I am very proud to say that I am today’s featured guest poster at NonProphet Status.
Chris Stedman (perma-linked in the Smart People blogroll) is the Managing Director of State of Formation, an initiative of the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue and the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions — and he’s an atheist. His blog is dedicated to the entirely reasonable proposition that atheists and people of faith can find a place of mutual respect, and work together toward shared goals. We found each other through Twitter (all hail the Tweet!), and he asked if I might like to rework an old piece for posting over at his place — to which I could only say: Yes, please!
Here’s the top of that post — for the rest, please click through!
Lately Americans have been talking a lot about faith – the Muslim faith. As we grapple with the understanding of just how diverse we are as a people, Americans of good will – Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims – have been striving to help their countrymen learn that we have nothing to fear from Islam. As a believing Jew, I’ve been right there in the thick of it.
But as I struggle with the fact that so many of my fellow citizens fear a belief system dear to the hearts of 1.5 billion people, I struggle also with another, far less acknowledged, fact: Even more of them fear my husband.
Because he doesn’t believe in God at all.
I urge you to also check out the important work that Chris just did for The New Humanist (published the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University), an “attempt to offer an introductory but comprehensive consideration of the issues surrounding nonreligious involvement in the interfaith movement.”
The idea that interfaith cooperation is necessary to advance social progress was not a conclusion I came to overnight. In fact, after I stopped believing in God, I spent some time walking about decrying the “evils of religion” to anyone who would listen. I wanted nothing to do with the religious, and was sure they wanted nothing to do with me.
…Now I see interfaith cooperation as the key to resolving the world’s great religious problems. All the more, I want my secular community to join me, to share their stories and learn from those of the religious. And, more importantly, I want us to join with the religious in working to resolve the problems that afflict our world. Together, we will accomplish so much more.
And speaking of religion!
Tonight (in, like, half an hour) yet another Jewish holiday begins! I would explain, but honestly, it’s kind of complicated — it’s two holidays smooshed into one, unless you live in the Diaspora, where it’s still two, unless you come from Israel, which we do, so it’s still one for you, unless you’ve officially moved to the Diaspora, which we have, so then it’s supposed to be two, unless you’re like us and holding on to your Israeli-Jewishness by your very teeth and thus only ever celebrate them smooshed together as one…. Who has time to explain all that!
I will say this though: Among our celebrations over the next day/two days will be Simhat Torah, a celebration of our Torah, the very thing that makes us a people. We finish the annual cycle of reading the first five books (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) — and then we start all over again. There will be dancing, and parading about with our Scriptures in our arms, and children running around like wild things, and it will once again remind me of how much I love the homey reverence with which we hold our faith and our holy books, awed and yet also literally carrying it all in our all-too-human hands. It’s a good thing.
It’s a good thing — and, as per usual, it means I won’t be here again until there are three stars in the sky on Thursday night. (Or possibly later, as these Diaspora Jews, they think the whole dancing with the Torah thing is tomorrow night, so I’ll be in services! I told you it was complicated).
So, the usual reminder: All first comments require my approval — if you get stuck in moderation, I’ll fish you out as soon as I can.
In the meantime, chag sameach, happy holiday! (And go read NonProphet Status!).
dmf
/ September 30, 2010and to you too. Jeffrey Stout is probably the leading humanist thinker in this area of coming to common values/efforts without common justifications:
http://www.theotherjournal.com/article.php?id=864
dmf
/ September 30, 2010oh and pt 2:
http://www.theotherjournal.com/article.php?id=867
dmf
/ September 30, 2010going to see this tonight: http://littletownofbethlehem.org/
“Come face to face with the courageous struggle for a nonviolent solution to the crisis that has torn Palestinians and Israelis apart. Little Town of Bethlehem, is a bold documentary by award-winning director Jim Hanon and producer Mart Green. It shares the gripping story of how three men born into the cycle of violence have chosen to risk everything to bring peace to their homelands. Sami and Ahmad are Palestinians, one is a Christian, the other a Muslim; and Yonatan is an Israeli Jew. Independently they find inspiration through the example of Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Mahatma Gandhi’s sacrificial commitment to equality. At great personal cost they have joined together in a heroic and dangerous cause. In the city of Bethlehem, where it is said that God became man, these men stand side by side with those whose only desire is to be treated as equals, as fellow human beings. Their story brings the possibility of real hope to this embattled region and provides a model for resolution of hostilities throughout the world.”
dmf
/ October 1, 2010Course in General Linguistics
by Jaswinder Bolina
If I’m going to be attacked, let it be by a rare pathogen
not some yokel hurling
sand nigger at me
from a beat-up Cutlass Sierra at seven a.m.
If I’m going to be attacked,
let it be by asteroid or metastasis
not the toothless yahoo of my expectations.
What I can’t understand is
who has the energy to be a xenophobe at seven in the morning.
Not me anyway, though I have energy enough to think of language.
Thud meant the saying
of sand nigger, so a sign is more than a signifier
with its tongue neatly stuck
in the ear of the signified.
It sometimes slobbers around some.
Anyway, I don’t mind being attacked,
just let it be by precision guidance
or satellite track, a line item in the budget
instead of dead language. Sand nigger,
he hollered, hoping for a rim shot maybe,
or maybe meaning, Go back where you came from.
How could I explain I had nowhere to go,
no other way to get where I was going,
and I hadn’t meant to sully his morning
and hadn’t meant to make him uncomfortable,
but if he thought he was uncomfortable,
I mean the guy howled
Sand nigger! at me,
and there were people around.
I was so embarrassed for them
looking so uncertainly to me and what I might do,
so I set about explaining
how he’d gotten the country of origin wrong,
how my folks are from green fields
and there isn’t any sand there,
and I’m from Chicago,
and sure I’m brown, but I’m harmless.
I mean, I don’t even believe in God.
Then I thought of all the people he meant
when he offered, Sand nigger,
and thought of all the people
he might’ve hoisted sand nigger upon
just that morning even, and how even now
he’s probably somewhere in his Cutlass Sierra
shouting, Sand nigger! Sand nigger!
at over-baked socialites strolling out of tanning salons,
squinting into the sun,
and how all us sand niggers are in this together.
Anyway, he shouted sand nigger,
and the others I told this to all agreed
it was just disgusting the way he shouted that at me,
so the signifier disgusting signified that
which signified sand nigger
which had meant disgusting all along,
but I could barely blame him,
all that concrete and glass
having fallen out of blue September,
the god-awful, sand-nigger sky,
how it was his sky, and I wanted then to embrace him
and murmur, I understand,
or, I’m sorry,
or maybe, I want to stab you in the heart,
meaning, How easy it is to wound,
how much easier to be the wounded.
asiangrrlMN
/ October 1, 2010ee, congrats. The post you did on your hubby is one of my faves. It fascinates me, you the devout Jew and your husband, the devout atheist. I am agnostic myself, so I am somewhere in the hazy land between (as usual), but I can also attest to the difficulties of being a non-believer (of sorts).