The Book of Genesis continues to exert a surprising magne-tism, especially when Bill Moyers is the one talking about it. Chizuk Amuno Congregation and the Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies welcomed Moyers to Baltimore on September 25th to launch the tenth anniversary of ICJS and a national program of inquiry into the Book of Genesis. A crowd of some 1,800 people joined the celebration.

Following introductory remarks by Rabbi Joel Zaiman of Chizuk Amuno, ICJS Executive Director Christopher Leighton, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch, Bill Moyers enter-tained the capacity audience with a lively description of the origins of the Genesis project and his hopes for the upcoming PBS television series based upon it. Pointing out the rapidly growing interest in serious talk about religion as one result of the unsettled conditions prevailing in American life today, and deploring the lack of religious discourse among people commit-ted to the life of the mind, Moyers spoke passionately of his desire to create a national conversation about religion and God. He envisions a "living conversation" in which people will listen to one another talk about their own experiences of spiritual reality without the hostilities and polemics that have marred religious discussions through the ages.

The stories of Genesis have been chosen for this project, Moyers said, because of the enormous impact they have had on language, literature, imagination, and social conscience in Western civilization. He explained further that most of what happens in modern life is a reflection of the difficult struggles and the genuine human feelings depicted in Genesis. Displaying

Moyers hopes to create a national conversation about religion and God.

his keen wit and his deep love of the Bible, Moyers referred to the familiar characters of Gene-sis as "a memorable cast of superstars in a story produced and directed by God." He hopes to bring to television the excite-ment of people of diverse backgrounds learning about these stories together, discuss-ing their deepest beliefs, and dealing creatively with their diversity. In the Genesis project Moyers positions himself at the intersection where the secular and the spiritual converge, because it is at this critical junc-ture that we can create a new vision of what it means to be a united nation in a time when mosques and Buddhist retreat centers, churches and synagogues, have become an integral part of the American religious landscape.

As described in Running Thoughts: Genesis and Life on the Streets, an exciting new dialogue has begun in Baltimore in a pilot project directed by the ICJS. The ICJS is an ideal context in which to field-test the Genesis project, developed by Moyers and his wife Judith, because their goal in bringing A Living Conversation to television is similar to one of the Institute's own long-standing objectives: to bring people from different religious communities together to study their sacred Scriptures and to view their own religious attachments through the eyes of the other. These encounters with text and neigh-bor animate a commitment at the heart of the ICJS, namely, that we can overcome the legacy of hatred that has characterized the relationship of Christians and Jews without loss to our unique and distinctive religious identities. The inter-congregational Genesis sessions translate this dream into community action. Nevertheless, the success of this project is not without its difficulties.

In the panel discussion that followed Moyers' presentation, the Rev. Kay Albury, pastor of Ames Memorial Methodist Church, articulated a challenge at the heart of this initiative: can a group of ordinary citizens contribute anything substantive to the conversation of an elite group of scholars? Will they be silenced by the expertise of academics, or will they discover in their struggle with Genesis that their own experiences advance understanding and sustain the promise that the racial and religious paralysis that cripples our community may yet be healed?

In moving the "living conversation" from the television screen into the living room, the ICJS is creating a model of interfaith and interracial encounter that may well be replicated in communities all across America, fulfilling Bill Moyers' dream of a dynamic new religious dialogue in our country.