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Daring to Dream
Ron Miller

 

An initiative which looks to the future and attempts to bring Christians and Jews out of the a secular arena 6 referred to in Professor Rylaarsdam's article, is the recently-founded Common Ground. Its programs aim to help individuals, through knowledge and opportunities for deeper sharing, to come to understand the other's faith and tradition s from his side, in his terms ».

Apart from outright denial, how do we Americans combat prejudices between Christians and Jews? In this country, the most common means for salving our consciences about anything is to create a day of awareness — after all, one out of 365 cannot be too burdensome. We find a day to think about Mother and another day for Dad. Secretaries, veterans and the handicapped also receive a day or possibly an entire week. So too with Jews and Christians. We are accustomed to the familiar scene in the posed newspaper photograph — one rabbi, one minister and one priest, all shaking hands to mark the opening of Brotherhood Week. Nice things are said about everyone having one God and all of us enjoying bagels. The reader smiles; guilt is temporarily assuaged, and we all have permission to return to the separate camps in which we live for the other days of the year.

These gestures are inadequate. The only possible future we can dare to dream must include deep sharing across barriers of religion, race and culture. Like everything else, this sharing has to begin with individuals. Talking with my good friend, a rabbi and director, we discovered that we both shared the feeling that a vacuum existed which needed to be filled. On that spring afternoon almost three years ago, we began to speak of Franz Rosenzweig and the center of Jewish study he established in Frankfurt in the 20's, and we lamented the lack of any really neutral space here where adults could confront religious issues in an interfaith atmosphere of sustained dialogue. We noted how religious institutions often turned in on themselves, pursuing their own agenda, unable or unwilling to attend to this broader spiritual search. We realized too the limitations of the academic contexts in which religions arc studied; the maze of registering, crediting and testing which, clearly necessary, often meant that these institutions failed to nurture this inner hunger for spiritual growth and communication across barriers.

Celebrate religious pluralism

Somewhere in the midst of this conversational flow, the idea emerged of starting a new center for religious study and dialogue. It would fill the gap between the necessarily limited concerns of religious institutions and the evaluative machinery of academic structures. Our insight that day was of a space for an organization which spoke to the need for a religious search without itself being a religion. Furthermore, it would be an organization geared to education without being a school. It would not only acknowledge hut celebrate the religious pluralism of the world community. And rather than simply admit adults into courses set up for traditional college-age students, it could direct its programs to those people in what C. G. Jung has referred to as « the afternoon of life », the years from thirty onwards which have the highest potential for spiritual growth.

The gathering of teachers was the next step, and our fellow graduate students formed the teaching core: an anthropologist, a student of Eastern religions, a specialist in Eastern Christianity. Then a series of informal gatherings with friends laid the groundwork of initial interest and attracted the first board members, people willing to invest time in what was still only a dream. A businessman, a Catholic nun, a corporation lawyer, a Quaker woman, a young minister — a nucleus was forming. And then a name was found, Common Ground, and we were officially incorporated on May 7, 1975.

When the first bulletin rolled off the press, we sensed that the dream was becoming a reality. Two main kinds of programs were offered: open forums and workshops. These continue to define the basic structure of Common Ground's service to the community. Open forums are single events on religion-related topics. The speaker makes a presentation on a subject and this is followed by questions from the floor and general discussion. The open forums not only inform people about various areas of spiritual interest but also generate further participation in the Common Ground program. Faith in Islam, The Female Principle in Judaism, Karma and Reincarnation, Religions of the American Indians —all of these have been open forum topics.

Workshops are the real heart of the Common Ground experience. They are ongoing educational opportunities, anywhere from three to ten weeks in duration, meeting once a week for two hours. Workshops too have covered a broad spectrum of interests from Comparative Mysticism and Moral Decision-Making to Zen Ink Drawing. In addition to workshops, we recently added a category of activities called « Special Events », which have included a variety of programs from interfaith concerts to tours of the Spertus Museum of Judaica and a Franciscan novitiate.

Jewish-Christian dialogue

Although we range across the world's religions, Common Ground is of ten seen primarily as a center for Jewish-Christian dialogue. This perception results from several factors, including the demography of Chicago's North Shore with its sizable Jewish and Christian communities, my own professional interest and background in Jewish-Christian dialogue, and the compelling concerns of our membership. The bulk of our workshops have centered on the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, Christian and Jewish spirituality (Thomas Merton, Martin Buber, Paul Tillich, Elie Wiesel), and the history of polemic between Jews and Christians (using, for example, Rosemary Ruether's excellent Faith and Fratricide). Many discussions have been geared specifically to better Jewish-Christian understanding.

The path to this better mutual understanding begins with knowledge. Until the Christian understands something of Jewish history — that 1492 was a date connected not only with America's discovery but also with Spain's expulsion of Jews, that the Crusaders are not only the ideal figures of Christian legend but also the murderers of whole Jewish communities in the Rhineland — until this educational process takes place, there is little room for dialogue. And the same illumination of the other side awaits the Jewish partner in dialogue — that Christians are not all like the street-corner proselytizers most frequently encountered by Jews, that Europe produced holy and compassionate Christians as well as inquisitors and leaders of pogroms.

When some foundation of knowledge has been laid, then the moment comes for a deeper kind of sharing. This may happen in a workshop on scripture, when a Jewish woman talks about her understanding of Jeremiah's promise of a new covenant or of the suffering servant passages in Isaiah. and a Christian listens without trying to convert or convince and then explains her own understanding of these same passages. Or such a deeper exploration may occur when each person in the group talks about the way his family perceived others —how non-Catholics were regarded in a Catholic home, how Gentiles were understood in a Jewish family. Sometimes a symbol of faith opens up an intense experience of dialogue. Each person in the group may comment about his or her perspective on the cross, for example, and there is both amazement and awe as the truth emerges that what is considered a sign of mercy by a Christian may well represent persecution and intolerance to her Jewish partner in dialogue.

The key to progress here is sustained and patient effort. We are all capable of an annual r/ Brotherhood Day » when we can feel good despite our differences. But the ongoing work of understanding another person's texture of faith and tradition, from his side, in his terms, and the even more challenging task of feeling the other side: all this comes more slowly. And these are Common Ground's most far-reaching goals. There have been Christians who for two years now have tried to read and understand their Old Testament >, first and foremost as the Bible of the Jewish people, the record of God's covenant which can never be old. And Jews have studied Christianity from Jesus and Paul to Hans Kung and the Niebuhrs, trying to understand the revelation of divinity in flesh, a revelation so foreign to the Jewish mentality and tradition.

As we move into a third year of activity, we are conscious of many shortcomings and failures. We have neither panacea nor parousia. But we do have some basic ways of working and growing. And we have hope. For the best part of what Common Ground does lies outside of its formal structure, in the friendships and bonds of understanding which continue after the workshops and open forums are over.

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Mr. Ron Miller, founder of the organization Common Ground and director of its programs, is on the faculty of Barat College, Lake Forest College and Loyola University's Pastoral Institute, U.S.A. He is currently completing dissertation work in Jewish-Christian studies at Northwestern University.