Bishop Wester joins community in celebrating diversity

Intermountain Catholic

+ Enlarge

(From left) The Right Rev. Scott B. Hayashi of the Episcopal Diocese of Utah; the Most Rev. John C. Wester, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City; John T. Nielsen, vice chair of the Public Affairs Council, Salt Lake Area Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; and Florien Wineriter of Humanists of Utah, were among the hundreds at the 21st Annual Interfaith Service. Speaking is Imam Muhammed Mahte of the Khadeeja Mosque, Islamic Society of Greater Salt Lake.

SALT LAKE CITY — A Catholic bishop, a rabbi and a imam met, not in a joke, but in a real-life attempt to find common ground with themselves and others from a wide range of faiths at the 21st Annual Interfaith Service on Nov. 21.

"It was really good for people to come together and find the commonalities that unite us," said the Most Rev. John C. Wester, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, who attended the event for the first time this year. "So often we’re so conscious of what divides us."

That the event is done in the theme of thanksgiving is appropriate, Bishop Wester added. "We do have a lot to be thankful for, and you start to realize that there’s more that binds us together than divides us, really, in many respects."

Bishop Wester gave the invocation for the event, which included not only 10 speakers but also a dance by Congregation Kol Ami religious schoolchildren and a video presentation of children of various faiths singing together at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Temple in Salt Lake City.

Congregation Kol Ami hosted the event; its rabbi, Ilana Schwartzman, gave the benediction.

Among the speakers was Alan Bachman, chairman of the Interfaith Roundtable, which helps sponsor the event with the Inclusion Center. Bachman recalled growing up in a community where almost every man who prayed in his synagogue had been in concentration camps during World War II. One of the men gave him a menorah. "I still have it," he said. "It’s the only possession I’ve had since I was 8."

Despite their terrible past, the men "were some of the happiest people I’ve ever met," he said, and their example spurred him to learn more about all people.

Bachman spoke of three Jewish principles and that a core belief is that believers must not only pray but act on their faith. "To redeem the world with the power of the Holy One, that’s our mission," he said.

That’s part of the reason he works with the Inclusion Center, he said, because only by working together will the world be safe. "Mountains and walls do not protect us today," he said. "It’s getting together, getting to know each other, getting real understanding. Understanding can only come from being together. When two people are fighting, the third person always wins. When faiths are fighting, who wins? People without faith."

Bachman’s story resonated with Susan Northway, the Catholic Diocese’s director of religious education, who also is a member of the Interfaith Roundtable, because she, too, grew up in a neighborhood with Jews who had survived Nazi Germany. But what touched her most about the evening, she said, was "the amazing dedication of people to get along and to appreciate each other. Not just get along but to really get to know each other."

This was unexpected, she said, because she had thought that strong religious identities would mark each one of the speakers, "but what I saw was such a huge view" of the issues, she said.

Imam Muhammed Mahte of the Khadeeja Mosque, Islamic Society of Greater Salt Lake, echoed Bachman’s sentiment that people of different religions must work together. After reciting a Muslim story with the moral that ‘if God thinks highly of someone, there’s nothing you can do about it even if they are different from you,’ the imam said, "We learn something very critical, not just as Muslims but as people. We have to find ways to include individuals as part of ourselves so that we can make a great contribution."

If Muslims, Christians and Jews and other people of faith are to be successful, they must go to each others’ house of worship, meet and talk with each other, he said. "Change comes in small steps."

Not all of the speakers during the event were members of a formal religion. Florien Wineriter, from Humanists of Utah, said that the evening celebrated "diversity of opinion, arrived at by critical thinking." He gave thanks for people who in the past established the right for women and minorities to vote, the right of women to decide when to have a child, for the separation of church and state and for civil rights.

"We celebrate the diversity of human life and the variety of acceptable lifestyles," Wineriter said. "We celebrate the human diversity that makes our communities more enjoyable, our world more peaceful."

While harmony was the theme of the evening, some of the comments revealed rifts that may never be breached. "We do have a long way to go," said James Snow, a member of Saint Martin de Porres’ Latin Mass congregation and the campaign director for 40 Days for Life, Salt Lake City, adding that Catholics, for example, have a strong commitment to the sanctity of human life, "and there were a number of comments speckled throughout that undercut the dignity and intrinsic worth of all human beings from conception to natural death…. I think it’s important to witness to the dignity of all human life."