We’re thrilled to welcome Rev. Kristin Stoneking to The Table this Sunday as our special guest preacher! Here is a link to Kristin’s address at the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington.
Kristin is the Executive Director of Fellowship of Reconciliation, a global interfaith organization committed to organizing, training, and growing a diverse movement that welcomes all people of conscience to end structures of violence and war, and create peace through the transformative power of nonviolence. Kristin is an ordained United Methodist pastor who led our ecumenical campus ministry at UC Davis in building a Multifaith Living Community. She’s nearing completion of a Ph.D. in interreligious studies & nonviolence education at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and lives in Davis with her spouse, Elizabeth Campi, and their two fabulous children.
Upcoming in Worship
August 28 Practicing Christianity in a Multifaith World (Kristin Stoneking)
September 4 The Call to Justice-Making (Chris Logan)
Kristin’s message will invite us to reflect on what it means to follow Jesus in a multifaith world. How might we say yes to Jesus in ways that honor and respect the diverse faith traditions that makeup our contemporary religious landscape?
This week reflect upon a particular relationship you’ve had with a person from another religious faith. How did your relationship with this person begin and how did it unfold? What did the person teach you? How was this relationship challenging? How was it inspiring?
Read the following paragraphs from The United Methodist Church’s “Called to Be Neighbors and Witnesses: Guidelines for Interreligious Relationships”:
The intent in developing interreligious relationships is not to amalgamate all faiths into one religion. We Christians have no interest in such syncretism. To engage in interreligious dialogue is neither to endorse nor to deny the faith of other people. In dialogue we mutually seek insight into the wisdom of other traditions and we hope to overcome our fears and misapprehensions. Far from requiring a lessening of commitment to Christ, effective dialogue is only possible when one’s own faith is strong, and may ultimately serve to deepen or extend it.
We Christians are seeking to be neighbors with persons whose religious commitments are different from our own and to engage each other about the deepest convictions of our lives. In our assurance of and trust in God’s grace in Jesus Christ, we open ourselves to dialogue and engagement with persons of other faith communities and to other Christians whose understandings, cultures, and practices may be different from our own.
This interreligious engagement challenges United Methodist Christians to think in new ways about our lives in the broader human community, about our mission, evangelism, service, and our life together within the Christian church. We seek to promote peace and harmony with persons of other religious traditions in our various towns, cities, and neighborhoods. Yet we do not hide our differences, nor avoid conflicts, but seek to make them constructive. In each place, we share our lives with each other, we witness and are witnessed to, we invite others into the Christian community and we are invited into theirs. Our prayer is that the lives of all in each place will be enriched by the differences of others, that a new sense of community may emerge, and that others may receive the gift of God in Christ, while we receive the gifts which have been given them.”
Take time to eflect on this statement from our global denomination. What encourages you? What troubles you? What questions do you have in relationship to this document?