William Secrest, professor and head of the Religious Studies program at Henry Ford Community college, took the winter semester off from teaching to travel to the Middle East with his wife, Misty. The Secrests' first stop was Beirut, Lebanon, and from there they will travel to Syria, Jordan, Mount Sinai, Israel, Palestine and, finally Turkey.

The entire trip will encompass approximately four months, bringing the Secrests back home near the end of April, and Bill will chronicle their travels via a series of "dispatches" that the Mirror News will publish each issue.

Here is my first dispatch. I have been in Beirut, Lebanon for four days. I am at the outset of a four-month journey through what the Emperor Constantine termed the "Holy Land" 17 centuries ago. My mission is to investigate religion, conflict and peace. If religion is supposed to bring us together, why does it so often drive us apart?

As a Religious Studies professor at our college, I continually confront this issue.

My wife, Misty, and I spent our first three nights here in West Beirut, primarily populated by Muslims. Yesterday at 5:00 a.m., as great as a thunderstorm was exploding across the seaside, the haunting murmurs of the adhan- the Islamic call to prayer- wafted from the minarets.

Today, Sunday morning, having relocated to the east, or Christian, side of the city, we awoke to church bells. Both sounds signal "God!" and both sounds are pleasing to the ear, but between the realms of the mosque, church and synagogue invisible lines have been drawn. Across these lines factions dispute, and along them armed troops stand at the ready.

On the day we landed in Lebanon the current ruling coalition collapsed, and the prime minister flew off the Washington to consult with President Obama. Although the discord is political, contending parties are identified religiously. The sacred is made secular, the holy profane. At issue is peace with justice. All religions claim to bring us to this end- yet all fail.

On this journey I will explore how religion cultivates compassion and healing while seemingly also generates conflict and war. On April 8-10 a conference will convene at HFCC, the third "International Conference on Religion, Conflict and Peace; Waling the Talk to Compassion and Harmony." I hope to be participating via satellite at this event with a group of young people of diverse faiths from Wahat asSalam/Neve Shalom, a "peace village" near Jerusalem.

Between now and then I'll be sending back little vignettes from our travels. Meanwhile, to learn more about the organization and the conference go to the Common Bond Institute website, www.cbiworld.org.

Peace,
Bill Secrest