A brief history of the Interfaith Guild of Chaplains (so far!)

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The Interfaith Guild of Chaplains (IGC) was founded on October 15, 2011 at the Camp Beta (Lownsdale Park) in the still-being-constructed community sukkah (later called the Sacred Space, after the sukkot) in downtown Portland, during the second week of the original Occupation.

The IGC was organized mostly by Sarah Morrigan after the Protest Chaplains groups in #OccupyBoston and #OWS (New York City), although with a much broader interfaith emphasis, and at the beginning, with a non-Christian majority membership.  Soon the group grew rapidly and also received various levels of support from a few Portland area churches.

The IGC designated yellow with a blue stripe and a blue heart symbol (chosen for religious neutrality) as the official armband identifier colors. It is one of the earliest non-committee, non-General-Assembly-chartered affinity groups to have been recognized by the Occupy Portland.  During the downtown Occupation the IGC held up to five services at the park every week, ranging from Jewish to ecumenical Protestant to Neo-Pagan to Roman Catholic.