The Living Interfaith Sanctuary is the sister congregation of the Living Interfaith Church in Lynnwood, WA. You can read more about them here.
Mission Statement
The purpose of the Living Interfaith Sanctuary is to provide a welcoming, respectful, and nurturing religious community for people of goodwill from all spiritual paths. We share who we are and celebrate our diversity, not to convert or convince, but in realization of our common humanity. We aspire to offer a model of an inclusive community that acts as an agent of good works in the local community and the world.
Vision Statement
We envision our mission unfolding in such a way that we honor and welcome people from all spiritual paths. We covenant to encourage and empower each other as we root ourselves in social justice, both in our own community and in the larger world. We seek to support the development of an Interfaith education that truly respects the diversity that is humanity. And we wish to provide an example that other Interfaith congregations might follow without attachment to dogma – always keeping in mind that we are all worthy of respect and that our spiritual diversity is a cause for celebration.
Specifically:
Welcoming All Paths
Our mission is to provide a welcoming, respectful, and nurturing home for people of goodwill from all spiritual paths. We seek to do so by creating:
- Interfaith services that explore some of the ways in which our differing spiritual paths approach a question, and
- Services that celebrate (with integrity) holy days from our differing spiritual paths, with the intent to share who we are, not to convert or convince.
We seek to do so by recognizing that it is not so much the beliefs we hold (which are deeply personal and to be respected) but how we act on those beliefs that is crucial – and that we are called by our common humanity to act with love, compassion, and respect in the world, always remembering that we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers.
Social Justice
Because we are brothers and sisters, an integral part of our vision is to act as a community to affirmatively address issues of social justice, both at home and in the larger world. We understand and embrace that we all have different needs and skills. Therefore, we will be called to engage with the world differently. We keep centered in ourselves as individuals and as a group that – while we may indeed strive for great things – it is not the perceived magnitude of our accomplishments that defines us. Rather, it is our commitment to community – to our own community, to all of humanity, and to the natural world.
Study Series
Throughout the year, we strive to offer educational series that help us expand our knowledge and love for all. The scheduling of these series is taken seriously, and we strive to offer them at times that will be convenient and beneficial to as many people as possible; however, we are not always able to schedule around all tradition’s holidays and celebrations, as there are so many. For this reason, we record our sessions so interested parties can watch the videos for any that they were unable to attend. Unless these include a note explicitly saying otherwise, please feel free to share these videos with others, so more people might be able to learn from them.
Interfaith Religious Education
We support the ongoing development of a curriculum of Interfaith education that teaches our children:
- We are all beloved and deserving of love, and there is no one “right” path to this love.
- We have differing spiritual roots and personal paths that need to be recognized, remembered, and respected:
- However beautiful and important our personal paths may be, it is crucial that we act in the world to promote our common humanity. We must serve each other and with each other regardless of societal delineations based on gender, sexual orientation, race, nationality, religion, politics, or economic circumstance – that no one is born into this world deserving of more or less love or respect than any other.
Interfaith Community
We seek to provide an example for other Interfaith congregations, not by expecting our answer to specific questions to be everyone else’s, but by encouraging and promoting a multitude of Living Interfaith congregations that are based on compassion, love, and respect for all of humanity. Each congregation will be a welcoming home for all spiritual paths, so that we might learn from each other and celebrate with each other our differences and similarities, with dignity and respect. We hope to serve as an example of how we can engage our own spiritual nature, not by finding one “right path” to it, but by truly learning how to get to know each other and to see what all of our spiritual paths have taught us: that we share a common humanity.