Giving thanks for their blessings along with offerings for the poor, members of Utah's diverse religious communities came together Sunday night for the sixth annual Interfaith Thanksgiving service.
Looking out at the congregation of different faiths and cultures attending the event, the Rev. Tom Goldsmith of the First Unitarian Church remarked, "A wonderful spirit fills this sanctuary tonight."The Rev. Goldsmith, the guest speaker, said such interfaith gatherings have evolved into a valuable means of weaving the many "cultural threads" of Salt Lake City together into whole cloth.
In what has become a holiday tradition in Utah, more than 200 people attended the service, which featured prayers of thanksgiving from the holy books of diverse faiths, choral music and remarks by religious leaders and local dignitaries.
Though normally held at a different church each year, the service this year returned to where it began in 1989, the First United Methodist Church in downtown Salt Lake City.
Larry Goldsmith, presiding co-chairman of the Utah Region of The National Conference (formerly the National Conference of Christians and Jews), said it was fitting to gather at a church that is celebrating its 125th anniversary in Utah.
The National Conference sponsors the service as an offering of thanks and in hopes of enhancing the diverse religious groups' respect for each other, said Goldsmith (no relation to the Rev. Goldsmith). "Our diversity is our strength," he said.
Other participants included the Right Rev. George E. Bates, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Utah; the Rev. France Davis, pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church; the Most Rev. George H. Niederauer, bishop of the Salt Lake Catholic Diocese; the Ghulam H. Patel, former leader of the Islamic Mosque in Salt Lake City; the Rev. Robert R. Sewell, pastor of the First United Methodist Church; Elder Robert E. Wells of the Quorum of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; and Rabbi Frederick Wenger of Congregation Kol Ami.
Each religious leader read from the holy books of his faith. Also, Lt. Gov. Olene Walker read a proclamation declaring the day "Interfaith Thanksgiving Sunday in Utah."
Recalling his own multi-cultural family's thanksgiving gatherings at his boyhood home in Queens, N.Y., the Rev. Goldsmith said, "Thanksgiving gave us the perspective that all who sat around the table were pilgrims."
He said the world today is facing a wilderness that in many ways is more hostile andperilous than that encountered by the original pilgrims. The "moral wilderness" of 1995 harbors "greed, arrogance and a paucity of love," the Rev. Goldsmith said.
"Our wilderness is a world indifferent to goodness, and the spirit of optimism is hard to find," he said, placing some of the blame on political leaders who widen the gulf between rich and poor and between the nation's diverse cultures.
He urged participants to pray for a reconciliation of the peoples of this nation and to dedicate themselves to compassion, cooperation and love of one another.
"As pilgrims today, we must sit at the table of a common humanity once again," the Rev. Goldsmith said.