It was a beautiful, warm day in Washington as hundreds of people of different faiths gathered in front of the Capitol for an Interfaith Prayer Vigil for Peace in Iraq, “Blessed are the Peacemakers.”

The event was part of the culmination of Ecumenical Advocacy Days, a weekend-long conference on religion and activism sponsored by over 40 different faith-based organizations and ending with lobby day at the Capitol. Although the rest of the conference was primarily rooted in Christian themes, the Union for Reform Judaism, The Interfaith Alliance, the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and the National Sikh Gurdwara joined in the prayer service, which conveyed the need for unity in our efforts to pursue peace in Iraq and throughout the world. Rabbi Scott Sperling, Director of the Union’s Mid-Atlantic Council, offered words of welcome as well as an adapted reading from The Gates of Prayer.

Among the highlights of the service was when Reverend John McCullough, Director of Church World Service, shared the following words by American poet Langston Hughes:

I dream a world where man
No other man will scorn,
Where love will bless the earth
And peace its paths adorn.
I dream a world where all
Will know sweet freedom's way,
Where greed no longer saps the soul
Nor avarice blights our day.
A world I dream where black or white,
Whatever race you be,
Will share the bounties of the earth
And every man is free,
Where wretchedness will hang its head
And joy, like a pearl,
Attends the needs of all mankind--
Of such I dream, my world!

[- The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), p. 311 .]