Personally, this event gives me chance each year to reflect on how far we have come as a community each year. The address is my assessment of where things stand and the directions we are moving. (You can watch my 2009 address here). It also affords me the opportunity to consider how the mission and vision of this School and the University Project is connecting with the needs of our cultures, locally, nationally and globally.
I hope you'll watch the entire video. But if you don't, I hope you take away this message:
The University Project represents the conviction that religion is not a competitive sport, that religion is not the tool of empire, and that religion is not a game of winner take all. At least 21 of the world’s religions have articulated a version of the ethics of reciprocity. In Christianity it is known as the Golden Rule. Whatever it be called, the ethics of reciprocity is not compatible with religion as competition. It rather suggests religion as compassion, as a source for healing, as a foundation for repairing our conflict-ridden world.In a nation where religious freedom is a fundamental right, we must strive toward religious expressions that are not competitive to the point of being destructive. This is just one more promise of our work together in this exciting endeavor.
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Imagine this (near) impossible scene: The Pope, many of his Cardinals, surrounded by Methodist Bishops and Christian Mega-Church Baptist Preachers join with and are invited by a broad based group of Islamic scholars and Islamic clergy to take the Hajj to Mecca http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajj where they will show respect for Mohammed (pbuh) and then inside the great shrine of Mecca on the sacred ground next to the great cube called the Ka'aba, the Islamic scholars and Islamic clergy openly accept the Eucharist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucharist from the Pope, followed by a similar invitation and pilgrimage to the Vatican with the roles of hospitality reversed.
Tell me please, why in my heart do I think God (or The Great Source, Yahweh, Allah http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_God ) would see this as a good thing, not a sacrilege nor offense? Why do I feel meaningful symbolism like this, that pull us together by self-sacrificing clergy, is never going to happen with clergy running things? Hence you might see just one more potential use of RethinkChurch.Org in the years ahead, daring over arching forms of symbolism to communicate the ocean of greater truth in which we all abide.
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