Chautauqua Abrahamic
- Who is Abraham?
- Who is the God of Abraham?
- How are Jews, Christians, and Muslims related to Abraham and his God?
- How are these questions important to people of the 21st century?
Ten years ago, having looked closely for many years at the brokenness of human relationships in the Middle East, Chautauqua determined to exercise our strong suit in the field of religion by exploring a way to shed positive light into human relationships in the Middle East by educating about the three religions which originated there and which claim descendance from Abraham. Utilizing the Chautauqua method of convening conversation, presenting information and comparative points of view, and engaging dialogue, prominent scholars and clergy representing the faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have been invited to Chautauqua to educate, raise awareness, and take the question of what it means to worship the same God out of the realm of theology and into the pragmatic realm of how that question can teach us how to live together. The intention has been that, if American Jews, Christians, and Muslims can create a lived community, then that model can be lifted up throughout the world.
This is the ultimate goal of Chautauqua’s Abrahamic Program: to foster a lived community of appreciation in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims – and, indeed, people of all faiths – can live in peace and mutual affirmation of what the other holds dear. The process for implementing this goal is three-fold: 1) develop the experience within the Chautauqua gates; 2) encourage Chautauquans to take the experience beyond the gates into the larger world; 3) create links to the larger world for networking and collaboration.
The Chautauqua Abrahamic Program is intended to be a model for other communities to emulate. We want to model thoughtful inquiry and engagement, respectful acknowledgement of difference as well as sameness, recognition and appreciation for mutual fears and hopes, and shared regret for past misunderstandings and injustices. Through meaningful dialogue, we hope to invite life-affirming relationships and life-building communities in which people of all faiths will not only know each other, but will together share meals, conduct work, and respond to each other’s needs. Beginning with the Family of Abraham, it is as the Human Family that Chautauqua strives to live.
How do the Abrahamic faiths themselves provide a model for a lived community?
We live in a century and an era of exploration, but often in religion we want to stay within the comfort of the familiar. All three of the Abrahamic faiths, however, at their core encourage outreach. The Hebrew Torah teaches outreach to the stranger: to treat the stranger as one of your own people, as Abraham welcomed the three strangers to his tent. The Torah presents Israel as a light to the nations and offers prophecies that the New Jerusalem would be a city without walls. In Christianity, Paul took Jesus’ message of love out to the entire gentile world, offering a new vision for humankind. The Qur’an is a pluralist scripture that blesses all the previous prophets of Judaism and Christianity, and says that God has sent the same message to all the peoples of the world in their own cultural idioms. The story of the Prophet Muhammad’s (Peace be upon him) Mi’raj (the miraculous Night Journey from Mecca to Jerusalem and ascent through the heavens in which the prophets of Judaism and Christianity gathered to welcome him) shows the intention of Islam to be part of the heart of the monotheistic family.
How do we live as the Family of Abraham?
Opening up to other faiths means conversation with no intention of conversion. It means learning and then coming back to one’s own faith with a larger vision. It is a process of opening up, making room without defensiveness, cultivating compassion, and imagining the faith and feelings of the other. The challenge is to overcome fear of difference and explore the richness of difference. From an appreciation of our own particularity, we enter into the universal and look for similarity. Through our own lens we see the universal idea in the other faiths. The goal is to maintain a good balance between loyalty to our faith and allegiance to the human family. The transformative journey of Moses to Mt. Sinai, Paul on the Damascus Road, and the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) on his Night Journey (Mi’raj) is an experience of being transformed and then coming back to one’s faith with new insight into God and into life itself. It is this transformation that will ultimately save and define the human family. It is this transformation of understanding and compassion that the Chautauqua Institution Abrahamic Community Program intends to foster.
