Yesterday I went to Philadelphia for the celebration of the ordination of two women to deacon and priest by the Roman Catholic Womenpriests. What a fabulous occasion it was! Of course, it wasn’t held in a Catholic Church. In fact, the women were excommunicated the moment of their ordinations. These brave women, both of whom have graduate theology degrees and have been working in religious education and pastoral care of the sick and poor for decades, were ordained in a Reconstructionist synagogue in the same city where the first Episcopal female priests were ordained, contrary to church law at the time, in 1974. Unfortunately, the Catholic Church hasn’t caught up to the Episcopal Church or many others in opening the priesthood to women. So these women and others around the world — nuns, mothers and grandmothers — have determined to break this unjust Catholic law. They deem their ordinations valid in that their bishop (Patricia Fresen, a former nun and seminary teacher) was ordained by a male bishop in good standing with the Catholic Church. His name has been locked in a safe. She, in turn, has ordained others, thus retaining the apostolic succession that is prized in the Catholic Church. This is not merely a feminist movement as was evident by the number of males in attendance. It is a movement of justice and renewal of the Catholic Church, which is suffering from a lack of priests. Enrollment at American seminaries last year was less than half the number it was in 1965. As a result, seminary standards have declined, churches have closed, and more foreign priests have been given parishes in the U.S. The elderly man who stood next to me leaning on his cane finally gave up on his local New Jersey pastor this spring. At the ordination mass he whispered to me as the homily began, “The women are usually better than the men.” It’s unfortunate that the Catholic hierarchy, which appears to have made an idol of its own celibate (or professed celibate) maleness, doesn’t recognize that these women could be the key to the survival of the Catholic Church in America.
If you want to know more, read yesterday’s article in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

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Over the past year and a half the Faith Club has traveled from coast to coast and north to south telling our story and having wonderful Faith Club discussions across the country. We’ve been amazed by the many ways that different communities have used our book. One reader organized an interfaith youth mission trip to Mexico. Others made a skit of our book and acted it out for their retirement community. People are reading our book on college campuses and in seminaries. In Delray Beach and many other locations, names were gathered after our presentation and faith clubs begun.
Now we have begun a new venture. It’s an online Faith Club that is being hosted by beliefnet.com. Come join our discussion!

Here’s another question we get asked over and over again.  And we can list many peace organizations, many petitions and demonstrations for peace that occur all over the world.  Unfortunately, like the Unity Walk Ranya and Priscilla participated in this past September, they don’t get any press.  Bad news makes the headlines.

Well, at long last, the “moderate Muslims” (otherwise known as the majority) have made it to page A23 of The New York Times.  (Of course this is well behind stories of terror plots in Germany, Shiite/Sunni violence in Iraq and car bombs.) The headline is “Muslims Seek Cooperation As a Step Toward Peace”.  (See article.)  The article tells of an open letter issued yesterday to Christian leaders urging Islam and Christianity to work more closely together to bring meaningful peace to the world.  The 29-page letter is signed by 138 signatories including senior theologians from around the world. It was put together with the support of the Royal Aaal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought in Jordan.  (See letter.)

This question keeps arising from the audiences we see across the country. Our reply has been that America was founded on the principle of religious freedom for all faiths by Deists, who were men of faith but not faithful to any particular religious institutions.  American Historian Gary Wills’ new book, Head and Heart: American Christianities, underscores that idea.

Interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air, Wills says that our founders were rational believers, also known as deists. They believed that God created the world and supervises it. They didn’t believe that God necessarily responds to prayer, but they did believe in providence and an after-life. Many of the founding fathers believed that Jesus was the promised Messiah from Jewish scripture, but not that he was incarnate. They saw him as an important moral leader singled out by God. Jefferson believed Jesus was the perfect moral teacher, though human, not God. 

Rather than instilling Christianity in the Constitution, these founding fathers instilled separation of church and state into the Constitution so that Christianity and other religions could thrive without being encumbered by state influence and control.

That separation, says Wills, is what enabled religion to flourish in America. It was also a unique element in the establishment of our government. Bicameral legislatures, confederations of states and independent judicial systems existed in other countries, but, says Wills, “No other country before ours dared to launch itself without formal protection by God through some religious institution.” 

Another myth Wills dispels is that our country has become less religious since its founding. In fact, the opposite is true. ”In the 1770s only 17% of Americans were regular churchgoers,” Wills reports.  Today it is about two-thirds.

While the constitutition did allow states to establish religions, they all eventually gave it up.  Virginia was the first, thanks to Jefferson and Madison.  Jefferson didn’t believe churches should receive tax breaks, nor that Congress should have chaplains or that clergy should even be able to report themselves as clergy in the census.  He believed the government should have no knowledge about the religious activity in the country.  His ideal: No one should be able to take away anyone’s right to worship God in whichever way he wants.  

Are we achieving that in America today?

This year I spent Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, thinking of how grateful I am for the full life I’ve been given in the past year, thanks to my experience in The Faith Club.
Ranya and Suzanne did not accompany me to Yom Kippur services this year, but they were very much with me in spirit as I sat in temple, praying to God to grant me and my loved ones another year of life. I heard the words of the prayers in a new way, remembering how Ranya, Suzanne and I had analyzed exactly what they meant to each of us. Every year, depending on what has transpired the year before, every prayer means something new to me.
The rich voice of our cantor always moves me to tears during the Kol Nidre service, on the first night of prayers. The haunting melodies I first heard while sitting next to my father always make me feel his presence and absence at the same time. This year I felt my mother’s absence as well, since she is safe and well cared for, but slipping away from me steadily as she fades into the world of Alzheimer’s.
I wished my parents were here, so they could see what a wonderful marriage I have, how good and kind my two sons are, and how my journey with Ranya and Suzanne has brought me, literally and figuratively to places I never imagined I would have had the strength to go.
I am so grateful to all of the people who have read our book and embraced our message, invited us to speak with them, and shared their stories and work with us.
I would like to thank each and every one of the people we’ve connected with in the last year, from Oman to Miami, for relating to us, as Martin Buber put it, “authentically and humanly,” because those connections have made me feel stronger and more alive than I ever have before.
I look forward to meeting so many more people in the year ahead, with Ranya and Suzanne by my side, as we tour the country in planes, trains and automobiles…

Last week we began our fall tour to promote the paperback edition of The Faith Club, which was published in June.  This tour will take us to 20 cities and into Canada.  (For the schedule, see our Appearances page.) Our first stop was in Chicago where we recorded a program for Milt Rosenberg’s radio show and met with the people who run the wonderful organization Hands of Peace.  Gretchen Grad, a Christian woman, began Hands of Peace with a Jewish woman and a Muslim woman after 9/11.  (Sound familiar?)  Hands of Peace brings together Israeli, Palestinian and American high school students for two weeks of dialogue and fun each summer.  The visitors stay with American families in the Lake Forest, Illinois area.  While the idea came out of Grad’s urge to foster Middle East peace, I am excited as much by what the American students and the American host families are learning from the Middle-Eastern guests.  “I can never go back to my old way of thinking,” one of the American students said.

The host families and the students have been given copies of The Faith Club to read. During the year Hands of Peace has also used The Faith Club in its interfaith meetings.   “It’s our Bible,” said a Hands of Peace spokesperson. And Ranya added, “Your Bible, your Torah and your Quran!”

Gretchen Grad told us, “I wish we had your book before we started Hands of Peace.  We faced the same issues you did when we were getting our organization off the ground.”

Thanks to Gretchen and all those at Hands of Peace for helping Israelies, Palestianians and Americans to get to know one another and to learn from each another.

In March we were delighted to have the opportunity to speak to attendees at a Young Presidents Organization Conference in Muscat, Oman. Many people have told us that a Faith Club dialogue can’t happen in the Middle East, but our experience here proved them wrong.  We spoke with men and women from Oman, Palestine, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Dubai, Lebanon, Egypt and Kuwait.  As we signed books the day after our presentation, many came forward to express their support for our message, including a gentleman from Saudi Arabia who said to Ranya, “Thank you for letting the true voice of Islam be heard in America.”

Today I attended a memorial service for a man who died too young, but led his life with extraordinary grace, gusto and appreciation for the people he loved. His family and friends spoke eloquently of his courage, his passion for the outdoors, and his ability to focus on the important things in life. Despite the fact that no cleric spoke and no prayers were read, I felt the presence of God in the room very strongly as people connected in their grief and acknowledged the fragility of life and the power of love. The poem his family reprinted in the service’s program spoke to me, perhaps because of conversations I’ve had with Ranya and Suzanne about my sister’s ability, despite the illnesses she battles, to take joy in the smallest things in life, such as finding “a good, ripe peach at the market.”

FROM BLOSSOMS

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

- by Li-Young Lee in ROSE

Here at The Faith Club, we’re all for open dialogue. Sometimes it takes a sense of humor to cover thorny issues. See how Canada’s television show Little Mosque on the Prairie seems to be doing just that. Could such a sitcom work in America?