Heavenly Harmony

COSTA MESA —  When Baha’is and Mormons, Muslims and Jews, Christians and Hindus come together Sunday for the third annual Thanksgiving Choir Festival, their disparate beliefs will be distilled to the force binding them, a strong faith in something larger than themselves.

“Basically, we all have a belief in one God, and I think there’s a commonality in values,” said Greg Kelly, president of the Interfaith Council of Orange County, which sponsors the concert. “Those are things we share and try to defend in our respective communities.”

The concert will bring together choirs and speakers from 13 religious groups throughout the county. Speakers will represent religions that do not typically mix music into their worship services, such as Islam.

“For the interfaith community, this meeting will enhance and broaden our knowledge about one another’s beliefs, and it strengthens our ties when we can all be under the same roof celebrating,” said Haitham Ahmed Bundakji, chairman of the Islamic Society of Orange County and a speaker at the event.

That unity of faith makes the difficult task of understanding people with different customs and beliefs easier, some religious leaders said.

“When people with faith are facing others of different religions, they are going to be more likely to be more open because you recognize a being more powerful than yourself when you’re religious,” said Rabbi David Rosenberg of Temple Isaiah in Newport Beach.

Past concerts have drawn full houses of about 1,500. But the participants receive as much from the show as do the concert-goers.

“Once they had the opportunity to perform together and the opportunity to schmooze together in a little reception, they were crying and hugging each other, and it was a really rich experience,” said Tom Thorkelson, a vice president of the Interfaith Council and founder of the concert series.

This year the festival, to be at 7 p.m. at the Robert Moore Theater at Orange Coast College, will honor nine families of the year, three each from Costa Mesa, Irvine and Newport Beach.

Veneration of the family is important to every religion, Thorkelson said, and the awards will be another way to unify groups by focusing on a commonality.

Musical selections will range from well-known hymns such as “Amazing Grace,” to be sung by the Newport Harbor Lutheran Church choir, to unorthodox arrangements of classics such as “How Great Thou Art,” to be sung by the Knudsen Brothers, an a capella group of six Mormon brothers, two of whom provide vocal percussion and bass lines.

“Our religion teaches us that family is the most important thing,” said Kevin Knudsen, 34. Developing a sense of family in the broadest sense of the word, will be the message Rosenberg has for listeners.

“What I want them to take away is the fact that we’re all human beings. We all have the same fears and prides and look for the same things and ultimately, life is too short to be harsh with one another,” Rosenberg said.