First Unitarian Universalist Society of Albany
"The Challenges of Interfaith Cooperation"
Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore January 7, 2001
READING
From the Commission on Social Witness GA 1999 (adapted for readability)
UUA Statement of Conscience
Beyond Religious Tolerance:
The Challenges of Interfaith Cooperation Begins with Us
We live in a global village that brings people of diverse economic, cultural, and religious backgrounds into close and interdependent contact. While we hear the plea for a more just society in the teachings of many faiths, intolerance toward people of other faiths inhibits cooperative efforts.
Interfaith cooperation sets a high standard of thought, feeling, and action for each individual and for each community that, by its nature, goes beyond the boundaries of self. It invites us to reach beyond ourselves into the world to confront fear, ignorance, and hatred wherever we find them. It also invites us to reach deep within ourselves to assess our own prejudices. This work begins with living our principles, thereby modeling what is possible in the broader community.
Therefore, we are called to:
The Unitarian Universalist Association dedicates itself to the challenges of interfaith cooperation and calls upon its member congregations and individual Unitarian Universalists, within the dictates of conscience, to accept these challenges.
SERMON
The general population expects someone bearing the title "reverend" to pray. Whether at the bedside in a hospital, before a meal, at a wedding or in a public meeting, faces turn toward the minister and they wait expectantly for sanctified words. For most men and women of the cloth, this is their shining moment to lift their stained glass voices in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord. This moment for Unitarian Universalist ministers, however, is often awkward and uncomfortable.
One of the initiations of Unitarian Universalist ministry is being asked to offer a prayer at the beginning or closing of an interfaith gathering. As hands come together, eyes close and heads bow forward, panic grips the UU seminarian's throat. Questions flood the mind rather than words of inspiration. "Who should I address this prayer to? God? Ultimate Being? Spirit of Life? To whom it may concern?" "What about Jesus - should I say his name or not?" "What are people expecting me to say, offer thanks to and pray for anyway?" "How do you pray if you don't believe God cares about petitional and perfunctory prayers?"
And what if the minister preparing to speak is a woman or gay or lesbian or transcended. Imagine the courage it takes for them to face those who would condemn them.
Not just our seminarians have this problem. Many Unitarian Universalists find the language of traditional opening and closing prayers often spoken in interfaith gatherings off-putting as they venture into the world of interfaith cooperation. It brings up memories of what many of us have chosen to leave behind as we enter and join a Unitarian Universalist congregation. Here we have found a place where our religious understanding can be articulated in words that do not offend our reason and intelligence. I do not ask you to profess metaphysical statements that cannot be confirmed or denied.
Now one way to handle this situation is to just avoid these interfaith gatherings. This is a natural human response to those who make us uncomfortable. Yet we don't do this. We persevere and participate in interfaith organizations, in part because these organizations mirror the same problems we have in our own congregations. Since we have a spectrum of belief here, we tolerate, more or less willingly, those who we don't agree with. Sometimes the language spoken from this podium by me or a guest speaker will cause discomfort. We, more than those of many other faiths, are practiced in the etiquette of tolerance that make interfaith organizations work.
Of course the range of theological expression is more limited here. You won't hear the words 'Jesus' and 'Christ' slurred together very often as if it was his surname. You will rarely, if ever, hear much fire and brimstone flowing from my mouth. I'm not going to send the devil out into the pews to put the fear of God into you. You're highly unlikely to hear me making an argument for blind, unquestioning faith in the Lord.
Even though the language we hear at times makes us uncomfortable, we enter interfaith settings because we have a vision of society and the world that motivates us to respond morally and ethically to a troubled world. Driven by justice and compassion in human relations and the goal of world community, we want to make a positive difference. We want to put our faith into actions and see our values spread.
We collaborate with those of other faiths partly because Unitarian Universalists are a tiny minority. Less than .1% of the population identifies themselves as Unitarian Universalist. 99.9% of the population either have never heard of us or want something different than what we offer. This is the margin of error of the ballot counting machines used during the presidential election in Florida! Just imagine if we did appeal to 1% of the population. Can you imagine our congregation being 10 times larger? We'd have 3,500 members and need 20 Sunday services! And that still means 99% of the population aren't with us.
So as less than .1% of the population of Albany, guess how much influence we have? Not much. The halls of power do not shake when I speak here on Sunday morning. When Bishop Hubbard speaks however, our political representatives sit up and take notice.
And when the Bishop speaks on social issues, we often discover we share common values. While our beliefs are quite different, our value system springs from the same Jewish and Christian roots. The Catholic Diocese here is quite progressive on economic justice issues. Their institutional concern for the poor, the hungry, the homeless, and the sick forms an important part of the safety net for our community. I remember in Port Charlotte, Florida, it was the Catholic Church that had staff and resources to deal with HIV/AIDS when no other churches had any interest.
Richard Gilbert writes about the Catholic Church:
I believe the Catholic bishops often are more prophetic and more effective on social issues like welfare reform and poverty than we. Their statement on economic justice could never pass muster in our churches, not only because it is a bit too radical for many of us, but also because many among us would run from such consensus with all deliberate speed.
Of course we do not agree on all social issues, particularly family planning, public aid to parochial schools and end of life issues like a doctor’s aid in dying. One of the Interfaith groups we participate in, Interfaith Impact does not have Catholic representation for that reason. A coalition of 100 liberal religious groups, Interfaith Impact takes strong stands on these issues and civil rights for those of all sexual orientations, educating and lobbying the state legislature. Our Endowment Trust has awarded a $3,000 grant to this organization to help strengthen it and reach out to more faith communities.
Interfaith partnership is not a new phenomenon and we are hardly strangers to this kind of work. Key to the success of the civil rights changes in the 50's and 60's was the mobilization of religious communities. We could not have built our Habitat for Humanity house without interfaith partnership. Today, we work with the Focus Churches to support the Focus food pantry. We work with the refugee resettlement program of Church World Service. We work with the Interfaith Alliance against the agenda of the Religious Right. I've participated in a clergy lobby day sponsored by Family Planning Advocates.
And we do not partner with every interfaith group that comes along the pike. We must be selective in which groups we join and which ones we don't based on their compatibility with our values and principles. Joining around a carefully considered common issue or concern is the way we're used to doing interfaith work. Using this approach, we've achieved some significant success in interfaith partnership.
Good as the work we have done in the past is, there have been significant drawbacks as well. When we get together around a crisis or an issue, our work together is often temporary. We meet and divide up the tasks without really getting to know each other more than as coworkers. Often, there isn't the time set aside to get to know the person we're working with behind the religious affiliation.
This is why I was intrigued by my first exposure to ARISE, A Religious Initiative Supporting Empowerment. At the first meeting I attended last Spring, we didn't make a laundry list of problems to solve in Albany or trash various elected officials for not doing our bidding. We broke into dyads and spent half an hour getting to know one other person at the meeting. We listened to find out who the other person was and what mattered to them. We asked questions to elicit that person's interest, be it political, religious or secular. In just half an hour, I developed a relationship and a sense of what matters to the person I interviewed as he learned the same from me.
This was so different than any interfaith work I had done before. Most interfaith meetings have packed agendas running through what needs to get done before we run off to our next meeting. The social time usually gets the ax. Now that I've done several of these one-to-one's as they are called with people from churches in Albany and Schenectady, when I see those people at the ARISE meetings, I feel connected to them. When they speak, I listen more closely. When they ask for my help, I'm much more willing to offer it.
ARISE is new to Albany, having started in Schenectady and spread through the Capital Region. The ideas that are being used to organize it date from the 1960s. Saul Alinsky, pioneered some of these techniques organizing disenfranchised groups and neighborhoods in Chicago to advocate for change in their community. Much has been learned since then about how to bring people together to advocate for social change. Much of the success of the ARISE idea so far has come from having support from a Chicago based international organizing institute called the Gamaliel Foundation.
While the Gamaliel organizing theory isn't specifically religious, it takes full advantage of what makes religious communities strong - personal relationships. When people join together and act in concert, they can wield greater power and initiate change. That joining process is greatly facilitated when people know each other, when the relationships within the organization are as important as the issues being worked on.
In my experience, this is how many of the successful advocacy groups I know function at the core of the organization, particularly the group's board. The wider the network of relationships, the stronger the organization usually is. The Gamaliel Foundation understands this and STARTS the organizing process building relationships rather than immediately picking issues. When the foundation of an organization is based on positive personal relationships, it is likely to be much stronger, more powerful and enduring than when it is built around issues.
Now it takes a lot of trust to put time, energy and money into an organization before you know what it will be doing. For some this may be counter-intuitive. There is the temptation to stand back and watch what the organization does before signing up with it. And that is a sure way to sabotage what ARISE is trying to be.
You see, building a committed interfaith organization really is a goal all by itself, independent of the projects it undertakes. ARISE's mission is:
To build a power organization made up of faith groups and other [non-religious] membership organizations that will enable its members both to revitalize their own membership and to revive the communities in the Capital Region
Yes ARISE wants to address the decline of our region's cities. Yes ARISE wants to deal with the issues of poverty, homelessness, hunger and health care. There is lots of energy for action in its growing membership.
But the building of sustainable community is also a primary end in itself. The people power generated by many voices speaking a shared concern and many hands pulling together for the common good has its own transforming energy, a revitalizing energy as important as any action undertaken.
Today, I think ARISE looks like a viable organization to advocate for values we care deeply about. A number of the people and faith communities involved are ones we have worked together with in the past and the present. These are people like the ARISE organizer, Andreas Kriefall who has spoken here twice, Ward Greer of the Albany United Methodist Society, Ed Bloch currently with Interfaith Alliance, Tom McPheeters, Jim Murphy, and Jim Pielz of the Labor and Religion Coalition, to name a few, and congregations like Westminster Presbyterian, First Presbyterian, and Trinity Methodist - people and institutions whose liberal social credentials are without question.
Most exciting to me is that our neighbor, the Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church is on the edge of becoming a member too. Their choir will be performing this afternoon at the Covenanting Ceremony at the First Reformed church on Pearl Street near Clinton at 4:00pm. This is an exciting opportunity for us to work together and build stronger ties with each other.
So today is a day of decision for this society.
My job is to keep my ear to the ground and find these opportunities for you. I have the time to do the research and get to know the different interfaith organizations in our area. I have advocated with the Social Responsibility Council and the Board that we put our energy into ARISE as a way of working cooperatively for positive social change in our community. I've done what I can do to prepare for you what I think will become a fruitful avenue for social action.
Now its your turn.
Today you can participate in walking the talk of our congregation. Today, you can take the first step to help bring ARISE to life by attending the Covenanting Ceremony at the First Reformed Church on Pearl Street near Clinton at 4:00pm. The theme speaker will be a representative from a similar faith based organization in Buffalo who will share the vision and excitement of what they have done and we can do together.
Today I want to know who is willing to go this afternoon and represent us. This is likely to be a very exciting and energizing event. If you are willing and able to go today and help create this new voice in our community, please stand now.
If you are not able to go but are excited by the vision of ARISE, I ask you to stand as well.
Thank you!
Together we can move mountains, divided we fall.
BENEDICTION
The dance we do with our interfaith partners can be a beautiful one.ARISE is a promising name for this organization as it says in the 60th chapter of Isaiah:
Arise, Jerusalem, rise clothed in light;Copyright © 2001 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.