Interfaith/Interreligious? Worship/Prayer? Services/Occasions? Interfaith Prayer Gatherings

Abstract

Today there are many occasions when persons from various religious traditions gather together for some type of observance. These gatherings are referred to by various names: Interfaith “Worship”, Multireligious “Prayer,” Interreligious “Services,” and “Integrative Religious Prayer.” People come together to learn more about one another, to protest injustices, to mourn disasters, and to join together to work for the common good. In some gatherings, there are also people in attendance who claim no religious affiliation at all. In other gatherings, like a community ritual event designed by the religious leaders of the town the eve before Thanksgiving, there is often an assumption that all who attend “pray” to a “God” even if the content and forms of “prayer” and the names and understandings of “God” differ. However, while Buddhists use the term “prayer,” they do not have a “god” to whom they pray. This article addresses the models of host/guest, serial interfaith occasions (when people are participant observers at a gathering where each religious tradition maintains its own integrity and contributes something to the whole in a serial fashion), and “inter-riting” (when the event is designed so the people can pray together in a unified fashion, often blurring the boundaries that commonly separate each religion). The Shinnyo Lantern Floating Hawaii, a large Buddhist-designed interfaith ritual gathering that combines the personal and the global, and offers insights into guest/host, serial interfaith, and inter-riting models, will be used as a basis for understanding these issues to assist religious leaders in their interfaith work.