Together to serve the poor

	Advertisement:	The Lutheran is the magazine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. More search options...
	← This month's issue: Social media: Jump in. Seafarers ministry. Lutheran group tries something very old. The lost art of storytelling. More...

Members: log in

Not a member? Join now.
Print subscriber? Activate your free membership.
"Green" congregation members: Activate your membership.
Did you forget your username or password? Retrieve it.

December 2008 issue

Home
Issues
Article Buy

Story by

Frank Waugh

Together to serve the poor
In Atlanta, ELCA youth join interreligious peers

The Atlanta Community Food Bank is a typical warehouse with cold, cement floors and the echoing voices of workers who run forklift pallets of macaroni and cheese to assembly lines—all to feed 42,000 people a week through partner nonprofit organizations. In July it was the site of a peacemaking experiment involving teenagers from Epiphany Lutheran Church, Suwanee, Ga.

While participating in an Atlanta service event in July, Lutheran youth talked and worked with peers from a variety of religious faiths.

The youth were there with peers from many faith traditions for a day of service sponsored by Emory University’s Youth Theological Initiative and Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based interreligious organization founded by Eboo Patel, an American Muslim. Such encounters are essential to world peace, said Patel, co-author of Building the Interfaith Youth Movement (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). It’s part of the imperative “for all communities within a diverse society to take responsibility for embracing a common life while maintaining their uniqueness,” Patel wrote.

The rest of this article is only available to subscribers.