Pastor Joe Summers’ hard work and dedication organizing “UnStuck: Reviving the Movement for Social Justice, Human Dignity, and the Environment” at The Michigan Theater on February 16, 2013 was a huge success. With Rev. James Forbes and Cornel West as the keynotes, along with musical performances, and wide support, the program delivered a whole greater than the sum of its parts. I was honored to be among several speakers about religion’s sticking points in unleashing social change. I’m sharing my talk here.
“Stick” with this; it’s  not that long.

I’ve been energized these days about my profession as an Interfaith Minister and my practice (vocation) as an Interfaith Educator.  So when Joe asked me to be part of this event, I agreed.  Because I thought I had a lot to say. But when I sat down to write, I felt “stuck.”  Now I’m going to tell you what I’ve learned about getting “unstuck.”

I grew up in a Conservative Jewish household.  I went to Hebrew School every Monday, Wednesday, and Sunday. My family attended Sabbath Services which meant I was at the synagogue on Saturdays, too. When I joined the Jewish Youth Group, I was there five times each week. I went to Jewish camps in the summer. I lived on a religious kibbutz in Israel briefly in high school. I attended the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for my junior year of college. I thought I would join the Israeli army, marry an Israeli, and live life on a kibbutz.  Would you be surprised if I told you that it didn’t work out that way?

What happened?

I fell in love with a guy who is “not Jewish.” God has a sense of humor.  And I was exposed to a different way of thinking about the world and my place in it. My interfaith marriage put me on a path of exploring interfaith issues. And as a result, I’ve had many inspiring experiences; leading a Jewish-Interfaith congregation, running a Hebrew school for children of Jewish intermarriage, designing interfaith programs and interfaith ceremonies, organizing religion tours and interfaith movie nights for my students, and counseling interfaith couples… and along the way, I grew, and my faith developed.

Now…… fast forward….to a conference I recently attended that brought together Interfaith Educators including Jews, Christians and Muslims. In one small group session, we were asked to go around the circle and each share our biggest fear about Interfaith. My immediate thought was: “I don’t have any fear.” Until David spoke.

David was 30 years old, training to be a rabbi, and the father of a one-year old. His biggest fear was that his daughter might not identify with Judaism, that if she learned about other faiths, she might be attracted to them, and identify with a different religion, different from his. When I heard this, I realized, “Uh-Oh, I do have a fear.”

So I spoke up: My fear is just the opposite. My fear is that if I don’t expose my kids to interfaith opportunities, they might identify too much with Judaism and get stuck; stuck in their own religion and stalled in their own faith development. For if there is something I’ve learned in the last 20+ years, it’s that interfaith engagement initiates spiritual growth. Learning about other faith traditions helps you get unstuck from your own. Sometimes you have to cross over the line and look at yourself from the other side.

AND the corollary is equally important; this process can work the other way around.
Sometimes when you’re out there gathering spirituality from different traditions, you need to step back and interpret it all. And that’s when your own religious roots can be helpful.  Maybe they are strengthened by what you see that’s different, and maybe they are challenged and changed as a result.

At that same conference we were also asked to meet with all the people from our own religion. All the Jews meet over here, all the Christians over there, all the Muslims here. Since the Muslims were the most under-represented, if you weren’t sure where to go, you were to go with the Muslims. Well, I almost did.

See, I was upset. Because in my experience, Judaism was so “we-they” oriented, so over-identified with itself that it felt threatened by my parents’ divorce and my brother’s gayness while I was growing up, threatened by interfaith marriage, threatened by Palestinians, threatened by Otherness. After all my interfaith work, I wasn’t sure I belonged in an ‘all-only ‘ Jewish group. But I went. In the circle, I shared my feelings of sorrow. And something unexpected happened. Right after the session, five people rushed up to me offering support and wanting to understand how I saw Judaism.

And later it hit me.

The very thing for which I’d been disappointed in my Tradition -its reluctance to know and accept the Other- was keeping me from It.  Without realizing it, I’d been stuck in Interfaith but the willingness to be heard by fellow Jews released me – just as I released them from their fear of Interfaith.

So how do we keep from getting stuck in Religion?

In Strangers to Ourselves, Julia Kristeva wrote,

“Strangely, the foreigner lives within us: he is the hidden face of our identity, the space that wrecks our abode, the time in which understanding and affinity founder. By recognizing him within ourselves, we are spared detesting him in himself, a symptom that precisely turns “we” into a problem…The foreigner comes in when the  consciousness of my difference arises, and he disappears when we all acknowledge ourselves as foreigners…” (p.1)

Over-Identifying with any religion keeps us stuck, keeps us from seeing the Other within ourselves. If we keep that relationship so tight, the walls so high, that we only see the foreigner on the outside, then we rob ourselves of acknowledging the foreigner within and of interpersonal growth as a result. We need not throw away religion. But we do need to focus on aspects of religion that support our psycho-spiritual development. So I encourage us all to shift the value placed on Identity to Integrity where, paradoxically, our religious traditions provide the wisdom for doing so.

If we look deeply into Integrity, we find such virtues as Responsibility. The Jewish sages taught that the Hebrew for responsibility, ACHRAYUT, gives clues to its two-fold meaning.  The root ACHAR means AFTER, implying that responsibility means we consider the consequences of our decisions/actions before we make them. The same root with a different vowel, ACHER, means OTHER, implying that responsibility means bearing the burden of and caring for the Other. (Everyday Holiness by Alan Morinis)

We live in a world that calls for RESPONSIBLE RELIGION. This means taking responsibility for our relationship to religion, for how religion affects Us and Others, Now and After. And in this way, through Responsible Religion (for which Integrity Over Identity is key), we revive the movement for social justice, human dignity, and all of life.  Amen

The Resources on my website offer programs and materials to help us get unstuck.