Clergy urge Americans to defend religious minorities

A group of religious leaders representing seven faith traditions have called for something more than a period of public mourning after a week that saw a shooting rampage at a Sikh temple and a suspicious fire at a Missouri mosque.

“It is my hope that this is more than a time to express personal sorrows,” said Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. “Our most concrete rejection of violence occurs when we engage the neighbor, the neighbor who is new in our community, the neighbor who worships differently than we,” he said.

The gathering was mostly virtual—a national conference call sponsored by Shoulder to Shoulder, an interfaith group founded in 2010 to combat a surge of anti-Muslim sentiment. Faith leaders came together on August 9 in the wake of several recent acts against religious minorities.