In recognition of increasing Islamophobia, threats to religious freedom and other forms of intolerance in the United States, Partners in Humanity's America's Common Ground project aims to shift the current paradigm to one of common respect for religious tolerance and liberty.
To launch this effort, Search for Common Ground has created a short video based on a series of interviews with civic and thought leaders from a diverse range of political and religious affiliations.
Meet some of the prominent Americans speaking out on this topic:
Ralph G. Neas, President and CEO of the National Coalition on Healthcare
I have a friend who I partner with on occasion with the name of Grover Norquist. And we disagree on just about everything, especially the role of government and how much government can do with and for the people of the United States, but what we have total unanimity on is the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform
If you focus on the totality of your own faith and other people's faiths, you realize how much you share. If you take one or two issues where you disagree, and focus on that, it leads in a different direction, but the fuller and deeper your understanding of your own religion, and of other people's faiths, the more you see things in common.
Joel C. Hunter, Senior Pastor at Northland, a Church Distributed
For a Christian, common ground is really holy ground, because Christians say that we are to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. Well that's not possible unless you know one another, unless you talk with one another, unless you work together on common projects.
Jessica Oleon, Rabbi at Mount Sinai
It is a really important part of what I try to do as a faith leader in my community to be a window so that we are better aware, and we are in more relationships, and we are having better conversations with our friends and neighbors and strangers – fellow citizens who understand God in a different way than we do but are just using different words and different language and different rituals to try to get to the same values and ultimately to the same place.
Bob Edgar, President of Common Cause
The best sermons I've ever heard preached are the ones that are lived, not spoken. We need more non-verbal sermons, particularly in this area: the touch of a child who happens to be of a different faith, the willingness to reach out and help each other when there is prejudice or racism, or religious racism. Those are acts of prophetic nature.
Nina Shea, Director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute
If you don't have the freedom to believe what you want to believe in your heart, than really you have no other freedom.
