Did you hear the one about the Episcopalian, former Baptist, Catholic turned Baha’i and atheist who walked into a coffee shop?
While that may sound like the beginning of a joke, this particular interfaith gathering is part of a serious endeavor called Common Tables.
This nonprofit group is trying to end religious bigotry — one dinner table at a time.
The notion is that people who break bread together can break down barriers between faiths.
Co-founders Randy and Sandy Harris and Dave and Kay Corby arrange for individuals and couples from diverse spiritual backgrounds to meet and explore their similarities and differences.
Common Tables, although not affiliated with any faith group, has worked with local clergy in launching the program, Randy Harris says.
After only two months of operations, they have signed up about 150 couples in the Denver area.
They usually meet first in a coffee shop or some neutral territory — then, their homes are the venues.
On a recent Saturday it was Mark and Sarah Peters’ turn to host four couples for dinner at their house in Superior — the second meal of four the group will share over six months.
The pre-dinner chatter touched on subjects including wine, kitchen lighting, toys and war.
“If people talk about their dogs and gardens for six months, then that accomplishes our mission,” Dave Corby says.
If the groups want to talk about their faith and cultural traditions, that’s fine too. And if they want to attend one another’s worship or other services, they can.
Any prohibitions held by a member — such as not eating pork or drinking alcohol — are honored at the dinner table.
London-born Mark Peters is a nonbeliever — in God, that is — yet he is still very much interested in this sort of fellowship.
“I’m an atheist. In America, that’s a difficult thing to say,” the 47-year-old says.
Having someone ask him what he believes in was, Peters says, both “frightening and freeing.”
“I have beliefs,” he says. “The fact that they don’t involve God doesn’t mean I don’t have a strong moral code.”
The biggest challenge, he says, is trying not to convert someone, whether the talk is about football or faith.
The one rule of Common Tables: no proselytizing.
“It didn’t take long for us to get right into it, into talking about our beliefs,” says one of Peters’ dinner guests, Dorothy Hackett, a member of the Mile High Church of Religious Science.
While the Peterses dished up an Englishman’s shepherd’s pie and selection of cheeses, the four couples revisited their first conversation about their spirituality — this time with more openness and depth.
“This is about compassionate dialogue,” the 60-year-old Corby says. “This is about learning there is nothing to fear. We want to create ever- expanding circles of inclusiveness.”
Common Tables has its work cut out with 10,000 distinct religions in the world, according to .
Within Christianity alone there are more than 33,000 denominations, all based on the same Scriptures.
“This is not so much about trying to understand all the variations within Islam or Christianity as it is about understanding that Muslims and Christians are people like ourselves,” Corby says.
If he’d had a dozen Muslim friends years ago, he said, his take on 9/11 would have been completely different.
Common Tables’ current registration fee is $25 per individual or couple.
The membership goal is 3 million worldwide, or 750,000 contemporaneous dinner meetings, by the end of 2008.
It’s doable, the founders claim.
“This is happening almost faster than we can manage it,” the 55-year-old Harris says. “All four of us have had to leave our day jobs to run this.”
Harris said the group’s website, ., has experienced hits from all over the globe, from Pakistan to Ireland.
Saturday dinner guest Bill Mahoney, 60, a Baha’i convert and former Catholic, said everyone in his group is pretty open-minded or they probably wouldn’t be there.
“How do you bring the fundamentalists to the table? I don’t know,” Mahoney says.
Electa Draper: 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.com
