INTERFAITH ALLIANCE STATE OF BELIEF RADIO APRIL 23, 2014

RUSH TRANSCRIPT: Auburn Lives of Commitment Breakfast Panel

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[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: We’re glad to have you all here. You should know that you’ll have access to the interviews that we do this morning; they’ll be on the State of Belief website. You can get each one of them individually, or you can listen to the whole thing together. And so we’re going to treat this just as we do a regular show, but we’re going straight to the interview time. And panelists, thank you for being here. I am going to ask you, if you will, to keep your answers relatively short because we’ve got a lot of road to travel and not a lot of time to do it.

I do want to ask each of you the same question, because I was very impressed with this: Chelsea Clinton said, in her remarks, that she sees commonality between her work and the work of all of us that are in interfaith/interreligious work, as having commonalities. And she said three commonalities are – and what my question’s going to be, what did you think when you heard this – past is not precedent; when you think of hate, think also of optimism; and we need to reverse the order of moving from the political to the personal to moving from the personal to the political.

When you hear those commonalities, what first comes to mind? Anybody wants to go, go first?

And so, Jacqui, I’m going to ask you.

[REV. DR. JACQUELINE J. LEWIS, PANELIST]: OK. I want to talk about that personal-political piece first, if I can. You know, this place where I’m nine years old and King gets killed was a personal trauma that happened in my life, and it happened on the history, on the story of my mom and dad’s traumas – being walking past the school to the colored school; really experiencing prejudice and racism in the Jim Crow south. So that that personal event, that personal trauma in my story, an episode in my story, really did activate me; and I think it shapes my politics at Middle Church and it shapes my politics in the world. So I think she’s right about that.

When she talks about the fact that we need to have incredible optimism in the midst of hatred, I do think that we have to be able to imagine the world we create. We have to be able to see the world as it can be. Some of my clergy talk about having reign-of-God-tinted glasses, or Shalom-tinted glasses. I think what we can see, we can create. Some pop singer wrote, “If we can see it, we can do it.” And so I think she’s right about that.

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And I think that the place where those things conjoin is that we can’t be bound by our past, but we have to be inspired by it. I’m thinking about how my husband is a White guy, White United Methodist minister, and my dad is a Black man from Mississippi. And if they were both bound by their past, I wouldn’t have the incredible, strong relationship I have – because I think it’s hard to be in love with somebody when your mom and dad are upset. It’s just problematic! But my dad and my husband are friends, because they’re not bound by the past. So I think the three things she lifts up go together right there.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Great, thank you.

[SAPREET KAUR, PANELIST]: Yeah, all of it really resonated with me. You know, in particular to sort of dive deeper on the boundless optimism – this concept in Sikhism is called “Chardi Kala,” – you’re supposed to aspire to be in that state at all times, and I’ve got to say it’s easy to say and hard to do!

It’s hard to do in even the small ways, you know, when that person cuts you off in the road, and you have that little bit of road rage when you need to get where you need to go; or your four-year-old son is melting down because he’s been up since 5:30 in the morning. But I think it’s the way we approach other people in our everyday interactions, and the choices that we make, that we’re going to move forward with optimism; we’re going to live that. And I think the other pieces go hand-in-hand with it. But yeah, it’s about the big choices we make, and the small choices we make, every day.

[RABBI JENNIE ROSENN, PANELIST]: When I hear that, I think – in Jewish tradition, we talk so much about the past, and the past becomes a reference point and a launching-off point. So I sort of find myself flipping it, because – we just finished the holiday of Passover – because we were slaves in Egypt, we know what it’s like to be a slave, and that becomes a motif that travels with us through history.

And I think that it’s, again, the personal to the political; if it stays with just “we” as a specific, particular group, that’s kind of where the personal can get incredibly constrained. But if you can then make the leap from the past into the present, and from the particular into the universal, then it’s about remembering that we were slaves, and then it’s about welcoming and loving the stranger.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Yes.

[LINDA G. MILLS, Ph.D., PANELIST]: What I’d say is that the path to social change or to imagining what we can see as a different world is a huge mountain to climb. But when you re-conceptualize that as one person at a time, or one friend at a time, or just building a very small bridge to somebody who’s sitting next to you at a breakfast, or being inspired by somebody who’s spoken at a breakfast, or just reaching across the divide in a classroom – whatever version

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that takes, it feels so much easier. And what we need to do is hold onto the fact that that is the social change.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Let me ask you a follow-up question, because it’s a question I get asked a lot myself: you have a passion for leadership that’s already obvious, and you have skills for leadership. And you have people that you really want to lead. What do you do when the people you want to lead don’t want to leave?

[LINDA G. MILLS, Ph.D., PANELIST]: Well, I think that’s an easy question to answer, which is that leadership, I think, today, has to be about - and teaching people about – leadership has to be about embodying it themselves. That it isn’t enough for us to be some leader trying to bring people along, but it’s really about listening to people in order to be able to be responsive to what they need and want, and then knitting it together as a group effort. I don’t think – I don’t adhere to old forms of leadership, although they continue to inspire me, which is our president, for example, when he stands up there as though he is, in a sense, the Word or Gospel. There are ways in which he deeply inspires me. But really, the work is in the everyday coming together, and recognizing that we all have a piece of that leadership in ourselves.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Wonderful.

[REV. DR. JACQUELINE J. LEWIS, PANELIST]: I agree with what Linda is saying there. Helen Gardner says, “Leaders tell compelling stories that can wrestle with the story already in the mind of followers.” And I think that’s true. But I also think that we have to help people find themselves in that story. And we create that story together. If we’re creating a narrative together, it’s a shared vision; it’s a shared story. And then people can find themselves: what’s my role in this story? What’s my role in the drama of social change and healing?

[RABBI JENNIE ROSENN, PANELIST]: I would even take what you said a step further. I think that part of leadership is actually facilitating other people to make the change that they’re seeking. I think of it as a kind of adaptive leadership. And that often means that you are leading in a way that may not always be popular or comfortable; but that it can’t be, as you said, the kind of classic model of a leader with followers, but someone who through their leadership is actually engaging the community and people to do the work that needs to happen.

[SAPREET KAUR, PANELIST]: You know what, that is – to build upon what we’ve heard already – I think it’s so much about bringing out the best in others. I think we intrinsically want to do good; we intrinsically want to leave the world a better place. And some of being a leader is helping to cultivate and nourish that, individuals to bring out the best, to help them understand their strengths so that they’re contributing to the greater good, and they’re seeing you aspire to do that yourself – and they’re finding inspiration in that.

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[REV. DR. JACQUELINE J. LEWIS, PANELIST]: And in our Judeo-Christian narrative, though, we have just a really clear story about how everybody doesn’t want to go. I mean, I think that’s an unpopular thing to say, maybe, but everybody doesn’t want to go – and that’s okay. I think we want to build coalitions; we want to look for partners; we want to say, “This is where we’re trying to go,” and do all of the things we said – but some people aren’t going to walk toward the Promised Land.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Right. I want to ask each of you a question very specific to who you are and to what you do, and after you respond, if others of you want to jump in and talk about that, fine.

Jennie, you said something that really did strike me, because I’m at a point in my life when I’m looking back a lot, and I’m seeing things that I’ve worked on for 50 years, and some of them don’t seem to be any better now than they were then; and others of them even seem to be worse. There are some that are better. But you said that you were impressed by the fact that we’re obligated to work, but we’re obligated to work on tasks that never will be done. Talk about that some more, because I think there’s something both inspiring and liberating about that.

[RABBI JENNIE ROSENN, PANELIST]: …And frustrating, sometimes.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: And frustrating, right!

[RABBI JENNIE ROSENN, PANELIST]: So I think it’s holding both of those. It’s holding that we are called to do this work, and we need to respond to real suffering and injustice that is part of our world and our communities; and we can’t rest from doing that work. And we need to hold each other accountable for doing that work. At the same time, we know that there will always be the poor in our land, and that there is a sense that it’s not going to be solved in our generation – and that’s where I think it becomes so important not just to do the work, but to actually cultivate, in our ethnic and religious communities, a sense that doing this work is central to what it means to be a fill-in-the blank: a Jew, a Christian, an African-American… And I think that if we’re developing that as part of the fabric of those communities, then there will be generations to pick up the work from where we left off.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Hmm. Any of the rest of you feel that? I mean, am I the only one that thinks that… And I know I personalize it too much, but I get up and say, “Well, I must have failed here somewhere.” How do you overcome that for yourself?

[REV. DR. JACQUELINE J. LEWIS, PANELIST]: I think that what Jennie is saying is really right, about it being kind of a legacy-building. You know, we talk about building institutions, but there’s also just building ties that make a legacy.

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So we’re doing training of young adults; and were doing training of teen-agers. We’re starting a freedom school this summer, so that we keep putting into the generations “This is who we be.” This is who we be, and this is how we do what we do because of who we be; and it’s in our DNA, and that I’m not the only one who has to do it.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Sapreet, first of all I want you to know that I have the utmost respect for the Sikh community. We have worked together from the inception of Interfaith Alliance, and in fact had SALDEF in our offices first. So I’ve watched the way Sikhs have identified themselves to a country that didn’t know anything about Sikhs. And you’ve done it with excellence. Your leadership since 9/11 - and the first person to die after 9/11 was a Sikh mistaken as a Muslim – and then what happened in Wisconsin and other places across the nation… You have had the challenge of exercising leadership in the midst of grief. What’s that like?

[SAPREET KAUR, PANELIST]: I think that in those moments – it was said earlier, the place where fear comes from, and then where you find yourself rebounding – it’s that split second where it translates over. And in our core principles as Sikhs, there is this desire to find that place and translate it into good. And both when Balbir Singh Sodhi was killed for having been mistaken for a terrorist, and in the wake of the Oak Creek tragedy, we saw those local Sikh communities show us the way. We saw the everyday people who were living that tragedy – they weren’t strangers who were affected; they were their families, they were their family friends, they were the people they knew – and they found the resolve! They showed us the way. And I think that that’s the lesson.

There’s a lesson in community; there’s a lesson in togetherness – that you’re not alone, and you look to your neighbor and you find strength, you find solidarity, you find inspiration. And really, for me, I look at those Sikh communities, I look at the interfaith communities around the areas where those tragedies happened, and they show us. They show us how to rebound; they show us how to build – build bridges, share more information, and they show us that it’s possible. Once you know it’s possible, and you’ve gone to that well – it’s so easy to dip into it again.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Yeah. Well said. I’ll never forget spending an evening with the Sodhi family. This family has had two sons that have been lost since they’ve been in this country…

[SAPREET KAUR, PANELIST]: Both in hate crimes.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: …Both in hate crimes. Both in hate crimes. And I remember saying to one of the brothers, “Have you ever thought about going home – back to India?” And he looked at me as if I’d just lost my mind, and he said, “Why would we do that? This is our home. This is our nation.”

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And it’s a great reminder that just because a person’s heritage may lie outside the realm of the United States doesn’t mean once they’re here they’re not as committed to this nation as we are, and we forget that a lot, I think.

Linda, that brings me to what I wanted to ask you. Your story about your grandmother gripped me – and her courage. Two things: where did her courage come from, and how do we rightly apply that courage to the challenges of interfaith/interreligious relationships today?

[LINDA G. MILLS, Ph.D., PANELIST]: So I think her courage came from that sense of responsibility, and you know, when your family is at stake, there’s something instinctual. So maybe it’s human nature – I don’t know. But there was something profoundly necessary about what she did, and she just did it.

It had the effect of ultimately kind of breaking her in this very painful way, which I’ve described. Although you could always see that courage there, and that sense of strength that she drew from having successfully completed her mission, which was to save her immediate family – it was to save so many more, but certainly she saved her immediate family – and it all rested on her shoulders, because my grandfather was in a concentration camp.

So the question of, how do we now figure out how to do this interfaith work – what was so striking about, as I went to reflect on, well, what story most inspired me in my life to come to this place; what did my family teach me that then gave me the strength to carry on – what felt clear was that that they had the mandate to build a country that would keep them safe. And I have to accept that, even if it has all of its complexities; I have to accept that that’s what my family felt was their mandate. But I also don’t have to be tied to that history in a way that compromises my own needs and goals. And I think many of us next-generation Holocaust survivor children do feel this sense of the weight of that history, and at the same time, is it okay to find our own voice that takes us in a profoundly different direction, and that reinforces in the world a new place for progressive Jews who feel they need to tell a different story from the story of their families who were so deeply hurt by hate. And so it’s very complex and tangled, but inspiring, and, you know, I live my life by complexity – I think everybody in the room does – and so that’s it. It just inspires you or propels you into what you need to do; what you are driven to do because of the Holocaust. And that’s the story I told.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Let me press that just a little bit, because that’s – and you answered what I asked, what was that motivation behind your grandmother’s courage – why are you working on interreligious relations?

[LINDA G. MILLS, Ph.D., PANELIST]: I think that I have not been able to find my voice in my family’s story in relation to the Holocaust. I have to a certain degree:

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I’m deeply sympathetic, I’m deeply immersed in it, I did all the right things in my childhood to understand and embrace that history – there’s no question about that, except a few embarrassing moments when I said to my mother, “I don’t understand why it’s so important to you” – and then I went on to make a film about my mother’s journey to the United States from Vienna with that view in mind, to understand why it was so profound to her experience, and now I understand that.

So the question was, how do I take that history and make meaning of it for me, and for the next generation – talk about advancing the work. It felt like, to them, it was about drawing lines around us, and that would somehow have saved us? In fact, that feels wrong. It just feels wrong. I get why they got there; but that’s not a truth! It feels like the truth is something very different, and it’s about opening up, and the possibilities of that embrace.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Oh, that’s great.

[APPLAUSE]

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Jacqui, I like to think of you as the exemplar of inequity, because most of us have one thing we do pretty well. You do all those things well! I mean, you got up there and sang, and you’re a good organizer, and you’re a good preacher, and you’re a good thinker – that’s not equity!

[LAUGHTER]

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Okay. So anyway. That’s just a comment.

[REV. DR. JACQUELINE J. LEWIS, PANELIST]: Thank you.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: You are obviously what most people, I think, would call a born leader. What has been, for you personally, the greatest challenge to being a leader?

[REV. DR. JACQUELINE J. LEWIS, PANELIST]: Myself. I’m the greatest challenge to being a leader. No, seriously. My staff and my colleagues would say the thing that you observed about many hats, or maybe a couple of gifts – I’m uber-ambitious, and I think I can do so many things. And one of the pitfalls of that – so, this isn’t like a self-care moment, but it probably should be – what I think is really true, as I’ve been in my own kind of personal journey toward getting a grown-up God – what I mean by “grown-up God” is I’m not making boundaries around it, God loves everybody, this is not a particularly Christian God or a particularly Sikh God – this is a God of all of the people all over the place.

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But there’s also something about a grown-up faith that says, “I’m also not God.” And I really mean, I am not God. I am not able to do all of the things that I think I can do. And if I don’t acknowledge that as a leader, then I’m setting a really bad example for my team; I’m setting a really poor priority for my spouse, as in work goes before this particular call to him; and I don’t think it’s sustainable. So if we’re thinking about sustainable leadership, there’s got to be something in it. I’m always in a talk with some of my dear friends about beauty and joy and chill and stop and breathe and pray and rest and laugh and dance and, yes, sing – to make our leadership rich and juicy, and to also make space for other people to lead. And that is my biggest handicap, and my growing edge, and I’m working on it.

[APPLAUSE]

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: I happen to believe that we are either going to get this interreligious relationships right, or we’re going to have a heck of a lot more trouble. So I want to ask a kind of a dangerous question: from each of your perspectives, how are we doing in this new challenge to cooperate, identify with, mutually respect, share scriptures and oral traditions with – how are we doing, from your various perspectives?

Rabbi, why don’t you begin this one, if you will?

[RABBI JENNIE ROSENN, PANELIST]: So, I think one of the challenges of interfaith is that it not become a big mush.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Right.

[RABBI JENNIE ROSENN, PANELIST]: And I think that a precursor to real, authentic interfaith discourse and work together is that there’s a strength of where people are coming form. And so I think that there’s a step before that we sometimes miss, which is, really, being grounded in our tradition and in the values and history of our tradition; and from that place stepping into interfaith circles. And obviously those things can’t be sequential; we have to sort of simultaneously do both of those things. But I think if we skip that first, we can’t really have the second. And if we wait ‘til we achieve the first to the nth degree, we’ll never get to that next piece.

So again, I think it’s a question of holding both of those things, and not being afraid of the things that are particular as a launching-off point for something much bigger. I mean, I think the story you shared is a very particular experience in some ways, and a completely universal in another; and part of that pain, the personal pain, has been catapulted and inspired your world view in a way that’s distinct, but not disconnected from that.

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[SAPREET KAUR, PANELIST]: You know, what I would add to that is, in Sikhism we believe that the journey is as important as the destination, and so when I think about the question you’re posing – the Sikh community has been in the US now for a hundred years, and we’re sort of late to the interfaith party here; but we’ve been engaging more meaningfully, I think, particularly in the last decade plus. And so I look at our progress as a community and with our interfaith partners as, how is the journey going? Are we growing and learning? Are we finding more points of commonality? Are we listening? Are we understanding the other faith traditions and perspectives so that we can talk together and see how much of the change we wish to see is our collective?

So in terms of looking at the journey, I think there’s some more twists and turns, but we’re progressing. And there’s a growing number of individuals, institutions and organizations that are joining the collective and moving forward, and that’s the part that gives me a lot of optimism. I’m not exactly sure that I personally understand the destination just yet, other than the lofty goals of love and peace, but you know, what does that feel like tangibly? And so for this part of the journey, I think we’re progressing well, and we’re very self-reflective, I think, as individuals and as a group. So, not surprisingly, like all of you I’m optimistic.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: I’m really glad to hear you say that you don’t know exactly what the end of the journey is. The people who write me know what the end of the journey is; they’re there, and wondering what’s taking the rest of us so long to get there!

[LAUGHTER]

[LINDA G. MILLS, Ph.D., PANELIST]: I am by nature optimistic; you probably gathered that, so I would say that it’s incredibly inspiring – and in my most immediate world at NYU, we have a spiritual life building that converges all of the religions practicing at one time in the building, and 4,000 students come to practice their religion every single week. So that feels inspiring.

And it’s not only that they come to practice their religion, but they are bumping up and bumping into – in the best sense. You know, New York I often describe as collisions and possibilities, and feels very much like a collision and possibility.

And I think getting them – the whole question of when do you get them? So in our film Of Many, it’s at the youngest age, between Rabbi Yehuda Sarna’s children and Imam Khalid Latif’s children. But sometimes that’s not possible, because families are barriers. So the question becomes, when do you then next get them? And it is, really, in college. And so I think we have focused our efforts, in large part, because that is that turning moment, and so many of us in this room were turned at those moments, right? They were key moments in our futures. So I think we think that there’s tremendous possibility at a place like NYU with 50,000 students – take it away!

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So I do think that I feel very hopeful.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Good. Jacqui?

[REV. DR. JACQUELINE J. LEWIS, PANELIST]: I absolutely share the optimism of my colleagues. Particular stories make me really optimistic. A Muslim man who felt like he as a follower of the Christ for all of his life, and felt like he was a minority – understandable – found his way to Middle Church, and found his way to the welcome, and was baptized last Sunday evening – Easter Sunday – baptizing a Muslim. He wanted to convert. What I loved was that my colleagues, his pastors, told him “You don’t have to convert to join our movement.” I love that.

On Easter Sunday, we preached a sermon about how the Resurrection - the Anastasis in Greek, the New Life, the Life Again – isn’t just for Christians; it’s for everybody! And you don’t have to be a Christian to be there. So there was an Atheist-Jewish family worshipping with us on Easter, just after the Passover, and they were weeping because they felt included. Those kinds of particular stories make me feel very hopeful. And in every one of the places where we’re doing our work, in every one of the places where we open a door and say “Welcome,” and we are particular in our own story and understand that our story isn’t the only truth – that’s what makes me hopeful.

The rigidity – too much. And so I want to go sweep just a little bit to the negative. I think sadly there are still too many pockets of American religion where we feel privileged and entitled and sure that we know exactly what the holy intends, or exactly what God intends. And then we end up preaching, teaching, practices that actually lead to hate – and that’s dangerous. And I think we have to guard that. And all of us who are leaders – and all of us are leaders – I think we have to hold those in the pulpit, those in the teaching room, accountable for a radically loving, inclusive, justice-empowering Holy that accepts and loves all of us.

[APPLAUSE]

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Because we tape State of Belief, we don’t often get to get questions at the moment of an interview. We don’t have much time – about 8 to 10 minutes left. If you have a brief question, I would invite you to ask it now; in fact I’d like to take two at a time. So, yes?

[AUDIENCE MEMBER 1]: Thank you so much for your service, all of you. I heard recently a speaker make the distinction between “optimism” and “hope.” I heard the word “optimism” very often today, and “hope” sometimes, but not quite as much. I’m interested in whether you see a distinction between the two, or do you find optimism and hope to be the same thing.

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[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Okay, and I – you had your hand up, right – I’m going to have to repeat this for the radio, but the question here is, distinction between optimism and hope. And your question?

{AUDIENCE MEMBER 2]: I wanted to ask, as faith leaders, how you split your time between those more progressive elements of our faith organizations and the more extremist, the more resistant to your message.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Okay. In your work, how do you deal with the polarization in the religious community, that’s in other communities, between progressives and fundamentalists or not-so-progressives. Either question, anybody want to take it?

[SAPREET KAUR, PANELIST]: Yeah, I can take the second one. You know, for us we currently have a campaign, as was mentioned, for Sikhs who wear turbans and men who keep beards to be able to serve in the US military. We have a very long military tradition; and then about 30 years ago an executive order forbid any new Sikh men wearing a turban, having a beard or Sikh woman having a turban to serve. And so we’ve been fighting for the last 5 years to change that.

And I’ve actually observed that in appealing to sort of fairness in humanity, we’ve made some strange bedfellows. There are a number of folks who I would say are perhaps socially more conservative and more insular in their thinking, and even in their thinking about faith, who’ve supported our campaign entirely. And they see it as justice and they look for the commonality of faith. They see that we wear our faith; we express our faith in a different way, but that in its core it’s there. And I’m thinking of my colleague Rajdeep Singh, who’s here and who’s leading that effort in DC – the number of conversations that he’s had with individuals to sort of humanize the campaign and make them understand us and understand them at the most basic level has broken down a lot of barriers. And it’s always delightful to see elements that perhaps would have viewed us with some reservation – at least some ignorance – before, see us as part of the greater American fabric, and then advocate on our behalf.

So I think a lot of this is person-by-person, experience-by-experience; but I’ve been amazed at how many barriers we’ve broken down. There’s still so many more to go: Sikhs still can’t serve with their articles of faith intact – we have three exceptions we’ve sought accommodations for – but there’s progress, and there is a way of finding that commonality.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: You and Rajdeep are very good examples of this, and what’s really interesting to me – but somewhat discouraging – is that it is often easier to cross faith lines completely than it is to reconcile within one tradition the fundamentalists and the progressives.

Somebody please deal with optimism – oh, yes. Okay, go ahead.

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[RABBI JENNIE ROSENN, PANELIST]: The second question, I think in the Jewish community we’re at a very exciting moment. I think about the organization that I just recently joined, HIAS, which is a 133-year-old organization that’s been working with refugees, and protected and rescued and resettled Jews through 120 of those years.

And then with the decline of Jewish refugees, had a moment of, is it going to recreate itself for this new era – and decided to do just that; and now protects refugees and resettles refugees of all ethnic and religious backgrounds as a Jewish organization. And I think that sort of in that story is a broader story in the American Jewish community, and that we’re at a moment when, again, informed very much by our Jewish values about the stranger and also our Jewish history about having been refugees over and over again, there’s now an opportunity to take that expertise and really bring it to a broader – of all different faiths: Muslim, Christian, Zoroastrian, Baha’i - religious minorities and other reasons why people are refugees, and an ability to do that as a Jewish organization. And I think that that reflects a shift that’s happening in the American Jewish community, where progressive and activist forces are very much alive and, I think, finding new ways to gain expression.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Someone do optimism…

[LINDA G. MILLS, Ph.D., PANELIST]: So I’ll do optimism and hope, and I’ll use my mother’s story about HIAS to actually tell the story and then to illustrate what I think the difference is. So my mother left Vienna on her own at age 14 and came to London, and when she arrived in London HIAS met her. And HIAS at that point did many things during the war, but one of the things they did was they met the children who were traveling on their own. She was going off to the United States from there. And they gave her some sum of money – let’s call it $3. And she had a travel buddy, and the travel buddy also got $3, and they both got off the train with their $3. And her travel buddy went off and comes back onto the train, and my mother went off, whatever she did. And she comes back on the train, and she says to the girl, “What did you do with your $3?” And the girl said, “I bought an umbrella.” And my mother said, “Really? Like, why would you buy an umbrella?” And she said, “Because I needed an umbrella, that was the one thing I didn’t bring with me, and you never know when you need an umbrella – we’re in London, after all.” And my mother didn’t spend a dime.

What I’d say about my mother’s journey, then, from London to the United States, which was a very difficult, challenging journey including the possibility of her boat being bombed, was that she was hopeful that she would survive – but she had no optimism about the future. And that’s what I’d say the difference is, and I think my mother has probably taught me that difference.

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[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Two quick questions from this side. Yes.

[AUDIENCE MEMBER 3]: First, I want to say [unintelligible]. Just a quick question about gender: I’m just curious, sort of, (a) if the treatment of gender in society and then within specific religions has served as an individual barrier, and whether or not that barrier serves as coalition-building for women across religions.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Great question. Gender: has it been a barrier personally, in religion, has it been a barrier in coalition-building? Anybody else on this side? Okay, let’s go with that one.

[REV. DR. JACQUELINE J. LEWIS, PANELIST]: I’m a woman, and I have been in many contexts where being a woman makes it a problem for me to get in the pulpit, or a problem for me to lead. I think that makes me have empathy for the way religious institutions have hurt other people around other issues: LGBT folks who’ve been kicked out of congregations, or pastors kicked out for marrying their kids, or divorced people not being welcome, that kind of thing. So I think there’s an empathy that happens when we have been rejected around any of the stuff that we are, any of our identities, and I think that empathy is a place where coalitions can be born.

I think there is work for women to do, though, about women connecting. I’m sitting in front of a bunch of women who I know are in a group together, who support each other; I have a clergywomen group that supports me. Across faith, I don’t find that the female identifier is the thing that draws us. I don’t think so. I think we have work to do on that.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Others want to comment on that? Because it’s an important question.

[SAPREET KAUR, PANELIST]: In our community – so, Sikhism was founded on the principle of equality: equality between all people and equality between men and women, which at the time, 500 years ago in the Punjab region of India was quite a statement to make! And when you meet a Sikh and they talk and share something about their faith tradition with you, this is a source of immense pride and sort of the cornerstone of the faith.

I think we are often, to be self-reflective, far from reaching that aspiration, because there’s a lot of cultural baggage that overlays all of that. And I think here in the US there’s a lot of cultural baggage to add to the baggage we brought with us. And so I think the journey from where we are and our aspiration – it’s a long one. And I feel it in my everyday work, both in the community and outside of it. But there’s always inspiration. And what I’ve noticed is there’s a difference between my mother’s generation and mine in terms of what we see as possible

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and what we reach and grab. And then, in talking with girls who are a decade younger, two decades younger – totally different. There is a different reality that they live in, and they’re living in that reality because they continue to see a model that evolves. And I think that’s the place where we build change.

Myself and Valarie Kaur – I was hosting a panel that she was on, she’s with Auburn, and the best part of the whole panel was at the end, when it was over – and it was three Sikh women sharing their experiences – there were a group of middle school girls who had come with their moms; and my favorite moment after I grabbed lunch was looking back, and they were sitting in the three chairs, and one was pretending to be me and found my notecards, and they were having this real conversation. “Well, you know, I’m going to work for justice in every form,” and “I’m going to be a filmmaker;” “Well, I paint.” And I was watching them unfold, and I thought, “Gosh, that’s leaps and bounds ahead of where I was at that age, and imagine what comes behind it.” And I think modeling is what matters; opportunity, seeing women out in front in leadership roles across faiths, wearing who they are on their sleeve. But I do agree, I haven’t yet experienced a forum that is an interfaith forum in that regard, and so I look forward to that.

[REV. DR. JACQUELINE J. LEWIS, PANELIST]: I just so want to echo what you’re saying. We met a bunch of young women in various levels of cover when we were in Pakistan a little while ago, and they were all college students – and they were stunning. They were stunningly bright, stunningly eager to heal the world and change the world, and they need access. They need access to partners across faith.

[LINDA G. MILLS, Ph.D., PANELIST]: So, I have a fairly controversial thing to say, which is that I feel – well, were in a conversation about faith, and so it has a particular resonance in relation to gender that’s very complicated. So I just want to acknowledge that. But what I’d say, particularly in relation to my domestic violence work, is that we cannot leave men behind. Women are now in positions of leadership, and we have a place at the table that is truly remarkable given the short history of that radical movement to acknowledge and recognize women. But I fear that in our preoccupation with that history, which was not pretty, that we are forgetting that we need to bring men along, and we need to bring men along not only because of us, as women and as a women’s movement, but really the embrace of all people. So I really need to say that, and particularly in an environment where I think people are sympathetic to the crossing of boundaries.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: I want to bring the discussion to close, with each of you having one minute – and I want you to use that one minute to say what you would like to say if you could talk to the whole nation at one time. See, we have this idea that the whole nation listens to State of Belief, so we’d like for you to take one minute and do that. And while you’re thinking about how you’re going to do it, I want to say – because I want them to hear me say – Katherine and Macky, I shared with these people at the very beginning what a

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wonderful relationship it is between State of Belief and what you all do at Auburn Seminary. And it wouldn’t work if it weren’t for the two of you; and the fact that…

[APPLAUSE]

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: …So thank you. We’re going to hear four women speak to the nation, and then I’m going to close like I usually close State of Belief. Go to it.

[SAPREET KAUR, PANELIST]: I can go first. I don’t think I need a whole minute.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Good.

[LINDA G. MILLS, Ph.D., PANELIST]: Yeah, that was exactly what I was going to say.

[SAPREET KAUR, PANELIST]: I think it’s part of my earlier remarks, you know, to love your neighbor you need to know your neighbor. I think we’re all curious, and sometimes that curiosity – we keep trapped inside, you know? My request to people would be if there’s something you want to seek to understand – ask. Have that childlike curiosity; be bold. Chances are, after the person you’re asking the question to gets over their surprise, they will be thrilled to share the answer with you, and something about themselves. And we watch children do this! I watch my son on the playground with his small turban on, and I hear other kids say, “What is that on your head?” And he says, “That’s my turban.” “You wear that?” “Yup. Every day. To school, here…” “Why do you wear that?” “Because my mom ties it.” [LAUGHTER] He is only four. And then he’ll say, “It’s what we believe. It’s part of my uniform.” And the kids ask, and then the kids say, “Okay.” You know, and then they run off to the next part of the playground.

There is that bit of us that still exists inside, and I would ask everyone to find it. When you see somebody and you wonder something about them, or there’s something about somebody else’s experience, whether it’s faith or not even related to faith that you’re curious about – ask. And that’s the first step. And I think it builds bridges and it breaks down barriers.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Who’s next?

[REV. DR. JACQUELINE J. LEWIS, PANELIST]: I’ll go. I think I would want to say – I will say, “You gotta do what you gotta do” That every single one of us is a leader, and every single one of us is fueled by our faith; fueled by the faith that we have been raised in. I’d like us to lean into a grown-up faith that doesn’t feel restrictive and bounded, but feels open and broad and generous like the God I believe we serve; and that in every space we are – in the cafeteria, at the lunch counter, on the street, on the subway, in congregations, doing our activism, doing our teaching and preaching – everywhere you are, there’s something for you to

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do to make it better, to heal the world. The responsibility is for us to heal our stuff so we can be healers. The responsibility is for us to not be bound by our pain, but to address it, heal our souls, so we can heal the world. And everybody’s got a job to do. We gotta do what we gotta do.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: That’s great.

[RABBI JENNIE ROSENN, PANELIST]: I think I would come back to this way in which we can live in very small worlds, and we can, so often – and I think this is happening more and more across our country – people are living and interacting with people like themselves, in all sorts of ways. And I think the challenge for all of us is how to step outside of the particular, of the immediate, of the things that we feel most connected to most easily, and actually reach beyond that. And to have a sense of having responsibility beyond our inner circle – whether that’s a family, or an ethnic group, or religious group. And that we have, I would say, not just an opportunity but a certain obligation to really reach beyond our particular insular circles, and effect change, yes there, but also beyond.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Linda.

[LINDA G. MILLS, Ph.D., PANELIST]: So of course, mine is a version of these three inspiring women, which is: that the universal human experience is love. But it is so often love with people or in circles with which we are most familiar. And really, the task ahead is to understand that that love is there for you, as you venture outside of it. And that you will find more love – it is hard to believe, but it is an endless well to be filled, and you will find more love and feel ever-more fulfilled as you cross those boundaries; so surprisingly, so paradoxically, to come back and feel more love even at home. But that is our task.

[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Literally, the conversation that’s been held here today is the kind of conversation that we try to facilitate on State of Belief every week. You can hear it on the Internet; you can get a podcast of it. Please look it up; I think you will enjoy more of it than not. And we’d love to have you because we want to broaden this kind of conversation all across our nation. Until we get back together here, or somewhere else, you all take care of each other. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

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State of Belief is based on the proposition that religion has a positive and healing role to play in the life of the nation. The show explains and explores that role by illustrating the vast diversity of beliefs in America – the most religiously diverse

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country in the world – while exposing and critiquing both the political manipulation of religion for partisan purposes and the religious manipulation of government for sectarian purposes.

Each week, the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy offers listeners critical analysis of the news of religion and politics, and seeks to provide listeners with an understanding and appreciation of religious liberty. Rev. Gaddy tackles politics with the firm belief that the best way to secure freedom for religion in America is to secure freedom from religion. State of Belief illustrates how the Religious Right is wrong – wrong for America and bad for religion.

Through interviews with celebrities and newsmakers and field reports from around the country, State of Belief explores the intersection of religion with politics, culture, media, and activism, and promotes diverse religious voices in a religiously pluralistic world.

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Author of more than 20 books, including First Freedom First: A Citizen’s Guide to Protecting Religious Liberty and the Separation of Church and State, the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy leads the national non-partisan grassroots and educational organization Interfaith Alliance and serves as Pastor for Preaching and Worship at Northminster (Baptist) Church in Monroe, Louisiana.

In addition to being a prolific writer, Dr. Gaddy hosts the weekly State of Belief radio program, where he explores the role of religion in the life of the nation by illustrating the vast diversity of beliefs in America, while exposing and critiquing both the political manipulation of religion for partisan purposes and the religious manipulation of government for sectarian purposes.

Dr. Gaddy provides regular commentary to the national media on issues relating to religion and politics. He has appeared on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show and Hardball, NBC’s Nightly News and Dateline, PBS’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly and The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, ABC’s World News, and CNN’s American Morning. Former host of Morally Speaking on NBC affiliate KTVE in Monroe, Louisiana, Dr. Gaddy is a regular contributor to mainstream and religious news outlets.

While ministering to churches with a message of inclusion, Dr. Gaddy emerged as a leader among progressive and moderate Baptists. Among his many leadership roles, he is a past president of the Alliance of Baptists and has been a 20-year member of the Commission of Christian Ethics of the Baptist World Alliance. His past leadership roles include serving as a member of the General

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Council of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, President of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Chair of the Pastoral Leadership Commission of the Baptist World Alliance and member of the World Economic Forum’s Council of 100. Rev. Gaddy currently serves on the White House task force on the reform of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Prior to the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), Dr. Gaddy served in many SBC leadership roles including as a member of the convention’s Executive Committee from 1980-84 and Director of Christian Citizenship Development of the Christian Life Commission from 1973-77.

Dr. Gaddy received his undergraduate degree from Union University in Jackson, Tennessee and his doctoral degree and divinity training from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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