Plurality on Easter

News stories make us constantly aware of the tensions and conflicts that divide our world, and so often the roots of the conflicts are religious. Amidst all these divisions, it was refreshing to hear one of NPR’s Easter stories. The reporter broadcasted from Jerusalem and hailed the day as the most important of Christian holidays to which most Christians would likely agree.

The correspondent situated her story at an outdoor Christian service on Mount Scopus, where chiming bells provided the sound postcard. Then she moved seamlessly from the Easter service to show a

Courtesy en.wikipedia.org

Muslim cabbie rolling out his prayer rug and kneeling below the hill. From there she described Jews hurrying to the Western Wall to daven.

Despite the frequent reminders of the deep chasms among these faiths and especially in the Middle East, I thought the report represented a shift in our collective consciousness regarding the value of diversity. I felt pretty sure that this is a relatively recent development, that 20 or 30 years ago, maybe even a shorter time ago, the Easter report would have been exclusively Christian, no mention of the presence of other faiths in the city that Christians recognize as the locus of the first Easter.