Siljander, Mark D. A Deadly Misunderstanding: A Congressman’s Quest to Bridge the Muslim/Christian Divide Harper-Collins 2008
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I learned about this book in a conversation with Rev. Donna Johnson as we were talking about what had inspired us in our own interfaith work. When our conversation moved in the direction of our perceptions about Islam and how we deal with its radical variants she told me about how profoundly this book by Mark Siljander had moved her and changed her understanding of the conflicts between the Abrahamic faiths. When I obtained the book and began to read it I at once saw that there were unique and radical notions here that were worth pursuing. Over the course of the next several days a read the book and began to make notes for this little review of it.

Siljander’s path to his understanding is both surprising and to my mind heroic. He came from a deeply committed evangelical perspective, believing the Koran to be the work of the devil and Islam to be an evil perversion of the traditions of Judaism and Christianity. There were catalytic events that caused extreme emotional reactions in him, which in turn prompted mentors of his to suggest ways in which to reconsider his attitudes and his understanding of the problem.

“This was not the path I set out to follow twenty-five years ago, as a conservative Republican congressman and Evangelical Christian just entering the world of Washington politics. At the time, I believed that Islam was a religion of violence, that the Qur’an preached the destruction of all non-Muslims, and that the Qur’an and Islam were of the devil, as godless as the great evil of communism whose defeat was then the defining purpose of American foreign policy. I believed that Islam and Christianity were contradictory at their core, that the Eastern Islamic and Western Judeo-Christian cultures were irretrievably opposed to one another, and that the only possible solution to this conflict was the conversion of “them” so they would come to think like “us.” My worldview could not have been clearer or simpler—or more myopic.”

Perhaps the most profound turning point was when one of his mentors suggested that he begin to study the Bible in Aramaic, the ancient language that Jesus had spoken when he walked this earth. Already an accomplished and natural linguist Siljander took readily to this new course of study and began to have pivotal insights which built on each other, and combined with later experiences looked at in this new light, ultimately resulted in the chief premise of this book A Deadly Misunderstanding. As an evangelical Christian Siljander regarded it as his highest duty to convert others to his Christian faith. Among his earliest and most important struggles was coming to terms with where this idea of conversion came from. He concluded after much conversation, debate and study that it had no real foundation in the teachings of Jesus. From this point forward he would introduce himself as a follower of Jesus as opposed to a Christian. This would serve him very well in opening conversations with Muslim and even Jewish individuals, for whom Christianity is inseparable from its history of warfare and genocide. It is worth noting how potent the image of “conversion by the sword” is in creating a demonic image of Islam, yet anyone who knows the history of the Crusades understands the irony of this.

The task of translation is fraught with peril and often requires choices which emphasizes an important aspect of what one is seeing and wanting to convey, yet often at the expense of the complete truth of what was said. This is a problem for the most scrupulously honest translator, but even more so in the work of someone with a political agenda. Thus it is the case that translations of Scripture are often very different from the original intent and meaning of the authors. There are many points of inflection that illustrate this in the history of the evolution of the Christian Bible. The Council of Nicaea, a council of Christian bishops convened in the Bithynian city of Nicaea by the Roman Emperor Constantine I in AD 325, being a prime example. In that case not only were there debates on the meanings of words and phrases based on the agenda of the individuals in that counsel, there were also debates about which books should be included in the canonical text. Some of that discussion was of course motivated by the difficulty of proving the origin of some of those works, and clearly in other cases the messages contained in those debated books were anathema to the dogma they were trying to sculpt. For another example consider the Protestant Council of Trent 4 April 1546, which declared which books were to be officially considered canonical. To look at some of these excluded works I suggest you obtain a Catholic version of the Bible which contains the Apocrypha, the collection of books excluded from Protestant Bibles.

Retreating back to the simpler problems of translation, and disregarding agendas, Siljander carefully outlines a number of words and key phrases that are at the heart of disagreement between the Abrahamic faiths. Siljander arrived at his understanding of the importance of the Aramaic language as the root of both Hebrew and Arabic through a number of discussions over a number of years with Islamic, Judaic and Christian scholars and holy men. In many cases the Mullah, Rabbi, Minister or priest exclaimed “this is revolutionary” after hearing Siljander’s arguments. The notion of “a deadly misunderstanding” becomes very clear and specific over the course of this book.

Another critical consideration that goes well beyond any discussion of the value of particular translations of Scripture is the fact that throughout the world the bulk of believers have never read their scriptures, instead they have relied upon teachers who inevitably present to them portions of Scripture which serve their agendas. Radical Islam is the product of two very potent forces, one: the fact that the vast majority of Muslims do not even speak Arabic, and it is a tenet of that faith that in order to understand Islam one must read the Koran in its original Arabic. This is doubly difficult in that even if you are from a country in which Arabic is the official language, reading the Koran is very much like an English speaker attempting to read the old English of Beowulf which looks much more like German than any English we learned in school. And two: the undeniable impact of decades of colonization, brutalization and the theft of natural resources by the Western world in those places where radical Islam finds its most fertile ground.

Well beyond any academic exercise, Siljander’s book is really an exciting and well written journal of a very long, complex and arduous journey towards understanding and bridge building. In an early trip to Syria within a period of 24 hours he was nearly shot by both Palestinian and Israeli forces. With over 30 years of work in government and civil service including six years in the US Congress and an appointment to the United Nations General Assembly, his journey has taken him all over the world. Some of those journeys took him, practically alone and without any US government sanction, into very hostile countries to meet with leaders who were open enemies of the United States. Also early in his career when he was rabidly anti-Islamic a contract was taken out on him by the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who would later be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin. Years later when Arafat was visiting Washington DC Siljander was asked to host a private party for him. And although he found this deeply disturbing he did in fact host this party and further found himself being asked to help Arafat craft a speech he was to give the following day. He wanted to include some references from the Koran about Isa, as Jesus is called in the Koran. It may surprise some Christians that there are many mentions of Isa/Jesus in the Koran and in fact one of the books is about him, and another about his mother Mary. Siljander gave him six quotes to choose from and to his surprise Arafat used all six in the talk that he gave.

Siljander met with many heads of state and high officials in all of the Abrahamic faiths. He pursued his unique path to peace in spite of the many on all sides who had enmity towards him. Perhaps the most difficult phase of his work came after 9/11. His advocacy for understanding and communication with representatives of Islam was considered practically treasonous by many of those around him. It was also much harder for him to gain the trust of Islamic leaders, nevertheless he worked very hard to support Islamic moderates and to educate Americans about the misunderstandings which he saw as the cause of all of this conflict.

I too believe that the scholarly understanding of the roots of the misunderstandings between the Abrahamic faiths could be revolutionary. What will determine whether it is or not, is whether or not enough people, a critical mass, become aware of these ideas. I encourage you to do as I have done, read it, talk about it, and buy extra copies to give away. To purchase this book click on the title credit at the top of this page to go to Amazon. It is available cheaply as a used book and is also available for Kindle.

 I had a number of video assignments while at the Parliament of the World's Religions this past November in Toronto. I did record some videos that were just for sharing through these pages and among them was this address by Rabbi David Rosen at the plenary on Understanding. To view the video click here. Rabbi  Rosen is AJC’s (the leading global Jewish advocacy organization) International Director of Interreligious Affairs, and has been advancing understanding and good relations between religious communities for more than forty years –  from the time he served as rabbi of the largest Orthodox Jewish congregation in South Africa, during his tenure as Chief Rabbi of Ireland; and throughout the last more than thirty years based in Jerusalem. This talk is inspiring and often funny and is a marvelous story of one person's interfaith journey.

Thank you Reverend Therese Donlan Lee for entrusting me with assembling this program. Our guest speakers are each one pillars of faith in our wider community.

“So that we might be illuminated, to be called to significant action so that what may seem to be a tragedy to some can become a triumph to the rest of the world”.

These were the closing words of Rev. Dr. Kylon Middleton, Pastor, Mt. Zion AME Chapel, Charleston, SC and keynote speaker at Unified Interfaith Community Coalition of Beaufort’s third annual Mother Emanuel Nine Memorial on June 15th, 2018. His rousing sermon in this interfaith event at the historic Brick Baptist Church, adjacent to Penn Center, honored those nine slain souls, and very personally that of Rev. Clementa Pinckney, his lifelong friend and pastoral colleague. To see his sermon click on the image above. Rev. Middleton went well beyond that though, furthering UICC’s goal of transcending the pain, of not being bound by the past, with a fervent desire to give meaning to the suffering we have sustained in the loss of so many to violence.

UICC was founded by Rev. Jeannine Smalls, Pastor Grace Chapel AME Church, in response to that tragic event in 2015 at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. From the beginning she felt that it was important that this tragedy unite us, transcending the barriers among denominations and between faiths, knowing that our faith communities share a common humanity, a desire for justice and a hunger for peace. Her longtime friend and spiritual brother Rev. Middleton spoke of this very eloquently “We are stronger together because of our faith, we are stronger when we stand as Baptists, and we are stronger when we stand as AME, we are stronger when we stand as Jews, we are stronger when we stand in the Baha’i faith, we are strong when we acknowledge our Unitarian Universalism, we are strong when we’re Islamic, we are strong when we stand up to be Episcopalians, especially in South Carolina in 2018, we are strong when we are Lutheran, we’re strong in our Presbyterianism, we are strong as non-denominationalists, we are strong as Catholics, so we are stronger in our faith together! It is larger than one church, it is larger than one denomination, is larger than one faith, it is about our human community.”

Rev. Smalls in her introduction for Rev. Middleton quoted Martin Luther King “…the most segregated hour in Christian America is 11 AM on a Sunday morning”. The interfaith work of UICC has as a key goal of the change to this “appalling” situation. It is common for events like these to be held on a Friday evening when many people are able to come, and appropriate venues are available. We are deeply grateful to Rev. Dr. Abraham Murray, pastor of the Brick Baptist Church for hosting this important event and for his gracious welcome in his opening remarks. Several of the most dedicated and hardworking members of our organization are members of the Jewish faith and we recognize that it is a hardship, and somewhat insensitive of us to hold these events on their Shabbat. In keeping with who we are and what we are about, it was the first time a Shabbat candle was lit in this august sanctuary. Rabbi TZiPi Radonsky of Watering the Tree Outside the Fence Foundation lit the candle and offered a prayer, closing with a reading from Numbers 6:23-27.

A number of segments of the evening were beautifully woven together with the music of choirs and Emma Stevenson of Rev. Murray’s congregation as soloist. “Aunt Emma” is the aunt of both Rev. Pinckney and Rev. Middleton. Rev. Penny Rahm of Waters Edge United Methodist, had written words reflecting our theme to go with the tune “we shall overcome” which she led a jubilant congregation through. Mostly behind the scenes though absolutely essential to the success of this event was Rev. Shannon Mullen, Pastor of St. John’s Lutheran. There was a slideshow honoring The Mother Emanuel Nine which was shown while one by one individuals in the congregation stood and spoke loudly the name of one of those nine followed by a hallowed chime from Rev. Lori Hlaban, of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Beaufort, as she conducted the remembrance portion. Theresa White of the Pan-African Family Empowerment and Land Preservation Network spoke to us about the history of Juneteenth and related a number of stories from her family history that brought it home to us all. Members of IPSC, Interfaith Partners of South Carolina, traveled down Columbia to attend including Dr. Adrian Bird, Carey Murphy, and Ethel Crawford. Rev. Roy Tripp of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church offered the closing Benediction.  

Our second keynote speaker was Victoria Smalls who currently serves as Commissioner, Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor and program director for the International African American Museum being built in Charleston South Carolina. Ms. Smalls served a number of years as director of History, Art an Culture programs at Penn Center and also serves everywhere she lives on Baha’i Local Spiritual Assemblies. As Ms. Smalls grew up on St. Helena Island and still had a lot of family living there she was able to offer a unique perspective. Her talk was informative, as she is an historian at heart, inspiring, and she ended with relevant quotes from her Baha’i scriptures. One point in particular that she made is that Penn Center was one of the very few places that Dr. Martin Luther King felt safe, and perhaps the only place where blacks and whites were able to sit down, speak and plan together, during the very segregated 1960s. Many of his most famous speeches were written here and shared with those who accompanied him. At the time of his death plans were in the works to build him a cottage on the marsh on the eastern edge of Penn Center where he could rest and find peace.

Our theme, “We Remember and We Do Not Forget” was suggested by Rabbi TZiPi Radonsky at one of our early planning meetings for this event. She shared with us that in her Jewish faith this phrase “We Remember and We Do Not Forget” is part of her weekly spiritual practice. That it is important to review and remember the blessings and challenges of the past week on the Sabbath and to remind one of the blessings and opportunities to come in the following week. She had a vision that this practice could be extended further back in time and further into the future in the context of this memorial service. One component of the evening was a slideshow where this phrase appeared and was followed by an image reminding us of many of the painful tragedies that somehow unite us. The images included scenes from more than a dozen of the mass shootings of the past few decades, atrocities committed at Jewish concentration camps, numerous slain martyrs to beloved causes, Dr. Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Harvey Milk, and others, slaughters of Native Americans at Wounded Knee, the Cherokee Trail of tears, the Japanese internment camps and most especially the assassinated Mother Emanuel Nine. It ended with these words “We Remember Those We Have Lost To Violence, And We Do Not Forget Our Commitment To Peace”.
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Rev. Smalls has carried the conviction that these tragedies might unite us and give us hope for the future, that our shared understanding and efforts will eventually make such things impossible. Just this morning as I was thinking through all of this in order to write this blog post a friend of mine shared with me this quote from the Talmud “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” People become martyrs when they are assassinated to prevent them from bringing to completion their life work, and though their deaths are a sadness to us they are most clearly a call to complete their labors.

Unity of Hilton Head held its second annual Interfaith Harmony service in alignment with Governor Henry McMaster's proclamation of January as South Carolina's Interfaith Harmony Month. Among the faiths celebrated were Bahá’í, Islam, Judaism, Native American, New Thought, and Taoism. Here below 21 slides each of which have a Time Stamp in upper left hand corner if you would like to quickly navigate to that segment of the video which was made from the audio and these slides. Here's the link to the video: Unity of Hilton Head Interfaith Harmony Service.

Last Sunday January 14th the Hindu Temple and Cultural Center of Charleston hosted an event in alignment with the observation of January being South Carolina’s Interfaith Harmony Month. The evening featured presentations from different faiths on Angels and Experiences. The event ran from 4 to 6 PM and offered food and drink for all, I especially enjoyed a dish prepared by our hostess Shaila Shroff’s husband Vijay.

Our Hindu hostess selected and introduced the topic. Later on she shared her considerations of the concept of angels from both a Hindu and physicist’s point of view. The first speaker was Dinesh Sarvate who is a trustee of the Temple and Cultural Center and has had priestly duties there as well. Following was Muskan Singh, a Sikh who sang a beautiful song in what I believe was Punjabi, the language in which most portions of the Guru Granth Sahib (one of their sacred texts) was written in. She was followed by her grandfather Gajindav Singh who had a career as an educator in New York. IPSC’s chair Dr. Adrian Bird spoke next, he also serves as Visiting Professor of Christian history at Union Presbyterian Seminary, Charlotte. Howie Comen a long time interfaith activist and a private detective, shared interesting material from both Judaic and Islamic perspectives. Radhika Pande chanted a lovely prayer for us, and finally Herb Silverman spoke from his perspective as an Atheist, he serves on the Mathematics faculty of College of Charleston.
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Adrian and I found the topic interesting in several ways which have resulted in an ongoing email conversation. During his presentation he expressed surprise that in his years of teaching no one had posed a question about angels in his seminary classes. Several of the speakers addressed how we commonly recognize certain kind and caring people as angels. Mr. Silverman shared that he was not expecting to find much agreement with the other speakers and although he disavows supernatural angels he was very comfortable with the notion of natural, human angels. All in all a fascinating and enjoyable evening with a generous and thoughtful group of people. Thank you Shaila.
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​I did not come to Unity, the denomination of New Thought religion I identify with, by way of Christianity, I was attracted to the byline “one God many paths”. Although I had been raised in a Christian home I had difficulty with many of the ideas and stories in the Bible from a very early age and left the church of my family by the time I was twelve. Most of the difficulties that I had with the Bible, came from the Old Testament with all of its smoting, vengeance and warfare and most especially with the book of Job. The idea that God could allow such suffering in pursuit of winning a bet with the Devil was mortifying. As I began to explore Unity, which describes itself as a school of “Practical Christianity” I focused on the New Testament, particularly the teachings of our way-shower Jesus. Five years ago I took an SEE (Spiritual Enrichment and Education) course on prayer which used as its text “How to Pray Without Talking To God” by Rev. Linda Martella-Whitsett and decided at that point to pursue becoming an LUT (Licensed Unity Teacher) which involved taking twenty-five, ten hour courses among other requirements. Last year I took the SEE course on the metaphysical interpretation of the Bible and I finished with a much deeper appreciation for this sacred text as well as a higher tolerance for those elements which on a literal level I found abhorrent. Just this past month I completed the last of those twenty-five course with the on the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament.
 
My teacher and guide in this course on the Hebrew Bible assigned as part of our learning materials a series of YouTube videos on the books of the Hebrew Bible that were simply astounding. In introducing what it was they had in mind doing their work on the Bible Project, the content creators made the point very clearly and reiterated it often, that the Bible forms a single book, a single story with many elements and is filled with a number of literary devices, symbols and teaching techniques. This was an eye-opener for me in that of course I knew that most Bible-based believers would make this claim but these folks backed it up with some very clear analysis. The reason this is so important to me is that through this lens I began to understand something which had perplexed me for a long time in my interfaith work regarding what Muslims would call “the People of the Book”. Certainly we understand that the Bible is shared in part by three religions. The first five books which comprise the Torah are the central Scriptures of the Jewish faith. The rest of the Old Testament is important in part or in whole to most if not all Jews. Part of the difficulty between Jews and Christians has been that the Jews often do not regard the New Testament as an extension of their sacred text. As I understand it some of them do accept Jesus as a prophet while not considering him the Messiah they had long been, and still are looking for.
 
All of this came into focus again for me while at a presentation by a Muslim on his faith as part of an Interfaith Harmony monthly series at Pastor Jack Bomar’s United Church in Beaufort, SC. I am not enough of an expert on Islam to be able to verify in any way the things he said but I was struck by a claim he made that Islam was not considered a new religion by Muslims, but rather an extension of and a re-focued approach to the Bible as a whole as Scripture. In his understanding the prophet Mohammed was just that, another prophet of God, and he was quick to point out that the Koran mentions Jesus, whom they revere as a Prophet, many more times than it mentions Mohammed himself. In fact Jesus has his own book in the Koran as does Jesus’ mother Mary. He pointed out that in almost all ways Muslims and Christians agree on who Jesus was and is, including that he had a miraculous birth. However as with their Jewish cousins, Muslims do not see Jesus as the Messiah and most specifically they do not see Jesus as God incarnated on earth.
 
I must confess that as a young hippie I was exposed to a lot of born-again Christians and their very clear-cut and dogmatic view of the world, particularly their notion of being “saved”. I found it deeply offensive. Fast-forward a number of years to where I am now, as a Truth Unity student, and also heavily involved in the interfaith movement. Through some life circumstance as well as my efforts to reach out I am now breaking bread with and trying to reach common ground, with my fundamentalist Christian brethren (correct choice of word in that this is primarily through a Men’s breakfast group). I’ve always seen fundamentalism as a reactionary movement, partly driven by fear and partly seen as a radical solution to the problem of evil we see in the world today.
 
One of the very great gifts I have received in this SEE course on the Hebrew Bible, particularly in reading the books of the prophets, is to see that this is a very old trend. Throughout the entire history of the sacred text we call the Bible there have been those who would see that the culture they were living in had divorced itself from the spiritual principles which it was taught and that the consequence of this split would inevitably be some kind of a disaster as punishment for these sins. As a side note Unity emphasizes the Latin root of the word “sin” as an archery term meaning merely “to miss the mark” and does not encourage people to fear bolts of lightning from an angry god for such transgressions.
 
The Old Testament prophets pointed out three ways in which “wickedness” was manifest, firstly the worship of false gods, and this included Mammon, my understanding of which was a God to whom you would appeal for money and power. Secondly was the abuse and exploitation of the poor, and thirdly the descent into unbridled sensuality including such things as drunkenness, and debauchery and the indulgence in feasts of rich and exotic foods, etc. All of these things lead humankind away from its spiritual roots, and as always there are consequences for losing sight of our true source and nature. After calling out the people on the ways in which they had moved away from their God they generally continued their prophecy with often very explicit out-picturings of the catastrophes coming, such things as being conquered by Babylon or plagues of disease and vermin. Seeing this so clearly in the Old Testament has helped me to understand the fundamentalist Christian in a way that’s not just dismissively seeing them as reactionaries, bound by fear, but in fact part of a long lineage of the visionaries and doomsayers who see themselves as continuing this tradition. This is related in a way to the Christian understanding of the New Testament being a continuation of the story of God’s relation with humankind in history.
 
This line of understanding I think is crucial in coming to grips with fundamentalist Islam. I want to be quick to note that the vast majority of the two billion Muslims that inhabit this earth are peaceful, have a desire to be good in the sight of God and to serve their fellow man. But just as fundamentalist Jews were behind the crucifixion of Jesus, and fundamentalist Christians were behind the Spanish Inquisition and the genocide of nine-tenths of the population of the New World, Islamic fundamentalists are capable of great violence in their quest to purify the world. Their mission is to deal with evil and violence in the world, no matter how paradoxical their methods may seem. Among the things that the prophets were concerned with was with the breaking of the covenants with their God and with the use of lying and cheating as means of amassing wealth and control. In just this way fundamentalist Islam sees Christianity as being a very hypocritical and evil outworking of the principles in “the Book”.

Many people do not know that on the opening page of the official ISIS website is mention of the Sykes-Picot agreement, a secret treaty entered into by France and Great Britain in 1916 to divide up all of the Islamic former territories of Turkey between themselves. The most explicit avowed goal of ISIS is to overturn Sykes-Picot. This crucial fact is something I never see mentioned in western media when talking about radical Islamic terroism. Anyone who has seen Peter O’Toole’s great film Lawrence of Arabia knows that this Colonel T. E. Lawrence had been charged by the British government to build an insurrection army to defeat the Turks (which he did most successfully) and that he had been authorized by his government to assure the Arabs that they would be rewarded with home rule in their various lands. From ISIS and Al Qaeda's perspectives, and even from those of non-radicalized Muslims, this great betrayal was clearly a ruse to gain control of and to exploit the peoples of these lands. Certainly the extraction and export of petroleum for almost the sole benefit of the West confirmed their darkest fears.
 
Many of those Islamic fundamentalist Imams see themselves as legitimate heirs to the tradition of the prophets of the Old Testament. Not only are they quick to point out the iniquities (in most cases the very same iniquities of those of Old Testament times) but to prophesy the inevitable outcome of the “wickedness” of the West. Beyond the grievances I’ve outlined is the outrage of the more conservative members of these cultures when confronted with the Western values that are portrayed in motion pictures and in advertisements for consumer products. This includes the blatant sexuality, the gratuitous violence, the un-tempered extravagances of the very wealthy, and in the clear, unmistakable exploitation of the poor and of the land, the Earth itself, for the profit of the very few. I have no doubt that this understanding they have of the continuity of the story of the peoples of “the Book” could go a long way towards fostering understanding between one another. It could be the basis of much needed dialogue amongst these peoples, who between them (Christian, Muslim and Jew) comprise nearly two-thirds of all the believers alive today on earth.
 
With my opening paragraph confession about my reservations and reluctance to invest time in the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, it might seem as logical, perhaps inevitable that this class on the Hebrew Bible ended up being my last SEE course, and certainly that is a factor. But I have come to believe in the Divine manifesting in my life through perfect timing. I am deeply grateful that it was my last class in this course of study. Even as recently as a week before I heard that young man speak with such conviction about his Islamic faith, I would not have been ready for the great gifts that have come to me through this study. The term “The Peoples of the Book” came from the Prophet Mohammed and was used in part to justify special treatment, exclusion from taxes for one, not afforded to the Pagans which were a majority in these lands at that time.  My hope and prayer is that this understanding may become a basis for defusing the great dangers that radicalized monotheists pose for our shared world.

Recently I was in Beaufort for a meeting of the Unified Interfaith Community Coalition of Beaufort where Rabbi TZiPi Radonsky was also in attendance.  She and I work together with Interfaith Partners of South Carolina. Afterwards as I often do, I wandered the gracious city of Beaufort; this time out on the north eastern edge towards Pidgeon Point. As I was photographing the marsh and simultaneously trespassing (I can often pull off two things at once) I was called to by a man who asked if I “needed help”. After confirming that I was on private property we began a conversation that within a couple minutes brought us to the friendship between his grandfather Warren Mosby Seay, ThD (Doctor of Theology), pastor of the Beaufort Baptist Church, and Rabbi Julius S. Fisher PhD of the Beaufort Synagogue. After another few minutes I’m invited into the home of my host Andy Kinghorn and his charming wife Betsy, where he played the tape of Rabbi Fisher delivering his eulogy. After which Andy consented to allow me to capture this story on video. Not having my video equipment the sound suffered, I had no tripod and this was not the right lens, but I'm pleased to have the record nonetheless. Here’s the LINK TO VIDEO which is under 2 minutes. Below I've posted the Eulogy that Rabbi Fisher gave, although much is missed in the text as the Rabbi's deep, sonorous voice carries both love and gravitas so beautifully. As it was raining and I had walked several miles from where I had parked under the majestic oaks which line Newcastle Street at the east entrance to the Parish Church of St Helena, Andy offered to drive me back to my truck. We stopped a block away at the Baptist Church of Beaufort to visit Rev. Seay’s grave. Both sets of Mr. Kinghorn’s grandparents, as well as six uncles and aunts are also buried there. All in all a rather unexpected turn of events for me that day for which I am very grateful. This is certainly a fine example of the accord that Judaism and Christianity have reached in South Carolina as well as an inspiring personal testament to the friendships which can arise out of genuine interest in our neighbor’s faith paths.