Concern over protest canceled annual interfaith Thanksgiving service in Charlotte

A decades-old Charlotte tradition that gathers people from different faith communities for a Thanksgiving service did not occur this year due to concerns over a protest.

Mecklenburg Metropolitan Interfaith Network canceled its annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Service just hours before it was scheduled to start Wednesday at Trinity Presbyterian Church on Providence Road.

Muslim and Arab community members had gathered at the site before the service was scheduled to begin. In an email announcing the cancellation, MeckMIN said it was aware that a peaceful protest was planned.

”We had anticipated this possibility and had protocols in place. After consultation with the host church and with respect for their concerns that our protocols might not be adequate, it was with great reluctance that the incredibly difficult decision was made to cancel,” it read.

As many as 1,500 people have attended the service, held each year at a different house of worship in Charlotte. This year’s interfaith service theme was “Radical Inclusion.”

Imam John Ederer, a former MeckMIN president, said the protest was not intended to oppose MeckMIN. Its focus was to bring attention to the Israel-Hamas war’s impact on Palestinian people and to encourage frank discussions in interfaith communities about the complex topic.

Jolin McElroy, pastor of First Christian Church, voiced sadness about the service cancellation on MeckMin’s Facebook.

“Breaks my heart,” he wrote, adding: “A first for us, since we’ve been having these gatherings, I think. At least, in recent memory.”

MeckMin, Trinity Presbyterian and multiple people listed as speakers for the event did not respond to requests for comment from The Charlotte Observer on Friday.

About 40 people gathered Wednesday across the street from Trinity Presbyterian Church. They came to bring attention to the impact of the Israel-Hamas war on the Palestinian community and to encourage frank discussions about the complex topic between interfaith communities, a local Muslim leader said.

Friction over responses to war

Ederer, who is the imam and religious director of the Muslim Community Center of Charlotte, said that while he wasn’t involved in the protest planning, his understanding was the peaceful gathering was part the Palestinian community’s efforts to draw attention to what’s happening in Gaza.

“They feel like their voices are never heard,” said Ederer, who served as MeckMIN president from 2019 to 2022.

For years, he and some others in MeckMIN have “tried to discuss the issue of Zionism, as it relates to the mission of MeckMIN, to promote interfaith collaboration through fostering understanding, compassion and justice,” he added.

A “public interfaith conversation” about Zionism, an effort by Jewish people to regain and retain their biblical homeland as described in the Book of Genesis, is critical given how many religions have ties to the land now known as Israel, Ederer said.

But ultimately, he said, that was a “discussion that we were just never able to have,” leading to some frustration among some members of MeckMIN.

In early November, an email from Ederer on behalf of the imams of Charlotte to the MeckMIN board, laid out frustration over two opinion pieces published in The Observer about the Israel-Hamas war.

“The Muslim community of Mecklenburg County cannot partner with any organization that affiliates with an oppressive ideology,” Ederer wrote in the Nov. 9 email, which The Observer obtained on Friday.

“The Muslim community of Mecklenburg County cannot partner with any organization that affiliates with an oppressive ideology,” Ederer also wrote.

In the October opinion piece, Rabbis Asher Knight and Schindler — the senior rabbi and rabbi emerita of Temple Beth El — expressed “profound grief” over “the innocent lives tragically lost on both sides of the border” and described the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel as “a horrifying nightmare.”

“In these challenging times, we stand resolutely united with Israel, sharing in their fear and crisis. An attack on Israel poses not only a threat to its people but an existential threat to the entire Jewish community and our collective identity,” it stated.

The letter said Israel was created to provide a safe haven for a persecuted people and that its “safety and existence” are challenged. “The foremost duty of any government is to safeguard its citizens from physical attack. Israel is no exception,” they wrote.

The November opinion, authored by Rabbi Daniel Greyber on behalf of the executive committee of the North Carolina Jewish Clergy Association, thanked some North Carolina leaders for “steadfast support of Israel” and said that a group of protesters who sat on NC Highway 147 with a sign saying, “NC Jews Say Ceasefire Now,” “do not speak in our name.”

“Our commitments to peace and compassion for innocent Israelis and Palestinians force us to confront a painful truth: Israel must fight a just war until Hamas is defeated,” it said.

Temple Beth El is listed by MeckMin as one of its “Member Houses of Faith,” though neither Knight nor Schindler are listed as speakers at the 2023 Thanksgiving service.

Mecklenburg Metropolitan Interfaith Network canceled its annual community-wide Interfaith Thanksgiving Service, shown in this file photo, on Wednesday at Trinity Presbyterian Church in response to “planned peaceful protests.”

What happened Wednesday?

About 40 people from the Muslim and Arab community had gathered across the street before the scheduled Thanksgiving service, said Paul McAllister, founder and president of Global Leaders in Unity and Evolvement.

“What they’re wanting to do is use the occasion to bring attention to the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, they were not protesting the interfaith service,” said McAllister, who was scheduled to participate in the service. “I celebrate peaceful Muslim demonstrators who entered into a rich dialogue with organizers and attendees of the MeckMiN Interfaith Thanksgiving Day Service.”

Cancelling the service “seems to have been a bit of an overreaction based upon unsubstantiated statements from outside the MeckMIN organization, but something we can learn from,” McAllister said. “My hope is that we will collectively engage in an ongoing conversation in the future with our community at large.”

More communication about differences — even when in opposition to each other — is key, he said.

“I think that it’s time for the faith community to exercise more courage to have unsettling conversations,” McAllister said. “We have to do better.”

People had come from across the state for the service and left disappointed, McAllister said. But worse, he said, it perpetuates false stereotypes linking the Muslim community to violence.

“That’s the biggest woe of this whole thing, that peace-loving young people exercising their constitutional right to demonstrate were castrated through cancellations of this event,” he said.

A loss for many reasons

he community-wide interfaith Thanksgiving service started in 1975 with the Rev. Sidney Freeman of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Charlotte and Rabbi Harold Krantzler of Temple Beth El, according to MeckMIN’s website.

MeckMIN, formed as Mecklenburg Ministries in 1987, with a mission “to be an interfaith advocate for compassion and justice within our community.” Houses of worship from faiths including Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism and Sikhism are among MeckMin’s current members.

The Thanksgiving event has brought together leaders from various faiths and speakers from Charlotte and around the state and the country in previous years. It hasn’t shied away from current events in years past, such as the fatal police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott in 2016 and the protests that followed.

Mecklenburg Metropolitan Interfaith Network canceled its annual community-wide Interfaith Thanksgiving Service on Wednesday at Trinity Presbyterian Church, which includes choir performances, shown in this file photo at St. Paul Baptist Church.

Loaves & Fishes CEO Tina Postel was one of a handful of people who voiced disappointment about the event’s cancellation on MeckMIN’s Facebook post.

“Sorry to hear this my friends! I know how much work went into making it happen!,” she said.

Postel told The Observer she has attended the service for seven years. Attending remotely this year, when she logged on she learned the community service had been canceled.

“Just seeing people from all different faiths come together because we believe in humanity and kindness and the season of giving, that’s what it represents,” Postel said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re Episcopal, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, we should all care about our fellow brothers and sisters.”

A couple of Loaves & Fishes nonprofit staff members attending the service weren’t aware of the late cancellation. They were turned away at the door.

“My heart breaks for all of the people involved in putting it on; they spend hours and days putting a program like that together and having it be canceled at the very last minute, I’m sure it was a really tough decision,” Postel said.

Postel described the annual service as “beautiful” exposing people to different songs and sermons, welcoming all faiths.

“It’s really all about a higher power and hope for all mankind, it really feels joyful and harmonious in that room,” Postel said. “This world now more than ever needs radical inclusive, the theme of this year’s event.”

Each year, the service also holds a food drive for Loaves & Fishes, which brings in a couple hundred pounds of food, as well as support for nonprofit Crisis Assistance Ministries.

Loaves & Fishes served a record-breaking 5,000 people the week leading up to Thanksgiving, she said.

“It hurts organizations like us that count on those donations,” Postel said. “Need is at an all-time high.”