How to Be a Perfect Stranger (5th Edition)

Description

The indispensable guidebook to help the well-meaning guest when visiting other people’s religious ceremonies—updated and revised. New edition!

We North Americans live in a remarkably diverse society, and it’s increasingly common to be invited to a wedding, funeral or other religious service of a friend, relative or coworker whose faith is different from our own. These can be awkward situations....

• What will happen?
• What do I do? What do I wear? What do I say?
• What should I avoid doing, wearing, saying?
• Is it okay to use a video camera?
• How long will it last?
• What are their basic beliefs?
• Will there be a reception? Will there be food?
• Should I bring a gift? When is it okay to leave?

These are just a few of the basic questions answered in How to Be a Perfect Stranger. This easy-to-read guidebook, with an “Everything You Need to Know Before You Go” checklist, helps the well-meaning guest to feel comfortable, participate to the fullest extent possible and avoid violating anyone’s religious principles—while enriching their own spiritual understanding. Featured faith traditions include:

African American Methodist Churches • Assemblies of God • Bahá’í • Baptist • Buddhist • Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) • Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) • Churches of Christ • Episcopalian and Anglican • Hindu • Islam • Jehovah’s Witnesses • Jewish • Lutheran • Mennonite/Amish • Methodist • Mormon (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) • Native American/First Nations • Orthodox Churches • Pentecostal Church of God • Presbyterian • Quaker (Religious Society of Friends) • Reformed Church in America/Canada • Roman Catholic • Seventh-day Adventist • Sikh • Unitarian Universalist • United Church of Canada • United Church of Christ

Acknowledgments xi
Introduction xv
The "Everything You Need to Know Before You Go" Checklist xix
General Secretary, National Council of Churches 17
1 African American Methodist Churches 1
2 Assemblies of God 14
3 Bahá'í Faith 25
4 Baptist 36
5 Buddhist 46
6 Christian Church(Disciples of Christ) 58
7 Christian Science(Church of Christ, Scientist) 70
8 Churches of Christ 77
9 Episcopalian and Anglican 87
10 Hindu 100
11 Islam 110
12 Jehovah's Witnesses 124
13 Jewish 132
14 Lutheran 159
15 Mennonite/Amish 174
16 Methodist 191
17 Mormon (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) 203
18 Native American/First Nations 215
19 Orthodox Churches 227
20 Pentecostal Church of God 245
21 Presbyterian 258
22 Quaker (Religious Society of Friends)271
23 Reformed Church in America/ Canada 283
24 Roman Catholic 297
25 Seventh-day Adventist 309
26 Sikh 318
27 Unitarian Universalist 338
28 United Church of Canada 352
29 United Church of Christ 368
Glossary of Common Religious Terms and Names 382
The Meanings of Popular Religious Symbols 392
Calendar of Religious Holidays and Festivals 395
Summary of Proper Forms for Addressing Leaders of Various Faiths 401

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Reference
• Religion

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 18 février 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781594733543
• Langue: English

Extrait

How to Be a Perfect Stranger

The Essential Religious Etiquette Handbook
Edited by Stuart M. Matlins Arthur J. Magida
Books in the Perfect Stranger Series
How to Be a Perfect Stranger, 5th Edition: The Essential Religious Etiquette Handbook
The Perfect Stranger s Guide to Funerals and Grieving Practices: A Guide to Etiquette in Other People s Religious Ceremonies
The Perfect Stranger s Guide to Wedding Ceremonies: A Guide to Etiquette in Other People s Religious Ceremonies
How to Be a Perfect Stranger , 5th Edition: The Essential Religious Etiquette Handbook
2011 Fifth Edition, Quality Paperback, First Printing 2011 and 2006 by SkyLight Paths Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information regarding permission to reprint material from this book, please mail or fax your request in writing to SkyLight Paths Publishing, Permissions Department, at the address / fax number listed below, or e-mail your request to [e-mail].

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data How to be a perfect stranger : the essential religious etiquette handbook / edited by Stuart M. Matlins Arthur J. Magida.-5th ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-59473-294-2 (quality pbk.)
1. Religious etiquette. 2. Church etiquette. I. Matlins, Stuart M. II. Magida, Arthur J.
BJ2010.H68 2010
203'.8-dc22
2010031668
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

SkyLight Paths Publishing is creating a place where people of different spiritual traditions come together for challenge and inspiration, a place where we can help each other understand the mystery that lies at the heart of our existence.
SkyLight Paths sees both believers and seekers as a community that increasingly transcends traditional boundaries of religion and denomination-people wanting to learn from each other, walking together, finding the way .
Manufactured in the United States of America
SkyLight Paths, Walking Together, Finding the Way, and colophon are trademarks of LongHill Partners, Inc., registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Walking Together, Finding the Way
Published by SkyLight Paths Publishing
A Division of LongHill Partners, Inc.
Sunset Farm Offices, Rte. 4, P.O. Box 237
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Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone] www.skylightpaths.com
Foreword by Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell
Preface by Sanford Cloud, Jr. , Former President, The National Conference for Community and Justice
Acknowledgments
Introduction
The Everything You Need to Know Before You Go Checklist

1 African American Methodist Churches
2 Assemblies of God
3 Bah ' Faith
4 Baptist
5 Buddhist
6 Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
7 Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist)
8 Churches of Christ
9 Episcopalian and Anglican
10 Hindu
11 Islam
12 Jehovah s Witnesses
13 Jewish
14 Lutheran
15 Mennonite/Amish
16 Methodist
17 Mormon (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
18 Native American/First Nations
19 Orthodox Churches
20 Pentecostal Church of God
21 Presbyterian
22 Quaker (Religious Society of Friends)
23 Reformed Church in America/Canada
24 Roman Catholic
25 Seventh-day Adventist
26 Sikh
27 Unitarian Universalist
28 United Church of Canada
29 United Church of Christ
Glossary of Common Religious Terms and Names
The Meanings of Popular Religious Symbols
Calendar of Religious Holidays and Festivals
Summary of Proper Forms for Addressing Leaders of Various Faith s
Foreword
The religious landscape of North America has been in flux to one degree or another since the arrival of the first Europeans to these shores. Despite this, the cultural consciousness of North American people was largely Protestant Christian until fairly recently. However, from about the middle of the 20th century, the rate of change and diversification of religious affiliation within the United States and Canada has increased appreciably. Today, any residual sense of North America as a religious monolith has been dispelled even in small towns and throughout the countryside.
In the United States, for example, about 92 percent of our citizens profess a belief in God, and the nation continues to reflect one of the highest rates of religious affiliation among industrialized countries. The confluence of recent immigration patterns and a growing awareness among North Americans of world religions has helped produce in our country today a more open and vital attitude toward all faiths.
In an earlier era, those who practiced a faith other than the Protestant or Roman Catholic traditions of Christianity often did so in relative obscurity. Today, the vigorous religious rites and customs of a host of faiths take place in full public view. This reality, which is the manifestation of the venerable North American right to free exercise of religions, is a national treasure of great worth.
The great North American experiment in a pluralistic republic democracy is well served by the growing religious pluralism and the diversity of our people. It is freshly infused in each generation as new people bring their religious and cultural legacy to the workplace, the public square and their newly founded houses of worship, reinvigorating our land and our sense of the holy.
How to Be a Perfect Stranger provides all North Americans with an inviting point of entry into the world of religious pluralism. As we become more comfortable with the ways in which others pray, marry, bury and celebrate, we can move more effectively toward a sense of our single yet diverse peoplehood. Although we are diverse racially, religiously and culturally, we are united by principles and ideals that celebrate our very differences.
How to Be a Perfect Stranger equips each of us to enter into the religious realm of our neighbors. By providing us with practical information concerning what to bring, where to sit or stand, when to participate and when to refrain from participating, this volume serves as a great encouragement for all of us to know the faith traditions of each other, and to help erode the walls of ignorance that too often separate or confuse us. By bringing us out of our respective religious communities, each of which has a tendency to be more insular than we might like, How to Be a Perfect Stranger can help us appreciate and know the vast variety of our religious voices. Together, these voices create an extraordinary choir of ritual and celebration, piety and devotion, faith and resilience that is truly part of the bedrock of our nation.
Schools, businesses, public libraries and libraries in churches, synagogues and mosques will want to have a copy of How to Be a Perfect Stranger on hand, a volume that can reap big dividends during celebrations of our quintessential North American right of religious liberties.
Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell
Preface
The truism that 11:00 on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in North American life does not refer to race only. For most people, religious practice is an exercise in the familiar. Those of us who participate in congregational worship and observance-and many do in Canada and the United States, the most religiously observant nations in the industrialized West-do so with people who live like us, look like us and pretty much think and believe like us. So while white Americans and black Americans, for example, do not, as a rule, worship together in large numbers, neither do evangelical and liberal Lutherans, Satmar and Lubavitcher Hasidim, Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Let alone Jews and Presbyterians, or Greek Orthodox and Quakers, or Methodists and Buddhists.
The vitality experienced in these communities is usually enjoyed in isolation: Faith communities in North America often don t have much to do with each other. Many North Americans live in geographic, cultural, economic and social isolation from one another and are ill-prepared to speak honestly across racial, religious and cultural lines. To them, others ways are strange ways.
Yet, a sense of estrangement is not necessarily a stranger to religious tradition. For example, the earliest writings at the core of the Abrahamic religions-Islam, Christianity and Judaism-use the experience of otherness and isolation from other religious traditions as a pretext to reflect on being strangers in strange lands. Little wonder, then, that many religions exalt the stranger and offer numerous spiritual injunctions about the obligations of hospitality, the right of protection and the general caution, expressed in one form or another, to take care with strangers lest, as the Christian saint Paul wrote in his Letter to the Hebrews (13:2), we entertain angels unawares.
If the ancient wisdom suggests caution, contemporary circumstances suggest urgency. Indeed, the publication of How to Be a Perfect Stranger comes at a time when the airwaves and radio talk shows are dominated by those who would use religious faith as a cover for intolerance, who exploit eternal truths for short-term political gain and who cynically use the spark of faith to ignite culture wars and divide North America into bickering camps.
Having seen how religion can be abused, it is up to us, as citizens, to step out of our isolated communities and into dialogue with those different from ourselves if we are ever to reach the common ground that defines us as citizens, parents, neighbors and human beings. For shared values can get us past the superficial barriers of language and skin color to catch a glimpse, however fleeting, of the spirit that exists in equal measure in all people. Only around those shared values can we hope to find solutions to many of the problems vexing society as a whole.
For understanding to increase, our differences need not disappea