Redefining Christian Identity in a Pluralistic Context
I live in a unique multifaith experiment called the Community of Living Traditions. Located at Stony Point Conference Center in the Hudson Valley, our Abrahamic community of twenty Muslims, Jews, and Christians dedicates itself to the work of offering hospitality and practicing nonviolence. Together, we commit to a radical proposition, a sacred project to learn one another’s rhythms and practices and to understand and appreciate one another’s core motivations and convictions without attempting to change or convert one another in the process. As Rabia Terri Harris, Co-Founder of the Community of Living Traditions has asked, “what would happen if human beings actively embraced the vision that our identities, all of them, religious and otherwise, were cherished and sustained by God?”
Shortly after the September 11, 2001, John Paul Lederach penned his “Traveling Essay,” in which he presciently named the challenge before our nation – to destroy the myth that each side seeks to sustain as justification for their actions. That myth, a battle between good and evil, or between faithful and apostate, drives the actions of both sides. For the west it justifies constant, overwhelming use of military force that makes it ever easier for the “terrorists” to sell their myth and entice more and more recruits to sacrifice their lives in terrorist bombings that seem inexplicable to the rest of the world. This in turn justifies even greater military aggression from so-called, “civilized” nations that is sustained through an ever-growing and carefully cultivated fear of the other. This, Lederach warned, would be a never-ending cycle of violence. Unfortunately, he appears to have been exactly right in his prediction.
The Community of Living Traditions (CLT) was born as a direct response to this cycle of violence. We insist that our first act must be to build deep relationships based on mutual understanding of one another, appreciation differences, and commitment to seeking common ground. We stand against those in each of our traditions who corrupt our sacred text to justify acts of violence against one another. We honor what Rabia has suggested as a unique, historic opportunity to renounce the tendency in each of our traditions to seek endless growth, evolving instead toward the “revelatory rhythms of dynamic balance.”
Early in our work together as a community, my Jewish and Muslim colleagues held me accountable for the ways Christian privilege in the United States shaped me, a position we Christians are slowly losing as the changing demographic reality of the U.S. population takes hold, forcing us to actually own the values of freedom of religion which our country’s founders enshrined in our Constitution.
This privilege we enjoy shapes me and all of us who are Christian in ways that most of us are not aware of, yet are obvious to those of other religious traditions. Our religious holidays are woven into the fabric of our national culture, our leisure, and even our work. Our churches are accustomed to being the primary architects of our nation’s moral conscience. Worse, we assume that other religious traditions have nothing to offer in that endeavor. We make little or no effort to understand the most rudimentary elements of the significant religious celebrations in other traditions, like Jewish Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, or Muslim Ramadan and Eid. We routinely offer Christian prayers before public events, but become uncomfortable and even suspicious at public expressions of piety or faithfulness by those who espouse something other than a faith in Jesus Christ.
Anyone who cares to seek can find these signs, but it is more challenging to name the invisible ways in which assumption of privilege marks our relationships with those who are not Christian. Gently, but firmly, members of the Community of Living Traditions have held the Christians in our community to account for the unexamined ways in which we set the agenda or establish our cultural mores.
For instance, early on, we worked to create safe, visible places where Muslims and Jews could feel welcome at Stony Point Center. However, as our relationships have deepened it has become increasingly obvious that doing so actually creates an assumption that the entire campus is “Christian” and that Muslims and Jews are honored guests on what remains, essentially, Christian territory. The task is far greater than making Jew and Muslims feel welcome, it is to make our entire campus feel as if we are co-creators of a space that is “owned” by all of us. We realized that the next step must be to create a particular space for Christians to feel comfortable, just as we have for those of other traditions, subtly insisting in the process that the larger campus is not “Christian,” but instead a space where we must work together to assure that all people can feel welcome and at home.
Early in our time together, I actually felt insecurity as a Christian. I think that was largely because the Muslim and Jewish members of our community were accustomed to a practice of ritual and prayer and observance of religious holidays that made me feel kind of inadequate. This should have been no surprise, because these are the things that minority cultures and religious traditions have always had to do to maintain a sense of their own identity in a culture that is fundamentally hostile to them. The flip side is that those who are part of the dominant culture often become lazy or complacent because we find little need to distinguish ourselves from the dominant culture. Over time, I have been pushed to examine and establish my own practices in a way that has grounded me in my own tradition.
Gracefully letting go of our Christian assumption of superiority may be the most important gift we have to offer to the project of building a “multireligious” voice for peace and ecological and social justice in a nation that is struggling to find its moral center. It is that vacuum that exists in our national psyche that makes the work of building authentic, multi-faith communities so exciting at this particular moment. While the enthusiasm for the institutional trappings of church has never been lower in our country than it is right now, the desire to connect with a spiritual grounding that counters the empty promises of the dominant culture is unmistakably on the rise.
We must insist that we are less, not more safe, when we assume that we have the right and responsibility to impose our religious, cultural, economic, and political hegemony on others. This deeply-integrated part of our psyche as a nation provides the moral justification for empire-building that we take for granted, just as members of empire have done throughout history. Rabia has suggested that this largely unrecognized conviction lies just below the surface in justifying a great deal of the violence in the world today. Wouldn’t it be amazing for Christians to model a sense of humility that could help lead all of us into a different way of relating with one another?
As Christians, we can live our lives with passion and conviction and invite others to experience the Good News of the Gospel without assuming that we must be “more right” than everyone else. Our ability to thrive will not be secured through an act of force or military aggression. In the world of the 21st Century, no religious tradition will be able to assume a position of superiority, regardless how benevolent its intent.
We will find the security that we seek only when we can affirm what makes us most authentically who God calls us to be. What do we bring to the table that has the potential not just to strengthen our Christian identity, but also to enrich others who believe differently than we do? Are we capable of distinguishing ourselves from the empty promises of consumerism, selfishness, and greed of the dominant culture in order to offer a genuine alternative to those who are seeking meaning over glitz and glitter?
These are values I’m willing to be held accountable for. They offer a clear alternative to meaningless glitter promised by allegiance to the Empire. If we who are followers of Jesus are willing to put this on the table as the hallmark for what it means to be Christian, I expect that we will find a great deal of common ground and a shared sense of purpose with sisters and brothers from other traditions or from totally non- religious backgrounds, who share these values.
