Common ground on “doing good” is the best way, in my experience, to get into a varied and rich conversation among people of a wide variety of religious traditions.

People of faith from conservative Baptist traditions, for example, worked side by side in the Gulf following the Katrina disaster with people of faith from the Metropolitan Community Churches (the so-called “gay denomination” started by Rev. Troy Perry) and learned a lot of positive things about each other.

This is the way that the “Not Even One” project by the Faith and Health project of the Carter Center worked with communities to get religious folks across a wide spectrum to commit to concrete steps to reduce child deaths and injury from handgun violence. Muslim or Hindu, Christian or Jew, Buddhist or Wiccan, all people care about their children and want to work to keep them safe. Common ground on doing good leads to greater understanding of the heart of faith.

Now, I’m not saying that we should just reduce religion to ethics—doctrinal differences are important. But the best way to open the conversation is through doing good together and then looking each other in the eye and asking, “What in your faith motivates you to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the homeless?” That’s when common ground stops being a metaphor and starts being a description of where people of faith can stand together to bring hope and healing to this world.