The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Nicolas Senèze is deputy editor of the religion service at the French Catholic daily La Croix and author of La crise intégriste, a history of the SSPX. He wrote this for FaithWorld (translation by Reuters) after covering the ordinations in Ecône for La Croix.

(Photo: Bishop Fellay greets children in Ecône, in Valais canton in southwestern Switzerland, 29 June 2009/Denis Balibouse)

By Nicolas Senèze

Bishop Bernard Fellay has gone and done it. On the morning of June 29, before crowds of the faithful gathered on the large meadow outside the Saint Pius X seminary in Ecône, Switzerland, the Superior General of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (SSPX) ordained eight new priests. Just like Bishop Alfonso de Galaretta did on Friday in Zaitzkofen, Germany, and Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais 10 days ago in Winona, Minnesota in the United States. They went ahead and ordained these men despite the Vatican’s declaration that the ordinations were “illegitimate”, i.e. illegal according to the law of the Roman Catholic Church.

Was this a provocation by the SSPX against Pope Benedict, whose flag flies above the seminary? Absolutely not, a very self-confident Bishop Fellay responded to journalists who had journeyed to this Swiss Alpine village for the ceremony. “There is a tacit tolerance from Rome,” said the Swiss-born bishop, whose 20-year excommunication was lifted in January along with the three other bishops drummed out of the Church in 1988. “We did not have an explicit order not to do this. I have contacts with Rome, I’m not just making this up out of thin air. Rome knows this is not a provocation on our part.”

In any event, for Bishop Fellay, the SSPX is in the “state of necessity” which canon law mentions when it allows derogations from Church rules. “If everything went well in the Church, our gesture would have been disobedience. But all is not well in the Church,” he said calmly. “We see such scandals at Mass, we hear sermons so contrary to the faith!”

This is the same “state of necessity” that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre invoked in the 1970s and 1980s, when he went ahead with priestly ordinations without having the power to do so. At the time, the SSPX, which had been dissolved by the bishop of Fribourg with the endorsement of Pope Paul VI, had no official status in the Church. Pope John Paul had asked the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) to settle the Lefebvre case. The CDF prefect at the time was named … Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

(Photo: Candidates for SSPX priesthood in procession before their ordination in Ecône, Switzerland, 29 June 2009/Denis Balibouse)

Early this year, the same person, who became pope in 2005, lifted the excommunications pronounced after the collapse of the talks he had conducted in 1988 with Archbishop Lefebvre. Again, the case will now be entrusted to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - a sign that the differences with these fundamentalists are primarily theological. But that means there is also a red line not to cross — the fundamentalists must accept the authority of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the post-conciliar magisterium of the popes.

“The biggest problem is philosophical,” Bishop Fellay observed. “Two philosophies meet: the classical scholastic philosophy and modern philosophy. The pope is very eclectic and we feel that he has been marked by a subjective philosophy — less when he talks about morality than when he speaks in the abstract. Our scholastic philosophy is more objective.”

So Bishop Fellay thinks that Rome and Ecône may speak “about the same thing, but differently.” This is a timid opening, but it must be appreciated for what it is. Only a little while ago, the SSPX Council firmly rejected Vatican II as a council tainted by error.

In essence, Bishop Fellay is saying that the fundamental issue is less the Council itself than its interpretation. “There are differences of position within the Catholic Church that are larger and more serious than those we have with Rome,” he said. “The Council texts opened the door to interpretations. It may be necessary that the pope clarifies them, as Paul VI did on collegiality. But when the pope condemned the hermeneutic of discontinuity, he condemned 80% of what is happening in the Church!”

What’s your opinion? Is 80% of what goes on in the Catholic Church wrong?

(For readers of French, here are La Croix readers’ reactions to the ordinations)

(Photo: President Obama speaks at Cairo University, 4 June 2009/Larry Downing)

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Miroslav Volf is director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture and a theology professor at Yale Divinity School, where he co-teaches a course on faith and globalization with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. A native of Croatia and member of the Episcopal Church in the U.S.A., he has been involved in international ecumenical and interfaith dialogues, most recently in Christian-Muslim dialogue.

By Miroslav Volf

I am tempted to say that in Cairo President Obama delivered an historic speech on relations between “the United States and Muslims around the world.” Speeches aren’t historic when they are delivered, however; they become historic after they’ve shaped history. What is certain even now, mere few hours after the speech, is that it was brilliant — visionary and practical, deeply human and political, moral and pragmatic, all at the same time. These wise words, beautifully crafted and compellingly delivered, have the potential of becoming seeds from which a new future will sprout and flourish.

The perspective that pervades the whole speech was signaled when the President recognized his own Christian faith, while at the same time noting that his father came from a family that includes generations of Muslims. Thus, in his own biography, the President embodies what his speech was ultimately about: relations between the United States and Muslims around the world should not be defined simply by “our differences” but by “overlaps” and “common principles” as well. This point is crucial. In encounter with others, if we see only differences, the result is exclusion; if we see only commonalities, the result is distortion. Only when we see both-undeniable differences that give others a peculiar character and commonalities that bind us together-are we able to honor both others and ourselves.

Especially since September 11th, many in the West deny that there are commonalities between Christianity and Islam or between Western Judeo-Christian and Islamic civilizations. They see only differences, envisioning the West as bathed in soft welcoming light and Islam enveloped in forbidding darkness.

Photo: Professor Miroslav Volf at Yale, 25 July 2008/Tom Heneghan)

It is then no surprise that they speak of clashes: Yahweh vs. Allah, reason vs. violence, human rights vs. tyranny, religious freedom vs. persecution. Now, the differences are undeniable, and we can certainly point to cases in which they take the form of immoral practices. Yet a denial of commonalities is born out of fear, and rests not on truth but on distortion. And with distortions it is as with violence: as the President said, engaging in them is “not how moral authority is claimed, [but] how it is surrendered.” While we must honor differences and decry abuses of rights when they occur; in order to be truthful, we must affirm commonalities and, where appropriate, praise the virtues of others.

Martin Luther — not the Martin Luther King of the “beloved community,” but the fierce and uncompromising Protestant reformer from the sixteenth century — was well known for his unsparingly dysphemistic language. Muslim Turks, and not just Catholics, Jews, and Anabaptists, were often his target. Yet he praised not only the obvious intellectual and cultural achievements of the Muslim world, but also its moral virtues. Even as the armies of the mighty Suleiman the Magnificent were laying siege to Vienna, Luther wrote that, as far as “good customs and good works” were concerned, “the Turks are far superior to our Christians.” It took courage and honesty to state the truth.

What we need in relations between Muslims and Christians today more than ever is the courage be truthful — about positive as well as negative things. Early on in the speech, the President committed himself to speaking the truth as best he could. At least one prominent Muslim wrote to me saying that the President succeeded — his speech was “fair.” But truth was not the only concern of the President. He ended the speech with the call that we follow the Golden Rule — “that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.” That rule itself is an expression of care for others, of benevolence and beneficence toward them. Truth is an indispensable foundation upon which the bridge between estranged people can be built. But truth is not yet that bridge. To build the bridge, you need to seek actively the good of others as you would want them actively to seek your own good.

(Photo: Palestinians in Hebron watch President Obama’s speech, 4 June 2009/Nayef Hashlamoun)

The “Common Word” initiative, which originated in Jordan under leadership of HRH Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal, has at its core the affirmation that the love of God and neighbor is not only central for both Christianity and Islam, but that the joint affirmation of this commonality is the key to peace between Muslims and Christians. It is a bit unfortunate that the President did not mention this initiative in his speech, especially since he made reference to Saudi Arabian King Abdullah’s “Interfaith Dialogue” and Turkey’s leadership in the “Alliance of Civilizations.” For the thrust of the final remarks in his own speech read like an echo of the “Common Word” — an initiative which is very much in tune with deep religious sensibilities of both Muslims and Christians, and which recognizes differences while centering on commonalities.

Both the “Common Word” initiative and President Obama’s speech have much to offer a world seeking religious reconciliation and peace. For people of different faiths to repair their relations and to live in peace, it takes “love” for the neighbor and “doing to others as we would have them do unto us,” not just pursuing our own interests. With this in mind, I would suggest a threefold agenda for improving relations between Muslims and Christians in the coming years:

(1) offer compelling arguments for and disseminate widely the idea that, notwithstanding the undeniable differences, there are significant overlaps in theological and moral convictions of Muslims and Christians;

(2) show that one of these significant overlaps is that both these faiths, properly understood, teach their adherents to love their neighbors of whatever faith these neighbors may be;

(3) promote joint engagement in service, so that the love of neighbor may find concrete expression.

These agenda items do not, of course, address directly any of the practical problems which the President named in his speech and which bedevil relations between the United States and Muslims around the world-extremist violence, war in Iraq, Israeli-Palestinian relations, or equality of women, to name only a few. But progress on these items would create a solid platform on which workable solutions could be found.

(Photo: President Obama’s speech seen in Tel Aviv electronics shop, 4 June 2009/Gil Cohen Magen)

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Rev. Bud Heckman is Director for External Relations at Religions for Peace (New York) and Matthew Weiner is Program Director at the Interfaith Center of New York.

By Rev. Bud Heckman and Matthew Weiner

In the foreshadow of President Obama’s much anticipated speech to the Muslim world and on peace this week, there is new hope for peace in the Middle East. Its source is the opposite of what many may think: religion, and the extraordinary promise of principled inclusion of religions in seeking solutions for peace and justice.

Of course, in one sense this is nothing new. Think of the Peace of Westphalia and the political virtue of tolerance developed in response to bloody religious civil wars, which were no less serious than any religious conflict we face today. One difference now — to some degree the result of secularization — is the assumption that the political and public is more frequently separate from the religious. That is to say, an assumption arises that we can do without religion in the public sphere to solve public problems. With this secular mind set, when making a political peace, it is assumed that religion should be sidelined or asked to join only in some superficial way.

(Photo: An image of Barack Obama made from postage stamps at the Asian International Stamp Exhibition in Jakarta, 25 Oct 2008/Dadang Tri)

But this neglects the very real power of religion when it comes to developing shared forms of peace-building and reconciliation. In fact, the very frameworks of social justice and peace that good minded politicians hold dear often emerge from these religious moral principles.

Again, U.S. President Barack Obama will make what presages to be an historic address in Cairo on June 4. We are among those who eagerly await details of his peace plan as well as the dialogue that his announcement will spark around the world. Together with President Obama, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and King Abdullah II of Jordan have each offered to bring fresh initiatives towards achieving security and peace in the Middle East. These are encouraging signs. Prioritization of attention and resource allocation on behalf of the United States, the other members of the Quartet, and Arab countries are welcome developments.

However, these initiatives alone are not enough. In fact, too often grand peace agreements are reached with little attention either before or after to building peace on the ground, between communities, which leads to festering and a breakdown of peace later on. Instead religious communities must be engaged through their own moral structures. We believe that the collective voices and actions of millions of people of faith can make a meaningful and substantive contribution to forging lasting peace.

We know and delight in the powerful and positive resources for healing, reconciliation, and justice within our respective traditions. From our work together in such organizations as Religions for Peace, we have witnessed first-hand the irreplaceable strength and effectiveness of our multi-religious cooperation.

(Photo: Jordan’s King Abdullah (R) welcomes Middle East envoy Tony Blair in Amman, 8 Jan 2008/Yousef Allan)

Political leaders may inspire their citizens, but they largely and historically address the outward aspects of our lives. Religious leaders primarily seek to address the extraordinary power of the inner life; that may, in turn, powerfully affect the outer life. Our texts and our traditions provide a tremendous moral impetus for peace and justice.

Those who argue that religion is part of the problem will agree that religion must be part of any effective solution. As President Obama himself has repeatedly said, “religion is a force for good greater than any government.” This absence of religion has been one of the major failings of past peace initiatives in the region. It has lead to premature and shallow agreements for peace. We don’t need a process that ends with just another morally impotent handshake on the White House lawn.

The current efforts led by President Obama, former Prime Minister Blair, and King Abdullah could hold great new promise in these regards. Each leader has acknowledged the powerful and unique role that religious communities can and should have in addressing our most difficult problems. However, this must be practically translated into accepting religious leaders as genuine and principled partners in a comprehensive solution for peace.

We believe in the possibility of peace from the very core of our beings, based on the deepest dimensions of our faith.

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone. The author, Rabbi Burton L. Visotzky, is Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and author of the novel A Delightful Compendium of Consolation.

(Photo: Muslim sheikh and Jewish rabbi address interfaith meeting in Brussels, 4 Jan 2005/Thierry Roge)

By Rabbi Burton L. Visotzky

Jewish-Muslim engagement in an international context is inevitably more than interreligious dialogue. Muslim representatives, for the most part, do not come from countries that have a separation of mosque and state. Practically speaking, these dialogues are a form of second-tier diplomacy. In the United States, this is made apparent by fact the State Department sponsors Muslim visitors through its Foreign Leadership Visitor Program.

Under the aegis of the State Department, the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS, where I teach) has welcomed imams from Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Imam Shamsi Ali of the 96^th Street Mosque in New York has brought the heads of the Indonesian Muslim community to visit JTS. I have been privileged to visit Muslim colleagues in Cairo (2004), in Doha (2005) and Madrid (2008), the latter for the first Saudi Arabian interreligious dialogue, sponsored by King Abdullah and hosted by Spain’s King Juan Carlos.

As a representative of Judaism at these dialogues, I am often called upon to represent and/or defend the state of Israel. It has been my personal practice as a rabbi participating in such international dialogues to contact the Israeli Foreign Ministry either directly or indirectly in advance of my participation, so that I have the opportunity to hear their views on these conferences (which may not have invited any Israeli representatives). This sometimes leads me to feeling conflicted personally, when our views may diverge.

(Photo: Rabbi Visotzky and King Abdullah in Madrid, July 2009)

Jews reacted to September 11^th and its aftermath in complicated ways. I recall giving a public address in lower Manhattan on the first anniversary of the tragedy in which I suggested “we all live in Jerusalem now.” To me, the horror America experienced echoed the terror Israelis know daily. As a Jewish American, it is important to me to represent and advance Israel. On the other hand, my own dismay at the Israeli government’s overreaction in Gaza earlier this year and my personal disapproval of the impediments that the “settler movement” has created to a two-state solution have been a part of what pushes me to participate in international Jewish-Muslim dialogue. I do so in order to help, in whatever small way I am able, to move Israel and the Palestinians toward a mutually agreeable accord. I am, however, not naïve about the apparent intractability of the problem and the chasm between the narratives on each side in the dispute.

I also believe there is a genuine Jewish imperative for dialogue with our Muslim colleagues. From a religious perspective, we share much in common. For the past five years, I have represented the JTS in a variety of dialogue and social-action projects with the Muslim community in the U.S. as well as abroad. Locally, we joined with members of New York City’s 96^th Street Mosque for dialogue, exchanged mosque and synagogue visits and worked side-by-side in a soup kitchen run by a local Presbyterian Church.

Nationally, JTS has joined with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) on a number of projects, including matching Conservative synagogues with local mosques for dialogue. We have also surveyed the 1,200 Conservative Rabbis in the United States both to see what Jewish-Muslim projects they are engaged in and to encourage other congregations to participate.

(Photo: New York Islamic Cultural Center, 23 April 2008/Tom Heneghan)

Personally, as an American who disagrees with Bush-era policies, I want to demonstrate that there are U.S. citizens who are respectful of and eager to dialogue with Islam, despite that administration’s Manichaean world-view. One hopes that the more open face of the Obama administration toward the Muslim world is a harbinger for more productive dialogue and encounter.

Of late, there has been a marked increase on the part of Muslim, particularly Arab Muslim moderate countries, for interreligious engagement. This can be attributed to the horrific events of September 11^th, to a reaction to the Bush declarations against so-called “Islamo-fascism” and the perceived “clash of civilizations,” and as a response to Islamic extremism. It may also be a reaction to the influences of radical Islamic elements in Iran. But we must recognize that the move toward interreligious dialogue is also a genuine Islamic sentiment toward engagement with the “other,” particularly “religions of the Book.”

In the end, it is incumbent upon Islam to deal with its violent religious radicals, much as it is equally incumbent upon Judaism to deal with its violent religious radicals. For those of us who consider ourselves moderates or progressives, it is a religious obligation to continue the Jewish-Muslim engagement on the local, national, and international levels.

(For a fuller account of the JTS participation in Jewish-Muslim engagement, see the inaugural issue of The Journal of InterReligious Dialogue, www.irdialogue.org )

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Matthew Weiner is Program Director at the Interfaith Center of New York. Rev. Bud Heckman is Director for External Relations at Religions for Peace and editor of InterActive Faith: The Essential Interreligious Community-Building Handbook (SkyLight, 2008).

By Matthew Weiner and Rev. Bud Heckman

Mary Rosenblatt grew up Jewish, she married a Catholic and her children are “exposed to both faiths.” In her adult life, she has become particularly drawn to meditation as practiced by a local Buddhist circle. If she participated in a survey about religious identity, how might she be portrayed?  And what about her kids?

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has just released a survey entitled “Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S.” that attempts to map changes in religious affiliation in the U.S.  It follows on the coattails of the important “U.S Religious Landscape Survey” conducted by the Pew Forum in 2007.  If read in cross-tension with the “American Religious Identification Survey 2008″ released by Trinity College in Hartford, one can begin to see a complex and diverse picture of faith affiliation for Americans, as well as some patterns of change.

One key result is that perhaps as many as six in ten American adults have changed their faith tradition. Nationwide surveys are certainly important, and getting statistics about changing religion is also important. But thinking about the problems with this survey is perhaps as important as the information that it provides.

The first important problem with both surveys is that they do not allow for the likes of Mary Rosenblatt. Is she Jewish, Buddhist, Unaffiliated or Other?  The survey questions assume that she is only one of these, and so asks “What is your religion?” in the singular. Of course, Buddhists, Baha’is, Sikhs and others who think of their “religion” as a faith or those who view themselves as “spiritual, but not religious” might not make it through the early stages of the questions gauntlet either.

(Photo: A Tibetan Buddhist monk at Washington’s National Cathedral, 19 Oct 2007/Jim Young)

Others who because of life circumstance, e.g. inter-marriage, geographic transplantation, or cultural expectations, may think of themselves as being multireligious or somewhere in-between, are equally off the grid. In the ARIS study an unusually high number of Asians were unwilling to identify their religious identification, perhaps because of the imposition of Western presuppositions and categories.

If the first problem is a misunderstanding about how religion is lived out by many Americans, the second problem is that not all religious Americans speak sophisticated English.  In fact, many of those attempted to be questioned for the Pew study were dropped out of the interviewing because there was a language barrier or they “did not confirm their religion.” Scholars of religion and immigration have detected the increase of religiosity amongst new immigrant groups in America: religion serves as an organizing force, houses of worship as community centers, often across religious lines. Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim newcomers, not to mention Latino Christians and Russian Jews, find themselves increasingly identified with their faith tradition when they come here. Yet this segment of the population is largely left out of the Pew survey because of language.

Mentioning these other faiths leads to the third major problem. The survey claims to speak for American religious trends, but focuses on Christians. Researchers set aside another 4% before the survey started because they belonged to small groups, other world religions, other faiths, or because they merely moved around within the broad stroke of the unaffiliated.  What would happen if Orthodox Jews, Muslims and Hindus were included in this survey with equal numbers?

(Photo: Mosque in Atlanta, 25 Feb 2007/Tami Chappell)

As the ARIS study is more apt to lead one to discover, after sifting through the weight of the data, there may be more yet hidden from our maps of knowing than heretofore realized.  It shows that the number of people refusing to answer the survey or declaring no religion (atheist, agnostic, or searching) has more than doubled since the 1990’s.  These two categories of people now account for one in five Americans.  And the geographic breakdown shows that this phenomenon, while concentrated in the West and Northeast, is widespread and now is evident even in the deep South.

With President Obama recently joining an interfaith prayer service the morning after his inauguration, and with the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships claiming that they will work with all faiths, national surveys conducted by organizations like the Pew Forum must at least acknowledge that their surveys are about Christian Americans, or reconfigure how they approach their sample audience.

(Photo: Woman attends Mass by Pope Benedict in Washington, 17 April 2008/Jason Reed)

What else can we see in these set of surveys? The growth in unaffiliated respondents is the overriding story.  According to Pew, four of every five becoming unaffiliated reported that they were raised in a religion as a child. But of the former Catholics and former Protestants - where Pew concentrated its analysis of research - few of those who became unaffiliated reported a strong faith as a child.  Further, three-fourths of them cite both the view that “religious people as being hypocritical, judgmental, and insincere” and the view that “many religions as being partly true, but none completely true” as factors at play.  And half of them give this outlook as an important reason for having become unaffiliated.

But much remains unknown. Perhaps the most important missing factors are the changes one makes within a faith -say from Jewish Reform to Orthodoxy. These changes are substantial, in terms of how one dresses, who one lives and communicates with and how one lives ones life in both public and private. While the change between a liberal Christian and a liberal Buddhist may go unseen by anyone, the move from Jewish Reform to Jewish Orthodoxy could not be missed by anyone.

Likewise, a person changing from being a Methodist to a Presbyterian because they have moved or married may be captured by the way these surveys are structured, but these moves are often uneventful and give false impressions of the “churn.”

(Phoito: Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis meeting in New York, 21 Nov 2008/Chip East)

In fact, allowing for a picture of the pluralism that may be within the individual and, in some ways, within a tradition is not in the cards yet for the designs of these surveys.  It is a little like looking at a puzzle table in its very early stages.  The pieces are there, and perhaps there are some connections, but it is not clear that they will fit together.  Worse yet, the box cover is not to be found, and whether it provides a picture worth looking at once it is put together is still unclear.

(Photo: Brooklyn, with Manhattan in the background, 21 Sept 2008/Ray Stubblebine)

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Matthew Weiner is Program Director at the Interfaith Center of New York and Raffaele Timarchi is the Interfaith Center’s education director.

By Matthew Weiner and Raffaele Timarchi

Why should students in urban high schools learn about religion?

The Interfaith Center of New York recently received a call from Penny Kapanika, a social studies teacher at Nazareth Regional High School in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn. Canarsie lies on the eastern edge of Brooklyn, next to Jamaica Bay. To get to the school, you take the number 4 subway train to the end of the line, hop on a bus down Utica Avenue and finally walk to a sparsely populated neighborhood that was once an Italian and Jewish hold out against white flight.

Nazareth, a Roman Catholic school, is now ethnically African American and Caribbean. In the old days, students came from the neighborhood, but now most of them take the bus from Crown Heights and Bedford Stuyvesant. Only 51% of the kids are Catholic, but most are Christian. The kids, though, live amongst Hasidic Jews  in Crown Heights, where a history of racial conflict still looms large, and Muslims in “Bed Stuy,” one of New York’s poorest neighborhoods.

“I found my students asking me questions that I could not answer,” Kapanika explained. “They don’t understand why the Jews dress like this, or won’t talk with them. And honestly, I don’t know too much about it either. There are stereotypes and we need to address them.”

Kapanika found the Interfaith Center, which was interested in her case. The Interfaith Center, a secular non-profit that educates religious communities about one another, worked with Nazareth to locate religious leaders from these communities who could come in and talk with the students. They also worked with the New York Police Department’s community affairs bureau. Detective Michael Theogine, whose job is religious outreach, invited other Catholic educators to see how a school-based interfaith project could work. Theogine himself is African American and went to Nazareth in the 1980s, when he was one of the very few people of color. “It was sure different then,” he says with a smile.

The Interfaith Center’s goal was not to invite top-tier leadership but rather grassroots workers who could show a human face to the students. “Most of these kids, maybe none of them, have talked to a Hasidic Jewish person,” Kapanika said.

(Photo: Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn, 28 Nov 2008/Brendan McDermid)

But now they have. The meeting took place in the school’s library with about forty students. Rabbi Avi Lesches spoke about growing up in Crown Heights with his five brothers and sisters. Lesches is in his mid-twenties, has a reddish beard, dresses in dark slacks and a blazer and wears a yarmulke. He became a chaplain for the 88^th Brigade of the US Army.

“Why do you wear the hat on your head?” one student asked.

“First, to acknowledge that we are a different from the larger community,” the rabbi said. “But also we wear it to remind ourselves that we are not the final authority. There is someone above us, and that someone is God.”

Another student was more daring: “I understand you don’t believe in Jesus, and that ya’ll still waiting for the messiah?”

That’s right, Lesches said. “There are still a lot of problems on the Earth. The messiah hasn’t come yet.” But he went on to say that Maimonides, the great medieval Jewish philosopher, praised Islam and Christianity for their monotheistic orientation.

Hesham El-Meligy is an Egyptian-born Muslim who moved to New York. “Egypt is on the Horn of Africa, so now I am an African-American,” he says to laughter from the class. Soon after he arrived in New York, he married an Italian-American. “Her family understands that I don’t drink, and they try not to drink around me,” he explained. Why is he serious about his faith? “When I was a kid, around your age, I began asking myself, ‘who am I?’ But I also noticed some people who saw the world as us vs. them, and I didn’t like it.”

Shaykh T.A. Bashir is an African American Muslim who grew up in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, a neighborhood known for its confrontational climate.  ”I’m from the ‘vill’, never ran, never will,” says Bashir with a tinge of pride. He is a tall strong man in his sixties, with a reddish beard and a wide smile. He wears a blue jean vest and a black Vietnam Veterans baseball hat. Bashir explained that his primary concern was preventing domestic violence, because violence in the family creates violence the community.

Besides guests from the Interfaith Center, Kapanika had invited several other speakers: an alumnus who grew up Catholic and is now a member of a megachurch called Christian Cultural Council, and three students: two Muslims and a Hindu. One of the Muslims, Sharear Kabir from Gyana, said it was hard being Muslim in a majority community. He said he was supposed to pray five times a day, but couldn’t when he was in school.

To this, Shaykh Bashir said that it was important to pray, and that the school should let him. “That’s one of my jobs, making sure that there is religious accommodation. So I will speak to your teachers here,” he said. The teachers all smiled.

The Hindu student, Umaysha Samlall, a shy but articulate girl, explained that her family was part of the Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform movement that emphasizes the oneness of God and the promotion of social justice. Other students seemed to know that she and the Muslim student were a couple. Many students giggled when she said, “No one wants us to continue, because what are the kids gonna be?”

(Photo: Brooklyn Bridge with lower Manhattan in background, 23 May 2008/Lucas Jackson)

Difficult questions can come from unexpected quarters, but the discussion was open and answers were honest. When the program was over, students spoke with the panelists. The guests wished they had more time to talk with each other as well. The chance meeting at a Catholic school, it seems, was a good opportunity for interfaith dialogue. El-Meligy the Muslim said of Lesches the Jew: “He seemed like a good man, and I hope we have time to talk more in the future.”

Kapanika talked with them as well. She was interested in learning more, but also wanted to have local contacts in case one of her kids had a problem in their community. “We are a Catholic school, but we don’t necessarily know those around us,” she explained.

For her the program was educational, but also an act of civic participation. It can lead to networks that create trust in times of trouble. Sometimes thought of as spiritual exploration, interfaith in this case was a teaching tool.

Ever since the mid 1800’s, when New York Bishop John Hughes argued that Catholics needed their own schools  to insure a social, moral, and spiritual identity distinct from the Protestant majority, the Catholic Church has made good on its emphasis of education. But how to develop a Catholic identity in an increasingly diverse setting while maintaining a positive relationship with others remains the question? This is the question that all of the participants at this program, all New Yorkers, and indeed all citizens are struggling with. It begins with learning about each other: through their stories and a conversation.

“For me, the worst thing in the world is ignorance,” Lesches told me the following day on the phone. “This is an opportunity to undo some of that.”

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Libyan theologian Aref Ali Nayed is a senior advisor to the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme and a leading signatory of A Common Word.

By Aref Ali Nayed

Being held in the early days of the Obama presidency, this year’s U.S.-Muslim World Forum in Doha last weekend was particularly luminescent with rays of hope. One was the very fact that its host, the influential Brookings Institution think-tank, invited faith leaders to discuss how to improve the dreadful state of relations between Washington and the Muslim world. The basis for discussion was A Common Word, an appeal by 138 Muslim scholars to Christian leaders to join in a dialogue based on the shared commandments to love God and love one’s neighbor.

That a theological and spiritual initiative is of keen interest to policy planners is indeed a fresh ray of light.  Basking in that hopeful light, moreover, I had the rare privilege for a Muslim theologian of listening to the U.S. CentCom Commander General David Petraeus expound there on a “network of networks” that constituted a “security architecture” for our Middle East region.

(Photo: General David Petraeus addresses the U.S.-Muslim World Forum, 14 Feb 2009/Osama Faisal)

General Petraeus argued that security can only be achieved through a multi-layered and multi-faceted network of networks that involved training, tooling and equipping, information sharing, and infrastructure building.

I very much liked the talk of a network of networks and indeed agreed with the need for training, tooling, information sharing and infrastructure building. Alas, I had to keep reminding myself, while looking at the elegantly uniformed speaker, that it is a military network of networks that he was advocating and that all those nice-sounding activities pertained to matters military. It turned out that I very much liked the structure of what General Petraeus was proposing, but definitely not its content!

The training we truly need is training in compassionate dialogue between all of us and in compassionate living amongst each other. The tools and equipment we truly need are those of compassionate communication and understanding. The information sharing we truly need is the honest sharing of, and witnessing to, our loftiest ideals and values and the cooperative shedding of dark stereotypes and caricatures of others. The infrastructures we truly need to build are infrastructures of public and shared spaces in which we respectfully appreciate and cherish each other just as we stand firmly rooted in our respective traditions.

The Obama presidency does NOT need more of the same “security architecture” inherited from the destructive, divisive and corrosive years of the Bush presidencies. Rather, it urgently needs a fresh “compassion architecture” that is constructive, mending and healing. Such a compassion architecture can only be communal and cooperative. All religious, spiritual and philosophical communities, Muslims included, must contribute to it.

(Photo: Aref Ali Nayed at U.S.-Muslim World Forum, 15 Feb 2009/Sohail Nakhooda)

Compassion architecture is built on the theological fact that true security can only come from God’s own compassion towards humanity and the compassion of humans towards humans. Compassion is the condition of possibility of true security.

A Common Word, which was launched in October 2007, is an important  contribution to an alternative compassion architecture. Its signatories, whose number has since grown to 301, include Muslim scholars and thinkers of all theological schools, both genders, all ages and occupations.

The response from Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox Christians has been very  positive and several constructive conferences have already been held with them to explore our common ground. Some Jewish scholars have also made positive and encouraging comments and they will be addressed in a similar document.

For example, Muslim scholars met evangelical Christian leaders last summer at a conference at Yale University, for many the first time either had sat down to discuss faith with the other.  It was a transformative event.  The dark and twisted images Muslims and evangelicals often had of each other came tumbling down. A door for compassionate cooperation opened.

Last November, a Common Word delegation of two dozen Muslim scholars, led by Grand Mufti of Bosnia Mustafa Ceric, met Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican and held three days of talks with leading Catholic scholars there.  The encounter was soothing and healing after the wounds of the pope’s speech in Regensburg in 2006.

(Photo: Pope Benedict and Grand Mufti Ceric at Vatican, 6 Nov 2008/Osservatore Romano)

Last month, one of Islam’s top Muslim television preachers, Amr Khaled, toured several Muslim countries including Sudan to rally tens of thousands of young people around the theme of A Common Word. The response proved overwhelmingly positive.

Initiatives such as A Common Word are giving rise to a “network of networks of compassion” with multiple nodes and growing complexity and interconnectivity. Much like the internet, this network of networks does not depend on any one node. It is robust and resilient precisely because it is so widespread and interconnected.  Compassion achitecture will rise from a wide variety of initiatives such as A Common Word coming together.

In a ‘stuck’ or ‘jammed’ world situation, A Common World hits the reset button with fresh and purified presuppositions. Now, we watch the lights come on in a fresh way, a way that may very well get our world going again. What better presuppositions to start with than Love of God and Love of Neighbor?

Reorienting and purifying intentions is the most important change to make if the Obama “change platform” is to work. Change requires a shift from self-righteous arrogance to attitudes of humility, concern for others, brokenness-before-God, compassion and understanding.

What humanity needs most today is a prophetic teaching of compassion and love. Inherent in A Common Word is a lofty, scriptures-based exhortation from which many lessons, sermons and much guidance can flow.

(Photo: Amr Khaled preaching in Sanaa, 1 July 2007/Khaled Abdullah Ali Al Mahdi)

Today we are all frightened, in one way or another, physically, politically, socially, and economically. For too many years, fear ran our lives both as actors and acted-upon. During those terrible Bush years, the generals and security agencies thrived on offering their “Security Architectures”. It is time for true change: change from fear to hope, from hate to love, from madness to sanity and from cruelty to compassion. The new day is indeed luminescent with rays of hope!

God knows best!

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Sarah Sayeed is Program Associate and Matthew Weiner is Program Director at the Interfaith Center of New York.

By Sarah Sayeed and Matthew Weiner

A Canadian judge recently ruled that a Toronto Muslim woman must take off her face veil while giving testimony in a sexual assault trial. This tension between public space and private religion comes up repeatedly in western urban centers where Muslim women increasingly occupy the pubic square.  This time it happened in Toronto, but the issue arises regularly in western countries in the schools, workplaces and courtrooms that Muslims increasingly share with the majority population. At stake is whether a Muslim woman’s choice to dress in accordance with her religious beliefs infringes upon “our way of life.”

(Photo: Sultaana Freeman testifies in court for right to wear a niqab on her Florida driver’s license, 27 May 2003/pool)

While all can agree that identity, tolerance and religious freedom are important, advocates for the face veil emphasize the upholding of freedom while opponents focus on the face veil, or niqab, as a challenge to collective identity.  Such tension between public expression of religion and collective identity is not new.  It has even gone on for centuries in Muslim countries, where religious minorities feel the tension between acceptance and their need to adapt, in varying degrees, to a Muslim majority worldview.  There is also a debate within Muslim communities about whether wearing the niqab is a religious requirement.

What seems problematic in the current debate, whether in Toronto or Milan, is the implication that Europeans and North Americans are willing to tolerate differences, but only up to a limit.   Some differences seem too threatening for them to consider seriously.  They seem to think some differences should be made invisible.  Thus, and perhaps inadvertently, the opponents of the niqab - who see themselves as the defenders of collective identity - call into question another value and practice that is central to Western democracy: open dialogue in the public sphere.

Ever since the Enlightenment, Westerners have agreed that tolerance and open discussion in a public space helps prevent violence and fosters community. It is a proud tradition. The great moral effect of creating a public space was that people from different traditions, with different views and different styles of conversing, could join in a shared process.  Tolerance - putting up with something you do not agree with - is understood here as an uncomfortable but necessary virtue.

(Photo: Female Saudi pharmacist in Jeddah, 4 June 2007/Susan Baaghil)

In deliberative democracy, each side or point of view must be given a chance to express itself and be subject to deliberation.  No side of the debate should be suppressed or dismissed without due consideration. However the niqab, when allowed into the public square, is a message that by itself questions the very boundaries of what is public versus private.  It is a mode of dress that suggests a different social order, a different public square.

Should people who cover their faces (and their mouths) speak and deliberate in the public square with those who do not?  There seem to be several good reasons for saying yes.

While it may be genuinely strange for us to encounter people with their heads and faces covered, it need not violate the principles of public space or democratic discourse.  Orthodox Jews are not supposed to shake hands or interact too closely with the opposite sex. This is accepted.  Advocates of public space need to recognize that if the public is genuinely democratic, every minority voice needs an opportunity to participate on their terms.  While this necessarily changes how discourse takes place, it is possible that the change will strengthen rather than threaten the collective.

Secondly, if women wearing a niqab are not permitted to engage in the public square in Western societies, the ripple effects may even impede the democratization of Muslim societies and keep Muslim women out of public life.  People who hold their religious values dear may choose — or worse, be forced — to remain out of the public square if they are not permitted to enter on their own terms.

(Photo: University graduate in Sanaa, Yemen, 30 July 2008/Khaled Abdullah)

If a community cannot express itself publicly in a way true to their own identity, what will this lead to?  Who will it exclude? What effect will such exclusion have, not only on the community at large, but on minorities’ ability to integrate in a way that maintains their identity?  And what will the impact of slow democratization in Muslim nations have for women’s rights and the larger global fabric?

There does not seem to be an easy answer, either to these questions or to the debate at hand. But deciding what makes the public square public and how people participate in public deliberation goes beyond the simple debate of religious freedom and national identity.  What is important for now is that someone spearhead a healthy discussion that seeks to think through these nuances, as opposed to the current polarized debate that simply compounds a growing divide between communities. Sadly, some who call for a dialogue with Muslims start with the proviso that Muslim women follow their standards for what is properly public.  This is not a partnership-based beginning.  Rather it will be the communities who move in the direction of real conversation, with openness to change, that will deserve to be called defenders of the pubic sphere.

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone. The author, Rabbi Burton L. Visotzky, is a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and author of the novel A Delightful Compendium of Consolation.

By Burton L. Visotzky

On Wednesday, I went to church. It seemed right that on the morning after President Barack Obama’s historic inauguration as the 44th President of the United States I should pray for his and our success in the years ahead. We are a nation in crisis, depleted in so many ways by the last eight years. On the Tuesday of the inauguration, I stood with a million other Americans on the Mall in Washington, watching and cheering the transfer of power. The air was frigid, but filled with hope. We stood just behind the Capitol reflecting pool - far from the rostrum, but embedded in the great, diverse mass of people who make up America. Next to us were folks from Augusta, Georgia, who drawled their discomfort when George Bush was booed. On our other side were Washingtonians - African-Americans who proudly declared that on this day we were not black or white, but all of us were silver (the color of our tickets to the event).

(Photo: National Prayer Service at the National Cathedral in Washington, 21 Jan 2009/Larry Downing)

Truth be told, the inaugural was better viewed in front of a television. But for the experience of being an American on this auspicious day, the Mall was the best place in the whole world. There is something extraordinary about standing among a million others, staring up at the jumbotron, striving to catch the words our new president was speaking. Sharing our food, our stories, ducking down so someone behind us could snap a photo, making sure that kids were in the sight-lines of their parents, breathing free; we huddled, massed against the cold, embodying the passions that Emma Lazarus’ poem emblazons on the base of the Statue of Liberty.

On Wednesday morning, waking before the dawn, again in bitter cold, we headed to church to pray for our republic. We were invited to the magnificent Washington National Cathedral for the interfaith National Prayer Service, a long tradition, since the days of President George Washington. There among the crowd I spotted many familiar Jewish faces (not a long tradition). There were Muslims and Hindus, and, of course, an abundance of Christian clergy.

I had the privilege of shaking hands with Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the U.S. (the National Cathedral is Episcopal). I greeted Rev. Joseph Lowery, who had delivered the stirring closing benediction at the inaugural. The 3,000 proud Americans in the congregation included the incoming cabinet, as well as senators and members of Congress among the pews. From my seat I watched former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton work the room. I saw Vice-President and Dr. Biden enter the cathedral, mere feet from where I was seated. They were immediately followed by President and Mrs. Obama. Tall, even regal, they embodied the very grace that we all prayed God may grant them.

(Photo: Michelle Obama, President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Jill Biden, 21 Jan 2009/Larry Downing)

The program included music on the carillon, the organ, the brass ensemble of the Marine Band, and a children’s gospel choir. The kids sang “He’s got the whole world in his hands,” and encouraged us to sing along for the final verse. Dr. Wintley Phipps sang “Amazing Grace” in his deep bass voice, profoundly moving the congregation. And Rev. Dr. Sharon Watkins, President of the Disciples of Christ Church, preached an excellent sermon, charging President Obama to continue his moral leadership. We all heartily assented, “Amen.”

The service ended with the hymn, “For the healing of the nations,” another cause to say “Amen.” But for me, the most symbolic moment of the National Prayer Service, and perhaps even the entire inaugural, came when the cathedral choir sang their hymn, “America the Beautiful.” The first verse, “O beautiful for spacious skies,” was sung solely by the sopranos, who sounded like the celestial choir. The entire chorus sang verse two, “O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife/ who more than self their country loved, and mercy more than life!” We all joined in, clergy, cabinet, Bidens, and Obamas, for the third and final verse, “O beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years/ thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears!” Except by then, my own tears were streaming down my cheeks.

“America, America, God shed his grace on thee.”

President-elect Barack Obama hopes to reach across the political divide, but the uproar over the preachers at his inauguration celebrations show just how wide some of those divisions are in America, our Dallas correspondent Ed Stoddard writes in a pre-inaugural analysis.

(Photo: Obama in Philadelphia at the start of his train voyage to Washington, 17 Jan 2009/Brian Snyder)

Some gay rights activists have expressed anger at Obama’s choice of California pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation prayer at his inauguration on Tuesday because of Warren’s opposition to gay marriage. And some conservatives are up in arms over openly gay Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson’s role in an earlier part of the celebrations.

But political analysts and activists say many Americans appear weary of the “culture war” battles over issues like gay marriage, and Obama may find some safe ground in the middle.

Read Stoddard’s analysis in full here.

In a FaithWorld FaithWorld guest contribution, Matthew Weiner of the Interfaith Center of New York writes:

“Obama would be more in keeping with his own sense of diversity if he had the first ever interfaith invocation. Instead of a single speaker from a single religion, why not have many from a diversity of faiths and political positions? Instead of a liberal Christian or an evangelical Christian, he could have a conservative Christian, a liberal Jew, and a Muslim, a Buddhist  and a Hindu (or any such combination).”

Among the other articles published these days about prayer at the inauguration, Steven Waldman’s “Why The Inaugural Prayers Have Become Less Inclusive Over Time” on Beliefnet stands out for showing that these ceremonies have become less religiously inclusive over time even though American society has become more diverse:

“Including the two prayers at Barack Obama’s inaugural, 12 prayers will have been delivered at inaugurations since 1989. All of them will have been delivered by Protestants. By contrast, in the previous 48 years, fewer than half of the prayers were offered by Protestants. Every president prior to George H.W. Bush had a Catholic and more than half also had a Jewish or Greek Orthodox clergyman…”

“Barack Obama mostly seems focused on ideological rather than denominational diversity. He chose Rick Warren, who opposes gay marriage, and then added Gene Robinson, the gay Episcopal bishop from New Hampshire, to pray at a morning service. He’s also reportedly going to have a full range of faiths–including Muslims and Jews–at the prayer service the next day. But at the high-profile, official event–the swearing in–there will be just Rick Warren and Joseph Lowery, both Protestants…”

“As Messrs. Warren and Lowery take the inaugural stage next week, they’ll be trying to achieve two different missions. They are Christian ministers and need to stay true to their faith. But they are the only clergy on the podium and therefore must represent all Americans. If they can’t restore the proper balance that existed before 2001, then their prayers will–and should–increase the drumbeat to get rid of inaugural prayers entirely.”

What do you think about the debate over the invocation? What does it say about the role of religion in U.S. politics?  Has this prayer become a political and religious football that should be abolished?