c. 1996 Religion News Service

HARTFORD, Conn. (RNS)-The Hartford Seminary’s center for the study of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations and the University of Hartford’s center Judaic studies are joining in a major project to promote understanding among the faiths.

A $400,000, five-year grant from the Henry Luce Foundation of New York will establish”the Luce Forum in Abrahamic Religions”to be run jointly by the university and the seminary.

The grant will enable the two schools to establish a joint visiting professorship drawn from top scholars of Abrahamic religions to oversee scholarly and cultural activities, the two schools announced.

Both schools offer frequent community-wide programs to enhance public understanding of religion and public affairs as well as formal academic degree courses.

The name of the new forum stems from the fact that the three monotheistic religions share reverence for Abraham, the first patriarch of the nation of Israel. Jews, Christians and Muslims alike regard him as the father of those who believe in one God and esteem him for faithfulness to the will of God. Abraham’s story is recounted in Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible, which Christians and Muslims also regard as part of their heritage.

The forum”will go beyond traditional academic study to … enable members of the three religions to relate to one another,”the joint statement said.”In addition, the forum will bring together regional and national representatives of the three communities for trilateral gatherings aimed at helping resolve social and political tensions.” The statement noted that with the growing number of Muslims,”there exists the need to revise the traditional American concept of `Judeo-Christian’ to include followers of Islam.”It is in the United States, after all, that for the first time in world history, these three religions … enjoy constitutional equality.” (STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

There has been growing collaboration between the university’s 11-year-old Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies and the Hartford Seminary’s century-old Duncan Black Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations. Jonathan Rosenbaum, director of the Greenberg Center, has been teaching a Hebrew scripture course at the seminary.

The seminary’s center was originally founded to train missionaries to work in Islamic countries. It has gone well beyond that mission to one promoting understanding of Islam and better relations between Christians and Muslims.

The Macdonald center this month came under the direction of Christian and Muslim co-directors for the first time.

Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi, a Palestinian Muslim scholar, and Jane I. Smith, formerly with the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, assumed their shared directorship Jan. 1. They succeeded David A. Kerr, who has accepted a position at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

Barbara Brown Zikmund, seminary president, said the seminary, which has Congregational roots, has a role to play in interfaith dialogue and that suspicions among Muslims about its missionary beginnings have abated. “We are really at a point now of trust where people are understanding that we are not acting out of a missionary perspective,”she said. “We are coming to engage in meaningful conversation between people of different faiths. This is important for the survival of our public life and for our individual faiths as well.”

MJP END RENNER