Episcopal priests' sabbatical gives insights

 

Heather VanDeventer, dean of the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John in Spokane, and David Gortner, priest at St. Luke's Episcopal in Coeur d'Alene, spent a three-month sabbatical over the summer traveling through Mediterranean countries in Africa and Europe.

Since returning, they have been reflecting with their congregations on the impact of religious history and current interfaith and ecumenical life.

David and Heather recently shared some of what they learned.

• They experienced Jewish faith communities reemerging after the annihilation of Jews by Nazis in Europe.

• They saw the slow, cautious increase of Christian faith communities in Muslim lands, and of Muslim faith communities in Christian lands.

• They encountered and studied about the roots of the spiritual traditions of Kabbalah and Sufism in Jewish and Muslim faiths in the Middle Ages.

• They visited shared holy sites and places of spiritual importance to people in the three Abrahamic faiths.

• They met people in different countries seeking to recover times of positive interfaith cooperation and respectful coexistence.

They are now sharing their observations in newsletters and sermons. In addition, they will offer reflections by writing columns in The Fig Tree. David is a member of The Fig Tree board.

Beginning in June, they reconnected with some areas they visited on their honeymoon 26 years ago. They also visited new places in Spain and Morocco, including historic Jewish neighborhoods in Muslim-era sites in Girona, Toledo, Cordoba and Sevilla that span 1,500 years of Abrahamic religions' history.

"We learned stories of cooperation and conflict, respect and prejudice, trust and suspicion, and how rulers set the stage for positive and negative relationships," David said.

Under Moorish Muslim rule from 711 to 1348, along with mostly peaceful coexistence and cooperation between Muslims, Christians and Jews, there was classism with Christians and Jews consigned to lower classes, he said.

"As Catholic Spanish rulers retook control of Spain, Jewish oppression and anti-Jewish violence increased. In 1492 and 1493, Jews and Muslims were expelled from Spain," he explained. "Spain is still finding its way in affirming the presence of other faiths—including non-Catholic Christians—after a Catholic form of Christian nationalism took hold in prior centuries and the dictator Franco magnified and manipulated its use."

"Leaders and members in the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church told us of the challenges of being different types of Christians in Spain before and during Franco," Heather added.

David and Heather began their visit to Morocco during the Gnaoua World Music Festival in Essaouira, an Atlantic coastal city that was a favorite of Jews when many lived in Morocco especially after deportation from Spain after the reconquest.

They visited sacred sites and faith communities in Marrakesh and villages where the High Atlas Foundation guides Muslim and Jewish people together in sustainable agriculture, economic development and women's empowerment.

"In and around Fez, we toured old synagogues and mosques, visited tombs and caves that are pilgrimage sites for the three faiths, and met people leading the reconstruction of a Catholic monastery that sparked interfaith cooperation from the 1950s to 1970s," said David.

In his younger years, Hassan II, the Moroccan king, who reigned from 1951 to 1999, was inspired to make Morocco a nation that welcomed and affirmed diverse religious communities. The current king, Muhammed VI, continues this support.

"We met a Christian interfaith campus minister at an American-like national liberal arts university, saw Islamic universities and schools founded by women over 1,100 years ago, and met a leader of the American Language Center," said Heather. "In Rabat, the capital, we met leaders of an ecumenical and interfaith theological school who are helping Christian leaders understand Islam and Muslim leaders understand Christianity."

Jews were in Morocco in the first century when the Roman Empire annexed it in 40 CE, and Christians were present and active for the centuries before the rise of Islam across North Africa.

"In the last century, Morocco was one of the few Muslim nations with laws of tolerance and respect for other religions," David said. "When the Nazis attempted to force the king to turn over Jews, he refused, saying, 'We are all Moroccans here.' In recent years, there have been places people of the three faiths come together for shared Iftar meals during the Ramadan fast."

Heather and David spent July in Tunisia, Italy, Albania, northern Greece and North Macedonia.

"Albania demonstrates the strongest interfaith respect, co-existence and collaboration. This small country, with a complicated history and repressive era of Communist rule, has been reborn as a nation with pride," David pointed out. "It was long a place where Abrahamic faiths coexisted peacefully."

In the Communist era, all religions' houses of worship were destroyed or claimed for nonreligious purposes. Cemeteries were destroyed to further annihilate faith-related memory.

"Since Albania peacefully overthrew Communist rule, religion has reemerged strong," he said. "We saw new Orthodox and Catholic churches, Muslim mosques and shrines, and pilgrimage sites. We met religious leaders working in interfaith partnership for the public good."

Orthodox and Catholic faiths have deep roots, as does the Sufi and Bektashi Muslim tradition.

"Albania intentionally draws together strands from different Abrahamic religions," David said.

In Greece, they found the history of interfaith co-existence and collaboration more complicated with the interplay of the rise of Christianity and decline of Greek polytheism.

In addition, they learned of the relatively peaceful co-existence of Orthodox Christianity and Islam in Greece and Turkey under the Ottoman Empire.

"When war erupted between these nations and brought the demise of the Ottoman Empire, the Treaty of Lausanne enforced a mutual deportation," Heather said. "Turkish Orthodox Christians were moved to Greece, and Greek Muslims were moved to Turkey. Fear and tensions between groups and anti-semitism rose after this."

On the island of Corfu and in the city of Thessaloniki, they learned that Jewish presence once was strong. Thessaloniki initially drew Jews expelled from Spain, and centuries later Jews escaping from antisemitic cruelty in Eastern Europe and Russia. It became known among Jews as "the Jerusalem of the Balkans," but Nazi incursions with Greek cooperation led to the destruction of Jewish neighborhoods, seizure of property and deportation of 54,000 Jews to concentration camps.

In North Macedonia, David and Heather also found a spirit of peaceful coexistence of Christians and Muslims, who shared sacred places. Houses of worship have been both Muslim and Orthodox Christian. Houses of worship and sacred water springs are pilgrimage sites. There are shrines to Saints Cyril, Methodius and others who brought Christian faith and an early alphabetic system to the region.

In addition, David and Heather found that Mother Teresa, who came from North Macedonia, is regarded with reverence. There is a shrine in the heart of Skopje that memorializes her, her childhood home and tells her life story.

In August, they were in Austria, Germany and the Netherlands, visiting sites of Christian Reformation history and cities where they have family roots.

"People were good to us when we identified ourselves as clergy on a journey to discover the coexistence and cooperation of Abrahamic faiths," said David.

They connected with Episcopalians, worldwide Anglicans and other Protestants in Europe.

"We formed interfaith and ecumenical relationships we hope to strengthen in order to build more meaningful connections for the Episcopal Church, American universities and other faith communities," Heather said. "We hope to help foster stronger interfaith connection and collaboration here in this country and particularly in our region to share the love of Christ by loving and respecting our neighbors."

David and Heather affirm that "we grow in our own faith as we listen to and learn from others about their faith."

For information, call 208-664-5533 or 838-4277x114, or email priest@stlukescda.org or on the stjohns-cathedral.org