Interfaith teams at GAC worship

Over and over, Rick Ufford-Chase talks about the value of international connections, about things the church in the United States can learn from the church around the world.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is just starting its second round of the Interfaith Listening Project, in which teams from 10 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia — usually made up of one Christian and one Muslim who already know and work with each other at home — have come to the United States to visit churches and communities, to have conversations with people at the grassroots.

Ufford-Chase, who’s moderator of the church’s 216th General Assembly, said that in the three months since he was elected he’s had the chance to meet with international representatives at the Youth Triennium in Indiana, at the Peacemaking Conference in Seattle, and now at the General Assembly Council meeting this week in Louisville, where the interfaith listening teams made a presentation and participated in opening worship. Ufford-Chase said he’s come away from each of these encounters more convinced about the “opportunity they offer our church for transformation.”

The interfaith teams have come from 10 countries: Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Niger, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Africa and Syria. A few of their number spoke to the council during its opening session Sept. 22 — among them Ismat Mehdi, a Muslim professor of Arabic from India, who spoke of how the pluralistic society in her country, with its long tradition of tolerance, is becoming increasingly fascist. Her Christian colleague, Andreas D’Souza, spoke of violence of retribution between Muslims and Hindus — and how, in midst of that, some people still work for peace.

John Eter, a Presbyterian elder from Beirut, told of his work ministering to street children, who are sent out by their impoverished families and who become prey to “vices of the worst kind,” he said, including physical and sexual abuse and drug addiction.  Lina Hamaoui, a Muslim public health specialist from Beirut who’s involved in human rights work, said her country had engaged in civil war for 17 years — basically, half her life.

The teams are scheduled to visit 35 presbyteries, making a special effort to reach young people and to visit both rural and urban areas, including some places where partnerships don’t now exist between Christians and Muslims.

Council member Carol Hylkema, who’s from Dearborn, Mich., said her community has a sizeable Muslim population, but said Muslims and Christians there often don’t go beyond theoretical discussions of how to form relationships to really doing so. How can people of different religious backgrounds actually form such relationships, she asked, not just talk about them?

“It’s simpler than we think,” Hamaoui replied. “In Lebanon, we live together, we work together. There are no inhibitions . . . In everyday life we are together whether we like it or not,” it’s just an accepted part of life.

And Eter said that “food is an excellent way to make relationships.” Arabs have close families, he said; they love eating together and socializing. “I assure you,” he said, “they make excellent friends.”

During the worship service, Ufford-Chase used the presence of the international guests to preach about his recent, emotionally-intense trip to Colombia, where the politics are all jumbled up and violence is omnipresent. He gave a brief history lesson in which he described how what’s happening in Colombia is representative of the difficulties people of faith face around the globe — and to which he contends the Bible speaks directly.

Colombia has experienced civil war for 40 years now, Ufford-Chase said, and people are no longer clear what are the reasons for the fighting. The guerilla movement has been corrupted so “they have become actors in the violence themselves,” he said, and use terrorism and abductions as routine tactics.

The paramilitary forces operate with “a wink and a nod” from the government, he said, and have almost complete freedom to carry out incredible acts of violence. Guerillas are being offered the chance to re-emerge in society if they inform on other guerillas, which means anyone can be named with no substantiation and find their lives placed at risk.

Drug trafficking makes some people rich, while masses of others are displaced by the violence and have no homes. The U.S. has interest in the Colombian oil supply. And church workers who speak up about the abuses become targets.

Human rights workers are being assassinated — including one while Ufford-Chase was there last week, two blocks from where he was meeting with others about human rights concerns. When Milton Mejia, executive secretary of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia — who has received threats on his own life — got a call about that killing, of a 46-year-old sociology professor slain in broad daylight, “his face went white and he began to sob,” Ufford-Chase reported. “No, it can’t be,’ “Mejia cried.

Ufford-Chase said he believes the situation in Colombia “has a great deal to teach us. Colombia is, in the most disturbing way possible, a window on the world right now.”

Think of all the situations, he said, where violence is growing more intense and where it’s difficult to tell who are the protagonists and who the antagonists, who in the crowd is suspicious. Church and human rights workers who stand against the violence and work for peace end up in danger themselves.

But the Presbyterian Church of Colombia is saying that the proper response “is to insist that the church stands for non-violence,” Ufford-Chase said. “The church will stand with the poorest, the displaced, those who have the most to lose.”

He used as his text the fifth chapter of Matthew, as he preached that standing up for the powerless is seen in many places are subversive, but the Bible says the peacemakers and the persecuted, the meek and the humble, will be blessed.

Some will say that “God calls us to violence,” Ufford-Chase said. But he contends that “God calls us to something far different” — and that people of faith cannot allow their religions to be used for violence and evil.

Ufford-Chase said it takes “an almost unbelievable act of courage” for people in dangerous places all across the world to advocate for building interfaith relations and for non-violence. Nodding to the interfaith listening teams, he said that when Christians and Jews, Muslims and Hindus gather in peace to listen to each others’ stories with respect, knowing they might be changed by what they hear, willing to hear, that takes courage.