Muslims Pray at a Church: A Symbol of Arab American Interfaith

posted on: Jul 6, 2016

BY: Nisreen Eadeh/Staff Writer

The Church of the Epiphany rests between a café, a parking garage, and a pizza restaurant on G Street in Washington, DC. Only three blocks away from the White House, the church looks out of place in the District’s bustling and modern downtown area. Those who work in the many businesses, special interest groups, and museums surrounding the Church of the Epiphany use the space to take a break from high-stress jobs and make time to worship.

The Church of the Epiphany was founded in 1844 and serves Episcopalian Christians living and working in the surrounding communities. The church’s leadership and parishioners are mostly liberal, both politically and religiously. The Episcopal Church is one of only a few that allows women to be ordained, blesses same-sex marriages, supports civil rights movements, and calls for racial equality in all sectors of the U.S. Given the Episcopal Church’s history, it comes as no surprise that the Church of the Epiphany opens its doors to Muslims every day and gives them a space to pray.

People walking past the church on any given day around 1:15 in the afternoon are able to hear the call to prayer in Arabic, which is how Arab America discovered the church’s unique interfaith relationship. As Christian parishioners are leaving Friday Eucharist, Muslims enter the church for joum’a (Friday prayer).

Welcoming us into the church was Reverend Catriona Laing – an English woman whose personal history is analogous to the church’s interfaith message. She was happy to share her story with us, as well as those of the church’s Muslim worshipers.

For roughly eight years now, the Church of the Epiphany has allowed Muslims of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) to roll out prayer rugs and pray to Allah. For over 30 years, ADAMS has used various spaces like churches, businesses, and a synagogue for Muslims to pray. Since Christianity has a longer history in the U.S., it is not as easy for American Muslims to find a local mosque for Friday prayer. ADAMS asked the church to make space for Muslims in need of a place to worship, and as a result, a friendship was formed.

Revd. Catriona says the Christian parishioners are “deeply aware” that the Muslims pray here everyday during lunchtime. “There is a handful who would really like to develop a closer bond, have conversations, have a dialogue session with the Muslims who pray here on Friday,” said the Revd.

Already, the church has hosted several events where Christians and Muslims have opportunities to break bread and make friends. Revd. Catriona is working to include more interfaith events in the church because she believes Muslims and Christians can encourage each other to go deeper into their faiths.

Speaking about the importance of forming bonds, Revd. Catriona said, “My Muslim friends have taught me how to be a better Christian… I go home and think about what it is that makes me a Christian, and to explore that more, by virtue of having a friend who is doing the same, but with another religion.”

Revd. Catriona has made a point of developing religious bonds with Muslims, largely because she grew and worked throughout the Arab world in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Iraq, and Kuwait. While doing humanitarian work in Iraq in 2004, she met a priest who was reconciling disputes between Shia and Sunni Muslims. “I was very inspired by him and saw the way he was doing the kind of work I wanted to do, but he was doing it as a priest rather than someone working for an NGO, or the UN, or as a diplomat,” she said.

“You can do that [NGO] work and more as a priest. Doing it as a priest, as someone whose life is grounded in faith, I can do this work, but also think about the huge questions of life: What does it mean to be a child of God? What does it mean to live in relationship with God?”

Using religion as a tool for conflict resolution, rather than a tool for differentiation, Revd. Catriona is helping to foster much-needed, healthy relationships between Christians and Muslims.

In her experience, Revd. Catriona said the best way to promote positive Christian-Muslim relations is to have face-to-face contact with each other; especially, given the increase in hate crimes toward American Muslims. “It’s as soon as you have a friend that you realize the truth about a group of people,” said the Revd.

“It’s easy on one level to put out a press statement correcting misunderstanding, but how you create opportunities for people to actually sit down and talk with each other, I think, is a bigger challenge.”

Revd. Catriona said it’s harder to bring people together in the U.S. because it does not have the physical interfaith as seen in the Arab world. “In places like Cairo, where you have a whole area with beautiful churches rubbing up against Al-Azhar University; and in the Levant, where there are so many Christian Palestinians and Lebanese living side by side with Muslims,” there are more natural and normal interfaith relations. In the U.S., there needs to be additional effort to make this happen.

One way to build strong interfaith relations in the U.S. is by praying in the same space. Talking about her personal bonds, Revd. Catriona said, “After the Orlando shooting, I became really convinced that in a way the bond goes deeper than dialogue sessions or how much we actually stop and cross paths every week because we share a space where we pray. I’ve had a few meetings with [ADAMS] but more importantly, I’ve prayed in the same space as them. There’s an unspoken bond created through the fact that we pray together.”

Praying together is a step in the direction of inclusivity and normalizing American Muslims. Muslims, Arabs, and anyone who looks like them have been wrongfully attacked, demonized, and ostracized from national conversations about the communities. By making a friend and finding a common activity, prejudicial beliefs can be eradicated one person at a time.

The interview with Revd. Catriona has uncovered an understanding of what it means to be an Arab American, as well. Arabs are connected by more than just common language, food, and cultural traditions. Being Arab American means living a life of diversity and tolerance that so many non-Arab Americans strive to attain. Being Arab American means going to joum’a, but calling your lifelong Christian friends your cousins. Being Arab American means refraining from eating and drinking in front of Muslim neighbors during Ramadan out of respect for their fast.

Perhaps positive Arab Christian-Muslim relations are not seen as special or newsworthy to the community because they have been around for centuries, but we can be a beacon of religious tolerance.

We must not let conflicts define the Arab world and the Diasporas, but rather let our contributions to societies and culture’s advantage – the dynamic religious relationships – define who we are as Arab Americans.