Glad to share THIS news:
A Kentucky Baptist church will be host for an interfaith service Sept. 11 billed as a “peaceful, positive alternative” to a Quran-burning ceremony scheduled the same day in Florida.
The “Honoring Sacred Texts” service is scheduled at 11:30 a.m. Saturday at Highland Baptist Church in Louisville. The service is offered by Interfaith Paths to Peace, a Louisville-based non-profit organization that promotes inter-religious understanding, in partnership with Highland Baptist Church and the Kentucky Baptist Fellowship.
Other sponsors include various local Christian and non-Christian faith groups. The service will include a display of sacred texts from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, the Baha’i faith and other religions. The gathering will also include non-sectarian music and readings from the sacred texts by representatives of the world’s major religions on topics related to peace, cooperation and mutual understanding.
More below the fold …
From one of the organizers, Terry Taylor:
“We want to show the world that in Louisville we don’t burn sacred books; we honor them. We may not all agree about every word written in our sacred texts, but we do honor those books and our brothers and sisters in other religions who revere them.”
Those who know me know that HBC is the church I attend. It’s a wonderful combination of fellowship and challenge, of devotion and introspection, of fun and of the hard work of caring. The church tagline is truly accurate: “a thinking, feeling, healing community of faith.”
I’ll be at the service, as will many others. It will be a powerful symbol: on the anniversary of 9/11, we choose the paths of love and of freedom of religion. What better way to honor God and country than that?