One member of the EPF of Arkansas, Deb Silas Cooper, has developed a book study and friendship group called Daughters of Abraham whose mission is to foster mutual respect and understanding among Muslim, Jewish, and Christian women, building an interfaith community of women who can speak intelligently about one another’s faith.
The Daughters’ website, Daughters of Abraham provides a comprehensive summary about the group’s activities, including a mission statement, guidelines, book lists, calendar of events, resource materials, discussion guides, photo album, articles about Daughters in the news, contact information, a link to the Daughters’ good reads account, and a listing of current sponsors.
With grant funding and private donations received in 2012, the Daughters are in the process of planning marketing projects that will get the message out to other women in central Arkansas in ways that will help them start an interfaith book group in their own community. This will include traveling Arkansas to present the Daughters’ story, providing marketing bags with start-up materials, creating a small loan library, and finding additional sponsors to include the Daughters’ web link on their website and/or internal publications.
A long range goal of the Little Rock Daughters is to, in the spirit of Abraham’s “open tent”, invite women from other faith traditions to join the book group, and eventually to host an annual fellowship gathering of Daughters from around the state.
The EPF of Arkansas sponsored the Little Rock Daughters of Abraham by purchasing the documentary, Three Faiths, One God: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, which was reviewed throughout the summer of 2012. It is now part of the Daughters’ loan library, as is the EPF/PIN’s Steadfast Hope: The Palestinian Quest for Just Peace program.
In June, the Daughters will take a look inside the mind’s eye, as everyday people across America try to define God in the documentary film, “God In The Box.” The film explores diverse and unique perspectives, giving viewers the opportunity to respond to the questions: What does God mean to me? What does God look like to me?
