Photograph by Hakki Sabanci
It didn’t end with the scarlet letter. In America, we fight over mosques and protests, crèches and carols, evolution and embryonic stem cells. But scattered here and there are the real points of light: groups trying to forge understanding across different belief systems and religions.
And what emerges is a lot more interesting than the confused, reactive hatred in the political landscape.
The guests at the Fourth Annual Friendship and Dialog Dinner last Thursday were the perfect mix to make the dinner’s point. At our table: Jesse Swanigan, a senior lecturer in finance from the University of Missouri St. Louis whose Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church collaborates with longtime gay-rights activist and financial advisor Philip Deitch’s Central Reform Congregation. Swanigan admitted with an abashed grin, before anyone else arrived, that he knew virtually nothing about our hosts, the Turkish American Society of Missouri and Niagara Foundation, except their goodwill and frequent cultural exchanges. At the same table: St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce and her husband. Cultural liaison Emel Kopman, a Turkish American who used to raise Arabian horses. And Niagara executive director Aydin Danaci, who moved his family here from Istanbul and hopes to increase trade between Turkey and Missouri.
In the pre-dinner chitchat, I learned a lot. Aydin means full of light in Arabic; Emel means hope. TASOM and Niagara promote Turkish culture and emphasize the tolerant, forward-looking ways of Islam. For four years now, they’ve been spending huge amounts of time and money encouraging people of different faiths to talk to each other.
That was happening.
The exchanges stayed light through dinner, as the Danacis talked about trips the group is sponsoring to Istanbul and taught me how to make the type of Turkish coffee that’s 40 times stronger, and sweeter, than regular coffee: “You boil until it’s almost a solid liquid.”
Then the chocolate mousse was cleared, and Jill Carroll began to speak.
A professor at Rice University who specializes in the philosophy of world religions and religion’s role in public life, Carroll quickly demystified the “fancy title” of her talk, “Living in Dialogue: The Challenge of a Global Reality.”
“I just want to speak about this ‘global reality,’” she told us. “We are powerfully interconnected, in ways we have never been before.”
I glanced over and saw Mrs. Denaci slide her BlackBerry halfway out of her pocket, no doubt making sure all was well at home.
“When I say ‘religious diversity,’ some of us may recoil a little bit,” Carroll continued. “We’ve been hit over the head with the diversity stick, sat through diversity training at work…” Heads began to nod, slowly, all over the room. “But I don’t mean any kind of agenda, any kind of ideology, at all. Simply demographic realities.
“Gandhi took the notion of ahimsa from a Jain tutor, and Martin Luther King Jr. took it from Gandhi, and it shaped this country,” she remarked (what follows are excerpts only). “We have every major and minor religion in the world thriving here: Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, the Abrahamic faiths of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity; Baha’i, Zoroastrianism, Scientology, Wicca, and I’m just getting started. The religion of Thor—it’s been dead for centuries, but it’s back now in Berkeley. And if you don’t find a religion you like in America, you just start new one—we’re very entrepreneurial!”
In short, she said, “The United States is arguably the most religiously diverse country in the world. It started with native Americans. There were Jewish people on Christopher Columbus’ ship. Slaves brought religious traditions from Western Africa—and Islam. We are just now uncovering the Muslim slave narrative. Chinese laborers come to the West Coast. And then finally, in 1965, our country passes an immigration act, and the doors of this country swing wide open. So as we sit in this room, we can track the history of how we have become the people that we are.”
When the Bill of Rights was written, she continued, “there was no other document on the planet that gave a constitutional guarantee to religious freedom. The right to believe and worship and live your conscience—that’s a powerful thing.
“But now, who we are as a people is becoming ever more complex and sophisticated and complicated.
“Thirty years ago, the conversation was around ‘ecumenism.’ It meant the Baptists would talk to the Methodists and if they got really brave, they’d talk to the Catholics. And the Catholics—well, they’d start with the Episcopalians, who were ritually similar, had all the pageantry and none of the guilt. And then the stripped-down Protestants, and then they’d reach over to the Jews.
“Ecumenism won’t save the day. It’s not robust enough,” she said flatly, suggesting “interfaith” as the necessary replacement. “We are dealing with much bigger realities than we’ve ever dealt with, here and in every major city of the United States.
“I love to study the world’s religions, because they put the main questions of human existence front and central. Who are we, why are we here, is there a meaning to why we’re here, is there a meaning to life itself? Religion asks—and answers—these questions. More often than not in capital letters, with ‘absolute truths,’ gold standards that can apply across time and across cultures.
“I think it’s right that we seek out those standards,” she said slowly, “even if we’re not really sure they exist. But at the end of the day, it won’t be violence or our propensity for violence that does us in.” She paused, her smile wry. “I sometimes wonder if it won’t be arrogance.”
Carroll wasn’t blaming religion for that arrogance, though: “Even as they posit absolute truths, all the world’s religions at the same time preach humility,” she adds quickly. “Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God.”
“That’s right,” a black woman in the audience called back. “That’s right.”
“Even if our sacred texts came down perfectly,” Carroll continued, “can we honestly say that our understandings of them are perfect? No, we cannot. With absolute truth comes humility.”
Her voice was soft. Then she switched gears: “In America, we have a consumer market society, and the religions are out there competing just like Nike and Reebok,” she said, an edge forming. “But we see ugly instances in our country where religious hatred—it’s hard to even say those words together—but that’s what it is—religious hatred rises up.”
She sighed. “I think every era has its particular, defining challenge. I think ours is this: How will we live together, in the midst of sometimes radical difference? We will never all worship the same God. Some of us will never worship a god at all. And it is our destiny to share this planet, to share the United States, to share Missouri, to share St. Louis. So how can we live together, as ourselves? We tend to silo off, segregate ourselves, group up with people who think like us and try to limit the arc of our lives. It’s natural, it’s understandable. But I’m not sure there’s a future in it.”
Instead, she concluded, “we need something much bigger.” We need the dialogue Rumi refers to, in the quote printed on the dinner’s invitation: “Open to me, so that I may open. Provide me your inspiration, so that I might see mine.”
