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Page 1 of 2  Whatever religious holiday you're celebrating, here's some self-help advice to successfully communicate with people of all religions. Remember all those old jokes in which a priest, a rabbi and a Buddhist monk are waiting side by side for a bus, sharing a lifeboat, or jumping off a cliff? Well, they aren't funny anymore. | | | Interfaith Advice | | Want to work toward world peace without being elected president? Start by spreading religious tolerance in your own backyard. | | Attend the services of other denominations besides your own. In what ways are they similar? | | Read the spiritual literature of other denominations. While their settings take many different forms, the messages are often strikingly alike. | | Join your local interfaith council; ask your church or temple to help you get connected. | | Keep yourself well-informed about current events affecting religious groups worldwide; in one way or another they're likely to affect you, too. | | Religion and Guilt | | | |
At least not so funny.
Tradition has it that leaders of different religions keep to themselves and their flocks follow suit. Yet, and not a minute too soon, a worldwide movement is afoot to get them together and keep them together, at least long enough to talk.
And talk, at interfaith clubs and conventions around the globe, leads to shared worship services, softball games and social outreach, not to mention peace, love and understanding.
"It's all about networking," says Donald Frew, who recently returned from an interfaith parliament in Cape Town, South Africa. "But in a good way."
The parliament, Cape Town's largest confab ever, occupied two university campuses and City Hall. Thousands of attendees representing dozens of different religions; gurus, nuns, rinpoches, shamans, reverends and more cruised from lecture to service to workshop, sampling Zen meditation and Mass and everything in between. Together they made plans for hundreds of ambitious interfaith projects including, for instance, a drive to rescue "lost and endangered religions."
"The question was," Frew says, ' How can we work together to save the world?' "
His own participation was a bit miraculous. A California witch, Frew has been welcomed warmly into more and more interfaith circles over the last few years. Nobody bats an eye when they read the affiliation written on his nametag. An international organization called the United Religions Initiative has a logo incorporating 15 different symbols including not only Judaism's six-pointed star but also witchcraft's five-pointed one.
"That would never have happened 15 years ago," Frew says.
A lot has changed since the Inquisition.
Keeping an open mind about other religions isn't a betrayal of your own, as more and more people are realizing. On the contrary: Increasing your spiritual knowledge and making friends of would-be enemies can make you feel like a better person all around. Fear flies out the window, allowing more time for faith, hope and charity and for learning new ways of worship without ever straying off your chosen path.
At home, Frew hosts annual Thanksgiving programs with his local interfaith council. Watching yogis take the stage after a rabbi and robed neopagans offering their own versions of a Thanksgiving prayer, audiences see how concepts like gratitude and grace are not the exclusive property of any single denomination. Some sing; some chant; some sip wine, sway and dance but it all says the same thing, and it's all good. And that's the point, Frew says. If, as Rodney King suggested, we should try to "all just get along," this is a pretty profound way to start.
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