NEWS FEATURE: Interfaith conference teaches teens unity amid diversity

c. 1997 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ In his three weeks at the E Pluribus Unum Conference (EPU), Michael Barone has learned the Hebrew alphabet, participated in Torah study, shared a Jewish Sabbath dinner and picked up some handy Yiddish phrases. That’s no small accomplishment for the Roman Catholic Barone, 17, who will enter the […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ In his three weeks at the E Pluribus Unum Conference (EPU), Michael Barone has learned the Hebrew alphabet, participated in Torah study, shared a Jewish Sabbath dinner and picked up some handy Yiddish phrases.

That’s no small accomplishment for the Roman Catholic Barone, 17, who will enter the pre-theology program at Canisius College in his native Buffalo, N.Y., this fall.


But at EPU, a unique interfaith gathering of 59 recent high school graduates held at Washington’s American University, Barone and his Protestant and Jewish peers had daily opportunities to reach beyond the texts and traditions of their own faith traditions.

In the process, they learned about the importance of working out religious differences, and even something about their own beliefs.

Toward the end of the conference, each student was asked to present a cigar box decorated with symbols of their choice to describe their three-week experience.

Barone chose to embody the spirit and method of EPU by combining civic images, such as the U.S. Capitol, and spiritual symbols, including a cross. He also placed 59 pebbles in the box to represent the students who attended EPU, coming from 27 states. And in another compartment within the box, Barone displayed three pebbles, representing the Trinity, next to the words of the prayerful Jewish song,”Eli, Eli,”which describes a personal relationship with God.”It spoke to me even in my Catholic tradition,”Barone said.

EPU was a joint venture of the Washington Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values _ whose founder and president Rabbi Sidney Schwartz served as conference director _ the National Council of Churches and the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry.

EPU ended its first summer program Saturday (July 19). Schwartz hopes to repeat the program annually, depending upon future funding.

There was a considered balance among the three faith groups represented at the conference to help everyone feel comfortable. Twenty Jewish, 20 Catholic and 19 Protestant students participated (one Protestant participant withdrew just prior to the conference).”We can ask questions without being offensive,”said Marilyn Tebbe, a Catholic from Tipp City, Ohio, who said her mixed-race background has led her to be curious about other religions and races.


However, after one interfaith worship service during which Schwartz asked the students to call out names for God and no one mentioned Jesus, one Jewish student remarked that concern for offending others had gone too far.”The Christians are tiptoeing around,”said Sarah Yerkes, a Reform Jew from Columbus, Ohio.

Schwartz, a rabbi in the liberal Reconstructionist denomination, called the students”religious high-achievers,”who are learning to recognize the relationship between faith and civic engagement.”Religion without social justice is like a family without love,”said Schwartz, emphasizing that faith drives social action.

The conference was divided into four parts: spiritual arts and worship, community service, academics and communal life.

The community service component matched students with 17 primarily liberal advocacy and activist groups in Washington, including the Children’s Defense Fund, the National Forest Foundation and the National Center on Homelessness and Poverty.

Schwartz said teaching young people to commit to community service is the”final frontier … Americans hate to be told what to do.” Schwartz believes there’s no better place to learn about community than in Washington, where America’s divergent strains come together.

With this in mind, Aaron Slavik, a Catholic from Sacramento, Calif., adorned his cigar-box construction with a shiny penny bearing the inscription”E Pluribus Unum,”which is Latin for”Out of the Many, One,”and is also the nation’s motto.”It’s not so much the differences, it’s the similarities, it’s the roots, where we come from,”Slavik said, adding that his EPU experience had helped him better understand an interreligious relationship within his own family.


In a sacred dance workshop, part of the spiritual arts and worship component, students stood in a circle, performing African dance moves to”Shir haShalom,”the”Song of Peace”that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin sang just before he was assassinated in November 1995.

When the group became frustrated by the dance moves and length of the song, their instructor, Marjani Dele, said,”What we’re feeling here is the tension of conformity and spontaneity.” Clergy or academic representatives led the daily”faith-alike”study groups, in which students explored issues of human rights, poverty and the environment within their own faiths.”There can be no cooperation between faith communities unless you are grounded in your own tradition,”said Schwartz.

Colleen McCoy, a student from Marietta, Ga., came away from the conference strengthened in her commitment to her United Methodist denomination.

McCoy, who wants to become a minister, said she was”lucky”that her denomination ordains women, unlike some of the Catholic students at EPU who said they were upset by their church’s ban on female priests.

In his cigar-box construction, Barone _ who hopes to start an EPU-style study group in Buffalo _ placed a half-melted candle. He explained that the candle was left over from an exercise in which each student held an individual candle that combined to make one single flame.

Sitting next to Barone, Lori Eisenberg, a Reform Jew from Jacksonville, Fla., noted the symbolism of the flames coming together.”It was a big flame,”said Eisenberg, smiling.


MJP END LEBOWITZ

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