A Liturgical Model for Worship in the Multireligious Context: A Case Study Based on the Interfaith Service Held on September 25, 2015, at 9/11 Museum in New York City

Abstract

This article proposes a liturgical model for multireligious worship, namely the Pilgrim’s Service for the Ultimate Goodness of Humanity. Three key humanitarian liturgical principles buttress the proposed model; story-sharing, agreed symbols (metaphors), and de-centering. The model also proposes an overarching onto-narrative image—the pilgrim weaving and holding various liturgical threads as a whole. The end goals of this multireligious worship include, among others; (1) renewed awareness of the all-encompassing Transcendent and Its Peace, (2) interreligious dialogue and collaboration, (3) raised consciousness and the practice of radical hospitality for “strangers”, and (4) appreciation of the (religiously) marginalized. The interfaith service held on September 25, 2015, at the 9/11 Museum in New York City is analyzed and annotated, along with further suggestions, as a demonstration of the proposed model.

1. Introduction

I was recently on a plane with a fellow, and he is a Muslim. And when he said he was a Muslim, the first thing he said to me is, he said, “But I’m really kind of a spiritual but not religious Muslim.” He wanted me to sort of know that it wasn’t all about Dogma to him but that it was about an experience of God and he explained that to me and then he went on and he said, “Oh but I’m married to a Buddhist.” And it just so happened that the fellow who was the spiritual but not religious Muslim was married not only to a Buddhist but a Buddhist whose parents came from Vietnam, and they came here and the parents converted; one became a Catholic and one was a Baptist minister.

Diana Butler Bass1

The above story told by the religion scholar, Diana Butler Bass, in her interview by PBS is not uncommon in today’s world, at least in the North American context. People from different faith traditions mingle quickly, work together, play sports as teams, go to schools as peers, and get married. They find all these practical aspects of interfaith relations inevitable (that is, without really thinking hard or seriously about it; it is simply very natural), and religious scholars like Bass anticipate the velocity of this interfaith dimension of society will speed up exponentially in years to come.

However, as the same religious scholars would also agree with no varying degrees, there is one aspect of the interfaith life that, unlike other above aspects, does not really come along easily, even though there have been many attempts to achieve it; namely interfaith or multireligious worship service.2 Simply put, it is very hard to imagine and practice interfaith worship. There are understandably many critical reasons for it, including, but not limited to, theological differences (e.g., monotheism vs. polytheism), ritual differences (e.g., high liturgy vs. minimalist ritual), different cultural contexts (e.g., Euro-American Platonism vs. Eastern Asian Confucianism), historical mistrust (e.g., Christianity vs. Islam), differences in gender roles (e.g., egalitarianism vs. complementarianism), and others. Probably, a more fundamental reason could be that people have and express natural fear vis à vis, if not against, the “otherness” of different beliefs and practices. Even worse, human beings tend to feel threats from “otherness.” (Boyce and Chunnu 2020).

With all these difficulties present in creating interfaith worship considered, there have been exemplary cases of it. There have been some, including the interfaith service held on September 25, 2015, at the 9/11 Museum in New York City, which demonstrate much desirable liturgical principles of interfaith worship.3 The example also presents fundamental and strategic philosophical goals of interfaith worship, along with a universally sharable central spiritual (or anthropological) metaphor; that is, the pilgrim on the shared journey. In sum, the given 9/11 service showcases the high possibility of interfaith worship and its actual practice in the public arena.

This article is an analysis of the 9/11 interfaith service in both a descriptive and prescriptive sense (Fox10 2015).4 Thus, the article will provide an in-depth description of and annotation on the service, in an attempt to abstract fundamental liturgical principles and philosophical goals that could apply to similar liturgical trials in other interfaith settings. Certainly, we cannot and must not expect these liturgical principles or philosophical goals to be universal in the absolute sense and applicable to all different interfaith settings. But at least we can hope that those goals and principles will provide a guide for many other occasions. Difficulties in creating interfaith worship will still remain, but it should be good and fortunate to have fine exemplars like the 9/11 interfaith service.

2. The Interfaith Service Analyzed and Annotated

For the efficiency of the analysis of the 9/11 interfaith service, I will utilize the basic report toolkit of the 5Ws and 1H; Why, When, Where, Who, What, and How. This toolkit should provide a clear and succinct picture of the service. Each analytic unit, with When and Why combined, has two parts: a brief analysis and a brief annotation.

2.1. When and Why

The service happened on September 25, 2015, when Pope Francis visited the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York City to pay his respects to the victims of 9/11 during its 14th anniversary. This was his first visit to the memorial, and the occasion was used for an interfaith service, inviting faith leaders from the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, and Hindu traditions. The Christian tradition included the Protestant, the Catholic, and the Orthodox church.

The grand purpose of the service was straightforward and threefold: (1) to commemorate the fallen ones, both civilians and first responders, during the 9/11 attack in 2001, (2) to promote tolerance and solidarity among different faith traditions around the world while abating each other’s misunderstandings, and (3) to pray for the peace of the world. A very significant twofold message throughout the service was that (1) the innocent lives are sacrificed (2) due to the misuse of religion or even God’s name. Various prayers offered hoped that the people of the world be united in solidarity in recognizing differences of each other and seeking each other’s well-being.

The service showed that different faith traditions can come together (relatively easily) in a faith-oriented event that seeks the common good of the people beyond faith boundaries. The service was more about relationship, community, openness and service, rather than dogma, judgement, authority, and power. Also, the service was designed, through various prayers, to recognize that at the core of each faith tradition, notwithstanding that historically they have been in conflict with each other at times, there is the pursuit of and actual prayer for the common well-being of all people. Thus, during the service, participants would recognize that vicious terrorist activities against other human beings under the name of a religion or a god is simply a non-sense and meaningless.

2.2. Where

The service happened near one of the reflection pools in the memorial building, on a make-shift yet solid marvel stage. On the stage where faith leaders and their English translators sat together (thirteen people in total, including the Pope), chairs were arranged in a half-oval, audience-facing shape, thus creating a sense of welcoming and embracing toward other participants. Surrounding three sides of the stage, except for the backside, were seats for the audience coming from different faith traditions and no traditions (i.e., simply non-religious people). Family members and friends of the victims, city officials, clergy members, and the city’s politicians were present.

The reason for the choice of the service space seems obvious. The memorial stands right above the ground where the 9/11 victims were sacrificed. Thus, the symbolic meaning of the place is beyond any description. The raw and vivid nature of the backwall, the original material of which came from the remanent of the fallen World Trade Center, could easily draw the audience in their imagination into the trade building itself where once their beloved victims worked and lived before the fall. In a sense then (especially in an ancient Asian shamanistic sense),5 the audience was having the service with the spirits of the sacrificed victims right in the moment.

2.3. Who

On the service stage, clergy members and lay representatives/translators from six faith traditions were present with their unique ritual clothes or robes put on. There was a good gender balance, as five women and seven men were seen, although clergy members were all male but one. As the Pope was the main speaker in the middle of the service and the presider a Catholic priest, along with their assistants, the Catholic church’s presence felt strong, yet not overwhelming. The pope began his stage appearance by warmly greeting each faith’s representative, thus showing his egalitarian approach to the service.

It was highly plausible that several of the world religions were present on the same stage by almost equal numbers of representatives, again, even though the Catholic church’s presence felt stronger. The presiding cardinal mentioned Native American people’s presence in the service, but they were not represented on the stage. It would have been great for him to briefly make a specific note on their absence on the stage or at least recognize their presence in the audience. As aforementioned, the apparent absence of women clergy members, except for one, was somehow strange given that several lay women representatives were present as translators on the stage; the enhanced presence of women clergy is highly recommended. Also, it would have been great and more welcoming if clergy members with disabilities could have been present on the stage.

2.4. What (Contents of Prayers)

Throughout the service, several prayers were offered, at least one from each different faith tradition. They prayed according to or utilizing the best of their unique faith tradition, which also included citing their own scriptural sources (e.g., the Quran or the Bible) and invoking their own indications of the divine (e.g., Allah or God). This reliance on their unique traditions seemed to be acceptable—that is, not really exclusive to each other—as the actual content of their prayer was highly invitational toward the common good of humanity. For instance, the Muslim clergy member prayed, “The Quran declares that Allah is with those who are righteous and those who do good. Let us embody their unconditional love, their continued strength, their unwavering hope, and their pursuit of good as we seek to build a much-needed peace …”, and the Rabbi prayed, “The Book of Psalms teaches us that we should have Shalom. We should love peace and we should pursue peace. Let us honor those killed in this place by becoming in the words of St. Francis instruments of peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. And where there is sadness, joy.” In these instances, each faith tradition showed that their faith is and can be very welcoming and inclusive in practice. In many places of the prayers, the petition for solidarity among religions appeared as an urgent issue of the day. For instance, the Jewish clergy member made a note of Nostra Aetate, which is the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions of the Second Vatican Council (1965), which reveres the work of the Christian God in all the major faith traditions. Similarly, the Imam prayed, “Let us move beyond a mere toleration of our differences and work towards the much-needed celebration of them. Let us be bold enough to build partnerships with new friends and allies and together be the reason that people have hope in this world and not the reason that people dread it.”.

The pope’s address or homily seemed to be a reiteration of previous prayers. Nothing appeared really new. Thus, it does not merit a separate analysis here. But one thing that is notable about his address is his unapologetic condemnation on religious violence over the innocent and compassionate remarks on the vulnerable and marginalized. He seemed to acknowledge that in a world of violence and chasm, the vulnerable and marginalized are the one who suffer the most.

2.5. How

Here is the order of the service. An asterisk means when people stand together, with reasons for standing not clearly specified.

• *Procession (of the Pope);
• *Greetings and Beginning Remarks by the cardinal;
• Invocational Prayer Co-led by the Rabbi and the Imam;
• *Prayer by the Pope;
• Chanted Prayer by the Hindu priest, with contemplative instrumental music in the background; both native language and English translation;
• Bell Ringing;
• Chanted Prayer by the Buddhist monk, with contemplative instrumental music in the background; both native language and English translation;
• Bell Ringing;
• Prayer by the Sikh priest, with contemplative instrumental music in the background; both native language and English translation;
• Bell Ringing;
• Prayer by the Orthodox priest, with contemplative instrumental music in the background; both native language and English translation by a Protestant pastor;
• Bell Ringing;
• Chanted Prayer by the Imam, with contemplative instrumental music in the background; both native language and English translation;
• Bell Ringing;
• *Chanted Prayer by a second Rabbi (who came up to the stage from the audience); in Hebrew with no English translation;
• The Pope’s Homily, followed by a brief moment of prayerful silence (approx. 1 min);
• The Youth Choir Singing; coming forward to and standing around the stage;
• Final Remarks by the cardinal;
• *Sharing of Peace.

The whole service ran for roughly forty-eight minutes. The Pope, the main speaker of the service, greeted every faith tradition’s representative as he made his procession to the stage. Even though a Catholic cardinal presided over the service, he seemed to well recognizes the interfaith nature of the service and constantly used “we” language. Not once did he use the “I” language in his greetings and introduction of the service. Each faith tradition representative took turns in conducting a different segment of the service. Invocational prayer was done together by the Rabbi and the Imam. All chanted prayers, including the Orthodox priest’s prayer, were offered in their mother tongues, with English translations following. Yet, the Jewish chanting was not translated. American Sign Language was offered throughout the service from the left side of the floor. At the very end of the service, there was time for the physical exchange of the sign of peace among all participants, which concluded the service with people moving around.

At the beginning, the invocational prayer co-led by the Rabbi and the Imam was striking, which hardly, if not never, happens in any typical ritual setting in their own religious communities. It presented a remarkable sign of religious solidarity toward the common good of humanity. The most frequently used single word in almost all prayers was “peace”, including the Youth Choir’s singing, “Let there be peace on earth.” Faith representatives prayed for the peace of the world over and over again, which literally demonstrated that the world is not in peace but in chaos and in face of violence. Bell ringing was wisely used to signal the beginning and ending of each chanted prayer. As most faith traditions have their own historical use of bell ringing, belling ringing seemed to create a natural (or well-intended) feeling of universal solidarity of all humanity and all religions.

3. Four End Goals of the Service Interwoven

Inductively abstracted (that is, abstracted from the critical observation of the prayerful words and kinetic performances), the service seemed to endeavor to achieve at least four interreligious humanitarian goals.

3.1. Renewed Awareness of the All-Encompassing Transcendent and Its Peace

One of the most noticeable lessons that various prayers reminded the audience of is that the all-encompassing Transcendent is around, in, and for all humanity for their ultimate goodness. However, they call It—God, Allah, the Almighty, the Spirit, the One, etc., all we need is to recognize It, rely on It, and live up to Its moral, spiritual, and ethical expectations. The ultimate expectation of the One for humanity, the prayers recognized, is peace of all creatures, especially that of various human tribes that easily tend to be in conflicts with one another. The prayers also urged that the One is a highly reliable and trustable source of this peace, through and with which humanity can move a step toward the ultimate peace of the world gradually, however slow or painful it could be. Prayers encouraged the audience to enthusiastically and humbly participate in this common ethical journey of all humanity in their own renewed awareness of the all-encompassing Transcendent and Its peace.

3.2. Interreligious Dialogue and Collaboration

It was taken for granted in the service that each different faith tradition is a fine pathway to the renewed awareness of the all-encompassing Transcendent and Its peace. Further, each tradition is unique in so doing on its own full rights. The service certainly recognized each tradition’s uniqueness (e.g., having them use their own original languages), and it seems that that is the reason why different traditions came together to create the service. Each unique tradition will help people of other traditions to see more clearly the various (hidden) dimensions of the One that will greatly enrich human life and eventually lead to human flourishing. Thus, compassionate collaboration among different faith traditions is not a burden nor an additional assignment, but a necessity for the thriving of each tradition. There should be, the whole service seemed to indicate, only merits in interreligious dialogue and collaboration, in particular toward the greater peace of the world.

3.3. Raised Consciousness and Practice of Radical Hospitality for “Strangers”

One of critical reasons why interreligious dialogue and collaboration is hard is that humans tend to see people of differences as “strangers” or even worse, potential enemies. This easily happens, especially when people come to confront those of different faith traditions. People are prone to label those of different faiths as strangers, apostates, heretics, and, worse, representations of hostile spiritual forces. As prayers during the 9/11 service realized, in that degraded consciousness of “intolerance and ignorance”, religious conflicts, if not religious terrorism, are inevitable and actually have happened. Various prayers in the service encouraged the audience of different faiths to accept and love each other as beloved brothers and sisters, not as strangers. As not a single brother or sister in the family is the same with another brother or sister genetically or psychologically (they are all different apparently), people of different faiths, the service taught, should be able to see the differences and diversities as natural and as the One-given gifts for a colorful human life.

3.4. Appreciation of the (Religiously) Marginalized

The appreciation of the (religiously) marginalized was achieved in two ways in the service. First, it was done by the sheer representational presence of minor world religions, the racially marginalized, and women on the stage with equal weight. This achievement cannot be truer in the North American context, where the Euro-centric white male clergy-dominant Christianity still prevails across the continent; recall that this interfaith service was held in New York City. Throughout the service, Christianity was only present as a part of the diverse religious groups represented by racial minorities and women. Second, various prayers, especially that of the Pope, lifted up the lingering pains and suffering of those who have been heavily inflicted by the significant loss of their loved ones. Their pains are psychological, financial, relational, and even spiritual, which could make their lives highly vulnerable and potentially marginalized in their communities. The prayers remembered their ongoing suffering and motivated the audience to do the same and further take care of the needs of the suffering ones.

These four goals functioned collectively as the driving force of the interfaith service or as the fourfold teleological foundation. It was not, however, that all four appeared in each and every liturgical segment of the service. Only one or two of them were likely to appear in each. But still, the service as a whole embodied all these four integrated goals, further enhancing one another. In the next section, we see how these four goals were implemented throughout the service in a more liturgical–technical sense.

4. Three Humanitarian Liturgical Principles

Liturgical principles mean design or structural principles of interfaith service utilized to achieve the aforementioned four religious humanitarian goals. This is a technical side of services, but it functions much beyond simple mechanical techniques. The principles, with significant weight, contribute to the meaning making of a service. In a metaphorical sense, these principles are the solid foundation, internal columns, or external frames of a house that firmly sustain the whole entity, while the four goals are the internal furnishings of the house. These internal and external dimensions should not be exclusive to each other and are indeed essential in the generation of a meaningful interfaith service. The 9/11 service seemed to demonstrate the application of the two dimensions very well, and it adopted the following three liturgical principles: story-sharing, agreed symbols, and de-centering.

4.1. Story-Sharing

Stephen Crites proposes the fundamental narrative structure of human experience. For him, story or narrative is of vital importance in both individual and communal lives. In particular, when a story is truly meaningful to life’s situation, we humans experience it as the ontological or fundamental ground of existence. Thus, it would be safe to say that every individual or community needs a truthful and meaningful narrative that establishes that individual’s or community’s ontological ground, moral foundation, communal virtues, social relations, and, in particular, for religious folks, their spiritual journey in faith.

The 9/11 memorial service made a good case of Crites’ proposal. There was one central narrative shared by all participants for their relationship building and moral imagination, namely the sacrifices and courageous services of the 9/11 victims. For this service, it was relatively painless to “find” one story sharable by people of different faiths, as the service gathering’s main purpose was the commemoration of the 9/11 attack, which impacted (killed) people of many different faiths. Yet, still, the service showed its effortful consideration in telling the story in the way that the story led to robust relationship building and communal moral imagination among the people of different faiths gathered in one place. The service interpreted the 9/11 story not only as one of ultimate tragedies and human failures, but also, more importantly, as the sacrifice of the innocent and the triumph of courageous human spirt exemplified, among others, by the first responders and many kind volunteers who on the tragic day offered their own lives to save those of other people—even when the served were “strangers” or people of other faiths. The 9/11 story, the service recognized, beyond its utter darkness, sheds a hopeful light on humanity’s continued endeavor to live peacefully and in harmony. This one story was unmistakably shared by all the participants of the service.

4.2. Agreed Symbol (Metaphor)

In their study of metaphor par excellence, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson showed how metaphors or symbols function in people’s ordinary lives, as well as in language and text.6 Basically, they realized that without metaphors, human communication would be very limited in its meaning making and conveyance. More importantly, metaphors in communication create large space for different interpretations of the same situation, still with a certain agreed ethos underneath. This may sound quite devastating, as if “genuine” communication is impossible. At the same time, however, metaphoric or symbolic language provides a wide-open room for creative and radical perceptions and interpretations of the same situation.

The 9/11 service effectively utilized at least two symbolic metaphors in maximizing the implementation of the above four goals; the two are water and bell ringing. Water in almost every religion symbolizes (the sacredness of) life, new beginnings, and healing. With this water symbolism, the service participants gathered around one of the reflection pools in the Memorial Museum. Further, here and there during the service, prayers made references to the water image for the purpose of proclaiming healing, new beginnings, and renewed life. Bell ringing, which is also a symbolic action practiced by many religions for meditation, the invocation of a divine presence, and the making of communal spirit, had heightened presence in the service. Bell ringing happened five times interspersed among prayers of different faiths. This five-fold activity seemed to symbolize the gathered community’s meditation on human suffering and hopes for better future, yearning for the divine presence that may heal brokenness, and the community’s pursuit for peaceful world.

As Lakoff and Mark Johnson articulated, these symbolic actions seem to create large (spiritual or mental) space and time where and when people think of the confronted (violent) situation deeply and generate new hopes for the better future in their own wide-open imagination. What is highly plausible is the good use of these ordinary metaphoric symbols. Through the symbols that people can find easily and in a friendly manner in their own lives, people could realize painlessly that the renewed future—the future with no violence yet peace and harmony—is and must be really possible in this world we live in every day.

4.3. De-Centering

Along with story-sharing and agreed symbols (metaphors), de-centering should be a real key to the design of any proper interfaith service. This last, but by no means the least, principle is so important since in many cases of interfaith service, a particular faith tradition still tends to take on a superior status in terms of liturgical leadership and dictates the rest of the service. As a matter of fact, without this third principle integrated adroitly, the good intentions of the previous two could easily collapse; story-sharing and agreed symbol might be dominated by a certain tradition’s ideology or bias.

Multicenteredness, specifically a liturgical space of multicenteredness, should be the phenomenological result of the practice of de-centering. In other words, each different participant faith tradition should create its own liturgical center that is paralleled in harmony with those of others. This is easily observable in the 9/11 service in terms of its basic liturgical constructive elements of when, why, where, who, what, and how, as described earlier. In particular, the use of indigenous languages for prayers by various faith traditions (along with English translations) achieved the de-centering very wisely and in a very natural way. By this simple yet significant practice, the potential western religious hegemony, which has happened historically, culturally, and linguistically at least in the North American context, lost its grip—thus became de-centered—while the multicenteredness of different faiths was generated. The antiphonal invocation co-led by the Rabbi and the Imam at the beginning was also remarkable in this de-centering regard.

It should be noted that de-centering must be executed beyond mere right proportionality among different faith traditions; that is, beyond each tradition taking a turn to do something in order to simply fill up the service space in the sense of representational tokenism. The service space should function as that of “liminality” (Victor Turner) or that of “the Third Space” in Homi Bhabha’s terminology. The liminal space, Turner contends, is created by those who have arrived at a place where they find themselves being recognized as others, if not as strangers, yet still where they can begin to see a new possibility for life for all—themselves and all others around them (Turner 1969). The postcolonial Third Space functions almost in an identical way. In the Third Space, the dominant colonial entity loses its power yet becomes humble while the marginalized–colonized restore its indigenous identity and voice toward potential reconciliation between two previous opposing parties.7 The 9/11 interfaith service seemed to provide exactly this space of liminality or the liturgical Third Space, where the new reality of the reconciled peace among (historically) contending religions was being born and also where the dominant western religious power lost its hegemony while uplifting the marginalized voices of other faiths. This phenomenological de-centering of the interfaith service is certainly beyond representational religious tokenism.

It should be noted that there can be no set of liturgical principles that are applicable and adoptable for every interfaith service universally. By principles, we can only mean liturgical design fundamentals of significant consideration. Each different interfaith service for a different context and occasion would have to come up with its principles for liturgical design or structure that may serve its pursued goals well. That being said, the above three principles should be applicable with ease to any interfaith service with different specifics; that is, with different stories shared and different agreed symbols along with a variety of other de-centering strategies.

5. Conclusions: Toward the Interfaith Pilgrim’s Activism of Peace and Reconciliation

Lead us to your abode of peace8

The ultimate purpose of the 9/11 service was certainly beyond the commemoration of the sacrificed. Proactive activism toward the world’s peace and reconciliation was the very reason why the 9/11 service was planned and offered. The prayers encouraged proactive activism, which means that they wanted the participants to be swift and vigilant in preventing any similar (religiously oriented) tragic violence upon human lives. All the four end goals and three liturgical principles articulated above are activism-oriented reflections of that ultimate purpose in varying degrees.

As the above prayer quote from the 9/11 service indicates, the ethos of the pilgrim or pilgrimage existed throughout the service, though not explicitly. Put briefly, by the pilgrim ethos, the service reminded the audience that we are all temporary residents of this earthly place where we continue to walk on the shared journey of life toward the One Source who is the foundation of all life and all creation.9 Under this shared One Source, all, in spite of many differences and biases—not least in religious faiths—are expected to love and serve each other as beloved brothers and sisters. In my humble opinion, it would be great to adopt this pilgrim ethos as a central topical thread, in a more robust way, that may weave the whole liturgy and that each faith tradition may apply to the construction of their prayers. This central topical thread may have helped achieve better coherency of the service, which was somewhat lacking due to the presence of multiple faith traditions at once.

Finally, as Bass also points out in her interview, people of the 21st century across all religious terrains are yearning for religious activities that are more about genuine experience, authenticity, service of others, relationship, community, religious harmony, and openness in beliefs instead of religious dogma, power, hypocrisy, unchecked authority, judgement, religious conflicts, and individualistic piety. The 9/11 interfaith service, though limited, sincerely adopted these felt needs of the people into its design and practice. Furthermore, the service encouraged the participants to do the same—meeting the same needs of the people—in their own contexts for the same ultimate purpose. In that aspect, the 9/11 interfaith service seems to be an ongoing, never-ending invitation and encouragement to all.