Where There Is Hate, Extend Hospitality: Interfaith Solidarity in Gainesville
by Eve MacMaster
In Gainesville, Florida, there’s relief that the media circus has left town. The saturation coverage of the threat to burn the Qur’an morphed from news to spectacle, as national and world coverage provided an electronic megaphone to Terry Jones and his Dove World Outreach Center.
What’s been missed by most media is the quiet work behind the scenes, as Gainesville’s civic and religious leaders reach out across the borders of religious differences. Dennis Shuman, leader of the Jewish Renewal congregation, P’nai Or, observed to friends that the uproar over Jones was like the irritation of a grain of sand that causes oysters to produce pearls.
Among the pearls created in Gainesville was Mayor Craig Lowe’s proclamation of September 11, 2010, as “A Day of Tolerance and Interfaith Solidarity.” There were also an “Interfaith Prayer Service for Unity and Remembrance” at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church; a “Gathering for Peace, Understanding and Hope” at Trinity United Methodist Church; a “Day of Peace and Unity” organized by the Gainesville Muslim Initiative; and a “Know Your Muslim Neighbors” open house at the Hoda Islamic Center.
While meeting to plan the prayer service, local Jewish, Christian, and Muslim clergy agreed to begin regular lunch meetings in order to get to know one another. Some of them came together to form an Interfaith Forum earlier this year, in response to Jones’ provocations.
Working for interfaith understanding isn’t new for the Gainesville Interfaith Peace Coalition (GIPC), the Gainesville chapter of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. We’ve been holding public meetings and prayer vigils since 2002, beginning with “Dialogues on Peace in a Time of War,” a series of community-wide interfaith conversations on religion and peace.
Our network expanded from a few Quakers and Mennonites to include Roman Catholics, mainline and evangelical Protestants, Unitarians, Muslims, and Jews. We have joined together for interfaith services and prayer vigils for peace each March on the anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war.
This past spring, the opening of the Beltram Peace Center in the new Mennonite Meeting House provided a home for our coalition. The building was purchased by Emmanuel Mennonite Church with a generous legacy from Fred Beltram, who died in 2006. Fred, a long-time FOR member, was a World War II non-combatant who worked as a medic in both the Pacific and European theaters of war.
Our first event at the Beltram Peace Center was a five-part weekly series, “Christians and Islam,” held this past April and May. We began with a packet of printed articles from Sojourners magazine, but soon learned that our greatest resource was our participants — Christians and Muslims who live, work, and study together, but have never had the opportunity to share their understanding of faith with one another. Attendance and enthusiasm exceeded expectations, and a follow-up series, “Muslims and Christians in Conversation,” started on September 18.
Saeed Khan, past president of the Muslim Association of North Central Florida and professor of pathology at the University of Florida, observed that sharing with one another about faith doesn’t often happen in daily life, “even though I have Jewish and Christian co-workers and friends.”
Gainesville is no longer in the news, but awareness of the need for this kind of peacemaking is on our minds and in our hearts. Many people of our community are ready now in a way they weren’t before the public displays of ignorance and fear that brought notoriety to our community. We’re energized by the awareness of the cost of ignorance and the value of interfaith relationships.
Reaching out in friendship to the strangers who live among us is practical peacemaking. We don’t have to pretend that all faiths are the same. We can learn from one another. We may not agree on theology, but we can appreciate one another, and by exploring our differences we can go past superficial acquaintance to real friendship.
Moses, Mohammed, and Jesus all directed their followers to extend hospitality to strangers. Reaching to know and learn from people of a different faith is practical peacemaking.
Eve MacMaster is pastor of Emmanuel Mennonite Church and leader of the Gainesville Interfaith Peace Coalition.
