Thursday, May 24, 2007 Dear friends, The Cathedral of Hope is building an Interfaith Peace Chapel. It is designed to serve as a 175-seat space for weddings, funerals, the Cathedral’s Hispanic congregation and a congregation of excluded Catholics, as well as to host Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist gatherings and services. The total project cost is around $3.7 million, which will include the creation of a unified campus for the Cathedral. Someone recently asked me if that money might not be better spent serving the poor. I thought that was a very good question, and I knew the person was asking from a sincere place of compassion because she was very generous in both her giving and her personal service. We had a wonderful conversation and both left feeling better about the work we are doing. I explained that it isn’t a choice between serving the poor OR building a chapel. That kind of either/or, black/white thinking doesn’t leave room for God’s creativity or human generosity, and, in fact, I believe we are called to do both. In 1989, when I first announced that the church needed to raise $2.5 million if it was to get out of the building at Reagan and Brown and into a more adequate space, there was an audible gasp in the congregation. Texas was in the midst of a depression, and hundreds of members of our church were dying of AIDS. That dollar amount was 10 times our annual budget. After the service someone said to me, “If we ever had $2.5 million I hope we would use it caring for people living with AIDS.” I said to them, “We will, because people living with AIDS need a place to worship, too.” In the end, we did raise the money and moved into our present sanctuary. From that place, we spent the next decade caring for nearly 1,000 people living with AIDS. We had a full time chaplain and a caseworker. We had care teams, 28 professional counselors, a generous crisis fund, support groups for the living and grief groups for surviving family and friends, because we did almost 1,500 funerals. We provided tens of thousands of hours of support and care that were priceless. The face of AIDS has changed, and other organizations rose up to provide many of those services. But we were there for the community when they needed us, because generous people invested $2.5 million to build a facility from which ministry could be done. Each year for the past decade we have given away more than $1 million in financial assistance, as well as goods and services, to the poor and those in need. That little congregation meeting at Reagan and Brown could never have afforded to do all that we do. The investment to build this building has paid HUGE dividends for the poor. In the Gospel of John chapter 12, there is a story about a woman anointing Jesus feet with expensive oil. Judas protests that the oil might have been sold and the money given to the poor. Jesus was not an either/or thinker, though. He saw the beauty of the woman’s devotion and praised her for what she had done. So, too, I believe Jesus will be pleased that we are building a chapel in which people of various faiths can work at making peace. In the end, it is an investment. The war in Iraq has already cost more than $430 billion dollars, or the equivalent of 1,162 Interfaith Peace Chapels. This amount does not include the money that the U.S. budgets for regular military spending, since the war has been funded by additional appropriation bills.
On May 3, 2003, President Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and declared “Mission Accomplished!” We are left to wonder what mission? Certainly, the mission of the Church to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and house the homeless has not been accomplished. It is unlikely that it ever will be if we continue to spend so much of our national resources for war. If the Christian Church could change the culture, so that our response is just one percent more toward peace and away from war, we would free up more than $4 billion a year that could be spent on the poor. That is 1,000 times the amount of money we are spending to build the Interfaith Peace Chapel. We must continue working to help the poor, but we must also change the culture in such a way that we have a bias toward peace. Interfaith dialogue and cooperation are major keys in a world in which wars are being fought along divisions of faith. Building a place from which we will build peace is perhaps the greatest investment we can make for all the residents of our planet. Estimates are that Southern Methodist University will host a $500-million library and think tank as a record of the administration of President George W. Bush. Because most of his administration has been spent at war, war, of necessity, will dominate that facility. We have an opportunity to build a much less costly space, located just a few miles away, from which we will create programs and ministries for creating a culture of peace. It is the least we can do for the poor and needy and for all God’s children. Sincerely,
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