Rev. Dr. Jack Bomar launched United Church's Interfaith Ministry Fellowship this past Thursday, February 9th with a presentation on Native American Spirituality. He felt it appropriate as we are on land still under the spiritual stewardship of First Nations tribes. Among those presenting was my friend Billy who is in the Lodge (Sweat Lodge, where the Inipe ceremony of purification takes place) that I attend, and in which Pastor Jack recently participated. Pastor Jack's experience reconnected him in a profound way with his roots through his Cherokee grandmother in Tennessee.

​This will be followed by monthly presentations. March 9th the Baha'i Faith will be shared by Ms. Veronica Smalls, April 13th will feature a "Freedom Seder" conducted by Rabbi TZiPi Radonsky and in May Rev. Lori Hlaban will speak about Unitarian Universalism. There is much else in the works, to keep up to date please visit United Church's Facebook page.

The title is intended to be provocative and to raise some questions, such as “Why does he like Muslims?”, or “How many Muslims has he met?” or even “Why is he telling us that?” Good questions all. I have been involved in Interfaith work for over forty years and have developed some high level overviews and arguments for the value of Interfaith work, the intrinsic value of individual religions, even an elaborate defense of Swami Vivekananda’s statement in his keynote speech to the first Parliament of the World’s Religions in 1893 “We believe all religions are true”.  But I’ve been reading Eboo Patel’s book Interfaith Leadership lately and I have come to realize that my natural willingness to defend the rights of Muslims to practice their faith was arrived at slowly after much thought and debate, but my story (a very important word “story”) begins long before any real consideration of these issues, with my experience teaching English as a Second Language to Muslims at Utah State University in the mid-seventies, a point in time where I self-identified as an Atheist. Over the course of four or five years I taught several hundred students from all over the Middle East, Iran and parts of Africa. I found them generally warm, engaging and hospitable. It was twenty years later that I first heard the word “Jihad” even though some of those students were Palestinian or Libyan for instance and had very strong political opinions.

I was raised in the Mormon community of Bountiful, UT and attended that church until I was maybe twelve. The Latter Day Saints (LDS) as the Mormons are formally known, feel a strong kinship with the Jewish people, some going so far as to refer to themselves as “the other Chosen People”. Although I left the LDS faith while quite young I still had strong sympathies for the Jews and for the state of Israel. Because our community in Bountiful was so homogeneous I wasn’t really exposed to religious bigotry until I was in basic training in the military. One poor kid came down with a bad summer cold and as it turns out he was Jewish. It wasn’t long before I heard such phrases as “don't catch the Jew Germ” and other slurs. My natural response was to come to Bernard's aid and, as I had no arguments or positions to defend, I chose being his pal as a defense. I had him teach me Hava Nagila which I’d vaguely remembered from Fiddler on the Roof. We sang it at the top of our lungs… I’m not sure this really helped except I never heard “Jew Germ” again.

Fast forward to my years at Utah State and to the "Hub" where we gathered to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. Surprisingly the most boisterous, laughing tables were occupied by Middle Easterners, which made me feel comfortable and drew me in enough to allow me to begin asking questions about the volatility and warfare in that region. I soon came to realize that things were much more complicated than I originally believed. We had a lot of political discussions, but also I heard a great many personal stories which made for deeper connections. I really was quite taken by the cultural warmth and hospitality of these primarily Arabic speaking Semitic peoples. I say that in contrast to the large presence of Iranians, or Persians as they generally called themselves, who were also Muslim, but Caucasian for the most part, and many were quick to remind you of that. The national/cultural presence of these Farsi speaking folks was not as lighthearted or welcoming, they sat by themselves for the most part, somewhat more distant and reserved. Although when I began to teach I made good friends among them as well. It turned out they had plenty of reasons to be cautious as they fell into two strong factions, the loyalists to the Shaw of Iran and the revolutionary forces which eventually toppled the Peacock Throne.

So back to the questions I intended to spark. I’ve known hundreds of Muslims, made many friends and have participated in weddings and other celebrations, and yes, "broke bread" with them and I stand by my claim that I’ve never met a Muslim that I didn’t like. Since they are just people, like many another, I count myself lucky in who I have met. Certainly I’ve read of Muslims who have committed atrocities and I’m pretty sure that friendship would not have been possible with them, for same may be said for partisans in Northern Ireland or guerrilla army members of FARC in Columbia, just to point toward a couple other troubled places. My liking the Muslims that I’ve known also probably has very little to do with their religion. When I think of Muslims my mind doesn’t instantly go the troubles, to religious tensions and ideological chasms, but rather to specific people I came to know and like. For that I count myself lucky as well. Perhaps this is true in large measure because we shared and listened to each other’s stories and made human connections. Eboo Patel has challenged me deeply in almost everything I’ve read of his and I’m grateful that he has, because it has inevitably grounded me in my existence as just one man with his own unique history and stance, thereby allowing me to operate as an advocate of Interfaith Harmony in a more authentic and effective manner one-on-one. Mr. Patel has made me more sensitive to a number of subtler issues, but especially he has reminded me that in conversations it comes down to you and me, to your story and mine.

To hate Muslims is as ridiculous and immature a stance as to hate Republicans or Democrats. Certainly long lists of points of disagreement are readily at hand, but no single point is in fact an article of faith for everyone who adopts a label, sports a bumper sticker, or wears a baseball cap with a logo. And in the case of hating Muslims, in any number cases it’s like hating Frenchmen, any element of being French may very well be an accident of birth, that is, one happened to be born in Marseilles or Paris and not a crucial aspect of their identity. That one is born in Egypt or Indonesia (the most populous Islamic nation) is similarly an accident of birth. The tightness with which one holds to the tenets of their faith is as variable as the human experience. Even to the devout, the particular ranking of these tenets also vary widely. Best to come at anyone with the understanding that they came to be in front of you by way of paths that you have no idea of. The more willing you are to hear their story and to share your own, the more likely it is that you will hear one another on religious and ideological issues.

On December 30th, 2016 IPSC, the Governors representative, and many fellow travelers joined in the Capitol Rotunda in Columbia, SC to launch January as Interfaith Harmony Month. My dear friend Andy and I traveled up for the event and there were throngs of people, including Gov. Haley's father Ajit Singh Randhawa and mother Raj Kaur Randhawa. The photo above is of Dr. Randhawa receiving a plaque of recognition on behalf of Gov. Haley who was out of town, and so this year her proclamation was read by her liaison Ms. Beth Webb. Behind them is a corner of my beloved C's Interfaith banner which was her birthday present to herself from the 2015 Parliament of the World's Religions. The little corner that you can see has the symbol of the Bahá'í Faith. This event spawned all sorts of Interfaith activities all across the state, several of which I participated in and there will be posts about them soon. The press loved the banner as the image highlights, and it was prominently displayed in a number of later events.

CommUnity Newsletter is a publication service of Unity of Hilton Head and serves seven Unity Church/Centers, five in South Carolina, one in Georgia and one in North Carolina. As the editor/designer of this publication I dedicate two pages of each issue to Interfaith news and commentary. I'll add them as they come out. Click on image to open each issue, these files are largish and may take a minute or so to open.​

Even though I grew up in a Mormon community in semi-rural Utah, my mother’s love of art exposed me at an early age to religious Icons. I did not find them in churches but in books and found them beautiful and moving perhaps because I sensed the divinity behind them, not because I knew anything of Saints and the role of iconography in religion. As I grew older I saw Icons from many cultures and religions particularly Buddhism and Hinduism. Several years ago while at a Contemplative Aging retreat at Mepkin Abbey I had a conversation with Sister Annie, a Franciscan Nun, about St. Francis which lead to a discussion of the work of a colleague of hers Sister Kathleen Warren, who had produced a Movie and book called In the Footprints of Francis and the Sultan: A Model for Peacemaking which lead me down a fabulous rabbit hole, but that’s another story. Although I'll provide this link to a flyer I produced for the workshop I presented on the film. The cover for the movie was an exceedingly luminous Icon of St. Francis and Sultan Malik al-Kamil. I used that Icon to illuminate Rev. James King’s evocation of St. Francis’ prayer at the end of his article in the last issue of CommUnity. The artist is Brother Robert Lorentz and these green texts are links to his Robert Lentz website and Trinity Stores where some of his work is on sale.

Brother Robert has certainly stretched the bounds of western iconography. Here is a quote from him “The majority of my critics are uncomfortable with the way I move back and forth between the cultures in which I have had to live since childhood. They want tidy, black-and-white worlds that I have never known. From childhood I have had to deal with a Technicolor world in which I was never quite sure why there were so many fences. Byzantine icons stay safely behind Byzantine walls and look out at the rest of the world. Catholic images are hemmed in by Catholic fences. My icons ignore walls. They belong wherever there is life.”

Here below are wondrous examples of his work which I view as a deep contribution to our Interfaith work. Click on image to see it fully.

      In considering the deepening crisis in North Dakota at Standing Rock where the treaty rights of Lakota/Dakota peoples (commonly known as the Sioux) are being violently violated, my thoughts turned back to the direct actions I participated in with Earth First! in the 1980’s. As opposed to the purely environmental concerns of Dave Foreman, Howie Wolke, Mike Roselle, Ken Sanders and other notable founders of that movement that I engaged with, I saw environmental protection as a spiritual matter.
      The article below was published in CATALYST Magazine and summarizes materials that I presented as a workshop at the Ancient Ways Festival in California in the early 1980s, produced under the auspices of the Covenant of the Goddess. This was the outcome of a deepening interest in Native American spirituality and driven by some of the successes in defending and protecting sacred places, that native peoples had recently had in court. I had been inspired to look into my own Celtic European roots for similar traditions, ceremonies and folkways. This led me to an involvement with Celtic Pagan traditions and credentialing by the Covenant of the Goddess. Anyone who has read other of my blogposts in Interfaith Advocate knows that my spiritual alignments are quite eclectic. For a number of years now I have been deeply involved in the Unity movement, whose byline is “One God, Many Paths”.
 
The Role of the Spiritual Activist in the Environmental Movement

A New Perspective
      We are in the midst of a revolution in consciousness which heralds the new age. It is the redefining of our very place in the universe. The movement of thought from “conservation”, a concept which is anthropocentric and economically based, to “deep ecology”, which takes life itself in all of its manifest diversity as its base — is a quantum leap towards faith. In this new perspective we see all liberation movements as having their ultimate ground in ecology. In its fertile soil lies the seeds of peace. Biological, socio-economical, political and cultural harmony are all branches of the one tree.

Aligning Ourselves in Thought, Word and Deed
      For those that subscribe to this creed there is a spiritual mandate to ally ourselves in the life of the Earth with our fellow beings. We must align ourselves in thought, word and deed. Esoterically in rituals of protection and healing, and celebrations of the cycles of seasons and thanksgiving. Exoterically  as teachers and political activists, engaging in protest and civil disobedience. It is not trite to say that faith and conviction are potent forces for change. Examine the roles of Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King and the Rev. Daniel Barragan among many others in our recent history.
     The distinction between esoteric and exoteric considerations, although ultimately artificial, is useful in much the same way as are military strategists’ division of a war into fronts (a metaphor suggested by the urgency of our situation).

“Stead” — developing a sense of place
      Spiritual traditions arise out of a community’s relations with its environment and express themselves in the cultural trappings and unique poetry of their practice. A coven, a clan, a spiritual tribe is lost without “stead” — that is, the appointed or natural place of the thing, the ground on which a structure stands, that which gives the upright standing. Covenstead, the place of the gathering, meeting place of the four winds and the five senses.
      Come to know the land on which you live. Meet the inhabitant animals and plants, learn their names and the ways in which they fit into their environment. Your covenstead may assume the guise of political boundary, but must be mapped as a biome, a unit of living organisms in an ecological region; it defines itself in terms of ridge, valley and watershed, by that place where oak gives way to Douglas fir or field to fen. Find the heart of this place and make a shrine, altar of the wider temple in which you renew your faith by finding communion. Such an altar is a focal point for the gathering energies, crossroads of animal, mineral and plant, of devas and demons and of life and death. A place at which you may receive and give, a point of release for devotional energies, the appointed place for ritual and meditation.
      Exoterically we have the duties of conscience. Whether we celebrate in works of art and beauty and balance to which we are privileged witness, or find ourselves in confrontation with political powers and their sworn testimonies in halls of justice, we must stand with our alignments.
      As an environmental activist who acts for spiritual as opposed to “other” reasons, you bring to bear on specific cases, constitutional issues unique to your role in the movement. You must be prepared to demonstrate the integrity of your conscience through a history of affiliations and religious involvement. If called into court, your sincerity is in the province of witnesses and documents. Your views dodge the charge of being idiosyncratic when backed by common experience and by being encoded in charters.
      Law is a conservative venture requiring precedent and careful reasoning for which you will be held accountable. The notion of love may be dismissed as aesthetic, whereas the concept of devotion implies the possibility of sacrilege. The erection of a shrine and a history of religious activity at a given place may be important legal precedents if you are defending an act of civil disobedience. Knowledge of the traditions of indigenous peoples regarding the sacredness of a given place may stand as collaborative evidence. Your religious affiliations should have encoded in their traditions charters and administered credentials a philosophical basis for your actions.
      It is a spiritual war that we wage and our paradoxical weapons include shared hearts and minds as well as the tools of resistance. An ancient aphorism contends that the best defense is the making of friends. From the tradition of the four sacred hallows, also called the four magical weapons, comes the wisdom of offering the cup to those who thirst, the dish to those who are hungry and with the wand you may give the lost direction. It is in the final resort that we wield the iron will. May you be blessed in your service to the living.

While attending the 2015 Parliament of the World's Religions in SLC last year I signed the Indigenous Declaration which specifically addressed the desecration of sacred sites. We now have "boots on the ground" on site at Standing Rock. I was gratified to see Parliament Vice-Chair Andras Corban-Arthen leading the delegation meeting with the camp organizers.  I encourage all of you to visit the Parliaments site and sign this Declaration for Indigenous Peoples. The previous green text is a link.

Here is the Parliament of the World's Religions Statement On Standing Rock and the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and an excerpt from it:

The Parliament of the World’s Religions denies any purported “rights” of the Dakota Access Pipeline to trespass on, build upon, and subsequently endanger the sacred land and water of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation. We do not speak for the peoples whose sacred sites and waterways are under attack. Instead we respond to a call from our 2015 Parliament keynote speaker Chief Arvol Looking Horse, Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe, and we are inviting you to join us in answering that call:

“What we are being faced with is a dark spirit. All life cannot afford to allow the same mistakes to be made any longer. Look what is happening to the four directions in the contamination of MniWic’oni – the water of life...”

“We are asking the religious leaders to come support them to stand side by side with them [the protestors at Standing Rock] because they are standing in prayer.”

                                                                       Chief Arvol Looking Horse of the Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota Nations

On October 9th, 2016 Interfaith Partners of South Carolina presented “Peace in the Park” a festival/celebration at Saluda Shoals Park in Columbia, SC, a perfect venue for this event. As promised there was fun for all ages! Art, crafts, music, dance, entertainment, nature walks, and an art contest for young people! Ten different religions each had an activity area for crafts and games, the Commons area featured music and dance – both performing and participative, and many people enjoyed the nature trails with a local birder-naturalist, the afternoon topped it off with a giant spiral dance. Hundreds of people from many religious traditions came to celebrate peace, harmony, respect and dignity.

The weather was perfect although hurricane Matthew had reached even this far inland on Friday and Saturday, there was not much damage in evidence and the mood was celebratory! I arrived late in the afternoon due to a speaking engagement earlier in the day. This year featured a youth art contest organized by Dr. Will Moreau Goins and his dedicated team. Dr. Goins is the current president of IPSC and has dedicated his life to preserving, presenting and performing Native American music traditions, beadwork and storytelling. He weaves the ancient past, mythology and the present with dramatic narratives and song. He was the 2008 Recipient for Native American Traditions in South Carolina’s Jean Laney Harris Folk Heritage Awards. The Peace in the Park art competition showcased some wonderful work from a very diverse sampling of young people.

Of great personal delight for me was the strong presence of the Sikh community. I knew almost nothing about them before attending the Parliament of the World’s Religions which my wife Chris and I participated in Salt Lake City, UT October of last year. The Sikhs fed more than 7,000 of us each day. They have done so for each of the modern Parliaments and 150 of them flew in from England to support the 2015 event. My talk at UUC Columbia was about the Parliament and I was pleased to tell a number of Sikhs about my experience with Langar (the name for ritually prepared meals served as an offering of service) and how one of my slides featured a picture of their Golden Temple at Amritsar where they feed more than 250,000 people three meals a day, every day of the year. A crowning experience of my visit to the “Peace in the Park” event was being honored with a Sikh turban to wear for the rest of the afternoon. Attached is a picture that one of them took of me.

IPSC has a long and rich tradition in South Carolina and had it’s beginnings in the 1970’s as a Christian/Jewish ecumenical initiative and was headed up by Dr. Carl Evans, University of South Carolina Professor Emeritus, he retired from the Department of Religious Studies in 2009 having been a member of the faculty since 1974. Dr. Evans is also past president of IPSC. Unity ministers Ed Kosak of Unity of Charleston and Rev. Peggy Konkel of Unity of Columbia are active in the IPSC as well. Click on Interfaith Partners of South Carolina if you would like to visit their website and to see the good work they sponsor and/or support.

Here is a link to Holli Emore's lovely celebration of the event: Peace in the Park. I love the song which she used as well, it is One by One by Michael Stillwater.