Interfaith Service Affirms Racial Equality and Dignity
The Mount Hope AME Zion Church on Lake Street in White Plains was packed with hundreds of people Sunday afternoon as members of religious organizations around Westchester gathered together for an interfaith service to affirm racial equality and dignity and to remember the nine people shot and killed at Emanuel AME Church, Charleston, SC, last Wednesday.
The event was co-sponsored by a litany of organizations: American Jewish Committee (AJC) Westchester; The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Westchester Stake; Episcopal Diocese of New York; Hudson River Presbytery; Interreligious Council of New Rochelle; Westchester Martin Luther King Institute for Nonviolence; Metropolitan New York Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; Mount Hope AME Zion Church; Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York; United Methodist Church New York Annual Conference; Upper Westchester Muslim Society; and Westchester Jewish Council.
Speaking with great emotion from the pulpit, representatives of the different religious groups chose readings from their own traditions for a mix of sentiment that not only expressed the unique differences of each tradition, but also the similarity of spiritual expression.
Stuart Ginsberg, president AJC Westchester, opened the gathering saying that: “We have come together in response to crisis. We have come together to pray. When people pray together they build bonds of love and eradicate prejudices.”
The words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel were adapted for the event: No religion is an island; we share the kinship of humanity, the capacity for compassion. Let us not be guided by ignorance or disdain. Let lives of holiness illumine all our paths.
Commenting on the compassion and forgiveness shown by the congregation at Emanuel AME Church, speakers highlighted the fact that one of the key elements of that church’s mission was the concept of “Hospitality to the Stranger” that formed the basis of the prayer group letting a stranger into its midst and then speaking out in forgiveness after such a horrible atrocity was committed.
“Hospitality means the creation of free space for the stranger to enter,” one speaker said.
Portions of a letter from North Carolina State Senator Johnson to Pastor Tyler and Elders of Shorter AME were presented.
“On a night when old, devastating patterns of racial injustice return like childhood nightmares, it seemed the best thing to do was to get out of my bed and drive over here to make sure this note was the first thing you saw when you walked in the church tomorrow. This white man is driving over to this AME church to tell you how deeply grateful I am that the leaders of your church have helped build this city, and how honored I am that the ancestors of this church have helped build this great country,” the Senator wrote.
Imam Abdul Azeez said his Muslim congregation was feeling the pain. “When you hurt, we hurt,” he said.
Pastor Gregory Smith of the host Mount Hope AME Zion Church spoke about the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Beloved Community as referred to by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
“In the Beloved Community, conflict is resolved nonviolently. No conflict needs to erupt in violence,” he said. “We must break the cycle and make no distinction between the friend and the enemy.”
The event ended with a meal and scripture conversations among the group intended to break down the walls of difference for the establishment of common ground.
