The Faith Club

The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew--Three Women search for Understanding
by Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver, and Priscilla Warner

These three women all lived in the New York area in 2001, all three with children to try to explain the events of September 11 to. They came together to write a children's book about their three religions but their meetings soon took on another aspect which they could not have foreseen. They began to explore one another's faith traditions and to share their stereotypes of each other's cultures.

Several times in their early relationship their project almost came to a halt due to misunderstandings born of unacknowledged and unexamined biases. But they held onto their hope of coming to understand one another's religions so that they might write the book that would explain the three Peoples of the Book to children.

Soon they began to rely on the friendship they were cultivating, the mutual respect and the fellowship of their frequent meetings.

I can't say much more than that right now as I haven't finished the book. I am going to continue to read as much as I can before I sleep tonight as the copy I have is a library book and it was due today. My husband will be returning it for me in the morning.

I couldn't think of a more appropriate thing to blog about today, on the day the life of Martin Luther King Jr. was celebrated, than the book I happened to have spent the last couple of days with. A book dealing with the efforts of three people of disparate backgrounds learning to engage each other with profound mutual respect. Because that is the one thing, the one needful thing, to bring Dr. King's dream to full reality.

At The Faith Club web site there are instructions on how to form a Faith Club of your own, excerpts from the book, and a blog in which the three authors occasionally post, sometime about something on their mind, sometimes about their next tour appearance