The events of Sept. 11 prompted an unprecedented number of interfaith services nationwide, featuring leaders of different religions praying for peace and remembering the more than 4,100 terrorist attack victims.
But some religious leaders have questioned the appropriateness of their clergy participating in such gatherings, including the Sept. 23 "A Prayer for America" service at Yankee Stadium.
"The basic question is: Does my participation enhance my witness of Jesus Christ or obscure it?" said the Rev. Karl K. Schmidt, pastor of Bethany Lutheran Church in Alexandria.
"It's a judgment call," Schmidt said. An interfaith event is inappropriate, he said, if it "gives the impression that various religions are equally valid and equally true." But if it conveys that "various religions share a common concern for people in the midst of tragedy," which is how Schmidt sees the stadium event, then he believes it's appropriate.
Schmidt's denomination, the 2.6 million-member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, is embroiled in a controversy over whether the organization's new president, the Rev. Gerald B. Kieschnick, should be expelled because of his involvement with two interfaith gatherings after the terrorist attacks.
In one charge, two pastors accused Kieschnick, who was installed as president Sept. 8, of violating church law by promoting "syncretism," which the church defines as the belief that all religions are the same because they worship the same God. He did so, they said, by defending a Missouri Synod official who prayed before 20,000 people at Yankee Stadium along with clerics of other faiths.
According to his accusers, Kieschnick also supported "unionism," in which different Christian groups worship together as if their doctrines were the same, by praying with clergy, relief workers and other representatives of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on Sept. 19 at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Manhattan.
The ELCA has 5.1 million members and is not recognized as an "orthodox" Lutheran church by the Missouri Synod, said the Rev. Steven Bohler, pastor of Our Savior Lutheran Church in Crookston, Minn., and one of those who brought charges against Kieschnick.
Among other issues, the Missouri Synod opposes the ELCA's recent decision to enter "full communion" with the Episcopal Church. Under the agreement, Lutheran and Episcopal clergy could serve congregations of either church and celebrate Communion together.
Schmidt said the denomination is torn over the charges against its president, which will take at least three months to resolve. But he said he and most of the 35 to 40 Missouri Synod pastors in the Washington area support Kieschnick's defense of the Rev. David Benke because he was able to pray at Yankee Stadium without restriction, concluding his prayer, "In Jesus's precious name, amen."
The Rev. Clark Lobenstine, founder and executive director of the 23-year-old Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, said his group asks clergy to avoid specific references to a deity when praying during conference-sponsored events. Instead of praying in the name of Jesus, Allah or Siva, participants are asked to use such terms as Creator, God, Sustainer or Lord.
In interfaith work, there's a sense that "we are all worshiping the same God," said Lobenstine, a Presbyterian minister whose organization includes Bahais, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, Mormons, Protestants and Catholics. The conference presents an annual concert, offers workshops in high schools and sponsors prayer services at such venues as Washington National Cathedral.
People have different faith histories and traditions but "similar experiences through which we can grow and deepen in our understanding of God," Lobenstine said. "We are sharing our lenses of God."
On that point many people differ, including millions of evangelicals. "There's a movement afoot toward a kind of universalism that evangelicals do not accept, that we all pray to the same God and have different paths and the result is the same," said Richard Cizik, spokesman for the National Association of Evangelicals.
Cizik, like Schmidt, said participation in interfaith services is a matter of judgment, of conscience. But most of the 10 million Christians in his group's 51 member denominations and 43,000 churches would be cautious about taking part, he said.
"We take issue not so much with interfaith services but with the impression they leave in the minds of millions of Americans who are confused about the nature of God to begin with," Cizik said. "We want it understood that Christians, Buddhists and Muslims are not praying to the same god. Allah is not Jehovah."
The Rev. Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Northeast Washington, said he has never participated in an interfaith service and does not intend to.
"I don't want to be seen approving or encouraging prayer to Allah or to a Hindu god," said Dever, who calls himself a "conservative evangelical."
By appearing to be universal in scope, interfaith services "belittle differences" between religions, he said. "The Allah I know is not at all the God of the Bible. I'd be lying if I say they are [the same]."
The 15.9 million-member Southern Baptist Convention to which Dever belongs is not a member of the National Association of Evangelicals.
Nor is the Missouri Synod a member, though its president agrees with the belief that Christians must be allowed to pray in the name of the God of the Trinity -- Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The synod requires it and expulsion would be warranted for any pastor who violated that principle, Kieschnick said.
"If a clergyman gave clear indication that the reason for his participation was to demonstrate that all gods are the same, that all religions are the same and that it makes no difference which God and through which religion one prays, that's syncretism," he said.
But Benke did not violate church law when he prayed at Yankee Stadium because he invoked the name of Jesus, Kieschnick said. And arguments by Bohler and others that the event constituted "worship" are unfounded, he said.
"I have a clear picture in my mind of what a congregation looks like, and it's not Yankee Stadium," he said.
