Other People's Religion

Gerald L. Zelizer

President's Weekend and Valentine's Day highlight mid-February. Lesser known is Brotherhood Week, a winter pause established by the National Conference of Christians and Jews as an opportunity to respect one another's religion.

Usually, because the goal is so innocuous, the observance passes with a salute or, more realistically, a yawn, even from some clergy.

This February, though, sees a burgeoning phenomenon in American religions which, although not yet a trend, occurs frequently enough to elevate Brotherhood Week from lower case to capital letters.

In some settings, religions are not only tolerating other ones, but also using their own indigenous spaces and resources to nurture the faith of "the other." For example:

-- In Edison, N.J., a YMCA and Jewish Community Center have agreed to connect their separate facilities on the same property. Members have access to both institutions - to the superior health facilities in the YMCA and to the better pool in the JCC. The passageway connecting the two facilities will be closed on the respective holidays of either religion. Members of the YMCA who swim in the Jewish Center pool will be prohibited from bringing food that is not kosher.

-- In Niles, Ill., the after-school and pre-school programs of a YMCA, which hosts a large Jewish population from nearby Skokie, include a curriculum teaching children the major religious symbols and holidays of both Christianity and Judaism.

-- In Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, is an even more dramatic shared facility of the United Church of Christ and Temple Shalom. This is not a case of one faith renting space temporarily from a second, but building together from inception. The motivation was both practical and ideological.

Christians and Jews decided that a joint building was more economical and made a declaration that there could be "two faiths, one God, one idea." The sanctuaries are joined at their backs with a movable wall. The seating of both rotates and allows for merging spaces during maximum attendance at Jewish High Holy Days or Christmas Eve. Religious symbolism, such as crosses and menorahs, are either portable or coverable. Of course, a careful schedule is worked out for those occasional dates when a major observance like Christmas falls on the Friday night of the Jewish Sabbath.

The sharing of pews by distinctive religions in so many permanent, civilian settings is unprecedented in American life. Previously, it was generally restricted to either emergency conditions or military and hospital chapels. And this is more than partaking of apple pie and brotherhood. This external merging is made possible by a changed interior of religious life.

The Catholic theologian Michael Novak has noted that, in America, freedom and religion combine to yield original models with unprecedented raisons d'être.

For example, according to YMCA communications director Francesca Sgambati, their mission statement originally used Christian as a noun. But in its most current form, it has become an adjective, as in putting "Christian principles into a program that builds healthier spirit, mind and body for all." That more generic goal allows broader YMCA programs for those who seek the sound body and spirit but perhaps not the theology of Christianity.

Then, too, American pragmatism contributes to these new arrangements. The collaboration in New Jersey resulted from the Jewish facility seeking an updated health facility, while the Christian one, located in another area of town, required a satellite in an area with a growing population. The YMCA of Niles, Ill., as host to a large school population of Jewish children from nearby Skokie, understood that it must do something which their Jewish parents would accept.

And localism accounts for this reshaping of the religious landscape, too. The YMCA in Newton, Mass., justifies its after-school program, which teaches the religious symbols of both Judaism and Christianity, and its closing on the major Jewish observance of Yom Kippur, with its customized mission statement, that reads: "to teach the values of the Judeo-Christian tradition."

Collaboration also requires assurances from both sides that proselytizing and salesmanship by the partner will not undermine its own efforts. To counter such concerns, both Jewish and Christian institutions should understand that secularism and indifference are a much greater common threat. As Jim Gilpin, director of the YMCA in Niles, observed, "Better a faith than no faith at all."

Finally, not every aspect of this spiritual shift is to be applauded. If religion in America consists of one large faith, with minor variations, then one brand or the other becomes superfluous. There are, after all, doctrinal differences between faiths. To the extent that shared space inadvertently creates the illusion of shared doctrine, the experiment should be watched carefully. For at Brotherhood Week, the flavor of America's religions is not admired for its amalgam, but for its diversity.