Harper College hosting interfaith Sept. 11 service

Hope is an important part of an interfaith service planned for 4 to 6 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 11, in Harper College’s Performing Arts Center, organizers say.

“With the insanity of Sept. 11, 2001, many people woke up to the need for better communication, better understanding — cross-cultural and interfaith understanding,” said the Rev. Hilary Landeau Krivchenia, minister of Countryside Church Unitarian Universalist in Palatine.

“It called religious leaders to look more deeply into the message of their faith. It’s a message of love and understanding across the board,” she said.

Talks, chants, prayers and music will come from practitioners of Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu religions, as well as several Christian traditions, during the service on Harper’s Palatine campus, 1200 W. Algonquin Road.

Choirs from Beth Tikvah in Hoffman Estates and Countryside Unitarian will sing. A flute choir from St. John United Church of Christ in Arlington Heights will perform, and William Bucholtz of Chicago will play Native American flute music.

Children from some of the congregations will display their artwork depicting cooperation and peace.

“The interfaith service brings together people of many faiths in the Northwest suburbs to get to know each other; to build bridges of understanding and work together into the future,” said the Rev. B.J. Birkhahn-Rommelfanger of the Church of the Incarnation in Arlington Heights. “Our goal is about building peaceful relationships in a world that has seen so much hate and bigotry because of religion.”

For more information about the Interfaith Service of Memory, Healing and Hope, call Countryside Church Unitarian Universalist at (847) 359-8440 or the Church of the Incarnation at (847) 956-1510.