Interfaith activity and learning enrich spiritual life, teach respect for other religions

I have interacted with members of many Christian denominations since I arrived in this country.

My wife, who was raised as a Presbyterian, grew up in a small town near Peoria, Illinois, where there were only Christian denominations. There were no Jews or Muslims.

I remember visiting with their Presbyterian minister, who gave me a book titled, “Christians and Muslims Together: An Exploration by Presbyterians,” which had been edited by the Presbyterian Church shortly after the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979. I remember the minister telling me that members of their church picketed during one of their national conferences and carried signs that read, among other things, “Dialogue is Sin.”

Fast-forwarding to 2001 and beyond, I found myself engaged in interfaith activities involving both dialogue and action with members of the three Abrahamic faiths. One question that I was often asked is: Do I think that Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same God?

Speaking from my faith tradition, I will tell you that most mainstream Muslims believe they worship the same deity as Jews and Christians. In Chapter 2, Verse 133, we read the following about the Biblical character Jacob and his sons: “Or were you witnesses when death approached Jacob, when he said to his sons, ‘What will you worship after me?’ They said, ‘We will worship your God and the God of your fathers, Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac — one God. And we are Muslims (in submission) to Him.’”

I remember one letter to the editor in the Idaho Statesman claiming that Muslims worship the Moon-God, probably because many mosques have a minaret with a crescent adorning the uppermost part of this slender tower. This type of misinformation or disinformation was propagated in the United States in the 1990s by an evangelical preacher, Robert Morey, in a pamphlet titled, “The Moon-god Allah in the Archeology of the Middle East.”

You can easily debunk this nonsense by reading Chapter 41, Verse 37 of the Quran: “And of His signs are the night and day and the sun and moon. Do not prostrate to the sun or to the moon but prostrate to Allah (the Arabic name for God), who created them, if it is Him that you worship.”

In my interfaith discussions, I generally found no theological divide between Jews and Muslims who believe they worship the same deity. Christians also worship one deity defined differently as a triune God: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ) and the Holy Spirit. This is the concept of the Trinity.

In the Quran, Allah, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are described as three separate entities. In this respect, Muslims, like Jews, Unitarian Universalists, Baha’is and others, are very much unitarians in their understanding of the nature of God.

I read that Pope Francis said that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. This is certainly in line with the declaration of the Second Vatican Council to Catholics in 1964, which affirmed that Muslims “together with us adore the one, merciful God.” However, Christians of other denominations differ or disagree.

When I was a young college student, I read “The Religions of Man” by Huston Smith, a well-known professor of comparative religion at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In his book, Smith attempted to reconcile the different belief systems of the major faiths by pointing to the oneness of a Creator.

He later revised his book and published it in 1991 under a new title, “The World’s Religions.” This second book examines the world’s major faiths as well as those of indigenous people, and explains that they all express the Absolute, which is indescribable. The book concludes with a kind of golden rule for mutual understanding and coexistence: “If, then, we are to be true to our own faith, we must attend to others when they speak, as deeply and as alertly as we hope they will to us.”

I remember my mother-in-law offering me a subscription to Guideposts magazine. I was surprised when the first issue arrived, and it turned out to be a magazine for Christians. However, I was not offended in the least and I enjoyed reading its faith articles.

One article that pleased me a lot turned out to be written by Smith. I found out in his article that he had added some rituals from Judaism and Islam to his Christian faith. My original thought about Smith was that he had all his bases covered because he believed in all three Abrahamic religions.

My own interfaith journey has ingrained in me much respect for all world religions, because they try to understand the reality of the unseen through different lenses and perspectives. In over two decades of interfaith activities, I have learned that much work remains to be done when it comes to championing inclusiveness and love of neighbor, while rejecting exclusivity, and fear and hatred of those who are different from us.

This story was originally published October 1, 2021 at 12:29 PM.