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01 August 2008

Different Faiths Team Up to Bridge Differences in New York

Interfaith programs in Flushing provide entertainment, community services

 

Emmy Catedral’s interactive piece, Germinalia (garden tags), was part of an exhibition at the Queens Museum of Art on the Flushing Remonstrance, religious diversity and interfaith connections in Flushing, New York. Catedral’s work involved planting beech saplings at various religious sites. The pennants are paper mulch made from discarded religious pamphlets.

Emmy Catedral’s interactive piece, Germinalia, was part of an exhibit at the Queens Museum of Art on religious diversity.

By Carrie Loewenthal
Special Correspondent

New York -- For the past three years the Free Synagogue of Flushing, New York, has organized a choral concert.  Community members gather to honor and enjoy their neighbors’ talents.  But the audience doesn’t just hear Jewish music: Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews and Muslims share the stage.

“It’s interesting when you hear the music of somebody else’s culture other than your own,” said a Flushing resident who attended the concert last year.

Located 16 kilometers east of Manhattan, Flushing is home to more than 200 places of worship within 6.5 square kilometers. In recent decades Asian immigrants, as well as those from Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa, have established their homes and religious centers in the community. (See “One New York City Neighborhood Is a World of Religious Diversity.”)

The concert is one of several interfaith activities that take place in Flushing. Multicultural musical showcases, Indian dance classes and storytelling workshops draw people from around the community and are designed to reflect a diversity of interests.

“We have people of different religions and backgrounds on the committee itself that actually put together the programs,” said Paul Engel, executive director of the Flushing Jewish Community Council.

A team of interreligious leaders also works under Engel’s direction to run Queens Counseling Services, a program of the Foundation for Religion and Mental Health. (Flushing is located in Queens, one of the five boroughs that make up New York City.)

Mental health professionals and pastoral leaders provide services to people of various faiths.  Supported by roughly a dozen community-based organizations, the program offers counseling in English, Persian, French and Spanish. In the past, providers have also spoken Chinese, Russian and Korean.

“I have worked with people of Catholic, Christian, Muslim and Hindu faiths,” Engel said.  “We work with everyone and have used their religions as a strength in their therapy.”

 

One of the installations at the Queens Museum of Art’s exhibition on the religious landscape of Flushing, New York, was an interactive spiritual space -- a nondenominational chapel entitled Feel Free to Believe by Jose Ruiz. It featured a dark room with music, a large screen with pulsating colored shapes, and a video of a flickering candle cupped by a pair of hands.

A video of a flickering candle was part of Feel Free to Believe, by Jose Ruiz at the Queens Museum of Art.

Although Queens Counseling Services thrives, other interfaith alliances have struggled in recent years to achieve longevity in Flushing.  The Network for Intergroup Harmony formed in 1987, but participation waned, Engel said, as other groups began organizing different activities.  Before folding, the network hosted a program at a mosque in Flushing in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks.  Religious leaders spoke out to dispel misconceptions about Muslims that arose in the wake of the tragedy.

Engel attributes the difficulty of revitalizing an initiative like the Network for Intergroup Harmony to several factors, including lack of resources and the inclination of community groups to focus on their own constituents’ needs.

“I don’t know if [interfaith activity] is a priority for everyone,” Engel said. “Some groups do work together, but still very much their own community is primary.  There are different levels of interest.”

Language can at times form another hurdle to intergroup collaboration as more and more people from different parts of the world come to Flushing.

Katherine Williams, the executive secretary at Macedonia AME (African Methodist Episcopal) Church for 42 years, said she has seen an increase in the number of languages spoken in Flushing.  In the past, she said, a program brought Sunday schools from all of the churches together each June, but that program has since ended.  Williams senses “a lot of distance because of the language barrier.”

The language diversity in Flushing has also produced some surprises, Williams said. She attended a service that Macedonia AME’s Reverend Nicholas Tweed helped lead at a neighboring Korean Presbyterian church.

“We were singing the song ‘Amazing Grace.’  They were singing in Korean and we were singing in English.  It was weird to hear what they’re saying and what you’re saying and it’s the same.  It was good weird,” Williams said.  “It was a good, good service.”

Williams came away from the service with a realization about her culturally expanding community.  “It goes to show you can get along with anybody as long as you’re on the same page,” she said.

See “U.S. Religious Freedom Owes Debt to Colonists’ Radical Document.”

Also see Diversity-At Worship.