This February 23rd and 24th, the student fellows of Hebrew College’s Boston Interfaith Leadership Initiative (BILI) offered a retreat to local college students entitled, “Religion at the Dinner Table: Conversations that Matter.” As organizers, our goal for the retreat was to facilitate dialogue among attendees of all and no faiths in the hopes that they will learn about interfaith work and leave the retreat desiring to create interfaith spaces in their own communities. This was the second such BILI retreat.
Planning for February’s retreat had been underway since this year’s fellows first met in September 2018, although I was blessed enough to attend the first BILI retreat in April 2018. Last year’s retreat took place on a Saturday, so we celebrated Havdalah, the Jewish ceremony of separation from the Sabbath. That was my first introduction to Jewish prayer, but the tone of the retreat (the theme was “hospitality”) enabled me as a Catholic to feel like a valued participant.
This year, in our continued effort to encourage people to share their religious practices and learn from others, the BILI fellows offered Havdalah, a Muslim prayer, and a Christian worship service during the retreat. I volunteered to design and lead Sunday morning’s Christian service. Running a nondenominational Christian worship service is itself an interfaith endeavor, since there is so much theology that divides the various denominations—like centuries-old disagreements over the translation and interpretation of the Bible, who (if anyone) is allowed to lead Christendom, and the meaning of the communion bread and wine. An added challenge during planning was the need to ensure that the language and structure of the service were not immediately alienating to non-Christians. All that is to say, I had quite a lot to consider.
As I began, I asked myself this: what is essential to all of Christianity? For me, the immediate answer is Jesus (and also probably a thing or two about love). I can certainly write pages about Jesus using the language of my Catechism and the Catholic liturgy, but I needed instead to distill the sectarian theology I have learned into prayers for a friendly, undogmatic service.
Singing, reading sacred scripture, and partaking of communion are essential elements of my Christian practice, so I used those to create a basic outline. The finalized service included, in this order: an opening song and blessing, a time for collection and sharing of joys in lieu of money, time for communal prayers of petition, two readings from sacred scripture, a group reflection on the readings, and a closing blessing and song. In order to help people feel welcomed, the service was highly interactive. The prayers, lyrics, and readings were written in the order of service to enable people to follow along silently or aloud. The homily and collection were non-traditional; instead of preaching following the readings, attendees were divided into small groups to reflect on the word. Further, attendees were invited to write their joys on small pieces of paper, which were collected and read aloud. At first, the service also included an agape feast of bread and water in place of a more traditional rite of communion. Since our schedule allotted only thirty minutes for the service, though,the agape feast was eliminated. However, many congregations do not partake of communion every Sunday (or on Sunday at all!).
I considered opening with the song “Come, Now is the Time to Worship.” I remember the song fondly from my time as a child in a Catholic grammar school and wanted to use it because it has what I thought was the ideal tone of invitation. As I was copying the lyrics into the order of service, I came across the following verse:
One day every tongue will confess you are God
One day every knee will bow
Still the greatest treasure remains for those
Who gladly choose you now
I stopped. I had not before thought of this beloved song as hegemonic and threatening. The lyrics suggest that every person will be a Christian after their death (“one day”) and, further, that God prefers one person over another (“those” who “gladly choose” Christianity now). Those exclusive sentiments are not conducive to the kind of interfaith environment we as fellows wanted to create. Concerned that atheists or even non-Christians would feel singled-out by these lyrics, I began looking for a different song.
I eventually decided to mix traditional and contemporary with the songs “City of God” and “One Thing Remains.” Both songs have a positive tone. The first is welcoming, hopeful, and joyous, while the second is easy to pick up and—unlike most of the worship I am familiar with—does not use gendered or hierarchical language to refer to the self or to God.
Although I was tempted to endlessly worry about the precise adjectives used in each prayer, I tried to remember what the Catholic chaplain at my school had told me in response to conflicting opinions among the student-leaders of a club. She said, quite simply, that you cannot please everyone. “Well, of course, not!” I thought. I try to remember that lesson when engaged in interfaith work, which rarely achieves perfect harmony. Overall, I am pleased with the ecumenical service. It is brief, educational, and, most importantly, interfaith. There will be time for feedback from the retreat attendees, and I look forward to learning how to improve such a practice in the future.