane and his friend Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, take the converstion further.

Meanwhile, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has criticzed American imperialism in an interview with Emel, a magazine for Muslims. The Sunday Times reports here.

Several weeks ago, 138 Muslim scholars, sent a lengthy letter entitled 'A Common Word Between Us and You,' to Pope Benedict and other Christian leaders. As was noted in these pages last week, numerous American Christian scholars responded positively with a letter of their own.

That Christian response is receiving an appreciative response in the Muslim world. The Gulf News (United Arab Emirates):

Dr Habib Ali Al Jafri, Muslim propagator, said: "I am happy with this letter, which is considered as an unprecedented step to bring the Islamic and Christian faiths and civilisations closer."

Speaking at a press conference held yesterday at the Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation, Al Jafri said Muslims and Christians make up 55 per cent of the world's population, and this new closeness serves as the first firm step towards returning to peace, brotherhood and harmony between people.

He added that more steps would follow in response to the apology to enhance interfaith dialogue. The letter from Muslim scholars was sent to 27 Christian heads of churches around the world, including the Vatican.

Twenty-five of them replied, but no reply has been received yet from the Vatican and an Orthodox church, Al Jafri said.
... The clerics who signed the letter are from all over the world, mostly from the US....

Two major Jewish and Muslim organizations unveiled an interfaith dialogue curriculum yesterday and are urging their hundreds of thousands of members to use it. Both sides say it is the broadest Jewish-Muslim interfaith effort in the continent's history.

As reported in the Washington Post:

The manual and video are built around five sessions that touch on topics including the place of Jerusalem in Jewish and Muslim tradition and history. The toughest potential sticking points will probably be related to Israel and to stereotypes both groups carry about the other, Mark Pelavin, director of interreligious affairs for the Jewish group, said in an interview. "Jews want to know how Muslims feel about terrorism in the name of Islam, and Muslims want to know how Jews feel about Palestinian suffering.

Read it all here.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Rabbi Abraham Heschel. There is a new biography which tries to present him in the context of the times in which he lived. The New York Times has an article that reports on the biography and some of the other observances surrounding the celebration of his life.

From the article:

"Admittedly there are times when Heschel can seem sentimental or, as in his early book ‘The Earth Is the Lord’s,’ can romanticize the past. He turns the lost world of his fathers — the communities of Eastern European Hasidim and their rabbis — into an almost utopian realm. The scholarly skepticism of his colleagues at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, where close textual analysis was more eagerly embraced than Heschel’s inspirational philosophy, does not always seem unmerited.

But no modern Jewish thinker has had as profound an effect on other faiths as Heschel has; the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said he was ‘an authoritative voice not only in the Jewish community but in the religious life of America.’ Nor has any Jewish theologian since Heschel succeeded in speaking to such a wide range of readers while rigorously attending to the nuances of Judaism.

Some of this uniqueness can be felt in the way Heschel approached the woman in the airport. Her mockery is defused, the interaction shifted to the mundane. It is as if Heschel were saying: ‘I understand I’m not what you’re used to. But I’m prepared to meet you casually, accepting your comparison to a make-believe figure. But surely you can see that your anger is not justified?’"

Read the rest here.

The LA Times ran a story that's created some drama in the blogosphere about a service in which Hindus and Christians worshiped together at an Episcopal service. The story ran on Jan. 20, claiming that "All were invited to Holy Communion, after the Episcopal celebrant elevated a tray of consecrated Indian bread, and deacons raised wine-filled chalices."

Today, a correction:

FOR THE RECORD:
Hindu-Episcopal service: An article in Sunday's California section about a joint religious service involving Hindus and Episcopalians said that all those attending the service at St. John's Cathedral in Los Angeles were invited to Holy Communion. Although attendees walked toward the Communion table, only Christians were encouraged to partake of Communion. Out of respect for Hindu beliefs, the Hindus were invited to take a flower. Also, the article described Hindus consuming bread during Communion, but some of those worshipers were Christians wearing traditional Indian dress. —

The original article includes a description of the significance of the service:

During the service, the Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, issued a statement of apology to the Hindu religious community for centuries-old acts of religious discrimination by Christians, including attempts to convert them.

"I believe that the world cannot afford for us to repeat the errors of our past, in which we sought to dominate rather than to serve," Bruno said in a statement read by the Rt. Rev. Chester Talton. "In this spirit, and in order to take another step in building trust between our two great religious traditions, I offer a sincere apology to the Hindu religious community."

The bishop also said he was committed to renouncing "proselytizing" of Hindus. Bruno had been scheduled to read the statement himself, but a death of a close family friend prevented him from attending the service.

Swami Sarvadevananda, of Vedanta Society of Southern California, was among about a dozen Hindu leaders honored during the service. He called Bruno's stance "a great and courageous step" that binds the two communities.

"By declaring that there will be no more proselytizing, the bishop has opened a new door of understanding," Sarvadevananda said. "The modern religious man must expand his understanding and love of religions and their practices."

The story, with correction inserted, is here.