Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/religion-spirituality/interfaith-religion-spirituality/page/8/)
Many progressive clergy have recently spent our entire discretionary accounts on travel to our state capitals. An experiment is occurring in North Carolina to reunite our spiritual souls with our political bodies. Instead of episodic lobbying, on Moral Mondays, clergy visit with their representatives as chaplains. They change the language from the pragmatics of the political to the hope of our God.
The realms of acceptable debate in Jewish-Christian interfaith relations seem securely locked down, confined to domestic issues and the sharing of religious practice. Any challenge by Christians or Jews to the status quo on Israel is considered out of bounds. So what’s happened and what can be done to establish an honest interfaith conversation that doesn’t fall apart as soon as Israel or Palestine gets mentioned?
This week my heart experienced incredible joy and deep sadness about the Supreme Court decisions. I am so thankful to God for the historic Supreme Court decisions on DOMA and Prop 8. But the Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act felt like a punch in my stomach. Race still matters. And as people of faith, we are going to have to keep testifying to congressional leaders, rising up, and saying “not on our watch.” Human beings, inspired by the still speaking Word of God, need to teach, preach, blog, tweet and testify about the need for a just world. Together, we honor our stories and work to write new ones.
Violence against people perceived as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ) has existed for millennia. Recent anti-LGBTQ violence in New York City is the latest chapter in this sorry history of bigotry, oppression and discrimination. Urgent action is needed to put a stop to the growing number of targeted bashings and murders in our community. Our respective faiths call us to not only stand up for victims of direct violence and oppression, but to cooperatively work to transform violent religious rhetoric until all LGBTQ persons are safe inside and outside faith communities.
In continuation of my series on First Amendment rights as they impact religious minority groups, I address current controversy over social media posts maligning religious groups. My previous post in this series entitled Does Freedom of Speech Allow Stereotyping discussed a greeting card that stereotyped Muslims as terrorists in an unusually offensive and glaringly inaccurate way. This week I have chosen another unfortunate event, a Facebook post that ignited debate over the possible classification of certain types of content as threats instead of free speech. Tennessee County Commissioner Barry West posted a picture on his Facebook page showing a cowboy aiming a shotgun at the camera with the caption “How to Wink at a Muslim”. My personal feelings of disgust aside, the post once again shows a classic example of stereotyping, this time through social media, which is so much more viral than a greeting card.
Between every two people in the world is a unified field. The role of the interfaith activist has been to explore and cultivate that field and, in the process, to appreciate and emphasize the commonality – but not ignore the differences – of our faiths and beliefs. Locating a field of shared love and concern is the key to both interfaith and intrafaith harmony.
It’s no surprise to interfaith activists such as me that interfaith dialogue and relationship building between groups can pave the way towards peace and prosperity. Americans of all faiths would do well to remember this important fact: ignorance breeds hate, and who wants to be ignorant?
Sure enough, a debate erupted this past week over the impromptu memorial at Boylston Street – how to preserve it, where to move it. Such a discussion would have been pointless, if this were ordinary space. If it were incapable of being defiled.
The benefits of a separation of church and state are innumerable and undeniable. What Americans have never experienced firsthand is perhaps the most dangerous impact of establishing a state religion: persecution of religious minorities. Muslim countries unfortunately have fallen into this trap all too well. From Saudi Arabia to Pakistan and virtually every Muslim nation in between, so-called Islamic laws have crushed the rights of non-Muslims to the extent that those laws no longer resemble true Quranic teachings. The reality is that when one religion is preferred by the government over another, and preferential treatment is meted out to that religious group in terms of even school prayer or invocations, the result can be dangerous and terrifying.
The nation is still reeling from shock after Monday’s attack on the Boston Marathon. Gun violence notwithstanding, this is perhaps the first real terrorist attack on US soil after 9/11. Understandably emotions have been running high; no surprise then, that as the events unfolded many people, including the media, jumped on the “Blame the Muslims” bandwagon. The New York Post famously inflated casualty numbers and reported that a Saudi man was apprehended as a suspect by the police. Social media was inundated by predictions of guilt and accusations of violent jihad, at the same time as the Muslim community mobilized to condemn the attacks.