~ by Samir Selmanovic

While traveling this last Summer speaking about the new inter-religious reality we find ourselves in, I stopped in San Luis Obispo, South/Central California. For the last part of a two-day program, Pastor Josh Thompson of San Luis Obispo Seventh-day Adventist church staged an evening in a downtown public space (9/25/10) where Christians offered an exploration of (a)theism (tip: google Peter Rollins, one of the teachers at Faith House Manhattan this year). Before I talked about our deeply Christian desire to have a break from God, a phenomenal young singer and songwriter Johanna Chase performed (yes, click that link!). Then Matt Macias, a long time practicing Christian, shared his testimony, coming out as an atheist. His talk was an event in itself, brimming with tears and hope. Afterward, I asked him for a transcript of his handwritten notes, which I include here. Much gratitude to Josh, Johanna, Matt and my hosts, Hamrick family.

“My Shout” (by Matthew Macias)

In traffic yesterday, a truck had a decal of a cross on its back window.  Jesus was written on this cross, and it also said this: Not of This World.  How accurate is this statement?  Jesus is God in the flesh.  God made into man.  The sentiment is that God is “Not of This World.”  If God is “Not of This World,” then who is God?  Where is he from?  Or maybe, we should ask: what is this world that is absent of God?

Sometimes, before I fall asleep alone—I shout in the dark.  Who am I?  Why am I here?  What is this story we call life?  What does it all mean?

I’m not the only one who asks these questions.  These questions have been asked for centuries.  We are given answers from our families, our friends, our cultures, our nations, our science, and our religions.  As our knowledge grows, some questions no longer need to be asked.  We understand the science behind thunder; we don’t need to worship the thunder god.  But the hard questions still remain.

A religion is a wonderful thing.  It provides community and fellowship.  It provides answers.  It creates a sanctuary from all the scary questions about life.  But religion is also a terrible thing.

Since God is an explanation of the unknown and since religion can explain the mysteries of existence, any new idea that changes or transforms the explanation of life, the explanation of the difficult questions, this new idea also transforms the definition of God.  And God is limited in his definition by those who define him.  God is defined by language, religion, culture, and time, but really, we are all shouting in the dark.

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There is a difficult gap. I have been struggling with this question for years, how to reconcile the invitiation we feel to delight in life with the call to with empathy and action in the world full of suffering. This poem helps a great deal. (Thank you Faigy Abdelhak for sending it to me!)

A Brief for the Defense
— Jack Gilbert

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

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Do you have love hate relationship with New York? This is a freshly produced short film by Peter Ganim, an American of Syrian, Rusyn and Lebanese descent. He lives in New York City. This 8min film left me speechless. I can watch this over and over and over again.

It is a digital meditation on a century and a decade. A rumination on the immigrant, from the exterior as well as from within. An Arab-American’s broken, halting attempt at clarity… and a deep expression of love. 2010

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~ by Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism and sociology and chair of the Ph. D. program in Communications at Columbia. His next book, The Chosen Peoples: America, Israel, and the Ordeals of Divine Election (written with Liel Leibovitz), will be out in September.

The fervent mosque-haters have this much right: Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Sufi leader of the Cordoba Initiative that plans to build an Islamic center on Park Place near the site of the World Trade Center, is subversive. But what he wants to subvert is not the United States of America. What he wants to subvert are dictatorships in Islamic nations.

Imam Rauf’s third book, published in 2005 but unavailable to me last week when I wrote about him and his earlier work, is called What’s Right with Islam is What’s Right with America. In these pages, Rauf proves just as Islamic as his detractors say. He is downright idealistic about Islam and hearty about its prospects. He has been scouting out America for a long time. And what is it that he finds here to gladden his Islamic soul? It’s right there on p. 176:

“…the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution.”

The imam goes on to say that these documents “express the Islamic ideal, which is itself but an expression of the Abrahamic ethic.” Yes, “the American Constitution and system of governance uphold the core principles of Islamic law.” And here’s a way of putting it that never tempted Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich: “The overarching American religion that all Americans live under is ‘Islamic’ in the sense that it is fully compliant with and expresses the Islamic Shariah.” In Rauf’s understanding, Sharia is predicated on religious pluralism, which is “a fundamental human right under Islamic law.”

In fact—don’t tell Sean Hannity—it’s too late to resist. Satan is well ensconced here. “America is substantively an ‘Islamic’ country, by which I mean a country whose systems remarkably embody the principles that Islamic law requires of a government.”

No wonder the Imam is at this moment lecturing in the Gulf States on the State Department’s dime, to discuss “Muslim life in America and religious tolerance,” according to the AP—a trip that Governor Tim Pawlenty, guzzling a lot of tea in a hurry, calls “disgusting.”

No wonder the Bush State Department made similar use of him to win hearts and minds. He’s promoting the American social and political system. He believes that “democracy and liberty, in a peculiarly American way, provide a manifestation of the Abrahamic ethic.” If Muslims outside America “recognize in the American form of governance a genuine substantive workable expression and model of their centuries-old longing for the kingdom of heaven on earth,” he continues, “they can formulate their understanding of an Islamic state along these lines.” In other words, he wants to Americanize the Muslim world in the way that counts—by promoting our political institutions. You can see what Republicans object to, though: He says nothing about promoting the filibuster or repealing the Fourteenth Amendment.

Imam Rauf’s revisionism extends so far as to trash most putatively Islamic states—since 656 C.E., that is, when “the Muslims succumbed to dynastic rule, a paradigm of governance that did not display Islamic religious values.” No wonder it’s been a rough 13+ centuries for Islam ever since. But the moment, he argues, is ripe for American Muslims, for “no contradiction exists between Islam’s theology and the longing of many Muslims for democratic values and equality of opportunity. … Islam’s theology and jurisprudence demand it.” That is, the American system is the answer to an Islamic prayer.

The book closes with an appendix containing a fatwa issued by five Muslim clerics on September 27, 2001, at the request of the most senior Muslim chaplain in the American armed forces. Ending his book with a fatwa! Yes! Cunningly, it’s a “Fatwa Permitting U. S. Muslim Military Personnel to Participate in Afghanistan War Effort.”

What’s Right with Islam, by the way, was published by HarperSanFrancisco, which last I looked is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Does he know what kind of poison bears his imprimatur?

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“Dueling Protests over Ground Zero Mosque” CBS Evening News today comes with my tiny tiny contribution to the truth about Imam Feisal (BTW, my 15 sec of fame came out of a 30 min interview). The whole story is that Imam Feisal is a wonderful man and that Muslims had their mosque in the area even before the WTC was there. They are innocent people. Please friends ponder that. Innocent. Their expulsion from the neighborhood would be a terrible mistake.

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Over the years I have managed to collect pictures with most of the characters from my book.  Here is the photo of Sue Lee and her son Tristan and an excerpt from  “It’s Really All About God.”

Remembering good old times with Sue and Tristan at a recent birthday party in Korea Town, year 2010.

- – – book excerpt – – –

On a cold Saturday morning in December 2001, Soo Lee waited for her already-late friend on a busy street corner in Manhattan. She discovered she was standing in front of the doors of an old limestone church off Park Avenue where I was the pastor. Its large red doors were symbols of the large hands of God embracing everyone who ventured inside. That’s what God was all about, I thought—inviting people in.

For Soo and most of her friends, church was a treacherous place. But the cold was biting, and the doors were unlocked. It was Christmas, and I had titled my sermon “The Magic of Christianity.” Soo was a lively and tender young Korean woman who followed the spiritual path of White Magic and the Wicca religion, and the words “magic” and “Christianity” together drew her from the foyer into the sanctuary. She sat and listened to a story about a stable in Bethlehem, a magical moment in human history when, as Christians believe, the physical world as it appears to us humans and the spiritual world of God’s Kingdom—the world as it really is—interpenetrated and became one.

Soo, as I later learned, is a person of uncommon stamina, a single mom, an urbanite who had learned to handle the grind of New York City with the smile of a marathon runner who has found a groove in the midst of pain. My wife and I loved spending time with her. We liked the way she thoughtfully constructed her sentences. We liked the way she paid attention to what we didn’t say as much as to what we said. And we liked the way she treated everyone and everything around her. With compassion. Over the next several months, Soo and her little son, Tristan, became family friends. Soon we were caring for her boy and she was caring for our little daughters.

Some months after we met Soo, my church hosted the annual gathering of a national network I belonged to that consisted of mostly professional clergy and church leaders. The main service was going to include a closing segment we titled “Testimonies of Failure,” with six leaders who would tell us how they had failed in their religious work. It was not to be “how God turned things around for me” or “how my failure has actually been a blessing.” There would be no explanations, no justifications—just standing up, sharing the misery, and sitting down. I had a month to find someone who could address these hurting people with some healing words.

I thought of people who had cared for and encouraged me, and Soo immediately came to mind. But the thought seemed preposterous. Soo? How could I ask a witch to pray over a group of pastors? She could neither defend nor advocate for our religion—she was an outsider. But the experience of being a part of Soo’s life had opened a crack in the wall that separates “us” (those on the inside) from “them” (those on the outside). Then a thought broke through, a possibility that I found both burdensome and exhilarating. What if God is on the outside too? Does God have to be absent out there in order to be present in here?

The thought of inviting Soo into the inner sanctum of our Christian experience ripened like wine, intoxicating my orthodox faith. Everything I had been taught told me that God, in God’s infinite wisdom and love, has chosen to dwell in our religion. It was a kind of certainty one can stake one’s life on. But then everything I had experienced with Soo—and, as I began recalling, others like her over the years—told me that God dwells in the lives of people. All people. Drunk with these thoughts, I hesitated. Which should win? Religion? Or life? Should I use life to prop up my religion? Or should I use my religion to honor life?

“Okay, I’ll do it,” Soo said with a smile when I asked her. Then she added, “But only if I can pray to God as Mother.”

“Soo,” I said, and paused, taking time to swallow a momentary feeling of regret for approaching her at all, “some of these religious leaders are worn out and beaten down, and on that day, our goal is not to expand their theology but to comfort them.”

“I understand, Pastor Samir. That’s all right. For now. Let’s leave the discussion about the Christian obsession with phallic power for some other time,” she said with a gracious smile. “Is it okay if I pray to God as Holy Spirit?”

“Wonderful,” I said, relieved.

On the day of the gathering, after the six “losers” had shared their stories, the congregation was quiet, stunned by tales of the stark reality behind much of religious work and community organizing. Most of us religious people who go to our places of worship to receive religious goods and services assume that our faith is triumphantly marching forward on all fronts. Nobody wants to be a part of a losing battle. So talking about failures devoid of happy endings created an unbearably empty space in our hearts.

The sacred Scriptures say that in emptiness, God creates.

Then it was Soo’s turn to pray. After introducing her to the crowd, I stepped aside, regretting my choice again, my jaws tightening, my palms sweating. How did I get myself into a situation of bringing a witch to bless a conservative Christian crowd? Did I want to lose my job?

Or was I heeding the call of Jesus—losing my life in order to find it?

With the steady voice of a person who has no doubts that our ordinary lives are saturated with the Presence, she said, “Dear Holy Spirit, I am not a Christian. But I and my son are cared for in this church. These people who follow you work very hard to make a difference in the world and love people like us. Now they are tired, disoriented, discouraged. Please, make them see how important their work really is. What would our world be without people like them? Help them continue caring so that people like me might find a better way.”

There are religious experiences that have the power to restart our hearts, when fresh faith in God, humanity, and world is uploaded into our soul systems. This was one of those moments. A hush fell over the crowd, and Soo’s words lingered in the air like a sweet heathen scent. While some sat there paralyzed by the offense of her presence at the church pulpit, many of us basked in her compassion for us. We were hoping that if we just stayed quiet, there would be more words from her, interceding to our God on our behalf.

Life won.

After the crowd dispersed, I sat on a pew in the empty sanctuary to jot down these words in my notebook: “We are scared of finding our God in the other. Why do we fear something so wonderful?”

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~ by Ryan Bell who is the Senior Pastor of the Hollywood Seventh-day Adventist Church. You can learn more by reading his blog, Intersections.

Why should Christians participate in the Faith House project?  I believe that Jews, Muslims, atheist, and others will each generate solid reasons for their participation.  Such reasons will be rooted in their story/worldview. For us Christians, it is the incarnation that can most powerfully and creatively shape our imagination towards an answer.

For generations missionaries from the West (the US, UK, Australia & New Zealand) have entered communities of people profoundly different from themselves. These missionaries were taught to enter these communities as learners. This learning encompassed everything from language to food to social norms. Our short hand for this is “culture.” In short, these missionaries knew they were entering a world of which they had almost no understanding. As they learned about the people to whom God had sent them they were engaging the profound theological practice of “paying attention” – paying attention to God’s Spirit, being attentive to their own hearts and souls, and watching for evidence of God’s initiatives in the community.

Naturally, missionary engagements almost never went that smoothly. The modern missionary movement has become known for its arrogance and colonialism. Nevertheless, missiologists and responsible missionaries the world over know that they must be, at some level, anthropologists as well as theologians.

We have assumed that a learning posture toward our own native culture is unnecessary. After all, this is our home. However, as the world has come to us (especially in the urban centers) and the social fabric of Western societies has worn thin and come apart, we find ourselves in a vastly different world than that of our parents and grandparents.

In the midst of the church’s confusion about its place in this unhinged world, we are (or should be) driven back to our core narratives. And, at the very outset of those narratives we find the story of God showing up in our world at the most unlikely time and the most unlikely place. Theologians call this the Incarnation – divine become human. St. John said this about this mystery: “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.”

So, the primary mission question of our time is, can we live among the people of our neighborhoods? Can we “pitch our tent” in the pluralistic village as a neighbor and learner without coming with all the answers in our pocket? Can we open ourselves to the possibility of learning as much from our neighbors as they will learn from us? My contention is that much that has passed for evangelism and/or mission work in the US and elsewhere has been shaped more by a colonial than by an incarnational imagination. It’s high time we have our imaginations shaped by the story of God’s missionary encounter with us.

Why then should those of us who are Christians participate in the Faith House project? First, to learn and to receive, and then perhaps to teach and to give.

Ways to Donate to Faith House Manhattan

• SEND A CHECK
  written to “Faith House Manhattan”
  PO Box 552, New York, NY 10028

• GIVE ONLINE through our Fiscal Sponsor
  (AMM) Select  “Faith House”

• GIVE ONLINE through our  Facebook Cause

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When two young men, Moez, a Muslim, and David, an Orthodox Jew, strike up a friendship by engaging in serious thinking, good humor, and mutual support before, during, and after our Living Room Gatherings, Faith House happens. When our leaders talk to groups from all over the world who come to the city to learn the ways of interdependence, like a recent group of students from Denmark, Faith House happens (next year they are bringing the teachers from their entire school region). When we bring together GreenFaith, Bill McKibben, 350-dot-org and “green” Muslims to join together in a life-sustaining event in the largest cathedral in the USA, that’s Faith House too (September 18, 2010, full details coming soon!). When we direct people to our numerous and amazing allies such as the Interfaith Youth Core in Chicago and Union Theological Seminary or Intersections International in New York, Faith House happens. When we stand for and consult with our Muslim friends in Cordoba Initiative in New York who are daring to open a new front against radicalism by building Park51, a Muslim Community Center in downtown Manhattan, serving all Americans, Faith House happens. And on and on it goes.

We are all very busy in our own circles of belonging. We have our own people and our own affairs to take care of. Yet, the wellbeing of our own circles and our own affairs is now intertwined with the wellbeing of others. The time when we could leave issues of freedom, religion, and politics to those with the loudest voices is now over. We cannot live well if we know more about brands of consumer products than we know about the amazing treasures of history, stories, and spirituality of people who live across the street or work across the office or a members of our family. This must, can, and will change. In fact, investing in interdependence is not a risk but a safe investment into our future. A failure to invest in it would be a reckless course of action.

We have set a modest goal that we have to meet in order to survive as an organization. We are one-third of the way there. Risk with us. Contribute generously now.

In Faith,

Samir Selmanovic, Ph.D.
Founder and President of the Board, Faith House Manhattan

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