By Thomas Goodhue
Executive Director
Long Island Council of Churches

Recently the "Christian Life Times" took the LICC to task for joining with the Long Island Board of Rabbis, the Diocese of Rockville Centre, and the Islamic Center of Long Island in inviting pastors, priests, rabbis, imams and other preachers to a joint sermon preparation seminar. They also criticized us for sending interfaith education teams to teach children, "we are all serving the same God."

Jesus prayed that his followers "may all be one" (John 17:20-21). It hardly advances the unity of the Body of Christ for Christians to condemn one another without cause. It also behooves journalists—and Christians—to make some attempt to get the facts straight. The editors of CLT never picked up the phone and asked, "Is it true that ….?" Nor did they show up for the sermon preparation session they criticized.

Had they accepted the invitation, they might have learned how Rabbi Mark Greenspan approaches the Torah text each week with prayer. They might have been pleasantly surprised, I suspect, by the Rev. Jerome Taylor's forceful, funny, high-tech, and entirely orthodox exegesis of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Don't they applaud Pastor Taylor explaining to a group of rabbis how he understands the Gospel?

As for the Long Island Multi-Faith Forum, the LICC gladly pleads guilty to founding the LIMFF a dozen years ago, along with Auburn Theological Seminary. We remain deeply grateful to my predecessor Robert Pierce and to Auburn's Robert Reber for their pioneering work in building relationships among Long Islanders from eleven different world religions. The LIMFF encourages people to help us treat one another with greater understanding and respect, but neither the LICC, though, nor the LIMFF teaches what the CLT claims. The last time anyone at the LIMFF Board said, "we all worship the same God," others burst forth with laughter.

Like other Christians, I firmly believe that there is only one God, the maker of heaven and earth. This distinguishes us from Hindus, for example, who have a panoply of gods, though many Hindus say that they see these as merely different aspects of the one God, sort of like the way I say that God is at the same time the Creator, Redeemer, and Transformer of our lives and can be called by many names: Yahweh, Lord of Hosts, Wisdom, Lord, Savior, Shepherd, Holy Spirit, to mention just a few of the Biblical titles I use in prayer myself. Some faith communities in the LIMFF claim that each faith is following a different path to the same God, but others in the Forum think that those who teach this are seriously deluded. Do Baha'is and Buddhists worship the same God? The former think so, the latter do not.

Some of us, in my book, do worship the same God: Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Baha'is, for example, all worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but we understand God in different ways: the Muslims think the Baha'is are apostates, Jews sometimes suspect that Christians worship three gods (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), and Christians on occasion claim that Jews do not worship the God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth (a doctrine known as Marcionism, which the Church branded a heresy in second century) or that Muslims worship Mohammed, which they most certainly do not.

Many people of good will would like to believe that "we all basically believe the same things," but this is hardly true. The only fierce argument I recall at any meeting of the LIMFF Board occurred, long ago when we were just getting acquainted with one another, when someone suggested this very thing. There are often similarities among different faiths, of course, but not uniformity. As you may have noticed in last month's "Prelude," nearly every tradition in the LIMFF teaches compassion for the poor, but the Brahma Kumaris believe material wealth is an illusion.

"Christian Life Times" argues that the LICC should focus on evangelism, but it was precisely the desire to preach the Good News more effectively that pulled many of us into ecumenical and interfaith work in the first place. The divisions among us, which are only worsened by theological trash talk, particularly that which slanders our fellow believers, does little to present our Savior in an appealing light. There is an extraordinary openness these days among educators, employers, and others on Long Island to hearing how we live out the Gospel in our daily lives, and the Forum has found a way to let people share diverse religious traditions without trampling on the First Amendment, annoying parents, or offending employees. The only persistent complaint from school parents is this: why aren't more Christians volunteering to take part in these multi=faith festivals? If we Christians really want to share our faith, and to bear witness to the One who longs for us to be one, we must show tolerance, humility, and hospitality toward others. We also have to tell the truth.

Shalom/Salaam/Shanti/Pax,
Tom Goodhue

IDEAS YOU CAN USE
Invite the Multi-Faith Forum to Your Youth Group

Youth group leaders often are seeking ways to get teenagers talking about their beliefs in a way that is fun. The Long Island Multi-Faith Forum has sent teams of youth and young adults to speak at synagogues and Bahai fellowships, and the Forum has spoken at dozens of churches across our region, but they have received few requests thus far from church youth groups—and the Building Bridges presentations would make an excellent program for youth fellowship groups.

The Forum has trained a number of youngish volunteers and their new half-hour video "Faiths of Long Island" provides a quick survey of the major religions in our area, showing kids their age practicing their beliefs. Students are growing up today in a world which is more culturally and religiously diverse than their parents or teachers realize, and outside speakers can create a safe environment in which to ask questions that their elders cannot answer. At the very first BB presentation, to youth at Centerport United Methodist Church, a 6th grader asked a Hindu, "So why do you wear that red dot on your forehead, anyway."

Inviting a Building Bridges team to your church or synagogue could help the Forum, too. The LIMFF needs many more Christian and Jewish panelists and moderators for its presentations. Many "liberal" Christians are so turned off by the bad attempts at evangelism they have seen that they are uncomfortable giving their own testimony to their faith. Many evangelicals say they believe in evangelism but seldom practice it—and know deep down inside that they are ill-prepared to do it—or are not brave enough to describe their life as a Christian when seated between a Sikh and a Muslim. . Perhaps if you schedule a Building Bridges program in your congregation, God will raise up a young adult or parent who is brave enough to volunteer themselves.

Long Island Council of Churches Prelude