Beyond Belief (continued)

Once the event had actually progressed to those people holding sheetrock for each other, the educational aspect of the event developed in other ways. Christian volunteers worked on Rosh Hashanah and during Ramadan, learning about the importance of these holy days to their Jewish and Muslim partners. The work site was interfaith from top to bottom--right down to the snacks provided. "Even though everybody doesn't keep kosher," Powell says, "we decided since some of them will, let's find out what that means. So we've all had to find out where you can go shopping for kosher things, to find out that halal and kosher are almost the same. So we've learned about that whole kind of thing. There's just a lot of different levels to all of this."

Volunteers came from participating Baltimore congregations and area colleges and high schools. Among others, the Islamic Society of Baltimore, the Muslim Community Cultural Center, the Morgan State Muslim Student Association, three Jewish congregations, multiple Disciples of Christ and United Churches of Christ congregations, and Loyola College were represented. Financial support for the builds came from some of these partners, as well as from foundations, matching grants and individual donors.

St. Timothy's School, a Baltimore-area boarding and day school for girls grades 9 through 12 that offers its juniors and seniors an international baccalaureate diploma, sent volunteers to the work site on multiple occasions. "Although we're an Episcopal school, we also are an interfaith school," says the Rev. Kristen Looney, St. Timothy chaplain. "Our focus is really learning about how we fit in the context of the wider world. We have Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian and Jewish students here, so they're constantly learning in community and living together, but then to take it outside of the context of the school environment and to meet people of other faiths and to hear their backgrounds and experiences, I think is so important as well."

The results that the students could immediately see, says Looney, were paramount. "Students who think oftentimes that they can't make a difference and get really down about all the problems in the world, when they get to a Habitat house, they feel like, 'Wow. One nail at a time, I can make a little bit of a difference in the world.' And that's huge."

That hands-on aspect of the build experience appealed to other partners as well. "I really liked the idea of doing interfaith work in sort of a tangible way," says steering committee member Elissa Sachs-Kohen, Baltimore Hebrew Congregation associate rabbi. "Because I think that sometimes interfaith work can be a lot of talk and not much progress. This is a way to say we do have differences--and I personally believe that interfaith dialogue has to include the differences and not just whitewash them--we do have differences, and we have a lot that is the same, and together we can really do incredible things in the world."

For some, participation was more about the deed. "I think this is a very powerful tool where you are just bringing people together as you're doing the good work," says Islamic Society of Baltimore volunteer Akbar Ansari, who brought his two sons to work on-site one day. "Part of Islam is helping others, regardless of who you are and who that person is, and this provides that avenue.

"But with their cake, [volunteers] get icing, too," he adds. "That's how I see it. The interfaith part is the icing."

Chesapeake Habitat looks forward to future interfaith builds, says Powell. In a city facing a housing crisis of considerable proportions, it's one way to help address the shelter needs of families--and use homes, even ones not yet built, to bring people together.

"What we've said from the very beginning was that what we want to do is accentuate our similarities, and then--once we understand what's similar about us--we can talk about our differences," Powell says. "And I think that for all of the volunteers, that's the piece that they've really appreciated: that they understand that Allah calls Muslims to take care of the poor, and that Adonai calls Jews to be involved in repairing the world, and that God calls Christians to reach out to the least of these. All of us know that the call is the same, and so we can work side by side."