February 13, 2021
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As an inclusive group committed to loving and supporting one another, the Tri-City Interfaith Council (TCIC) condemns the vandalism recently discovered at Temple Beth Torah.

TCIC represents people from diverse faith traditions and beliefs. We promote respect, understanding, cooperation, and appreciation for the many religious and faith traditions within our community.

Each of our faith traditions calls on us to love our neighbors. There is no room for hate in our community. We reach out with compassion to Temple Beth Torah and stand in solidarity with their members.

The Tri-City Interfaith Council stands in solidarity with the people of Sri Lanka in the wake of the devastating terrorist attacks on Sunday, April 21, when many of the targeted victims were celebrating Easter. We offer our heartfelt condolences to the families of all those whose lives were taken and our healing prayers for those recovering from injuries.
 
We are appalled that yet another attack targeted people during worship, a time of particular spiritual and physical vulnerability. No person, of any faith, should be fearful in their place of worship. We stand united, across religious, faith, and spiritual traditions against such violence and will continue our work to promote the light of interreligious cooperation instead of the deep darkness of interreligious hatred and violence.
 
We are reminded of the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on the descending spiral of violence:
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence, you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence, you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: Only love can do that.”
[From “Where Do We Go From Here?” as published in, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967), p. 62.]
 
The work of interfaith cooperation and understanding is more important than ever, and we renew our commitment to advancing peace, justice, and love in our world.
 
Issued 23 April 2019

FREMONT, 22 October 2018 -  Responding to reports a hateful acts against local candidates running for public office, the Tri-City Interfaith Council releases the following statement:

The recent disparaging actions that have been committed in our community towards candidates running for office have no place here in Fremont. The defacing of a candidate's poster with a swastika, a symbol of hate, and the messages left for a candidate who wears a hijab does not speak for our community, a community that prides itself in its inclusiveness and diversity.
 
The Tri-City Interfaith Council rejects any form of racism, bigotry, and hatred. We stand for and with a community where all are welcome, diversity is embraced, and respect is held for one another in their beliefs as well as their political affiliations.
 
Our membership, a grassroots collection of people from many spiritual traditions, want to clearly state that our faith traditions call us to recognize all people as equal and sacred.
 
We call on all in our community to work together for the common good and honor the contributions of all individuals. Rather than be divided by our differences, let us be enriched by our diversity

At the January 5, 2018, meeting of the Tri-City Interfaith Council, the following statement was adopted unanimously:

TCIC anti-hate statement from Tri-City Interfaith Council
Adopted 5 January 2018
 
As a grassroots collection of people from many spiritual traditions, we want to clearly state that our faith traditions call us to recognize all people as equal and sacred.  We reject racism, bigotry, and hatred.

When expressions of white supremacy, Antisemitism, neo-Nazi ideology, Islamophobia, hatred against ethnic minorities, and other forms of oppression make headlines, we must stand firmly against these exhibitions of hate.  The Nazi swastika, the Ku Klux Klan hood, and the Confederate flag are symbols that have no place in American society.

While we denounce violence in any form by any group, we reject suggestions of the moral equivalency of groups that promote white supremacy and hatred of all kinds with those who oppose such values and protest against them.

We praise the many groups that are working in our community and across our country to overcome division and build understanding, whether it is among people of different races, faiths, sexual orientations, gender identities, or gender expressions; between police officers and community members; or within our schools.

All our faiths are grounded in the common value of compassion.  We affirm fair treatment for all and the centrality of “loving our neighbors as ourselves.”  Prejudice, animosity, or violence against any group of people is completely antithetical to our religious principles.  We promote our national values which declare that we are one nation with “liberty and justice for all.”

We call on all people of good will to work together for the common good and honor the contributions of all individuals.  Rather than be divided by our differences, let us be enriched by our diversity.

The Tri-City Interfaith Council signed onto an editorial calling for people of all faiths to bring the resources of their traditions to support their work in building a more just and loving community.

We as a society are in a tumultuous moment—not only politically but morally. Millions of people find the actions of the Administration, and of Congress also, deeply immoral, and they are taking to the streets to voice their discontent. People of faith, individually and as communities, are prominent among them.
But do people of faith have anything unique to bring to the struggles of the present moment? Can they do more than simply swell the multitudes protesting in the street or overwhelming Capitol telephone lines?
Yes, they can. In a moment where the latest executive order or the latest protest threatens to suck up all the world’s attention, people of faith have resources and wisdom that reach back millennia, and we need to bring them to bear on our current struggles. Here are some of them:

• Religious and ethical resources bearing on today’s contentious questions: The questions roiling the public today touch directly on issues about which our various traditions have much to say. This rests on the wisdom of centuries and cannot be written off as manifestations of modern liberalism. People of faith have rich spiritual and ethical resources that speak to today’s debates, including traditions and teachings addressing peace, nonviolence, mutual respect, hospitality, charity, and pluralism; and these resources point to basic values shared by all major world religions and also by humanists and other non-religious people. In the current climate, where certain religions (primarily, of course, Islam and Judaism) are openly or implicitly demonized, it is vital to point out these shared values and to use them as a starting point for addressing the ethical issues entailed in today’s conflicts. The issue of the reception of refugees, for instance, touches directly on questions of hospitality and care for the vulnerable that virtually all religious and ethical traditions address.
• Spiritual resources for self–care: Dealing with deeply-felt political and moral issues can easily lead to burn-out or, worse yet, to self-righteousness and anger that trigger speech and action that violate the very values we are trying to inculcate. Here, too, our traditions have rich resources to offer, including approaches to prayer and meditation, sacred texts that profoundly and powerfully express the truths and values that should inform our grappling with current issues, and the examples of adherents past and present who have lived by the virtues that we wish to see emulated. People of faith and spirit need to avail themselves of these resources and encourage fellow activists to draw on them.
• Hope: This could have been included under either of the two preceding points, but it so undergirds and completes everything we seek to say here that it deserves consideration on its own. Particularly when one is, politically speaking, the underdog, it’s easy to be overcome by frustration and even despair. But whether one believes in a beneficent deity or divine reality or simply in the potential of the human mind and spirit, our religious and ethical traditions offer assurance that evil does not have the final word—that, as Martin Luther King said, echoing words from a long tradition, “the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice.” Our spiritual traditions empower us to see that long arc beyond any current defeats. The current moment requires people who can draw on those traditions to kindle hope as we tread a challenging path of resistance.

Merely having these resources is not enough. We need to be both media-savvy and organizationally savvy—media savvy to draw media attention to our presence and our message, and organizationally savvy to initiate prayerful and spiritual events that build awareness of our values and resources among a broader public and inject them into current debates. The current Administration appears to be listening to the voices of only one segment of our country’s broad spectrum of faiths and faith communities. We, who on the basis of our faith share the moral concerns of so many of our fellow citizens, need to raise our voices to ensure that the values we seek to live by are heard above the din.

To keep abreast of who else has signed the editorial, click here.