Three Interfaith Organizations Helping Communities Navigate Their Differences – BCB #99
Three Interfaith Organizations Helping Communities Navigate Their Differences – BCB #99
Religion can be both a cause of division and a cure for it
There’s no question that religion plays a part in Americans’ divisions. Sometimes faith neatly aligns with existing divides, but most religions also have deep traditions of peace. Today we’re featuring three initiatives working to overcome both religious and political divisions.
This has become all the more relevant after Hamas’s attack on October 7th and Israel’s subsequent military response. This has not only realigned the culture war in significant ways, but made it all the more urgent to have better relationships between religious communities.
Multi-Faith Neighbors Network teaches leaders to bring people together
Founded in Texas by a pastor, an imam, and rabbi, the Multi-Faith Neighbors Network (MFNN) coordinates grassroots movements across religious groups and faith traditions. Through camps, days of service, and other relationship-building exercises between religious leaders, the organization believes that it can foster community and promote interfaith activism not predicated on theological agreement. One of MFNN’s goals is to combat political polarization. Bob Roberts Jr., the evangelical pastor who co-founded the group, notes:
When a preacher stands up and says, you have got to vote for this person or you’re not following Jesus, that’s not good. And when you have politicians promise that they can fix things, sometimes, we can be susceptible to a politician promising to fix something that they can’t or that they really don’t have a desire, other than to use us for their own political purposes.
And there’s nothing wrong with being in a political party. We all have political views. That’s great. But I think, as Christians, we have to realize that we are committed to a kingdom that transcends any nation.
To counter mounting conspiratorial thinking and extremism in religious communities, MFNN recently partnered with both Common Ground USA and the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University to produce a peacemaking toolkit. Among other things, the toolkit provides information on the causes and consequences of polarization, the roots of radicalization, and the symptoms of extremism. It also includes four scenarios that a religious leader might encounter, from “creeping divisions in his church” to “the aftermath of a hate crime in his city,” along with guidance about how to promote peacebuilding under these circumstances.
Resetting the Table strengthens bonds one conversation at a time
Conceived in 2014 to facilitate discussion within the Jewish community on Israel’s relationship with Palestine, Resetting the Table (RTT) has since expanded its reach. The organization has designed and disseminates a toolkit of processes, from communication workshops and community dialogues to educational resources and decision-making forums, that aim to help people “strengthen democracy by building collaborative deliberation across political siloes in American life.” To date, their programs have reached more than 42,000 participants, many of them community leaders who have in turn taught the skills they learned to others.
In the wake of October 7 and the ongoing conflict, RTT will soon be offering a facilitation training for rabbinical students, during which it will teach these future clergy members how to use its framework to lead meaningful political discussions on Israel and other loaded subjects. “Trainees will learn and practice facilitation skills and interventions designed to support participants to move from destructive patterns of communication (e.g. fight-or-flight, etc.) into connection and mutual receptivity, even while directly addressing heated differences and thorny issues,” the organization says.
The Tri-Faith Initiative provides space for different groups to come together
The Tri-Faith Initiative is a unique organization that brings together three religious communities on one sprawling, 38-acre campus on the outskirts of Omaha, Nebraska. The organization, which has its roots in dialogue between leaders of Temple Israel, a Jewish congregation in Omaha, and the city’s Muslim community, includes a mosque, a synagogue, a church, and an interfaith center. Members of these communities participate in courses, dialogues and events together, and even jointly tend the community garden. Rabbi A. Brian Stoller from Temple Israel says that the goal of the initiative is to better understand, rather than deemphasize, religious differences:
Sometimes people assume that the fact that we've come together and that we're so connected means that we're trying to create a blended, homogeneous faith, and that is absolutely not what Tri-Faith is about… It's like a neighborhood. And each neighborhood lives in its own house and has its own values and belief system.
To accomplish this goal, the Tri-Faith Initiative emphasizes empathy and understanding through programs like its Race, Religion, and Social Justice project (RRSJ). This multidisciplinary, cross-sector curriculum and training culminates in a conference the organization puts on in tandem with the University of Nebraska, Omaha’s Religious Studies Department. This year’s conference will be held in June, and its theme is “sustainable progress,” which, the organizers say:
. . . is about seeking societal change that takes root at a deeper level than victories that can easily be stripped away in the next political tug-of-war. Sustainable progress requires out-of-the-box thinking, genuine dialogue, multimodal approaches, and patience for the long game.
In the wake of the October 7 attacks in Israel, the various faiths represented on Tri-Faith’s campus have tried to support one another and to make room for divergent perspectives. They have shown up at one another’s worship services, and last December, community members attended a silent candlelight vigil on the campus to grieve for lives lost and pray for peace. They walked along the Abraham Bridge, the walkway that stitches the campus together and symbolizes the unity of the three Abrahamic faiths that share the space.
Quote of the Week
We are worried about our ability to withstand the tension from outside of this beautiful beacon of light to tear us apart, to make us take sides and to break down the beautiful dream that we have built here. And replace it with fear.
– Wendy Goldberg, Executive Director of the Tri-Faith Initiative
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