The February Family Fun day  was a well-organized huge hit!  We showered all our interfaith spirit and love onto about 10 people, young and old.   Board member Gerry Caprio provided music for the singalong, assisting leaders Marla Kolman and Mary Zamboukos.  They did a fun project about the Golden Rule,  made peace flags and shakers like last time, and had a singalong.
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The Family Fun Day takes place on the last Sunday of every month from 2:00 – 4:00 pm at the Presidio Chapel, 130 Fisher Circle, Presidio, San Francisco. Come and join us, and bring the whole family!
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Family-friendly interfaith activities including music and art in a fun and friendly atmosphere. People of all ages, backgrounds, and beliefs are welcome. Please join us this Sunday, February 26, from 2:00 to 4:00 pm at the Presidio Chapel.

We as a society are in a tumultuous moment—not only politically but morally. Millions of people find the actions of the Administration, and of Congress also, deeply immoral, and they are taking to the streets to voice their discontent. People of faith, individually and as communities, are prominent among them.


But do people of faith have anything unique to bring to the struggles of the present moment? Can they do more than simply swell the multitudes protesting in the street or overwhelming Capitol telephone lines?


Yes, they can. In a moment where the latest executive order or the latest protest threatens to suck up all the world’s attention, people of faith have resources and wisdom that reach back millennia, and we need to bring them to bear on our current struggles. Here are some of them:

• Religious and ethical resources bearing on today’s contentious questions: The questions roiling the public today touch directly on issues about which our various traditions have much to say. This rests on the wisdom of centuries and cannot be written off as manifestations of modern liberalism. People of faith have rich spiritual and ethical resources that speak to today’s debates, including traditions and teachings addressing peace, nonviolence, mutual respect, hospitality, charity, and pluralism; and these resources point to basic values shared by all major world religions and also by humanists and other non-religious people. In the current climate, where certain religions (primarily, of course, Islam and Judaism) are openly or implicitly demonized, it is vital to point out these shared values and to use them as a starting point for addressing the ethical issues entailed in today’s conflicts. The issue of the reception of refugees, for instance, touches directly on questions of hospitality and care for the vulnerable that virtually all religious and ethical traditions address.
• Spiritual resources for self–care: Dealing with deeply-felt political and moral issues can easily lead to burn-out or, worse yet, to self-righteousness and anger that trigger speech and action that violate the very values we are trying to inculcate. Here, too, our traditions have rich resources to offer, including approaches to prayer and meditation, sacred texts that profoundly and powerfully express the truths and values that should inform our grappling with current issues, and the examples of adherents past and present who have lived by the virtues that we wish to see emulated. People of faith and spirit need to avail themselves of these resources and encourage fellow activists to draw on them.
• Hope: This could have been included under either of the two preceding points, but it so undergirds and completes everything we seek to say here that it deserves consideration on its own. Particularly when one is, politically speaking, the underdog, it’s easy to be overcome by frustration and even despair. But whether one believes in a beneficent deity or divine reality or simply in the potential of the human mind and spirit, our religious and ethical traditions offer assurance that evil does not have the final word—that, as Martin Luther King said, echoing words from a long tradition, “the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice.” Our spiritual traditions empower us to see that long arc beyond any current defeats. The current moment requires people who can draw on those traditions to kindle hope as we tread a challenging path of resistance.

Merely having these resources is not enough. We need to be both media-savvy and organizationally savvy—media savvy to draw media attention to our presence and our message, and organizationally savvy to initiate prayerful and spiritual events that build awareness of our values and resources among a broader public and inject them into current debates. The current Administration appears to be listening to the voices of only one segment of our country’s broad spectrum of faiths and faith communities. We, who on the basis of our faith share the moral concerns of so many of our fellow citizens, need to raise our voices to ensure that the values we seek to live by are heard above the din.


Signed:

• Rev. Ken Chambers, Interim Board President , Interfaith Council of Alameda County
• Linda L. Crawford, Executive Director, Interfaith Center at the Presidio
• Rev. Kristi Denham, Co-President, Peninsula Multifaith Coalition
• Maha Elgenaidi, Executive Director, Islamic Networks Group (ING)
• Fatih Ferdi Ates, Director, Pacifica Institute
• Diane Fisher, Director, Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Silicon Valley
• Rev. D. Andrew Kille, Chair, Silicon Valley Interreligious Council (SiVIC)
• Rev. Will McGarvey, Executive Director, Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County
• Rev. Dr. Penny Nixon, Peninsula Solidarity Network
• Michael G. Pappas, M.Div, Executive Director, San Francisco Interfaith Council (SFIC)
• Rev. Steven A. Pinkston, Director of Christian Service, Bellarmine College Prep
• Rev. Scott Quinn, Acting Director, Marin Interfaith Council
• Rita R. Semel, Founder and past Chair, San Francisco Interfaith Council
• Moina Shaiq, President, Tri-City Interfaith Council
• Stephanie S. Spencer, President-elect, Eden Area Interfaith Council
• Jessica Trubowitch, Director, Public Policy and Community Building, Jewish Community Relations Council – San Francisco Bay Area
• Ardisanne Turner, Chair, United Religions Initiative North America

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See the latest version of the statement at the ING website; if your congregation or community would like to sign on, contact @.

Faith-based and humanist groups call on government to reaffirm American values“Although the U.S. is a nation of immigrants and has a long history of welcoming refugees from diverse lands, we also have a history of different periods of xenophobia and exclusion, including the Chinese Exclusion Act, the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and the rejection of Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution and genocide. None of these actions made our country more secure, and we can be certain that the great majority of our people do not support a repeat of such episodes.”
—Maha Elgenaidi, Executive Director of the Islamic Networks Group

“Any attempt to ban Muslim refugees based on their religion betrays our values and sends the un-American message that there are second-class faiths. Our country, founded by immigrants who established religious freedom as a bedrock principle, is better than this. A threat to anyone’s religious liberty is a threat to everyone’s religious liberty, and we as Baptists stand with those facing religious persecution around the world, regardless of their faith.”
—Amanda Tyler, Executive Director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty

San Jose – The Know Your Neighbor: Multifaith Encounters campaign, a program of the Islamic Networks Group (ING), released the following statement today in reaction to executive orders signed by President Donald Trump restricting immigration from a number of Middle Eastern and African countries.
The executive orders issued today and earlier this week by President Donald Trump require us to reaffirm basic values that we share with the great majority of Americans:

• Respect for diversity, pluralism, and religious freedom: Although the executive orders do not explicitly mention Muslims or their faith, several provisions target Muslims. As such, they violate the principles embodied in the First Amendment and our country’s commitment to religious neutrality.
• Care for the stranger and the needy: Except for the native peoples, since its founding the United States has been a nation of immigrants. Our country has a long tradition of welcoming and supporting immigrants and the needy; the rejection of refugees fleeing horrific violence flies in the face of the obligation to help and the hospitality that the American people have traditionally shown to those in need.
• Civil liberties: While these orders do not explicitly target particular groups, they clearly impact primarily one religion (Muslim) and one ethnicity (Latino). Singling out these groups reinforces and encourages existing prejudice and discrimination against them, including U.S. citizens and documented immigrants belonging to these groups.
• Unity and solidarity: Policies whose effect is to single out specific religious or ethnic groups violate the sense of national unity and solidarity that allows the diverse people of our nation to live in peace and harmony.

Although these measures purport to deal with the threat of terrorism, there is little evidence to support this claim. What they do, however, is to cast a dark cloud over the entire American Muslim population, making it all too clear that their significant contributions to American life are not welcomed. This impacts women in headscarves who have been the object of increased harassment and students in schools who have seen a rise in bullying in recent years due to anti-Muslim rhetoric which will increase with these policies. In response to the Executive Orders, we faith-based and humanist organizations call for an increase in:

• Interfaith engagement, including both interfaith dialogues and events bringing people of diverse traditions together for mutual encounter and learning. To get started, see this page.
• Education about Muslims and Islam, including presentations by Muslim speakers and “meet a Muslim” events in houses of worship or other public venues. To get started, see this page.
• Commitment to and training in being “upstanders” who respond supportively to incidents of hate and bigotry.

This is a time to come together as a community and uphold our sacred values. Therefore, in responding to the current situation, and to prepare for possible actions in the future that may likewise call our fundamental values into question, we commit ourselves, and call on all who share our concerns, to respect the principle of nonviolence in thought, word, and deed.

• We will maintain an attitude of charity and openness to all, including those with whom we most profoundly disagree. We will seek to understand their motivations and assume that they are sincerely seeking what is right unless presented with clear evidence to the contrary. If we are people of prayer, then we will pray for their well-being and for wisdom for them and for ourselves.
• In our statements, we will condemn actions but not persons. We will speak firmly but respectfully of and with those whose words and actions we oppose.

​Signed:

• American Muslim Advisory Council
• Arizona Jews for Justice
• Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty
• Bay Area Interfaith Connect
• Bridges of Faith Trialogue, Cincinnati
• California Institute for Human Science Interfaith Circle
• Center for Inquiry
• Colorado Muslim Speakers Bureau
• Council of Islamic Organizations of Kentucky
• Delaware Valley Speakers Bureau
• Euphrates Institute
• Global Immersion Project
• Interfaith Alliance
• Interfaith Arkansas
• Interfaith Center at the Presidio
• Interfaith Center of New York
• Interfaith Council of Central Florida
• Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, Ann Arbor
• Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston
• Interfaith Paths to Peace
• Interfaith Youth Core
• Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati
• Islamic Education & Resources Network (ILearn)
• Islamic Networks Group
• Islamic Society of Greater Houston
• Islamic Speakers Bureau of Alabama
• Islamic Speakers Bureau of Arizona
• Islamic Speakers Bureau of Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas
• Islamic Speakers Bureau of Edmonton, Canada
• Islamic Speakers Bureau of Greater Houston
• Islamic Speakers Bureau of Saint Louis
• Islamic Speakers Bureau of San Diego
• Islamic Speakers Bureau of Santa Barbara
• Jewish Council for Public Affairs
• Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest
• Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light
• Monmouth Center for World Religions and Ethical Thought
• Muslim Coalition of Connecticut
• Muslim Community Center, East Bay
• National Council of Churches
• National Sikh Campaign
• Network of Spiritual Progressives
• New Jersey Islamic Networks Group
• Religions for Peace USA
• Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism
• San Francisco Interfaith Council
• Seattle Islamic Speakers Bureau
• Shoulder to Shoulder Campaign
• Silicon Valley Interreligious Council
• Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom
• South Coast Interfaith Council
• Speakers Bureau of Nebraska
• Spokane Interfaith Council
• Tikkun Magazine
• Tri City Interfaith Council
• United Religions Initiative
• United We Dream Houston
• Uri L’Tzedek: The Jewish Orthodox Social Justice Movement
• Valley Beit Midrash: The Jewish Pluralistic Center
• Washington Ethical Society
• Welcoming Gainesville
• Wisdom Circle Ministry