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Running through an airport, Dru Sampson did what many of us do: She picked up a book at the terminal newsstand and raced to her gate, her in-flight entertainment now in hand.

As she walked down the aisle to her seat, she had no idea the book she was about to crack would affect her mind and soul, and lead her to be so inspired she wanted to bring the book’s authors to her hometown, Lawrence.

“It just caught me from the very beginning,” Sampson says.

The book was “The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew – Three Women Search for Understanding,” the best-seller written by three women of different faiths in post-9/11 New York.

The women – Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver and Priscilla Warner – got together after Idliby and Oliver met at their children’s bus stop. At the time, Idliby, a Muslim, was searching for two mothers, one Christian and one Jewish, to work with her on a children’s book. Oliver, a Christian, was interested and tracked down Warner, who is Jewish.

The project evolved from a children’s book into an exploration of faith in the context of an interfaith dialogue. The women talked candidly with one other about their religions, openly asking difficult questions.

Since the book’s first printing in 2006, people around the world have heard the authors speak and even formed faith clubs of their own. The authors have bounded across the country and have been as far as the mosques of the Middle East.

Moved by their story, Sampson, a Christian, hit the phone, working to lure the authors to Lawrence. A 14-person committee – itself an interfaith group – was able to recruit the authors as part of their spring tour. They’ll appear at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union.

“The outpouring has been incredible,” author Warner says. “The way that the book has been received has strengthened my belief in human beings and that good will prevail over evil. I get proof every time we speak. I’ve learned how much we have in common with people from places I never would have visited before.”

Getting information

The talk will be followed by a book-signing and coupled with informational tables set up by the 29 partner faith organizations helping to sponsor the event, where people involved can provide information about their faiths.

“When you start to get your own information … I think that’s where a lot of the problems come in because you don’t really have a good core understanding,” says Asra Haq, a Muslim who is a member of the steering committee. “Every partner will be able to have information about their organization or their faith so that everyone can sort of go through and move through what interests them. I think that will start and help the process.”

The next day, the authors will have a workshop aimed at helping attendees begin their own faith clubs in Lawrence. These would be clubs where members of many faiths can discuss their religions and answer questions, just like the women in the book.

Sampson says the clubs are about dispelling myths and misunderstandings.

“And what the authors found in ‘The Faith Club’ is … roads to commonality,” she says. “You begin to center on your common interests and your common beliefs rather than what divides us. What brings us together, rather than what divides us – that’s a very positive aspect of the process that they’re sharing with us.”

New understanding

It’s an aspect that Sampson believes can be used in all realms around Lawrence – not just religious ones.

“I think that (dialogue) is a process that the community at large could benefit from,” she says. “It teaches you how to listen, it teaches you how to approach someone who has a belief that you know is different than you with an open mind and with a readiness to understand, rather than … override them with your belief.

“I think it’s about learning, understanding and through understanding, helping you clarify your own belief better and then come to a mutual appreciation of the other belief that others believe.”

Warner says that though she did not know Oliver or Idliby when she met them to discuss writing the book, they now know each other closely because they have a working knowledge of each other’s beliefs.

“You don’t get too many opportunities in life to slow down the everyday chaos of life,” Warner says. “I have very close friends, but I never had the type of conversations I had with these women.”

Organizers hope that after hearing the authors speak, people in Lawrence get together and have ongoing groups. Sampson says that the hope is to open a permanent, helpful, interfaith dialogue.

“It’s easy to decry a theory, and to nullify a theory, to vilify a theory. When you get to know a person and you call them a friend, it’s much harder to reject their belief, their intentions, their goodness, their sincerity, because you know that person. I think that it opens up your mind to (accepting) religion is a theory, but people practicing that religion are humans,” Sampson says. “And it’s about who those people are and their beliefs and their heart.”