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A UMNS Report
By Linda Bloom*
7:00 A.M. ET Dec. 18, 2012
As Newtown, Conn., and the world come to grips with tragedy, the area
interfaith community comes together to pray. A UMNS photo by Arthur
McClanahan.
View in Photo Gallery
As the Dec. 16 televised interfaith service made clear, the response in Newtown, Conn., to the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School has transcended religious boundaries.
Representatives of Jewish, Muslim, Baha’i and various Christian
traditions — United Methodist, Congregationalist/ United Church of
Christ, Lutheran, Episcopal, Roman Catholic and Community Church — took
part in the service, which included an impassioned eulogy by President
Obama.
The Rev. Stephen J. Sidorak Jr., top executive of the United Methodist Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns, considers such diversity “a sign of things to come, religiously speaking,” in an area once considered Yankee and Protestant.
“The interreligious response (in Newtown) was quite impressive and, I
think, sophisticated in the best sense of that word,” said Sidorak,
who previously had served for many years as executive director of the
Christian Conference of Connecticut.
Sidorak has experience in organizing that type of joint response.
Three days after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, a service at
the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Hartford drew 3,000 people inside and
1,000 outside to the largest interreligious gathering in Connecticut’s
history.
He was able to pull that off because the connections already existed
through the 7-year-old Connecticut Council for Interreligious
Understanding, of which he was co-founder and past president.
“We built up relationships,” Sidorak explained. “We nurtured them; we sustained them. That’s what it takes.
“Obviously, the religious community of Newtown had done that. They were there for each other.”
The Rev. Karen Karpow, pastor of the United
Methodist Church of Danbury nearby, confirmed the area’s religious
diversity, pointing to Danbury’s own Association of Religious
Communities. That organization sponsored a prayer vigil for Newtown on
Friday evening.
A contingent from her congregation worshipped with the Newtown
United Methodist congregation at 8 a.m. Sunday before Danbury’s regular
10:30 a.m. service. During children’s time at their own church, Karpow
introduced a volunteer team scheduled for Hurricane Sandy relief work
this week on Staten Island and talked “about how we respond when we’re
afraid — that terrible things happen, but helpers come.” The children
then circled around the team and commissioned them.
Praying and grieving together
During the televised service, the Rev. Mel Kawakami, senior pastor of the Newtown United Methodist Church at Sandy Hook,
which is near the school, was paired with Rabbi Shaul Praver of
Congregation Adath Israel in giving the opening general prayers of
grief and consolation.
Praver, who conducted the funeral Dec. 17 for the youngest victim, Noah Pozner, told the New York Times that clergy members in Newtown are “very close” and had been in constant contact since the shootings.
As the service began, the rabbi sang Psalm 46. Kawakami referred to
those killed as “lights lost to the world” and he prayed for God’s
tender mercies for them and for “families and friends torn by grief”
and prayed for God’s love to also encompass “neighborhoods, the town,
state, nation and world.”
The Rev. Jane Sibley, visitation minister for the United Methodist
Newtown congregation, offered a prayer for the first responders — local
and state police who received standing ovations when they entered the
high school auditorium before the memorial began.
Her prayer recognized those who responded when they were needed,
asking God “to walk with them in the days ahead” and provide them with
“people to listen to their stories.”
Jason Graves of the Al Hedaya Islamic Center in Newtown, gave
readings from the Quran and a young child, Muadh Bhavnagarwala, chanted
a Muslim prayer.
John Woodall, a leader in the Baha’i faith community, gave a reading and prayer from his tradition.
Other participants included the Rev. Matt Crebbins, Newtown
Congregational Church; the Rev. Kathleen Adams-Shepherd, Trinity
Episcopal; the Rev. Jim Solomon, New Hope Community Church; the Rev.
Jack Tanner, Newtown Christian Church; the Rev. Leo McIlrath,
ecumenical chaplain of Luther Home of Southbury; the Rev. Bob Weiss,
St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church, and the Rev. Rob Morris, Christ
the King Lutheran Church.
Connecticut Gov. Daniel Malloy remarked
on the faith evident at the service and in the community, calling it
“a faith in which we are given the power to go on, to survive that
which has befallen this community, these families, these spouses.”
In his remarks, Obama said Newtown had inspired the nation.
“In the face of indescribable violence, in the face of
unconscionable evil, you’ve looked out for each other, and you’ve cared
for one another, and you’ve loved one another,” he said. “This is how
Newtown will be remembered. And with time, and God’s grace, that love
will see you through.”
Other ecumenical voices
In a message of condolence and support,
the Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, top executive of the World Council of
Churches, praised the interfaith effort, commending all who “stand in
vigil with those in pain.”
He also could personally relate to the pain that the people of Newtown were experiencing.
A minister in the Church of Norway, Tveit was home last July when “a
deranged gunman” stalked and killed youth at an island summer camp
after planting a car bomb in Oslo. Seventy-seven died.
“In the aftermath, we Norwegians were shocked by the tragedy, yet we
were moved by the way people of various beliefs came together,” Tviet
wrote in his message. “We were all too aware that evil and death are
inescapably real. But we slowly came to appreciate the reality of life
and love, as well.”
Kathryn Lohre, president of the National Council of Churches, related as a parent, expressing her own “shock and the profoundest grief” and noting that such tragedies are “impossible” for theologians and clergy to explain.
Lohre pointed out that the National Council of Churches has been expressing its concern about gun violence for decades. A 2010 resolution called for a unified effort on the part of churches, government and individuals to address the problem.
Bill Mefford, United Methodist Board of Church and Society, is asking other congregations to join his own church, Culmore United Methodist Church in Virginia, in taking action after the Newtown tragedy.
He encourages congregations to write to the President, asking his
support to “make gun ownership a more responsible process with
universal background checks no matter where the gun is purchased” and
“reinstate a vigorous ban on assault weapons.”
*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service multimedia reporter based in New York. Follow her at http://twitter.com/umcscribe.
Elliott Wright, a freelance writer and information consultant for the
United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, contributed to this
report.
News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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