An Evolutionary History

In the latter half of the 1980s Chautauqua ventured beyond the Season and beyond the gates on a grander scale than when President Arthur Bestor had toured Europe and the Middle East as a goodwill ambassador for Chautauqua. It was in the years from 1985 through 1989 that Chautauqua had engaged in its very successful Chautauqua-Soviet Exchange – an endeavor that had been so successful that it had left President Dan Bratton with the continuing inspiration to extend the mission of Chautauqua into another troubled area of the world: the Middle East. In the mid-1990s, therefore, President Bratton convened the Middle East Task Force to bring together principals from Israel, Jordan, and the US to begin to explore the possibility of working toward a Chautauqua Conference in Jerusalem, ideally, or in whatever place would be possible, given the volatile climate in the region. After two years of dialogue, however, amid plans to take a Chautauqua delegation to Jordan in the fall of 1997, Dan Bratton was forced to table the effort, inasmuch as it had been determined that it would be too dangerous to take such a visible group to that area.

It was at that time that the possibility of using one of Chautauqua’s unique strengths – our history of credibility in the field of religion and religious inquiry, and in particular building upon the substantive and qualitative base of Chautauqua’s Christian-Jewish dialogue – might make it possible to be of service in an educational way that could be accomplished within the gates of Chautauqua itself. A vision was raised, therefore, to engage Chautauquans about the common religious aspects and ethical concerns inherent in the relationship of the “Abrahamic Family” -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- the three monotheistic religions that historically claim a common ancestor in the patriarch Abraham / Ibrahim, as well as a spiritual center in the Middle East, particularly in Jerusalem. Thus began an effort and a process that has grown steadily since 1997 and will take Chautauqua to a new international level in the fall of 2005 with a Chautauqua in London Conference – an endeavor that has been ten years in the making.