When people break bread together, they build bridges – that was the theme for this year’s Children of Abraham Coalition (COAC) Potluck for Peace this past Sunday.
A few youth leaders addressed the event.
COAC brings together Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Baha’is to learn about each other’s religions and work together to build peace. In a reflection of the strength in these relationships, founder Fr. Corey Brost, CSV, and his peer faith leaders confidently entrust planning and leadership to the interfaith youth leadership group.
“This whole event – I had almost nothing to do with planning it. A team of adults and teens took charge of this, our signature event, and it’s been three years of effectively using this model,” Fr. Corey said. “COAC has nurtured new leadership in a way that it can stand on its own.”
This event started as a way to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and stand in countercultural witness to anti-Muslim hate and violence. Though it shifted to a virtual event during the peak time of the COVID-19 pandemic, the gathering has continued annually as a place for community and dialogue.
In 15 years of interfaith peacebuilding, Fr. Corey has brought together several faith communities in the four traditions, including expanding to work with Baha’i youth in the last couple years and learning about their history also as an Abrahamic tradition.
One key partner has been the Turkish American Society of Chicago, a sister organization to the national Niagara Foundation. TASC has a center in Mount Prospect, IL, and “provides a platform to Turks to come together and transfer to values of education, culture, language and history from one generation to another.” Like the Viatorians, the organization focuses specifically on young people. TASC hosted this Potluck for Peace and has been a host site for Peace Camp, too.
Fr. Corey (center) is often sharing and preaching from his perspective as a Catholic and a priest, alongside faith leaders from Jewish, Muslim, and Baha’i faith communities contributing to dialogue and education from their traditions’ perspectives.
Over that time, Fr. Corey and his faith leader peers have accompanied young people who grew up while involved in the coalition’s ministries. “The young adults who are there with us started with us as middle school students,” Fr. Corey said. “They grew up coming to our Peace Camp and now take part as grownups.”
Many Saint Viator High School students and alumni take part in COAC. As preparations for the next Peace Camp begin, one of them has been hired as the co-coordinator for the program: Kyle Wallisch SVHS ‘12, in his first year teaching math at Lincoln Middle School in Schiller Park, IL, after studying education at St. Norbert University. He’ll work alongside Abbey Finn, now a teacher at Buffalo Grove High School.
COAC is one way in which Viatorians strive to live out the spirit of Vatican II’s Nostra aetate, which, in calling for interfaith dialogue, begins, “In our time, when day by day mankind is being drawn closer together, and the ties between different peoples are becoming stronger, the Church examines more closely her relationship to non-Christian religions. In her task of promoting unity and love among men, indeed among nations, she considers above all in this declaration what men have in common and what draws them to fellowship.”