"Love all, Worship one!"

As promised I am going to write a few thoughts about the high school youth retreat theme. The subject for the retreat centered on exploring the monotheistic religions (Islam, Christianity, Judaism). The theme, "Love all, Worship One," ends up leading to a tension between steering others to a new faith or developing a better understanding of God through the experiences of others.

At the basic level the theme is about unity and tolerance. Methodists have the classic saying of "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors." In the spirit of this motto the theme fits very well.
By listening and talking with others we begin to break down the fear of the "other". This allows us to understand the human experience around the world and by extension God too.

Probably the most difficult talk given at the retreat was the discussion on Christianity. The majority of the group are Christians and so the speaker is "preaching to the choir." The speaker tried to balance this with presenting questions and how in our own faith we have lots of diversity. Unfortunately, this then leads to the impression that we have no basics in our faith where the other two have something they believe in.

We ended up exploring other faiths tenets, practices, and understandings to engage in a interfaith dialogue. The problem with this though is what one of my friends pointed out when I told them about the topic of the retreat. They pointed out that in interfaith dialogues it is important to be grounded and secure in what you believe before discussing with others. I am not sure how many High School students are secure and solid in their own faith to have that discussion. Case in point: I heard from one of the other ministers afterward that the girls from their church now want to be Jewish. This does not sound like a group that was secure in their faith and ready to learn from others, but several students who were fascinated with the aspects of Judaism they were exposed to.

The other thing that needs to be present to have an interfaith dialogue is being aware of one's own biases. After we know our faith then we know what biases and premises we bring to an interfaith dialogue. If we do not know our biases then we will often ask many questions that are either offensive, aggressive, or based on our own assumptions. This was very obvious from the questions that were asked of the Islamic speaker. There were questions about terrorists and angry Muslims (which come from our cultural bias- media).

This ends up begging the question of if at high school age students are ready for an interfaith dialogue. My assessment would be no for most. There were some rare students there who have had deep conversations about their faith and what it means for the last 3-6 years. These students are ready to engage in a meaningful way into this dialogue. As I explained in my post about attitudes in ministry, this was the minority there. Most groups did not have a solid, trusting, safe foundation with their faith and ministers to be able to go there yet.

Even though there is the obvious difficulty of this theme for the group the weekend ended up being very good. The group balanced the tensions of the topic very well. I did not expect it to be pulled off so well. There were difficulties with the age group, their foundation, and the question of if this really helped them in their faith, but all in all it was done very well.