When the United Nations launched the World Interfaith Harmony Week in 2010, the vision was for a week globally dedicated to highlighting common values across faith traditions, including all people of goodwill —love of God, love of the good, and love of neighbor. Sixteen years later, as we observe this week again, the onslaught of the unending bad news reminds me how the world has shifted dramatically. The challenge before us is no longer simply about dialogue and understanding. It’s about solidarity and cooperation for the common good in the face of rising religious nationalism globally.

This reality became profoundly clear to me on 6 January 2026, the Feast of Epiphany. While I walked through Washington DC’s government district that evening, I felt the significance of Jesus’ appearing in the Gospels and the present moment meeting one another. During the season of Epiphany, we are reminded about light overcoming darkness. As I walked past lit buildings embodying democracy’s rule of law, I thought about how Jesus manifested God’s presence not in palaces but in hidden places, recognized by foreigners such as the Magi, not kings.

I was heading to something unexpected: the first-ever “Faith in Democracy Interfaith Concert: A New Vision of January” at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation. The timing felt providential because on this day when we remember the journey of the Magi, I too was journeying toward an encounter with a special sacred event in an unexpected place.

Gifts of welcome and hospitality

Stepping into the church sanctuary, I found warmth, light, and a church already full, perhaps 150 people filling the pews. I could see how interfaith solidarity was made visible with turbans and hijabs, clergy collars and traditional dress, a congregation spanning different generations, all gathered in one space. The concert opened with a Syrian singer leading the U.S. national anthem in Arabic. Hearing this nation’s anthem in the language of refugees and diaspora brought an unexpected gift of welcome and hospitality, a strange calm that reminded me why this work for peace matters.

Throughout the evening, we didn’t fill a stadium with thousands; we gathered as a small interfaith community in a church opposite government buildings. The organizers had wisely chosen songs, music, and poetry instead of speeches, letting art create the space we needed. Each religious tradition—Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Bahá’í, Jewish—was represented through song, keeping the hope for a better country alive together.

This resonates deeply with my own journey. In 2010, the same year the UN launched Interfaith Harmony Week, I stood with my Muslim friend Ali and community leaders outside a mosque in Malaysia after violent attacks threatened to tear our society apart. We weren’t there for dialogue. We were there for solidarity, a small group with one message: We reject political violence. We stand together.

Standing firm against weaponization of faith

That experience taught me that interfaith relations must move beyond the important work of understanding each other’s traditions to the urgent work of standing together against forces that would weaponize our faiths. Today, this message is more urgent than ever. Religious nationalism, whether in the USA, India, Myanmar, or elsewhere, instrumentalizes religion and faith for political power, exploiting fear and division in society.

The Lutheran theologian Vítor Westhelle wrote about “weak epiphanies” pointing to promises in the midst of less visible spaces that keep the flame of hope kindled. That concert on 6 January was one such epiphany. Not a cosmic revelation, but a quiet gathering that demonstrated what becomes possible when we choose solidarity over divisiveness, suspicion, and even hatred.