Ecumenical & Interfaith
Network - PCUSA

What's Happening Where We Live?

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Local "Faith Trio" reads Golden Calf stories together

In Oakland, California, the spiritual leaders of the Montclair Presbyterian Church, the Kehilla Community Synagogue, and the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California will lead a reading of the golden calf stories of the Bible and the Qur'an, focusing on the dangers of idol-worship and the application of this for today. Members of the three congregations, making up the Faith Trio, meet monthly.

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Long Island Council has ideas for Labor Day

The Prelude, the newsletter of the Long Island Council of Churches (LICC), regularly features practical ideas, some of which are garnered by asking for input from readers' congregations. Recent suggestions are offered on the observance of Labor Day:

• Make pastoral visits to parishioners at their place of work.
• Offer prayers for workers on Labor Day Sabbath/Sunday.
• Use an affirmation of faith that affirms workers, such as the Social Creed (the result of an ecumenical project and recently adopted by the PC(USA) 218th General Assembly of 2008).
• Ask parishioners to bring something they use in their vocation (or volunteer avocation) to church, to be placed on the Table as a form of "bringing our daily life to the altar."

North Texas workplaces offer more quiet rooms

North Texas employers are increasingly providing space for quiet rooms, according to an article in the Dallas Morning News. One employer's comments imply their potential use might range from Muslim prayers to nursing mothers. The push for these spaces comes at a time when there is growing diversity in the workforce and a growing number of employees willing to disclose their religious needs. Particularly, North Texas has up to 180,000 Muslims, the seventh largest grouping in the U.S. To aid companies, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued new guidelines in July 2008 for handling religious diversity issues. The number of cases filed with EEOC had doubled since 1992.

Queens church council shines headlight on cyber-terrorism

Nexus (August 2008), a publication of the Queens Federation of Churches, is publicizing the growing problem of online hate crimes -- vandalism, obscenity, and harrassment -- directed toward ethnic and religious minorities, and it is naming names, though the group it names calls itself "Anonymous."  The Queens council's executive director, Skip L'Heureaux, is the moderator of the National Council of Churches' committee on religious liberty.

Mississippi Hindu temple needed larger building

A sign of the growing Hindu population in Mississippi comes in a building nearing completion for the Hindu Temple Society of Mississippi in Brandon. The temple's original building was erected in 1990 but is no longer large enough. About ten artisans have worked six days a week for nearly four years to carve patterns and figures on the new structure. Neighbors were initially wary but now are more accepting of the temple.

Courts hear important cases

New Jersey: workplace religious discrimination

In a case that went to the state Supreme Court, workplace religious discrimination has been ruled as serious as other forms of workplace discrimination based on race, gender, or ethnicity. At issue was the anti-Semitic remarks made against a policeman, which a lower court had dismissed as mere ribbing.

California textbooks challenged for bias toward Abrahamic religions

A court recently rejected a motion to dismiss a suit brought by California Parents for the Equalization of Educational Materials (CAPEEM), which has charged that the state's textbook selection process discriminated against Hindus and that sixth grade history books "indulge in indoctrination of Abrahamic religions while using disparaging language against Hinduism."

Colorado: state scholarship eligibility in pervasively sectarian situations
As a result of an appeals court decision, students at a Buddhist university and an evangelical Protestant university now have become eligible for Colorado scholarships. A previous ruling allowed Colorado to withhold scholarship assistance to students at accredited colleges deemed to be "pervasively sectarian." This required the state to engage in "intrusive scrutiny of religious belief and practice," the appeals court said. Nonetheless, the American Jewish Committee expressed its disappointment in the ruling out of concern for "government entanglement in religious affairs in America.”

After beginning as a temperance federation, the South Carolina Christian Action Council (SCCAC) took on the role of being a liaison agency between churches and partners doing moral/social justice, peacemaking, and racial/cultural reconciliation work. Its newsletter points to a program of the Episcopal Church's diocese of South Carolina that provides free access to a Next Steps database and related free training. Upon completion of brief Next Steps training, South Carolinians are eligible for training as a Lazarus and Samaritan minister who can provide one-on-one Christian care to people in poverty. The Next Steps database originates in the Samaritan Ministry of Greater Washington (DC), which provides help in locating available jobs and service providers. Five PC(USA) presbyteries are SCCAC members. The council also promotes dialogue among Christian traditions on matters of belief and practice.

Presbyterian congregation hosts interfaith dialoguers from Israel

Massachusett community's police learn about South Asians' domestic violence

As Burlington, Massachusetts police have been learning about how to handle domestic violence cases among its South Asian population, they have been taught by a locally-based group of women of South Asian origin.They have discovered that arrest should not be their first option, since many of the affected women are dependent on the men for their immigration status. Many of the men will not understand that they can be arrested for abuse, they were told, since domestic violence was outlawed in India only three years ago. The women's organization has funding from a Department of Justice grant.

United Methodists and Muslims carry out mutual work

 
In Indiana, a partnership between the Northwest Indiana Islamic Center and the Calumet District of the United Methodist Church has resulted in the Children of Abraham, an organization through which volunteers pack medical supplies given by fifteen area hospitals and send them to needy areas around the globe. In northern Illinois, the local United Methodist bishop and the chair of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago have signed a Declaration of Relationship "grounded in our mutual love and God and dedication to the ethical core of our faiths.” The parties agree to mutual dialogue and work for social justice. Each informs the other about situations that would affect it, and they meet annually to reaffirm the commitment.

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Long Island council head examines relationships and their limits

Should Latter-day Saints be in our council? Should we relate to Ahmadiyya Muslims when another mosque tells us they disapprove? In the vexed struggle over where to draw limits in an organization, some set of guidelines seems necessary, but what should they be? Thomas Goodhue (pictured), executive director of the Long Island Council of Churches, has addressed attitudinal aspects of the question from the perspective of broken relationships: what do we do after a split or a schism? (though his article, "My Heretics and Yours," still leaves organizational questions to be answered by careful procedural decisions, hopefully made in advance). Goodhue's guidelines? All too briefly:

• Be humble. (Avoid a judgmental attitude.)
• Remember your roots.("Nearly all our denomination began in division.")
• Listen carefully before jumping to conclusions. (More than once, schism has resulted from misunderstanding.)
• Try to remember that heterodoxy is not heresy. (Others may be "odd," but not a "sect.")
• Go visit even if you disagree.
• Don't pretend an offshoot represents the wider community.
• Be honest. ("We all believe the same thing" is not true.)
• Be honest with yourself.

The article can be found in NAINews (Summer 2007).

NAIN highlights interest new approaches

The North American Interfaith Network (NAIN) sought out new approaches to interfaith work to be highlighted at its 2008 NAINConnect conference. Here's what some of the selections have done:

• Convinced thousands of congregations across the land to go green
• As an Islamic agency, generated thousands of educational experiences each year between the Muslim community and the larger community
• As a regional network of clergy and religious leaders, fostered relationships with community leaders such as mayors and school superintendents
• As a program sprung from a Jewish-Muslim friendship, took interfaith young adult live drama across the country
• Created a poster that is a highly effective resource to the interfaith movement
• As a community foundation, in spite of the usual ‘no religious organizations please’ rule at most foundations, provided support to ithousands of congregations from all faiths
• Grew from a single friendship into a network of women from diverse religious, racial, and ethnic backgrounds that has a vital set of interlocking programs

NAIN has not yet posted the names of the organizations.

Top ten occasions for ecumenical celebration are listed

The top occasions for ecumenical celebrations, according to the Graymoor Ecumenical and Interfaith Institute, include the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (January 18-25) and World Day of Prayer (the first Friday in March) but also two civically-oriented dates –  the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. (the third Monday in January) and World Aids Day (December 1) – and the liturgical occasions of Ash Wednesday and Lent, Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost; and All Souls Day.

Interfaith movement is going deeper, centering on the local

"[T}here has been a profound shift [in interfaith relations] away from Christian denominational leaders plotting theological agreements and organizations in conference rooms in New York . . . [to] emphasis on local, congregational initiatives," an Episcopal priest told the Washington Post recently. A newspaper article reports more "deep" involvement that favors intimate group projects and community service over the anonymity and safety of lectures or joint annual worship services. One example is a Presbyterian and a Jewish congregation that, after years of shared Thanksgiving services, needed a series of intense meetings three years ago following a dispute related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now a small group of Presbyterians and Jews, augmented by some Muslims, meets regularly and shares projects as well as discussion. Still hanging over the article's general overview is the question: Is dialogue about political issues or faith?

Internet dialogue is accessible locally, reaches globally

The internet has ushered in another level of dialogue, accessible to the average user locally. In June a Facebook feature called "Faithbook" was begun by the U.K.'s Reform Jewish movement. Its administrators said the site would operate in the same way as a group, with members able to post images, start discussions, and write notes. WashingtonPost.com also has a "Faithbook" feature.

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