A Common Heart – An Inter-religious Dialogue

A Common Heart was created in 2009 by three places of worship … a Catholic Church, a Jewish Synagogue and an Islamic Center. The goal is to “join the efforts of Peacemakers nationally and worldwide to put an end to war, mistrust and suspicion.” They hosted an Inter-religious Dialogue focusing on each group’s Sacred Text, which I attended last week. It was obviously a topic of interest … they prepared for 250 people and it was standing room only.

The panelists did an excellent job. I took notes, but I wish I could have recorded everything word for word … below is my summary of what each one said about their texts.

Mr. Elsayed Elmarzouky, Dr. Khalid Blankinship,

Rabbi Brian Michelson, Rev. Phillip Rodgers

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Jewish - The Torah is written in Hebrew and is on a scroll. It’s recognized as God’s words to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Some view is as given by God word for word — others say it was divinely inspired, but written (and therefore affected) by mankind. The Torah translated to any other language and in book form is not considered the Torah, it’s considered a translation of the true Torah. Along with the Torah, the Talmund is also considered sacred and is used. It’s a collection of discussions and writings about Jewish, law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history.

Muslim – The Qur’an is written in Arabic. The Qur’an is considered to be revealed by God to Muhammad and considered to be God’s exact words. The Qur’an translated to any other language is not considered the Qur’an, it’s only considered a translation of the true Qur’an. Muslims also use the Hadith, a collection of instructions on how to live out the Qur’an, which is considered to be semi-revealed to various prophets over the centuries.

Christian – The Bible was written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. It is considered to be divinely inspired by God, with God using various people (over centuries) to compose the Bible. It is divided into two parts, called the Old and the New Testament. Many of the books in the Old Testament are the same or similar to the books in the Torah. It has been translated into hundreds of languages and each Bible, no matter what language or form it is published in, is considered The Bible. A lot of commentaries have been written on the Bible or select books within the Bible, but Christianity is unique in that it doesn’t have an additional sacred scriptures with instructions on how to live out the Bible.

After the discussion on their scriptures, each one talked about the selected text for the evening — the Abraham and Isaac story.

The stories are similar in all three scriptures … the biggest differences is that the Torah and the Bible name Isaac as the son, the Qur’an does not give a son’s name, only saying Abraham and his son. Dr. Blankinship said that some Muslims think it was Isaac, others think it was Ishmael.

After these discussions … there was a time of questions and answers. The questions and their responses were excellent. I was disappointed that the Q & A time wasn’t longer and I hope A Common Heart has more events to continue the discussion.

I will post the questions and following discussions tomorrow. Questions included talking about the symbols for each religion. Along with their thoughts on the afterlife, Mary (mother of Jesus) and the extremists within each religion. There was also a discussion on the male headcovering in Judaism and Islam, which I found interesting considering that in my traditional Mennonite background the women wear head coverings. Oh, the joys and the confusion within religion.

Have you ever been to an event like this? What did you learn from it?

An Inter-religious Dialogue – Part 2

An Inter-religious Dialogue - Part 3