Getting Religion

THE FAITH CLUB

A Muslim, a Christian, a Jew -- Three Women Search for Understanding

By Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver and Priscilla Warner

Free Press. 309 pp. $25

Each wave of immigrants to our inclusive society learns to define its identity within the larger culture. The challenge they all face is to harmonize their traditions and beliefs with the values and loyalties Americans hold in common. The violence and tragedy of Sept. 11 was the catalyst that brought together three American women who were strangers to one another -- one Jewish, one Episcopalian and one Muslim, all intelligent, well educated, sensitive and articulate. They sought, each from her own perspective, to examine the rage, the panic, the grieving and the myriad unanswered questions that arose in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. Their purpose was to write a children's book that would highlight the values held in common by Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

They quickly came to realize how little they knew about each other's traditions and how much they needed, initially, to deal with their own prejudices and stereotypes. They began meeting in each other's homes, and over the next three years they questioned their religious practices, life in this world and the next, the efficacy of prayer, relationships with aging parents and the transmission of their beliefs to their young. They struggled with issues in their own religious communities, with which they were not always in agreement, and probed the tensions between faith and reason. After countless soul-searching meetings, they grew close enough to explore what united them and to write about their experience in a book titled "The Faith Club."

The dialogue among the three friends comes across as genuine and thoughtful. They try valiantly to be frank with one another, which becomes easier as they learn to trust one another's motives and to respect each other's integrity. Each woman finds social and emotional support, familiarity and comfort within her own faith community, which also provides her and her children with a deep sense of belonging. Most important, the women learn that with listening comes understanding.

Each came to the project with her emotional baggage. Suzanne Oliver left the Catholic Church and converted to Episcopalianism because women couldn't become priests. She felt isolated when she left her calm Kansas City home for Manhattan, where she believed her business colleagues, armed with Ivy League degrees, looked down on her for having graduated from a Texas university. In college she had felt like an outsider because she was on a full scholarship "amid lots of oil-rich Texans with shiny BMWs and boxes of gold jewelry."

Priscilla Warner came from a Reform Jewish background. She had attended a Hebrew day school from which her father "abruptly pulled" her, sending her to a Quaker school. She deeply resents the label of "Christ killer," which she detects over and over again in the popular culture and media. She is frank in articulating the ingrained sensitivity born of Judaism's long and difficult history.

Ranya Idliby was reared in Dubai and went to college in the United States. She struggles to separate the universal values of Islam from extremism in the Muslim world, because she says she "could no longer resign myself to just accepting the prevailing image of Islam." At every turn she faces news of yet another suicide bomber or terrorist attack by Muslims whose beliefs are far from her own.

The conversations recorded in this book engage our attention as the women search out spiritual values common to all the three faiths and learn more about their own in the process. They agree that "faith is never free of contradictions, never as tidy as a textbook," that "faith is not the domain of one group or another," and that "faith is sometimes just the act of getting up in the morning, putting both feet on the floor, and standing up."

The book bogs down, though, when politics intrude. Idliby accepts no approach to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians but her own. No shadow of doubt troubles her as she aggressively pursues her political agenda, nor does she acknowledge the slightest responsibility for her side. Warner, with very little knowledge of the subject, eagerly assumes full responsibility and guilt for her side. She is not Idliby's equal in the political discussion, and the book departs from its original goal. The politics become a distraction from the book's quest for transcendent truths.

Interfaith dialogues whose purpose is to search for spiritual commonality simply do not work when they mix current political disputes with timeless spiritual values. It's a shame because the progress the women achieved is undermined by a one-sided political digression. "Faith Club" becomes a misnomer.