Interfaith Insight - 2025
Permanent link for "Transitions and Remembrance " by Douglas Kindschi, Sylvia and Richard Kaufman Founding Director, Kaufman Interfaith Institute, GVSU on January 21, 2025
This is a most interesting time of transition. Yesterday, we celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Also, on that day, the new president was inaugurated. Both events overlap the conclusion of President Biden's term and the 30-day remembrance of former President Jimmy Carter. As we think of these leaders, I’m also reminded of the words from Martin Luther King, Jr. from a speech early in his civil rights efforts that have been widely quoted recently, “May I stress the need for courageous, intelligent, and dedicated leadership…. Leaders of sound integrity. Leaders not in love with publicity, but in love with justice. Leaders not in love with money, but in love with humanity. Leaders who can subject their particular egos to the greatness of the cause.”
On the world stage, it is also a very long-awaited transition from the war in the Middle East to a cease-fire and release of hostages and prisoners. It has caused considerable grief on all sides. The tension has also created setbacks in interfaith work, involving not only in the Jewish and Muslim communities but also divisions in the Christian world. We pray that this agreement will prevail through the difficult implementation going forward.
In my last Insight, I reviewed the stress that we’ve endured in our country as well as around the world and recalled the Serenity Prayer that is often invoked in times like these. The prayer was made popular by the famous theologian and pastor, Reinhold Niebuhr.
Niebuhr began his career in Detroit as a pastor with a small congregation of 66. Detroit was at the beginning of the auto industry boom and was attracting many Black people from the south as well as Jewish and Catholic immigrants from eastern and southern Europe. White supremacists did all they could to oppress these “newcomers,” including growth of the Ku Klux Klan in Detroit to over 20,000 in the 1920s.
Niebuhr took a strong stance against this prejudice, receiving national attention, and his congregation grew from 66 to nearly 700 by the time he left in 1928 to become Professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Also, about the same time he wrote the Serenity Prayer as a part of a sermon. It became used over the years by many including the YMCA and Alcoholics Anonymous. It has various versions, but often the following:
God, give me grace to accept with serenity the things that
cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things which should
be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
Niebuhr was also well known for his many books and influence on many others including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whoin his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail wrote, “Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.”
This past weekend the Dominican Sisters newsletter sent the following prayer based on the writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. reflecting on the words of the Hebrew prophets Amos 5:24 and Micah 6:8.
A Prayer of Faith and Hope in a Time of Fear
In times of fear amid rumors of war,
We pray that one day
Justice will roll down like water,
And righteousness like a
mighty stream.
We pray that all our elected officials will
Do justice and love mercy
And walk humbly with their God.
We
pray that one day war will come to an end,
That men will beat
their swords into plowshares
And their spears into pruning hooks…
We pray that with this faith
We will be able to speed up the
day
When there will be peace on earth and good will toward
all.
We pray for that glorious day,
When the morning stars
will sing together,
And the children of God will shout for
joy.
Amen.
