Napa Bahá’ís contribute to interfaith discourse for Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Aileen Rothenberg, the Bahá’í representative on the Napa Valley Interfaith Council, worked alongside her Assembly to draw on Bahá’u’llah’s message of unity to help draft and adopt a statement for the Interfaith group’s 2025 presentation on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

The Interfaith Leadership group includes clergy from churches, the local synagogue and mosque, as well as a Buddhist chaplain and representatives from the Quaker and Bahá’í communities. Their purpose is to to bring together Napa Valley leaders in different faiths to support understanding, collaborate on common concerns and serve the community. The aim for the statement was to create a path towards healing and inclusiveness.

At a monthly meeting, the council’s coordinator read the original draft statement. While the language was intended to reflect and affirm all perspectives, it did not fully capture the Bahá’í Faith’s history and did not mention Dr. King. When the draft was emailed to all members for approval, Rothenberg decided to take a step.

Rothenberg and her husband, Benjamin Norris, reworked the statement to include an opening that honored Dr. King. The revision reframed some of the language about marginalized groups  around the idea that all people have souls and are worthy of love. Rothenberg took both drafts to her Local Spiritual Assembly for guidance, who encouraged her to present the Council with the updated version of the statement. They also emphasized to Rothenberg that she should be detached from the outcome, and to leave the decision in the hands of the group.

To her surprise, the new version, with its unifying and spiritually connecting language, was embraced by the group with a few small edits.

“I have learned a great deal from this experience,” Rothenberg says, noting that   the process taught her to follow her intuition, reaffirmed the impact of institutional support and helped to strengthen the Council’s practice of consultation.