Article December 16, 1996 Issue

The challenge of being religious in America today

by Kim Shippey

The fifteenth National Workshop on Christian-Jewish Relations, held in October in Stamford, Connecticut, brought together more than one thousand people from twenty-three American states and from ten other countries. It was a gathering of clergy, academicians, seminarians, religious leaders, and lay people representing more than fifty different faiths.

Over three days, more than eighty seminars, plenary sessions, Bible studies, and worship services were held, relating to the theme of the conference, "The challenge of being religious in America today." The gatherings covered an extraordinary range of topics, including the role of women in religion; interfaith marriage; religion in society, in politics, in the media, and on the Internet; the Religious Freedom Restoration Act; the search for religious identity; and, for the first time in the twenty-three years of the conference's existence, spiritual healing.

The conference opened with a message from Pope John Paul II, who called on delegates to "work to make our mutual respect increasingly evident in a world where voices of polarization, confrontation, and violence seem all too often to distract attention from the quiet but effective accomplishments being made on behalf of solidarity ..."; and the conference closed with an interfaith worship service that included a Zulu song of farewell, Siyahamba ("We are going ... we are marching in the light of God"). SALAD BOWL During a plenary session on "The Impact of Religion on Society," Dr. Cecil L. Murray, pastor of the

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