Avi, an Israeli Jew,
and Saleh, a Muslim Palestinian, both seventeen years old, visited
the World Trade Center site together. As they gazed at Ground
Zero, they fell into conversation. Who would become a suicide
bomber? If you felt your people were hopelessly oppressed, would
you become a freedom fighter? What is the difference between
a freedom fighter and a terrorist? They decided to postpone
the conversation until they could talk to each other at length.
Avi and Saleh are participants in Auburn Seminary’s
yearlong program Face to Face/Faith to Faith (F2F), which brings
teenagers from the Middle East, Northern Ireland, South Africa,
and the United States together at a Presbyterian camp in New
York state to learn about each others’ religious traditions
and their relationship to the conflicts in their home countries.
The opportunity to talk further came the next day at Brick Presbyterian
Church in New York City, where Avi and Saleh met Nick Taub,
a Brick member and fellow F2F participant. Using skills he had
learned in the program, Nick facilitated a very powerful discussion
between Avi and Saleh while members of the church listened.
Where two or three—or sixty—young people gather
to practice respect and build understanding, as they do in Auburn’s
program, God is there, “instructing and teaching,”
in the words of Psalm 32, “the way we should go.”
Out of such gatherings, leaders for the future emerge to teach
the church and the world the way to peace.
—Barbara G. Wheeler, president, Auburn Theological Seminary |
