Why are these chrislam services NEVER held in a mosque? Because it isn’t about ‘interfaith’ it IS about domination!

Various faiths find commonality at service

by David Andreatta

A Christian, a Jew and a Muslim walked into a church.

It sounds like the start of a joke, but there they were, hundreds of them, in fact, standing shoulder to shoulder in the pews of the grand Third Presbyterian Church in Rochester singing “America the Beautiful” to cap an [chrislam] interfaith prayer service that has become as much a rite of Thanksgiving here as turkey, football and commercials trumpeting low, low prices.

“You can just feel the vibe around you of people coming together for one thing — to give thanks,” said Husain Bawany, 21, a Brighton resident who delivered the Muslim call to prayer between greetings from a minister and a reading from a rabbi. “It’s the one thing that really unites us.”

The Union Thanksgiving Service, as the celebration is formally known, has been proclaimed by participants to be the longest-running annual interfaith Thanksgiving religious service in the country.

Organizers trace its roots to 1874, when congregants of the First Unitarian Church, Temple B’rith Kodesh and the First Universalist Church joined in prayer over the holiday. According to published histories of the congregations, the prayer service followed an era of periodic pulpit swaps, a then-radical practice in which the Unitarian minister and Jewish rabbi preached to the other’s congregation.

The metaphorical thread of tolerance and thanks that ran through that first service was magnified on Thursday in a blessing by the Rev. Kenneth Williams of the First Baptist Church of Rochester, one of nine houses of worship represented at the service.

“We live in a harsh culture. We’re mean. We’re partisan,” Williams said. “What is the remedy? The remedy is gratitude.”

Many of the 300 or so people who gathered under the vaulted ceilings and stained glass of the church described themselves as regulars of the service.

Ruth Hyde, a Quaker from Brighton who has attended the event for over 20 years, said the message of commonality and tolerance through shared gratitude spoke to her.

“I worship in silence so this is a very strange and unusual way for me to worship, but I do it once a year,” said Hyde, 82, who belongs to the Rochester Friends Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. “It’s just so important to try and understand other people’s religions . . . even if I don’t agree with them.”

A Unitarian minister offered a prayer, a member of the Islamic Center of Rochester delivered the sermon and a rabbi gave the benediction. A shofar was blown, a responsive reading was recited and music was played by a Catholic organist.

At the end, everyone in the church sang of spacious skies and amber waves of grain as organizers readied collection plates to benefit the needy in rural and migrant enclaves of western New York.

“It breaks down barriers,” Sarada George, 61, of Brighton said of the service she has been attending for so many years she lost count. “We’re all human.”

DANDREAT

Twitter: @dandreattaDandC