Dune Church and Religious Strife

Transcript:

The Hamptons is hardly someplace you would think of in connection with the word “spiritual”, but there is a tiny church tucked in along the beach in Southampton which is just that. St Andrews of the Dunes is a historic church, with museum quality Tiffany stained glass windows and a mystical sense about it that evokes the Civil War era lifesaving and rescue station that it once was.

But perhaps the finest thing about the Dune Church is its 150 year tradition of hosting some of the country’s best preachers in its pulpit – from many religious traditions. So far this season, St. Andrews worshippers had heard sermons from several Episcopalian Bishops, a Presbyterian minister, a Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi, and a Greek Orthodox priest. These religious men and women all honor the same God, but often from different perspectives.

Recently, the retired Episcopal Bishop of California, Bill Swing, spoke about what he saw as the coming crisis in every religions – the dispute over whether their teachings and core beliefs were set in stone or still evolving. Were the traditions laid down at the founding of those religious – by Abraham and Moses, or Jesus, or Martin Luther or Mohammed or Buddha – the end of the story or just the starting off point?

He went on to describe his own religious evolution. In 1995, the United Nations held its 50^th anniversary celebrations in San Francisco, where the UN was founded. Bishop Swing presided over an interfaith service of religious leaders from all over the world at Grace Cathedral.

Bishop Swing described how that night he found it hard to sleep and told himself, “If the nations of the world are working together for peace through the UN, then where are the religions of the world”? From the next day forward Bishop Swing has devoted his life to finding a way for the religions of the world to meet together and work for peace – not by merging their religions into some amorphous blob, but by honoring their different traditions and through them finding a way to work together to resolve conflict.

He founded the United Religions Initiative, and travels the world setting up Cooperation Circles, where people of different religions meet together to work through problems in their communities. Sometimes they are as simple as working together to build a school in their town, other times it is to diffuse tensions between nations. But at its core, the United Religious Initiative is an opportunity for people of different faith traditions to meet regularly with each other, to see that ‘the other’ is not necessarily the enemy.

Similarly, Canon Andrew White, Vicar of the only Anglican parish in Baghdad, is working to bring together Shiite and Sunni leaders from throughout the Middle East to find common ground, especially in Iraq. After their initial successes in Iraq in 2003, the US and its allies had failed to anticipate the outbreak of Iraqi factional conflict – much of it sectarian and religious based. Without Saddam Hussein’s iron fisted rule, the simmering resentments of the various sects and religious groups in Iraq broke out into civil war by 2004. As things began spinning out of control, Canon White sought to bring leaders of the various religious groups together to end the fighting.

“If religion is the cause of much conflict,” white says, “it can also be the cure to it. “ For the last several years, Canon White has worked with top clerics of the Shiite and Sunni communities and brought them together for inter-faith conferences in neutral regions outside of Iraq. Today they are working on a joint Shiite Sunni fatwa, or religious degree, that would be signed by the leaders of both Muslim constituencies, to condemn all violence.

Conferences between Shiite and Sunni religious leaders at this level are unprecedented. If the revered leaders of these traditions tell their people they are breaking with God and risking damnation it they take up arms against their neighbors, it will be difficult for militia leaders to urge them otherwise.

We Americans tend to discount the role of religions in causing wars and in resolving disputes. We live in the one truly multi-ethnic country in the world which guarantees religious freedom to all our citizens. But Bishop Swing of California and Canon White of Baghdad see their life’s mission as being God’s peacemakers, and willing to stand up to those who see themselves as God’s warriors. They both deserve our prayers and our support.