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are interfaith religious services feasible?
But that's not what I'm here to write about...
My rabbi does a lot of interfaith work locally, mostly dialogue and education. I got a call from him on Friday asking if I could talk to some folks at a local college who are trying to do some sort of interfaith services; they want lay people for some reason, so they didn't want to talk to him. So I gave the person a call.
A local college acquired a building that used to be a church (Carlow and St. Agnes, for the locals), and they want to use the space for non-denominational worship, and they've got plenty of Christians involved but they're light on Muslims and have no Jews involved. (She didn't mention other faiths.) I suspect I know the reason for that, after talking with her, but I will go to their organizational meeting and find out what they're trying to do. Conveniently, the meeting is the night before the next meeting of our worship committee, so if it sounds like any action on our part should come out of it, we'll be able to discuss it promptly.
They've had one event already (in September), and she thinks it went well and they want to do more. She hopes they can improve attendance; I suggested that publicity might be a factor. (This was the first I'd heard of the group.) It sounds like this is being driven, in part, from the fact that they have a beautiful space that is conducive to worship (she says), so they want to find some way to use it for the larger community. I suggested that they pursue education, not just worship, but she didn't react. I suspect that's where the good hunting is, though.
I can't help thinking that efforts like this face a real uphill battle. There's a lot that can be done to educate folks about different religions, and to create dialogues and the like, and that would be effort well-spent. Cross-religious worship, though? There are aspects of any worship service that some religions consider to be required and others consider to be anathema -- how do you handle that? How do you create a service that is authentic for its participants but offensive to none of them?
I suspect you do it by watering things down, and you end up with prayer to "whatever higher power(s) are out there". But if you're trying to draw people in from the community, well, who's going to attend something like that when they could just attend targetted services in their own congregations? Communities come together for these types of services in the face of major events (9/11, for instance), but this group wants to create an ongoing series of worship services.
(Aside: efforts to be all-inclusive at the cost of anything more than vague references to greater powers sit poorly with me. I dislike some of the ultra-liberal liturgy within my own religion for that reason. I have to be careful not to let my personal prejudice here come out, though; some people go for that sort of thing.)
There are a lot of Christian denominations, and they disagree with each other on lots of things, but they still have enough in common that non-denominational Christian services can work. Once you throw in even just Judaism and Islam, I suspect that breaks down. I'm sure it does if you also try to throw in Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, etc.
I will go to the meeting as my rabbi's representative, with an open mind. If there are things we can do to help them out without violating our own principles, we can do that. And maybe they have a viable idea for a service that can address the challenges I've mentioned, and if so that's great.
The rest of this entry should be read as "Monica doing contingency planning", not "Monica making premature judgements about the group". I often find it helpful to play through what-if scenarios before events that could be delicate (or contentious).
All of this has caused me to think about how one handles the "diplomacy" involved in such efforts. I mean, everyone has to compromise for such a thing to work, but there are things we (I) cannot compromise on, and it'll make us (me) look stubborn, but it can't be helped. For example, suppose the Catholics agree to not include any references to the trinity in the service text (something I think the Muslims would also require). That's a pretty big step for them, because the trinity is a fundamental principle of Catholicism, but I can't meet them halfway on this and say that it's ok to talk about Jesus absent that. (The Muslims would presumably be ok with that, so they would be seen as compromising while I would be seen as stubborn.) But it's just not ok, if you want Jews to participate. Ok, they might say, we'll just talk about God and grace and salvation. Oops -- we have very different ideas about that, too. So I could steer things in the direction of deeds, and get some of the Protestants behind me in the process I'm sure, but then that would be too watered-down for the Catholics (I'm guessing). But... I want to be a good diplomat, as I'm representing not just me but the entire Jewish community to this group, but I suspect I'm going to have to choose my words very carefully. Ah, a challenge. :-)
(Fortunately, I don't completely suck at that with warning, which I have, and I suspect the background prcesses in my brain, fueled by comments I get on this entry, will anticipate many of the issues so that I can consider reactions to them before they happen..)
I also have to keep in mind that my personal reactions are likely to be stronger than those of the average Jew on the street. And I know I hold a minority opinion with respect to presence at (certain) Christian practices -- that I would absent myself from certain things does not mean that they're necessarily wrong for others. On the other hand, it would behoove me to determine, in advance, a diplomatic explanation for why some Jews will have strong negative reactions to some things, so that they can decide whether they want to aim their events at Jews.
It should be interesting.
And all that said, if I can do a credible job with this, it's probably another indicator that I'm not a bad choice for the sh'liach k'hilah program. :-)
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I assume I'm supposed to be able to see content at that site (beyond the "who we are") blurb, but I'm not seeing it. Just a missing image at the top and an address in the left-hand frame. I wonder what's wrong. (Hmm. Popped it into IE and it wants me to download a Flash plugin. I didn't, but I now see at least three places-where-things-should-be indicators in the left frame. Still don't see any text/html, though.)