Inter-Culturalism

Why is the Controversy over the Cordoba Islamic Cultural Center Beginning to Wane?

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As I discussed in a previous post, I recently moved to Austin Texas and started sampling some of the local community events here. This past week I attended my second meeting of the Austin Area Interreligious Ministries (AAIM). The meeting was organized as a collection of small table discussion groups. The topics for the evening were the Cordoba Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero in NY City, and how to respond to the fear of Islam surfacing in our society. First, some general observations about the people I talked to there.

Christianity

Bonhoeffer’s Theological Drive to Protect Jews from Nazis

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This article was written with John Shellito, who served as its primary author. Johnis a student at Union Theological Seminary, interested in how faith communities can resist oppression in economic, ecological, and social spheres. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 2008 and is currently pursuing ordination in the Episcopal Church. “He was never what one might today term a culture warrior, nor could he easily be labeled conservative or liberal,” claims Eric Metaxas in one of many pungent lines from his groundbreaking new biography of Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Yet Bonhoeffer has often been pigeonholed as a courageous radical, working secretly for the assassination of Adolf Hitler during World War II.

General News

Is the "Anti-Immigrant Tide" Reversible?

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Well, it’s only an apparent tide and to the extent to which it seems to have momentum, it is reversible. Those are conclusions of what is, in my opinion, an excellent analysis of the current political state of play on the immigration rights issue, in a just published article, “The Preventable Rise of Arizona’s SB 1070,” by Justin Akers Chacon. Last June the General Assembly of my Unitarian Universalist denomination adopted Immigration Rights as a 4-Year Study-Action Issue, orienting its associated congregations, as much as possible given UU pluralism, toward a single primary topic of shared conversation. Since then I have been looking for a coherent way to understand the causes, the political forces standing in the way of a just resolution, and a sense of how progressives might engage this issue with some chance of a positive outcome. Chacon’s article is the best analysis I have seen so far.

Culture

What We Lose Without Deep Neighbor Love and Delight in the Holy

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“Justice is co-created through the joining of deep neighbor-love with delight in the holy.” I love that sentence from Mike Hogue’s recent post. If that’s what it takes to create justice, no wonder we have so little of it. I mean, isn’t it a given that you lose deep neighbor-love when you move into the middle class? Isn’t losing deep neighbor-love the way that you make it yourself?

Inter-Culturalism

Gershon Baskin, Rebecca Subar and Rabbi Arthur Waskow on BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanction)

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We have just put up a transcript of a workshop at which veteran peace activists Gershon Baskin, Rebecca Subar and Arthur Waskow debated BDS with those present. (This was at our June conference and we apologize for the delay: our interns transcribed many speeches and workshops over the summer. We edited some for the print issue here, and more have been going online this month. Our thanks to long-time Tikkun activist Hayyim Feldman who just completed the lengthy task of proofing the text of this workshop to the audio.) Some quotes:
Israeli activist Gershon Baskin on Why a one state solution is no solution at all:
Now I believe very, very strongly that there is only one solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, if solution means end of conflict. There is no such thing as a one state solution.

Inter-Culturalism

My First Encounter with a Red State Interreligious Community

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I recently moved from New York state to Austin Texas.  So far, the people I’ve meet in Austin have done a very poor job of playing the roles depicted by the standard red state stereotypes.  As an example, let me tell you about a recent interfaith event I attend here.   
The Austin Area Interreligious Ministries (AAIM) organized an event to discuss the fear generated by the  controversy over the Cordoba Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero in NYC.  Most of the people at our discussion table proclaimed outrage that what is basically a zoning board decision for lower Manhattan has been turned into a national issue, and is being exploited for political (or ratings) gains by stoking the flames of fear and anger.

Earth-based Religions

Elemental: Why We are All Pagan

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“That’s simple,” I answered. “We’ll honor the elements.” A feature of most contemporary pagan rituals. “We all have to breathe. We all need light and warmth. We all stand on the earth that feeds and shelters us. We all need water to stay alive, whatever else we believe or don’t believe.”

Culture

A Bar Mitzvah on the Jewish Frontier

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I live in Espanola, New Mexico, a town of 9,000 people, mostly Hispanic and Native American, with a lot of churches but without a Jewish synagogue. I live in an agrarian mestizo community: most of my neighbors are of mixed Spanish and Native American descent dating from the arrival of Juan de Onate in the 16th century. Leaders in my community worry about passing their cultural heritage on to the next generation in the face of industrial encroachment. Rio Arriba County reminds me of Israel at the time of Akiva, immediately preceding the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. Although I invited my Hispanic Rio Arriba colleagues to my son’s Bar Mitzvah, none came.

Christianity

Scriptural Reasoning: A Student Movement for Interfaith Understanding

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Scriptural Reasoning, a technique developed at Cambridge University and the University of Virginia, is known as much for its peer-reviewed journal as for its august participants. But it is on the verge of going mainstream, shaking up the way we understand each other’s scriptures and taking root on college campuses around the country. Approximately twenty Scriptural Reasoning (SR) groups exist across North America and the United Kingdom. But that number is likely to balloon as college chaplains take SR to their campuses. Two leading scholars of SR, Peter Ochs, Edgar Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia, and Homayra Ziad, Assistant Professor of Religion at Trinity College, brought the technique to the annual meeting of the National Association of College and University Chaplains (NACUC) this past spring, where it was warmly received.