wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Building houses of peace, bridges to the future

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This story and photo available online:

www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2008/08936<http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2008/08936>.

Building houses of peace, bridges to the future

'Junior Year Abroad' participants gather at Ghost Ranch

>by Pauline Coffmann and Linda Huffman Jones
>Special to Presbyterian News Service

GHOST RANCH, NM ― More than 80 "alumni" and their families
gathered here recently for a reunion of the Presbyterian
Church (U.S.A.)'s "Junior Year Abroad" (JYA) program.

"I think it really made a difference, don't you?"
96-year-old Margaret Flory commented to Bruce Rigdon about
the program she originated in 1953. JYA prompted about 500
Presbyterian college students to study and serve overseas
for one year. Rigdon participated in Hong Kong as part of
the first JYA group.

The JYA program lasted for two decades. It preceded the
Peace Corps by about eight years and is thought to be the
model for it. Flory, who lives in North Carolina, is still
pondering ways to build bridges. In a recorded interview,
she told the group that the "time has come to move east and
west and build the house of peace."

The group gathered here was challenged by Hartford (CT)
Seminary president and ethics professor Heidi Hadsell to
consider the need for interfaith dialogue. Hadsell noted
that her father, John Hadsell, a campus minister in
Berkeley and former head of the Advanced Pastoral Studies
Program at San Francisco Theological Seminary, took his
family to the University of Ibadan in Nigeria when Heidi
was 14 years old at Flory's behest.

Hadsell went to Nigeria because not only did Flory, who
worked in the Student World Relations Office of the
PC(USA), want college students to stretch their horizons,
she wanted campus ministers to do so, as well. So she
arranged for them to serve as campus ministers somewhere
else in the world.

Hadsell recognized one of the JYA'ers at the Ghost Ranch
gathering ― Linda Huffman Jones, who had been studying in
Nigeria at the time her family was there. They agreed that
the experience was one of "building bridges."

"We were cracked open and made amenable to learning with
new eyes," Hadsell recalled.

Participants engaged in agenda-busting discussions about
how living as a minority in another culture prepared them
to understand the feelings and reality of those with
religious and cultural differences in our society?

The challenges and nature of current times ― including the
collapse of the economy, the deep erosion of civil rights,
two protracted wars, diminished opportunities for children
and grandchildren, environmental brokenness, and the
challenges of pluralism require an ability to work
globally, "across the boundaries of "otherness," the group
agreed.

"The fundamental challenge today has everything to do with
perspective and worldview - approaching issues with a set
of chosen values," Hadsell said, "not necessarily those
freely supplied by the secular culture."

Many JYA alumni are deeply involved in efforts that do just
that.

-Richard Douglass (Ethiopia, '66-'67), is engaged in
developing a massive, high-tech program to address health
care needs in villages in Ghana;

-Walt Owensby, (Beirut '54-'55), who went on to do mission
work in Latin America, shared his understanding of
globalization and the new realities it brings;

-John Lorentz (Beirut '60-'61) led a workshop on Iran and
Central Asia. Vic Compher (Berlin '65-'66) brought a
presentation on interfaith dialogue;

-Bruce Rigdon discussed the Accra Declaration of the World
Alliance of Reformed Churches which calls on churches
around the world to work together on issues of justice and
ecology;

-Pauline Coffman (Beirut '59-'60) led a session on
Israel/Palestine, with help from many (28 of the 54 JYA'ers
present had studied in Lebanon at either the American
University of Beirut or the Beirut College for Women, now
Lebanese American University).

Hadsell called for the group to be "cosmopolitan
Christians" who have a world-wide scope but remain grounded
in our own particularity. She stressed the importance of
integrating into one's perspective that of "the other,"
which is different from "we are all the same."

The Reformed tradition is helpful in that regard, with its
keen awareness of the "otherness" of God and the partial
and incomplete descriptions that we, as Christians, are
able to offer; our pride in our history of reform that
suggests our ability to change and to self-critique; and
finally, the insistence on community - the practice of
hospitality together while striving for discernment about
the "kin-dom" of God.

The best Christians can offer to interfaith dialogue is to
amplify the Christian concept of love and apply it,
participants agreed. "Our children are showing us how to do
that by dropping some of the polarized categories about
others with which we grew up," one JYAer said.

What would a letter to participants' children and
grandchildren say. Could it avoid being moralistic, but
still contain our genuine yearnings for them? Could it
convey the passion JYAers have for studying in another
culture and how we learned more about ourselves than
anything else?

Participants agreed they want their children and
grandchildren to take risks. They want them to "live life
large" and to care about the world. They want them to
discern what is of lasting value and to live out of that.

Though not all JYAers voted for him, all agreed that Barack
Obama's election as president raised hopes for America's
young people. A bumper sticker on one participant's car
seemed to epitomize the gathering: "OBAMANOS!" ― let us get
on with the joy of building bridges internationally and in
our own communities.

Pauline Coffman was a JYA participant at Beirut College for
Women 1959-60. Linda Huffman Jones studied in Nigeria
1964-65.

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