Council holds Muslim, Christian worship service
By Paula R. Kincaid, The Layman Online, September 24, 2004
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – A worship service held Wednesday afternoon at the General Assembly Council meeting included readings from the Bible, the Koran and reflections from Moderator Rick Ufford-Chase on the time he spent in Colombia.
Ufford-Chase’s reflections were based on Matthew 5:1-12, the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. The Old Testament reading was from Micah 6:6-8.
The reading of the Koran was by Dr. Aslam Khaki, a Muslim from Pakistan. The worship service followed a presentation on the Interfaith Listening Teams, which are made up of 10 teams, each including a Muslim and a Christian who travel in the U.S. and speak at churches, schools and other events.
Ufford-Chase had spoken of his Colombia trip earlier in the day, saying he was part of an accompaniment program. During his five-day stay, Ufford-Chase said he attended meetings with Colombian government officials, where “my job was to sit and look grim and say we are watching, we are paying attention and we want you to know it.”
“Colombia is special right now,” said Ufford-Chase during the worship service, “not because it is unique in the world in the level of violence it is experiencing. … We have a special call from the church there, and we are trying to heed that call.”
He said Colombia has been experiencing a Civil War for 40 years, and that even those in Colombia can’t determine why it is being fought.
“In the guerilla movement the interests have been so corrupted – it’s not in behalf of the people – so you can’t distinguish between their violence and others,” he said. “And then you have the paramilitary, operating with a wink and a nod from the government in plain clothes with automatic weapons and carrying out violence.”
And if that isn’t confusing enough, Ufford-Chase said, there is also drug-trafficking, which involves huge amounts of money and the highest levels of society. And, he said, Colombia “has either the fortune or misfortune of having oil, so there are U.S. interests in Colombia that further complicate matters.”
“It is hard to decide whose side to be on,” he said.
“Colombia is in the most disturbing way possible a window to the world right now – a situation of violence where we can’t tell who are the antagonists or the protagonists … the level of violence goes up and up and up,” he said. “There are armed actors who are sanctioned by a government and armed actors who aren’t.”
The Colombian Presbyterian Church has something to teach us, he said. “They insist that the church stands for non-violence. The church will stand with the poorest, the displaced, those who have the most to lose … That action in the world we live in today is considered subversive – to insist that we will be a church to stand always for nonviolence – nothing can be scarier than that.”
“The poor, the sad, the humble, those who seek what is good and true, the kind, the forgiving … blessed are all of you when you find yourselves in that position,” he said. “Then the simple act of trying to reach across barriers and boundaries is an act of courage.”
“The act of trying to pair up Christians and Muslims and bring them here to tell their stories is an almost unbelievable act of courage in our world today. The act of inviting Christians and Muslims and Jews and Hindus and people of all different places in the world into our homes and listen, with the expectation that we might be changed, that is an act of courage in our world today,” he said.
He said the task of the church – of all religions, and faith communities – is to insist that the religious institutions not be undermined by those who would use the church to do violence.
“Every one of our religions has those that say that God calls us to violence, bet we all know that God calls us to something far different,” he said.