Light is glowing in the world of religion

My mother's kitchen had an old neon light that would flicker several times, come on, then slowly build to a warm glow.

I thought of that old light last week when an evangelical minister delivered a sermon at the LDS Tabernacle on Temple Square.

The light of good will between faiths in Utah has been flickering for some time. But in the past few weeks, I think, it began building into a glow.

Tip O'Neill once said, "All politics is local." I tend to think, "All local religion is personal." Affairs of the heart usually are. And in my own life, I've been seeing a flickering hope for understanding among local believers for many years. And I've taken heart — and direction — from what others have been willing to do.

When Craig Jessop, director of the Tabernacle Choir, invited the late Robert Shaw to not only lead the choir but deliver the Spoken Word, my mind lit up with new possibilities. Shaw was the first non-LDS soul to be offered that honor. My guess is he won't be the last.

When David Rowe — the spiritual director for the Salt Lake Theological Seminary — and his wife, Hazel, sang their hearts out on a cassette tape just so I could get a feeling for the songs of praise they cherished, I saw a light flickering to life.

It flickered to life when President Gordon B. Hinckley wrote his nondenominational book "Standing for Something," and again when LDS author Robert Millet took a bold and generous position on the film "The Passion of the Christ."

I knew something fresh was afoot when Hugh Hewitt of PBS interviewed Elder Neal A. Maxwell for his "Searching for God in America" series and coupled the late LDS apostle with the Dalai Lama.

I knew it when John Schaeffer, a Catholic publisher at McAmbrose Press, enthusiastically embraced printing what I'd written for the Deseret Morning News.

I keep a little quote from Jean Rousseau nearby: "Can there be any genius greater than kindness?"

A more official pronouncement puts it this way: "For he is our peace, who had made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us." (Ephesians 2:14)

In the end, what I've learned is it is usually the writers and speakers — like me — who are the last to pick up on a trend. Often as much direction comes from the pews as from the pulpit.

When I began writing this column several years ago, the first one I did was about a Catholic cardinal; the second was about a Shinto temple. I sat back and waited for the letters that would accuse me of contaminating the truth.

I didn't get one letter like that.

In the years since, I have not gotten one letter complaining when I've showcased leaders of other faiths and spiritual ideas out of the mainstream. It was as if the readers had been waiting for something to come along that would display such diversity. And instead of complaining, they seemed to say, "We've been waiting for this. What took you so long?"

I'd been so intrigued by the flickering light of religious generosity that I didn't realize that light was already glowing in the lives of people like Craig Jessop, Hazel and David Rowe, Robert Millet and John Schaeffer.

We writers and columnists do catch on — eventually.

We promise to learn — if you promise not to leave us behind.

---

E-mail: jerjohn@desnews.com