All and All Together
6 June 2008 - 4 סיון 5768 by Huw
The slow online and IRL manifestation of FAITH HOUSE Manhattan is starting to get real interesting.
OUR MISSION: We want to start a new kind of community in which we can discover The Other (individuals or groups other than those we belong to), deepen our personal and corporate journeys, and together participate in repairing the world. In this endeavor we will honor and learn from teachings, practices, and suffering of people from religions, philosophies, and worldviews, different from our own. Instead of isolating ourselves into like-minded groups or melting together into a single-minded organization, we will learn to live together with our differences and in a way that contributes to the wellbeing, peace, joy, and justice in the world. In this endeavor we will always be a courageous, hospitable and learning community.
With all charity - I want to imagine these being Orthodox Jews, Observant Muslims and Pious Christians of some Liturgical Stripe. I can’t imagine it would be so, though. Progressives, outside of certain circles, seem to like lots of talking, not much praying and political (not theological) singing. It seems to fit best with Puritanism rather than Incarnationalism.
Faith House will seek to bring progressive Jews, Christians, Muslims, and spiritual seekers of no faith to become an interfaith community for the good of the world. We have one world and one God. Nothing is impossible. Who can stop God from teaching us how to live together in community?
We envision a vibrant urban faith community to which all are welcome to bring the treasures of their faith. We believe that in this respectful and disarming environment in which we are all learners as well as teachers, the depth, the beauty, and the truthfulness of faith in God will shine and capture the imagination not only of the cynics looking from the outside, but also the imagination of the cynic within each of us
While I’m really sure there is only one God. If he’s not the GOd that promised the Jews a special relationship through divine revelation, nothing on the Jewish side means anything at all. This is helpful to the Christian idea, and only vaguely supportive of the Muslim side - but it is exclusivst to the Jewish side. If he’s not a Trinity of persons, one in essence, one of whom became incarnate into this messy life, had dirty diapers, embarrassing adolescent hard-ons and a specific ethnicity, languages and ancestry, nothing on the Christian side make any sense at all. This is a scandal to the other two traditions. If he’s not the God that channelled the Quran through Mohammed, nothing on the Muslim side means anything at all and this downplays both the other two traditions.
Can God be behind all three traditions, using all of them to reach a majority of humans, each in ways that would be understood? That’s God’s business but he’s certainly got one sick sense of humour: like a parent whispering to each child at bedtime, “I love you better than your sister.” Can all three traditions be only human metaphors by which we reach out to God with no divine input? Sure. But then why bother? Can all three understandings (true or not) work together and lead to a drive to better humanity and the world in which we live? Yes - but not by making pious claims that all our differences are meaningless.
There are ways around this: undoing much of the credalism of Christianity, deconstruction much of the last 2000 years of Rabbinic decrees and incarnating the ultra-transcendent deity.
But will we be left with a recognisable Judaism, Christianity or Islam at the end?
Is that important?
Show me a Torah Scroll, and Iconostasis and a mihrab in the same room, and we can talk. Show me a worship space where prayers, shabbat and mass can all happen (with a minimum of furniture movement) in a community where 1/3 devoutly eats pork (but not during lent) 1/3 devoutly keeps kosher and 1/3 devoutly doesn’t drink. Show me a community that devoutly gives up Friday afternoon right through to Sunday Morning.
Then I’ll think we’re on to something.
“Can all three traditions be only human metaphors by which we reach out to God with no divine input? Sure. But then why bother?”
Well yes, of course, but why would this imply an absence of the divine, unless, of course, God is totally other and “out there” rather than being very near to our hearts as all three traditions believe?