“We’ve Got a Friend” – Obama and Interfaith

That’s what I felt as I rode the train back from Washington, D.C. the night of June 7, after attending a meeting at the White House on “Advancing Interfaith and Community Service on College and University Campuses.”  It was organized by the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

It made clear to me, and I dare say to all of the 110 invitees, that those of us who are committed to promoting better relations and more effective cooperation between the religious communities of this country (and the world) have a friend in the President who now lives in the White House.

That’s a statement I don’t make easily.  I travelled to this meeting with my left-leaning guard up:  politicians are keen, and experienced, at using religion and religious leaders for their own political purposes.  If religion is supposed to be one of those sources of truth spoken to power, it suits “power” to befriend, and soften, “religion.”

I soon lowered my guard and opened my mind and heart.  Joshua DuBois, former Pentecostal minister, and presently Executive Director of the Office on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, together with his energetic and articulate Deputy Director, Mara Vanderslice, made it clear to us, in both the content of what they said and the way they said it, that they were genuinely interested, as Vanderslice put it, “to increase collaboration between universities, colleges, and seminaries in their interfaith activities and White House efforts to call religious communities to cooperate for the greater good of our society and the world.”

Mara Vanderslice, Deputy Director, White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships; Joshua DuBois, Executive Director of same, Rev. E. Terri LaVelle, Director of Veteran Affairs.

DuBois made it clear, especially for secular critics who fear transgressions of church-state borders, that this effort of the Obama Administration places its focus on bringing religions together not on the basis of shared beliefs but on the basis of shared action. This reflects what President Obama said in his first talk at a National Prayer Breakfast: he clearly recognizes the enduring differences between religions; he’s not out to boil those differences down to one common religious soup.  But Obama, and his administration, believe that the religions do have one thing in common: the desire to serve – the desire to respond to human needs and problems and do something.

This is where, the White House believes, religious believers, despite their real differences, can come together – and even be joined by secular humanists who also want to serve: they all can stand and act shoulder to shoulder in imaging and achieving “what good might look like.”

That last phrase came from Eboo Patel, the young, dynamic Muslim founder of the Interfaith Youth Core and one of the 25 members of Obama’s “Council of Advisors” for the White House Office on Interfaith. Patel delivered a short keynote address to launch the meeting and further conversations.

His main point was that “Interfaith, ” – the one-word designation for the dialogue and collaboration of religions that must replace the competition and clash of religions – is at what Malcolm Gladwell would call “a tipping point.”  Our society is coming to the realization (but is not quite there) that if our nation, as well as the community of nations, is going to effectively deal with the problems confronting us, religions are going to have to get along with each other and make their contribution.  That means that whether you’re a religious believer yourself or not, you’re going to have to deal with religion – with religions in the plural.

This is where Steven Prothero, Professor of Religion at Boston University and well known author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, and Doesn’t, offered his input. He highlighted both the growing awareness that “religious literacy” is today becoming an essential part of being educated.  When one goes to college one should expect just as much to learn about religious diversity as one expects to learn how to dissect a frog.  The term “interfaith” must become as much a part of our general knowledge and concerns as “ecology” and “human rights.”

And for religious believers themselves, Patel pointed out to the affirming nods of all participants, this presents a challenge.  Religions today stand before four possible paths: 1) religious communities can become bubbles, and try to shut off the rest of the world; 2) they can become barriers and by insisting that “my God is better than your God” increase the tensions among nations; 3) they can become bombs, and actively call their followers to resort to violence to defend their identities or supremacy; 4) or, they can become bridges of mutual respect and collaboration.

Clearly, the reason why the White House called us religious types together, and the reason why we all responded eagerly and hopefully, is that we share the conviction that now more than ever we can, and we must, make sure that at this “tipping point,” religious believers and religious leaders become bridges – or in the terms of the White House, partners in service.

The religious experts, leaders, scholars and organizers who attended this meeting felt that what they were trying to do was confirmed and affirmed.  It was a relief and a reassurance to know that this President understands “faith-based initiatives” to mean “multi-faith based initiatives”  — with the emphasis on service.

Personally, I found this meeting to be a confirmation both of what I have been trying to do as a scholar over the past 40 years and of what we are trying to do here at Union with the redefined Paul Tillich Chair.   As I tried to lay out in my 1995 book, One Earth Many Religions, the most promising and the most urgent kind of interreligious dialogue doesn’t begin with interreligious conversations about what we believe; it begins with interreligious collaboration about issues that concern us all.  If we start there, if we can become friends in such solidarity of action, we will create the spaces of trust and respect in which we can, and will want to, talk about the beliefs that ground us and animate us in our efforts to serve.

When I summarized this at the end of the meeting, Mr. DuBois pronounced a Pentecostal “Amen.”

I rode the train back to New York with a palpitating sense of gratitude – and hope.