Reverend
Jay Speights is now a regular columnist for UPI's Religion and Spirituality
Channel. Read his work at ReligionandSpirituality.com
Reverend Jay Speights featured guest columnist on UPI's ReligionandSpirituality.com. Read his column here.
The New Seminary is a cosponsor for the Tikkun Community's Spiritual Progressives Conference in Washington, DC: http://www.tikkun.org/community/spiritual_activism_conference/
World House by Reverend Jay Speights
When asked to write an article about the relevance of Interfaith, I did not know how to approach it. Then it occurred to me that all I had to do was look to the times I grew up in and the state of global affairs today for the answer. My thoughts went quickly to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. whom I regard as the greatest Interfaith Minister of our time. It was his non-violent movement and call to American clergy that made Interfaith Councils spring up across the country to fight the great American problems of segregation and poverty.
As Dr. King so eloquently stated in one of his lesser known speeches, the World House, which was based on his Nobel Prize-winning lecture delivered in Oslo in 1966: " 'A widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together.' This is the great new problem of mankind. We have inherited a large house, a great ?world house? in which we have to live together - black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu - a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace." This statement was extremely powerful and relevant in 1966 and it certainly is today.
If you look across this great globe of ours, to the Middle East, to Europe, Africa, and Asia, you will find war and strife in just about every region of the world. Most, if not all, of these conflicts are rooted in religious intolerance. This includes the United States? presence in Afghanistan and Iraq. Regardless of what the stated rationale is for our presence is in those countries, I think that some Americans feel we are waging a war against Islam.
The clergy of the world must assume the responsibility of working in their communities and nations to spread the news that there truly is one common thread running seamlessly through every religion that links all of us to the Divine, the One Source, God. So if there is a Balm in Gilead to heal the war-hardened souls of this world, it can be found in an Interfaith approach to living.
Making Interfaith relevant also applies to a very fundamental institution in society: marriage. What better way to make Dr. King?s concept of a World House come to life than people of all races and creeds intermarrying? This is perhaps the most basic way to bring the universal family together under one God. The Interfaith community must embrace and help couples from different faith traditions, weather the scorn and controversy many of them will receive from their families, friends and communities by marrying individuals outside their faith. We can do this by educating all parties involved, and, of course, by arranging Interfaith weddings and providing guidance to families about how to raise children in an Interfaith environment.
There are Interfaith Councils in just about every American community; some more active than others. The real work for us living in this nation is to join these councils, make them bigger and better, thereby ensuring they are true banner carriers for the concept of "One God, Many Paths".
Many Americans don?t want to face the truth that religion is being used as a tool of war, division and oppression. It is being used to punish those with different views about the role of religion in government, society and God, in general. This rolling tide of hard-line intolerance that is dominating public policy and sweeping across this land, leaving those with opposing views quaking with fear, must be stopped. Think about this; if we can strengthen the Interfaith movement in this country, and move our own society to be more open and accepting of all faith traditions, the world might just take notice.
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