Interfaith Partnership helping fight hunger

Members of different faith groups joined forces to feed the hungry in St. Charles County.

The Interfaith Partnership on June 19 collected 1,377 nonperishable food items for the FISH of St. Charles County food pantry in St. Peters. They also collected $740 that the Hunger Task Force will use to buy perishable food for pantries throughout the county.

"We can't donate a dozen eggs, but we can donate money to buy them," said Ann Miller, Interfaith Partnership chairwoman.

FISH provided a van to transport the food and buckets to carry the cash collected by 19 Interfaith Partnership members who spent four hours seeking donations at the Mobil service station on Jungermann Road in St. Peters. The station closed two pumps to accommodate the food drive, Miller said.

This is the sixth year for the Interfaith Partnership's annual food drive. Miller said the volunteers saw a good response, but donations were down from last year's total of 2,300 food items and $1,000 cash.

Miller said the heat might have played a factor. The St. Peters Olde Tyme Picnic ran simultaneously, and could have drawn people away from the location, she said.

Miller said donors might be saving their food for another upcoming drive, the Saturday Jubilee on July 31. More than 600 volunteers will collect nonperishable food outside grocery stores and deliver it to the Operation Food Search warehouse in Wentzville for distribution to pantries throughout St. Charles, Lincoln and Warren counties.

"It all goes to the same cause, so that is fine," Miller said.

The Interfaith Partnership is a nonprofit organization that includes members of different faith groups, including Christians, Jews and Muslims. It meets monthly and seeks to promote respect and understanding through dialogue and community events.

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Campaign for Love and Forgiveness ends, but impact lives on - Baltimore Sun

Campaign for Love and Forgiveness ends, but impact lives on - Baltimore Sun: "Campaign for Love and Forgiveness ends, but impact lives on
Foundation's 4-year initiative claims lasting effects
June 13, 2010|By Liz F. Kay, The Baltimore Sun
An interfaith peace garden in Northeast Baltimore builds tolerance among religions through annual conversations about forgiveness. At-risk youth forgive others and themselves with the help of drumming and dance.

It's all part of a four-year Maryland Public Television campaign wrapping up this Tuesday to promote love and forgiveness. But participants say the program, part of an effort to build the concepts nationwide, will have a lasting impact.

MPT was one of five stations that worked with the Fetzer Institute, a foundation based in Michigan that 'engages with people and organizations to bring the power of love, forgiveness and compassion to the center of individual and community life,' said Linda Grdina, an officer with the Fetzer program."

A symbol of progress in Lower Manhattan

By Joshua M. Z. Stanton and Zeeshan Suhail


Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue

Muslim Consultative NetworkIn the rabbinic tradition, it is said that if you bring color to a person's face by upsetting them, it is as though you have physically struck him. If so, the Cordoba House and its leaders have endured a true assault.


This past month has seen a flurry of protests from extreme opponents of the Cordoba House, a proposed community center in Lower Manhattan that would be founded by Muslims but serve all New Yorkers. While dissenters comprise only a small minority of voices, they have drowned out the large and growing number of the center's supporters, as well as those who simply want to learn more about its overarching aims.

Individuals, like tea party leader Mark Williams, have mislabeled the Cordoba House a potential breeding ground for fundamentalism and tried to smear its sponsoring organizations, the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, both of which have a strong record of promoting interfaith dialogue and improving Muslim-Western relations.

Sadly, these protesters have failed to distinguish between the mainstream Muslim majority and the tiny minority of militant Muslims.

Opponents say that building a Muslim-led community center near Ground Zero, a site of profound American loss and pain, would be a "victory" for militant Muslims and a loss for Americans. In fact, it is the undermining of Cordoba House that would be a true loss for Americans. One need only look as far as its name - inspired by the medieval city in Spain, Cordoba, where Christians, Jews and Muslims co-existed and thrived for 800 years - to realize that these critics are misguided.

In fact, Cordoba House is poised to become a gathering place for the enemies of militant Muslims: mainstream Muslims. It will be a sign of internal resistance to the tyranny that a small group of terrorists has tried to impose on the broader community of Muslim believers, whose ultimate goal is peace.

We, a lay Muslim American and former New Yorker, and a future rabbi and current New Yorker, are proud to stand behind this initiative. It sends a clear and profound global message that Muslims will not tolerate extremism and instead seek to collaborate with followers of other faiths and work for the common good.

Global significance aside, just imagine the local impact of Cordoba House: the community center would provide, in its creators' words, a "cultural nexus" for New Yorkers to come together for education, performances, sports and person-to-person interaction.

New York is one of the most religiously diverse cities in the world. Where better to create a space where Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Hindu New Yorkers, among others, can learn from each other through art classes, poetry readings, film screenings and interfaith dialogue? By investing in the larger New York community, Cordoba House is poised to become an incubator of social progress and haven of tolerance.

In many respects, fringe opponents of the Cordoba House have already failed - even before they rallied in protest against it on June 6. New York's Community Board recently endorsed the community center with a vote of 29 to 1, with 10 abstentions, and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg expressed his support for its construction.

Yet for Cordoba House to achieve its true potential, particularly in the face of such radical critics, people of all backgrounds must support this initiative and others like it - politically, socially, financially and, most importantly, personally. For it to truly bring together people of all religions and even those of no particular faith, New Yorkers - and indeed all Americans - should voice their support for Cordoba House and speak up about what they would truly like to see within its walls.

By participating in this effort together, New Yorkers can reclaim Cordoba House from its detractors and help it come to fruition as a symbol of progress.

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