I’m gonna lay down a BIG opinion here, and you can either appreciate it or just roll your eyes and go back to making pies. I kind of hope you’ll appreciate it and make pies but that may be asking for too much.
PeaceBang’s Big Opion On Interfaith Thanksgiving Services
1. If Christian churches are the only ones ever hosting this service, it’s not interfaith. It’s Christian and the other religious communities are guests.
2. If the structure of the service strongly resembles a Protestant liturgy and always has and no one has ever suggested that leaders from the other communities recommend a completely new kind of structure, it’s not an interfaith event. It’s a Christian event at which other religious communities are represented as respected guests. But they’re still guests.
3. If the group of people planning the service have not set aside time to discuss the intention of this service; eg, why are we treating Thanksgiving as a religious holiday when it is not, how may this service promoting a kind of benign nationalism, and that kind of question, it is not an interfaith service. It is a subtly and in oh-such a benign manner promoting the notion that America is a Christian nation.
4. If the people planning the service are always Christian clergy and the meetings or e-mails reminding everyone that it’s time to plan the service are always generated by Christian clergy, that should tell you something. It’s a Christian service. The other faith communities are responding to an invitation, they are not equal partners in the process and they do not feel ownership of the event.
5. If the service consists of Christian ministers and Christian lay people in the most prominent liturgist roles and the representatives of other faith traditions are there to add “diversity,” it is not an interfaith service but a Christian service featuring “our interesting neighbors.”
My recommendations: if Thanksgiving seems a great time to gather the community together, let lay people initiate the planning. Be willing to totally reconstruct the structure of the event. Focus less on religious tourism (“Now we’re going to stop in JewishLand!”) and more on community. Break bread together if you aren’t already doing so. Include a service or justice-making component to the event. And if you really want to be interfaith and relational, make plans to get together again sooner than same time next year.
Who’s doing this in a way that you really love? Tell us in the comments!
Love, TurkeyBang
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