As an atheist, Andrea Moore-Emmett was skeptical when Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson asked her to join a group discussion on how to bridge the religious rift in the city.

But now, four months after that initial conversation, Moore-Emmett joined Anderson and a variety of religious leaders Wednesday to announce a community campaign to get residents talking about and trying to understand their religious differences.

"For me, religion is the division. So it seemed like almost an impossible task," Moore-Emmett said. "But now although we aren't embracing each other's beliefs, we are embracing each other."

Anderson hopes to mirror the understanding that emerged from the initial "Bridging the Religious Divide Committee" in similar community conversations throughout the city.

The first such get-together will be a town hall style meeting Nov. 17 at 7 p.m. at the City Library Auditorium.

The first group chat will address the questions of how to create a more respectful community and what people can do personally to unite the community. Eventually, Anderson wants to bring individual families of different faiths together to talk on a one-on-one basis.

"The preconceptions people have — the biases, the prejudices — tend to dissolve when you get to know people of different backgrounds," he said.

In a state that is predominantly Latter-day Saint, Anderson said, tensions between the majority religion and other faiths tend to boil slowly under the surface until they erupt in a barrage of criticism and sometimes violence.

Funneling those tensions into open conversations, he said, will allow residents of every faith to express their viewpoint constructively.

"The importance of this project is underscored by the violence we see caused by a lack of understanding," Anderson said. "In order to heal these wounds, all of us need to learn how to live together with a variety of religious backgrounds."

While the LDS faith was at the center of the conversation, Moore-Emmett said the initial committee tried to veer from branding Salt Lake as a Mormon versus non-Mormon scenario. Rather, she said, the community discussions should focus more on individuals and their beliefs.

Moore-Emmett added that the group even considered removing the word religious from their project slogan, "Bridging the Religious Divide," to show the campaign is about uniting as individuals.

"But we didn't want to duck that. That's the elephant in the living room that we wanted to take on," she said.

Tackling religious differences was not always easy, said committee member Flo Wineriter, a humanist Unitarian. The group has met regularly since June and includes Latter-day Saints, Baptists, atheists, Buddhists, Unitarians, agnostics, Muslims and Methodists.

"We had some very strong opinions and expressed them — sometimes heatedly," he said.

But Wineriter said such group dialogues are the best way to give a voice to minority religions in Salt Lake and to start to chip away at the "invisible wall that exists between the Mormons and non-Mormons."

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