There are moments when our communities are called to do more than talk about unity. We are called to practice it. That is what Flags of Fellowship represents to me.
On Oct. 7, people across our region will gather for Flags of Fellowship, a campaign hosted by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. It is a time of remembrance, prayer, solidarity, and relationship-building between Christians and Jews. At Impact, that will include a unity luncheon bringing together clergy, rabbis, and community leaders, followed by an interfaith unity service where people from different backgrounds will worship, reflect, and stand together.
These gatherings matter because we live in a time when it is increasingly easy to retreat to our separate corners. We can live in the same community, drive the same streets, and send our children to the same schools, yet never really know one another.
I have become convinced that healing happens when we choose proximity.
I had an experience that changed the way I understood that truth. I traveled to Selma, Alabama, and crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge alongside my friend and brother Rabbi Aaron Krupnick and other Jewish and Christian leaders.
You cannot walk across that bridge without feeling the weight of history.
On March 7, 1965, a day that became known as Bloody Sunday, men and women marched across that bridge demanding something as fundamental as the right to vote. They were met with brutal violence.
But there is another moment from Selma that has always stayed with me.
Two days later, Martin Luther King Jr. returned to that same bridge with thousands of people. They walked to the place where violence had occurred. They stopped. They prayed. Then, King turned the marchers around.
Some questioned that decision. But history reminds us that courage is not always demonstrated by charging forward. Sometimes courage requires wisdom, patience, and the discipline to keep people together long enough to reach the destination.
Walking that bridge with others taught me something else: Bridges don’t erase pain. They create a path through it.
Our communities carry different histories. We have experienced different wounds. We practice different traditions and sometimes understand the world very differently. Unity does not require us to pretend those differences do not exist.
The question isn’t whether we have differences.
The question is: Will we cross them together?
That is especially important today as Jewish communities continue to confront antisemitism and fear. Christians cannot simply say that we love our Jewish neighbors. There are moments when love requires presence. It means showing up, listening, learning, and standing beside one another.
And that relationship must extend beyond moments of crisis.
One of the greatest lessons I have learned through my friendship with Krupnick is that we have more in common than what separates us. Friendship does not mean we agree on every theological, political, or social question. It means our differences do not have to prevent relationships.
I often say it this way: Unity isn’t agreeing on everything. It’s refusing to abandon each other in anything.
That is the spirit behind our Unity Luncheon. Pastors, rabbis, civic leaders, and community leaders will all sit around tables together, not merely exchanging business cards, but building relationships. Relationships established before a crisis can become bridges when a crisis comes.
That same spirit will carry into our interfaith unity service. It will be an opportunity for ordinary people, not only religious leaders, to stand together and declare that hatred does not get the final word.
Flags of Fellowship is ultimately about more than flags.
Every flag is an invitation to remember. Every conversation is an opportunity to understand. Every relationship is another plank in a bridge our communities desperately need.
Selma taught America that crossing a bridge can change history.
My prayer is that we will have the courage to keep crossing bridges today. Not because we have forgotten our differences or our pain, but because we understand that the future on the other side is worth walking toward together.
HEROES JUST STOPPED A HIJACKING. MAMDANI CAN’T EVEN DEFINE ANTISEMITISM
There is still a bridge in front of us.
The question is whether we will cross it alone or whether we will cross it together.
Ray Barnard is the founder and senior pastor of Impact Live Church in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and the founder of the Impact Center.