**1. Introduction**

The title of this article gives readers some idea of the complexities today in naming what some call "interfaith worship services" or "interreligious prayer". We know "it" when we see it or hear about it and many of us have participated in some sort of interreligious "event" where the people gathered for more than an educational activity. Ritual practices took place. A Jew may attend the baptism of a friend's child and in the process learn something and come to appreciate the role religion plays in his friend's life. You may attend the wedding of a Christian who is marrying a Hindu. A Muslim colleague invites you to break the fast during a day of Ramadan at an Iftar dinner. The various religious groups in your town/city join in solidarity to protest the killing of a young black man. The nation gathers people from every religion and no religious affiliation to lament and mourn the deaths of those killed in the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

There are occasions where there is an intentional gathering of people from various religions who come together to read sacred texts, to "pray," to be in silence together, to sing/chant songs. The purpose of these gatherings and one's decision to attend and observe, or more actively participate varies greatly. These events, however, are not primarily about religious histories and beliefs. They embody the ways religion is lived out in spiritual practices—in the gestures and postures and movements, the sounds and sights and smells and symbols that are deeply rooted in the psyche and spiritual being of religions' practitioners.

**Citation:** Black, Kathleen Mary. 2022. Interfaith/Interreligious? Worship/ Prayer? Services/Occasions? Interfaith Prayer Gatherings. *Religions* 13: 489. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/rel13060489

Academic Editor: Eunjoo Mary Kim

Received: 15 March 2022 Accepted: 25 May 2022 Published: 27 May 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

Joining with others from different religions, especially for ritual, prayer, or worship, is welcomed and embraced by some and viewed as a total violation of their own religious beliefs by others. Yet as oppression and even persecution of religious minorities continues at home and around the globe, and as local communities become increasingly multireligious, getting to know our religiously diverse neighbors and finding ways to foster peace can be a great contribution to human flourishing and the common good.

This article highlights the Lantern Floating Hawaii event as an example of a religious community that uses important elements and symbols from their tradition to create an interreligious occasion for the purpose of fostering healing and peace among those who attend. Organized by a Buddhist denomination that began in Japan in the 1930s, the event intentionally takes place near Pearl Harbor, the site that Japan bombed in 1941.

There are various occasions today that call upon religious leaders and laypersons to design and/or participate in collaborative multireligious events. The purpose(s), content, and leadership of these occasions all vary, but there are some models that can help those who participate in the design of these events. What these events are called varies greatly.

In the field of Christian liturgical studies, there is no common agreed upon term that refers to the variety of interfaith/interreligious worship/prayer/ritual services/occasions described above. In some ways it is tied to the area of study known as "multicultural worship" because the gathering of those from other religious traditions is, by definition, also multicultural. However, there are additional layers of complexity that accompany the worship/prayer/ritual gatherings where two or more religious traditions jointly design and facilitate an occasion that is for their respective communities but also for the confluence of these communities combined.

Different disciplines, different religions, and different regions within the Englishspeaking world define terms associated with these occasions in varied ways, not to mention the plethora of terms possible in other languages. I am a North American, Caucasian woman who is a Christian minister and native English speaker. This article is somewhat slanted toward an English-speaking Christian audience because these interfaith/multireligious ritual gatherings are often more problematic for Christians than for Hindus, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, or Baha'is. Christianity is considered an "exclusive" religion which, for some, poses issues for interfaith engagement.

It is clear that the English terms we choose can be interpreted in a variety of positive (welcoming, inclusive) and negative (boundary erecting, exclusive) ways. Therefore, clarity of what is meant by the words used in this article is essential. Coming to an understanding of these terms is an important part of engagement with persons from other religions.

#### *1.1. Interfaith? Interreligious? Multireligious?*

In reality, "interfaith" and "interreligious" are often used interchangeably. However, scholars and theologians have argued for highlighting the difference between these terms. The World Council of Churches (WCC)

distinguishes between 'interfaith' and 'interreligious.' For the WCC, the term 'interfaith' is not limited to established religions. The term 'interfaith' is also 'considered to encompass ideologies and systems of belief which transcend specific religious identification, including, for example, humanists and secularists. It is also a term regularly used in political and social circles, to speak about social cohesion, the importance of members of different faiths and religions working together for the common good, and the elusive search for peace between religions'. (Tveit 2016)

In 1965, as a result of Vatican II, the Roman Catholic Church published "Nostra Aetate" (Our Age) which used the term "interreligious" to refer to its engagement with those from other religions and faith traditions (Nostra Aetate 1965). Following "Nostra Aetate," the WCC "has increasingly opted to use the word interreligious rather than interfaith" because the work they do is primarily dialogue with those who represent a specific religious tradition (Tveit 2016).

Whether the term is all one word or two words or a hyphenated word can also signal differences in meaning. Sometimes, "interfaith" is used to emphasize the similarities between religions while "inter-faith" or "inter faith" is used to highlight the need to keep differences as well as similarities part of the encounter (Tveit 2016).

In "(Inter)Religious Studies: Making a Home in the Secular Academy," Kate McCarthy argues that "interfaith" activities are done with the goal of creating a space where people who belong to different faith traditions work together for the purpose of greater understanding and fostering peace. She views the field of "interreligious studies" as an academic discipline that is committed to critical study but is religiously neutral (McCarthy 2018).

"Multireligious" and "multifaith" are also terms that are used in both the academy and the church though not as often as interreligious and interfaith. As you can see, the choice of the term used means different things to different populations of people. Since ritual gatherings are often designed to bring adherents of different religions together for deeper understanding and fostering peace, and since civic ritual gatherings and those designed to protest, lament, or grieve tragedies in our communities, nations, and world also include those who are humanists, secularists, agnostics, spiritual but not religious, and atheists, for the purpose of this article, I will use the term "interfaith," though "multifaith" would similarly reflect the intent of these gatherings. While I have not chosen to include the hyphenated term "inter-faith" since it less frequently appears in discussions on this topic, attention to differences as well as similarities should nonetheless be a part of these interfaith gatherings. In helping to organize interfaith gatherings, it is important to discern what term will be used to best convey the purpose of the event and how the meaning of terms used will be conveyed to those who will attend.
