Seeking Unity, Building Community

To Blog or Not to Blog

We are evaluating the use of this blog. It will be very helpful if you let us know if you have read the blog in the past.

Please, send me a note to: Carlos.Malave@pcusa.org

This will help us decide if we should continue with this blog.  Thanks!

Interfaith Movement Gains New Strength

Interfaith Movement Gains New Strength

By Julia Duin

This is the first in a series of reports that will look at new efforts — driven largely by American faith leaders — to bridge old divisions among the nation's and the world's believers. -Washington Post

NEW YORK | When FaithHouse Manhattan has its twice-monthly interfaith gatherings, the guest list is a carnival of religious belief and creed.

An Islamic Sufi dervish greets you at the door, but the program director, an Episcopalian, makes the announcements. A rabbi, a female Muslim and a Seventh-day Adventist share leadership of the meeting.

The night's program at FaithHouse, in a posh office just off Fifth Avenue, was the Jewish holiday of Purim. Oranges, nuts, apricots and hamentaschen, a Jewish holiday pastry, were offered as snacks. Participants put on costumes to act out the biblical story of Esther.

"People who have a hunger for religious experience can have a taste of it here," said Samir Selmanovic, the Adventist co-leader. Born in Croatia to a Muslim father and a Catholic mother, he helped found FaithHouse 18 months ago. Then he wrote a book, "It's All About God: Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian," on the plethora of religions that Americans are increasingly sampling.

FaithHouse is probably the only multireligious church in the country, but its jumble of faiths and practices is becoming less unusual in today's religious marketplace."

Link to full article: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/05/interfaith-movement-gains-new-strength/(copy and paste link on browser)

The Story the Church is Called to Tell

Today I read in my morning devotion the following:

In 1983 a group of Youth With A Mission daredevils unfolded a banner on Easter Sunday morning in Red Square: “Christ is Risen!” it read in Russian. Some older Russians fell to their knees and wept. Soldiers soon surrounded the hymn-singing troublemakers, tore up their banner, and hustled them off to jail. Less than a decade later, all over Red Square on Easter Sunday people were greeting each other in the traditional way, “Christ is risen!” … “He is risen indeed!”

From: What’s So Amazing About Grace?(256 - 57)

Carlos M