Interfaith Christmas service builds community

In their recent book "American Grace," scholars Robert Putnam and David Campbell explore how religion can actually unite Americans. They discover that a key to America's interfaith religious tolerance and appreciation comes from the personal relationships between individuals of different faiths. So how are such relationships fostered? Allow me to provide one example.

Atop a grassy knoll in the heart of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley sits Ben Salem Presbyterian Church. A picture of it could easily have graced a Currier and Ives Christmas card. A neo-gothic chapel built in the late 19th century out of hewn local stone for about a hundred parishioners, it sits beneath a towering maple tree next to an old one-room schoolhouse (now used as a community center).

Its only yuletide deficit? It doesn't have a choir.

A few years ago, the pastor of Ben Salem, Rev. Larry Miles, was lamenting this fact to his round-robin tennis partners. His aging rural congregation always held an evening service of song on the Sunday before Christmas. But it had been years since the church had enjoyed a choir and that year it looked like they might even have trouble getting a pianist for the annual event.

Lisa Burks, one of Pastor Miles' tennis partners and a recent convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had a solution. Why not use the local LDS choir? The Lexington Ward of the LDS Church where she worshipped had a small but vibrant family choir that sang each month — why couldn't they sing for Pastor Miles' congregation?

According to Burks, Miles was initially reticent about using Mormons in his service, but as the conversation progressed and the seriousness of the offer became clear, the prospect of filling his church with Christmas carols was so generous and appealing that he agreed.

I was a part of the choir that year, led artfully by my wife Margo. We arrived early at the Ben Salem church on the icy December night of the service. Pastor Miles greeted us into the warm, candle-illuminated chapel. The piano and organ were out of tune. The space provided for the choir felt cramped and uncomfortable. But we adapted to our unfamiliar surroundings as we warmed up, especially when we realized how resonant our voices sounded beneath the timbered ceiling and hardwood floors.

As the hour of the service drew closer we worried whether anyone would come, but just before the top of the hour, cold air blasted through the back doors and a stream of bundled parishioners quickly filled the pews. Indeed, some had to stand in the back.