Stanford Interfaith Blog

"Creating Justice" - November 10, 2010!!

2010-11-01T01:28:00.001-07:00

Dear Friends,

On 10 November 2010, Dr. Mimi Silbert the CEO of the Delancey Street Foundation (www.delanceystreetfoundation.org) will be coming to Stanford University for the event "Creating Justice: Dr. Mimi Silbert on Breaking the Cycle of Poverty, Homelessness, and Addiction"!! How exciting!

Here's some background information: The Delancey Street Foundation is one of the most respected and well-established non-profits in the San Francisco Bay Area. Their aim is to rehabilitate those afflicted by addiction and those who are stuck in the cycle of poverty and homelessness in the Bay Area. How do they do that? Good question. Delancey Street's program is a two-year course and they "take applications from people who have hit bottom, from prison, jail or walk-ins. Residents who have been at Delancey Street awhile interview all applicants. The minimum stay is 2 years; the average stay is 4 years. We have 3 rules: no drugs or alcohol, no physical violence, and no threats of violence. The goal is to learn to lead a productive crime-free, drug-free life of purpose and integrity. Everyone learns a marketable skill (the goal is 3 skills), and earns at least a high school equivalency degree." Pretty amazing stuff, right? Delancey Street's success rate is not only a testament to the program, but to its founder, Dr. Mimi Silbert.

I hope you'll join me in hearing about her personal journey and social activism firsthand on Wednesday, 10 November 2010 at 7:00pm in Kehillah Hall at the Ziff Center for Jewish Life. The exact address is 565 Mayfield Ave (the corner of Campus and Mayfield). Let us all be inspired to act justly and create sustainable change.

In peace,

Doria

p.s - contact me with questions! doria@stanford.edu

Upcoming Events for FAITH

2010-04-01T17:21:00.000-07:00

Dear All,

Happy Passover, Easter, Rama Navami, and all other occasions you may have celebrated or are just entering. Stanford F.A.I.T.H is entering the Spring Quarter by building off last quarter's well-coordinated events: the MLK Multifaith Service, the campus-wide rally against extremists from the Westboro Baptist Church, and the Bloodsuckers Ball, which raised close to $1500 for Malaria No More. This month, we will continue our push on interfaith action against malaria and global poverty. The following are some of our upcoming events:

Week of April 12-16

-Interfaith Panels in Dorms: WestLag, FroSoCo, Burbank, Branner
---Sign-up to volunteer for the West Lag Interfaith Panel here!!---

-Film: When the Night Comes + Interfaith panel discussion (time and place TBD)

Tuesday, April 20, 4-7 PM

-One Voice of Faith: a National Interfaith Conference on Global Poverty in San Francisco. There will be a Youth Leadership Summit at the time posted above, to share strategies with activists from around the country on how to sustain an interfaith movement against global poverty on campus and beyond. You can register on the website at the link above, but the e-flyer will be coming soon. If you are interested in joining a contingent from F.A.I.T.H, please RSVP to me and to: timbrauhn@faithsactfellows.org

Friday, April 23, 11:00 AM-1:00 PM

-Admit Weekend Tabling

Saturday, April 24, 4 PM

-Lecture at Hillel by Ruth Messinger: "Serving God and Serving Humanity: A Jewish Ethic of Global Justice."

Thursday, April 29, 7:30-9:00 PM (tentative)

-Open-Air Interfaith Concert in Old Union Courtyard with I-AM (Initiative Against Malaria)

More information on each of these events will be coming soon. We hope you continue to follow our activities!

BLOODSUCKERS BALL March 6th

2010-02-26T12:54:00.000-08:00

Malaria kills over a million people a year, most of them children. It afflicts the poorest communities in the world, with devastating economic and social impacts. It's also entirely preventable and treatable. . . .

ANNOUNCING:

Stanford F.A.I.T.H and Initiative Against Malaria's first ever

Bloodsuckers Ball

~a social dance-fundraiser to fight malaria in Africa ~

Saturday, March 6th, 8PM-11PM

FREE beginning social dance lesson 7-8 pm

Costume contest! Dress up as your fave bloodsucker. Whether that's Edward or a pesky mosquito…

Tickets available in White Plaza 12 PM-1 PM next week M-F

$10 ~~ the price of a bed net ~~

Get a free button with your ticket.

The Bay Area Against Malaria campaign is a grassroots collaboration between interfaith and malaria activists across Bay Area campuses: ordinary people of all faiths and none doing something extraordinary. Together, we can eradicate deaths from malaria. YOU can help Malaria No More save another life!

In the Wake of Westboro

2010-02-05T08:47:00.000-08:00

Counter-Protest Draws Hundreds

In the Face of Hatred, Campus Comes Together

Letter to the Editor

A Provost's Pride

We Stand United

It's been a remarkable couple of weeks for F.A.I.T.H. So much positive energy has been generated by the Stanford community's overwhelming response last Friday to a few protesters from a fringe extremist group from the Westboro Baptist Church. I had not seen this kind of solidarity--with nearly 1000 members from all across Stanford--since the Bush protests in the year of my Admit Weekend. For many freshmen, some of whom have written on this blog, this was the most meaningful experience of their young Stanford career.

As I'm sure you know, we attached a letter to the invitation from Hillel to the entire Stanford community. We were specifically encouraged to do so by JSA President Joe Gettinger, who explained something very humbling to hear--that in many ways, F.A.I.T.H had laid the foundation for such an event to be possible. This letter, in turn, had a ripple effect on several faith communities on campus. The image of members of Campus Crusade for Christ with tears in their eyes at Blake Parkinson's spontaneous bagpipe rendering of "Amazing Grace" will remain salient in my memory.

I want to offer another example of the particular force of the interfaith narrative we were able to create. A Muslim girl told us after the event that when Daniel Pipes had come to campus some years ago, she felt she could only turn to MSAN and the ISSU for response; but now, she felt that her sense of community was much stronger, and that even students outside the group being attacked would actively empathize with her own sense of marginalization. And at a time when Muslim student groups are being systematically shut down in British universities, the narrative of mutual enrichment between diverse communities at Stanford is growing stronger every year.

I highlight this story to demonstrate how an initiative to strengthen interfaith relationships blossomed not only into a broader campus movement, but into a vision for the future. Provost Etchemendy had this to say about our efforts: "I am very grateful for the wonderful work you and Ansaf are doing to strengthen interfaith relations on campus. You are helping to build something very special in the community!" While we are thrilled to have been instrumental in creating such a favorable atmosphere, and to have rooted ourselves in several areas of the institution, now is the time for those who have thus far been ushers and Challah-makers and logo-designers to take the lead: to mobilize interfaith cooperation on malaria, to survey how religious identities are engaged on campus, to incorporate creative representations of religious diversity for FACES at next year's NSO.

Hence we welcome your presence at next week's FAITH meeting (Wed, Feb. 10th, 7:30 PM in the CIRCLE) with two more IFYC trainers, who will conduct a special intensive leadership session. The application for next year's Fellows Alliance (due March 15th) is now open! Besides looking for us at Dance Marathon this weekend, please keep in mind these other upcoming events:

Mon. Feb. 22nd, 7 PM, Annenberg Auditorium: Roger W. Heyns Lecture by Rev. Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners. (P.S: I will be introducing Rev. Wallis!)

Sat. March 6th, EPC, (Time TBA): Bloodsuckers Ball with Initiative Against Malaria. Dress as your favorite vampire, mosquito, or bednet, and raise funds for Malaria No More, all to be matched by the Tony Blair Faith Foundation!

We look forward to FAITH leadership, now and in future years, finding new ways to translate Stanford's commitment to diversity into the vitality of pluralism.

With Love,
Anand

A Brotherhood (and Sisterhood) of Love

2010-01-30T16:45:00.000-08:00

The great prophet of love, John Lennon, once had the “hope [that] someday you'll join us,/And the world will be as one.”

To me, today was definitely one of the days that epitomizes this beautiful dream. Before this day, I never would have imagined myself in the midst of a gathering of Stanford students, holding hands, and singing songs of love and peace in solidarity with my friends and my community. It seemed a little too hippyish in my imaginings, yet interestingly, this morning I found myself in this exact situation.

Having never contributed to this blog before or participated in a rally of any real significance before this today, I wonder what it is that inspires me to put my thoughts into words—how does a young Muslim American woman such as myself find herself swaying in a circle of peace, singing “Hiney ma tov,” arm in arm with her Christian and Jewish friend? How does a young man find the courage to play “Amazing Grace” on his bagpipe in front of a crowd of hundreds of people? How do Stanford college students, deprived of sleep and accosted by various obligations, make time to wake up at the crack of dawn (a little bit of poetic license here) and make their way to the Hillel center to stand united in their call for peace?

I believe that the reason was love. It was love of our neighbor and our friend and our love of justice and human rights that got us to the lawn this morning. It was love that helped us drown out the sounds of hate that the WBC yelled in the midst of this gathering, and it was love of religious freedom and respect for sexual freedom that gave us the courage to stand up to those ugly signs displayed by the WBC members. It was love that gave power to our voices as each one of us recited our pledge of “We Stand United,” each phrase gaining strength as more hearts and souls and voices joined in, forming a “brotherhood (and sisterhood) of love”.

As the rally came to a close, I looked out over the crowd, and could not help but feel proud of the grace we showed this morning. We may not have changed the bigoted attitudes of the WBC or others who carry such hate and discrimination in their hearts, but we stood up for ourselves and for our neighbors. Our songs of love continued to reverberate in my heart and allowed me to understand that the fight for peace and justice is just beginning. And from this beginning, each of us can continue to learn and stand up for what is right—because if we don't care, who will?

Today, we stood united.

2010-01-29T11:03:00.001-08:00

For those of you who aren't on the FAITH e-mail list, or otherwise associated with Stanford University, today, the campus was put to a test. Members of the Westboro Baptist Church came to Stanford with signs saying "God hates America," "God hates Jews," "You will eat your babies,"and were bent solely on dividing our community and sweeping in hate. From my perspective, Stanford passed the test.

Standing along with the couple hundred students who made their way to the Hillel lawn this morning at 8am, we showed WBC, but most importantly, we showed ourselves that this community did not tolerate hatred; rather, we chose to show support and love. Looking around the crowd this morning, it was so encouraging to see people from every end of the social spectrum singing "We've got the whole world in our hands," and meeting people they never knew while actively discussing the importance of coming out and showing their support this morning. Yes, I seriously heard students saying, "this is the most important thing I've done this school year."

As some members of FAITH were saying at a meeting last night, Westboro Church, itself, is insignificant, but the fact that the hate exists and is willing to travel to promote that message is the broader issue. From some people I've spoken to, I have heard the opinion that it was discouraging that it took outsiders to come to our campus to instigate this feeling of unity. I, personally, disagree. I think, as previously stated, the Westboro was insignificant. However, the fact that the student body is now aware that these types of group exist and we, as a community, have shown that hate-mongering and bigotry will not be tolerated here, shows that these sentiments of support and unity existed before, and now it is up to us, the students, to carry over this feeling into action for the future. Such is one aspect of the mission of FAITH, to promote interfaith understanding and tolerance through action, and I think we've seen that our community is ready and receptive to these types of ventures, and I, for one, am inspired and reinvigorated. In the words of the Iranian philosopher, Baha'u'llah, "So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth." Let us further light this world with our unity and love for one another.

In peace,

Doria

Sermon on Multifaith Service, Sunday, Jan. 24th

2010-01-25T13:42:00.000-08:00

“Why We Can't Wait: The Legacy and Promise of Interfaith Leadership”

gurur brahmā gurur viṣṇuḥ

gurur devo maheśvaraḥ

guruḥ sākṣāt paraṁ brahma

tasmai śrī gurave namaḥ

I bow down to my Teacher, the embodiment of Truth, and to all those gathered here today.

Sometimes I wonder how we dare invoke the name of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I still tremble when I hear his sermons, the fervor of the Hebrew prophets rippling through his words. King remains perhaps the greatest moral witness in American history. He stood at the vanguard of a nonviolent revolution against white supremacy (both overt and covert), against the U.S. military-industrial complex, and against systemic capitalist exploitation of the poor. He was nourished by the spiritual force of a people who found the strength to sing, even when “strange fruit was hanging from the poplar trees.” Their movement has etched itself in the hearts of those of us who still believe in what Cornel West calls “this precious democratic experiment.” From the Montgomery Bus Boycott to Beyond Vietnam, King demonstrated a radical commitment to justice, liberation, and fellow-suffering love. But there is another narrative which strings together these two poles of his activist life: the narrative of interfaith leadership. And that's the theme of my reflection today: the legacy of Dr. King as an interfaith leader, and the urgency of recapturing that story.

As a young, twenty year-old seminary student in Pennsylvania, like many of us still negotiating his own identity, King would hear a great Christian preacher, Mordecai Johnson, give a lecture one night on Christian pacifism. He listened to Dr. Johnson describe his trip to India, where he had found a man who embodied the ethic of Christian love in the 20^th century—a Hindu named Mahatma Gandhi. Now King's reaction to this encounter with religious diversity was seminal to his future leadership. He recognized that there was this love in Gandhi's Hinduism which resonated deeply with a love in his own Christian faith. And when he heard that this love was used not only to unite a nation, but even to redeem the oppressor, King knew he had received a blessing from the most unexpected of places. He saw in Gandhi's satyagraha movement a phenomenon of religious diversity coming together in a struggle for the freedom of all people. This ethic would permeate his activist life. In 1965, he marched in Selma, Alabama, with the great Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. He supported the efforts of the United Farm Workers here in California, led by the Catholic activist Cesar Chavez. He disagreed with but nonetheless admired the work of the brilliant Malcolm X, a Muslim minister. And finally, he corresponded with the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who convinced King that the fight for civil rights was inseparable from the fight to end the unjust war in Vietnam.

Why is this narrative so forgotten, yet so central to our lives? Too often, in popular media and political culture, the dominant image of strong religious affiliations in close proximity is one of violence and mutual incomprehensibility. Moreover, the face of religious extremism is one of highly motivated young people taking action. But while religious diversity is a fact, the direction it will take—as King's story shows us—depends on specific leaders. And the leaders who have the loudest voice right now are clear on which side of the faith line they stand on. It's not just a side which pits different religious groups against each other, or opposes religion and secularism, but a side which says only my group dominates, and others suffocate. Those voices are clearly a minority. But their message of an inevitable and endless cosmic clash looms heavy overhead, because we have failed to provide a more compelling alternative. Under vague liberal notions of tolerance, our institutions and public spheres maintain a fragile indifference to engaging young people's diverse religious identities. We can no longer afford this expensive façade of neutrality. “There comes a time,” King would thunder, “when silence is betrayal.”

The interfaith youth movement—of which Stanford is a growing part—is about removing that silence. We speak with our hearts and hands; in service and dialogue, in activism and reflection. Today's clothing drive is a symbolic expression of our vision: a world where diverse religious communities engage in common action for the common good, witnessing and learning of each others' commitment to serving others; a world where young people are at the forefront of building bridges instead of bubbles, or barriers, or bombs; and most importantly, a world where interfaith cooperation is not an anomaly, but a social norm. In other words, we want to change the headline from “Religious Clash Erupts Again in Nigeria” to “Interfaith Cooperation Breaks Out Again in Nigeria, as young Christians and Muslims work to eradicate malaria in their communities.” Are we reaching too high, or have our hands been in our pockets all this time?

The interreligious encounter is woven into my spirit. It has been with me since I first set foot on the Stanford campus five years ago, in my senior year of high school. I came to this very church, to hear His Holiness the Dalai Lama speak about nonviolence and compassion. In my freshman and sophomore years, I would spend long hours alone in these pews, Thomas Merton in one hand and Rumi in the other. As a junior, I was blessed to be a part of the Fellowship for Religious Encounter, where I made so many wonderful friends, who took their tradition as seriously as I did my own. And then I met a young Indian-American Muslim, Dr. Eboo Patel, who opened to me a different interfaith narrative: the one of Dorothy Day and Badshah Khan, of Howard Thurman and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The following words from Rabbi Heschel encapsulate that shift: “Early in my life, my great love was for learning, studying. And the place where I preferred to live was my study and books and writing and thinking. I've learned from the prophets that I have to be involved in the affairs of man, in the affairs of suffering man.”

Through all of these encounters, what has stood out to me is how they have strengthened and enriched my own Hindu identity. I grew up very involved in my religious community, with a deep knowledge base of my tradition: its liturgy, music, philosophy, and ritual. Now I know that I was the preacher's kid—or in my case, the priest's kid—which probably explains why I'm up here today. But that identity didn't take root in me until I came here, and met those completely different from me. To me, the very measure of that identity is the extent to which I can connect with the suffering of a people beyond my borders, and outside my tribe. So when extremists attack others on the basis of their identity—like they may do outside Hillel this upcoming Friday—my faith calls me to stand up, and respond to hate with solidarity and love.

Faith was, in the final analysis, at the heart of King's identity. He was unapologetic about his inspiration from Jesus Christ, from the prophets of Israel, and as a Southern Baptist preacher. Yet it was precisely this commitment that urged him to build bridges of cooperation across racial, economic, and religious lines. King knew that building such bridges was never an equal-opportunity affair. But he also understood that a painful embrace of our tortured histories was necessary; and what I'd like to close with is that same invitation: that we, as James Baldwin says in The Fire Next Time, “we...the relatively conscious...must like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others.”

May His grace and blessings flow through us to the world around us. Thank you.

Stanford F.A.I.T.H: From Conflict to Cooperation

2010-01-08T16:49:00.000-08:00

The new year has marked F.A.I.T.H's return to campus with a flurry of activity, though we are only holding our first official meeting next Wednesday, Jan.13th, at 7:30 PM in the Common Room (CIRCLE). In a couple of weeks, we will be presenting the annual Multifaith Service in Memorial Church, held in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. We're already busy with preparations for this and several other interfaith events over the course of this quarter. Briefly, these include:

-Winter Movie Screenings (4)

"A Jihad for Love" with LGBT-CRC
"Pray the Devil Back to Hell"
"Had-Anhad: Bounded-Boundless"
"Divided We Fall"

-Days of Interfaith Youth Service (2)

Environmental restoration in the Baylands
Challah for Hunger

-Leadership Training with IFYC Staff

-Bloodsuckers Ball with I-AM

The following is an op-ed Ansaf and I are submitting to the Stanford Daily in anticipation of these fresh projects. Please join us on Wednesday for a preview of these events, and how to get directly involved. This is a crucial meeting, so please come out in numbers!

---

So often I wonder if interfaith work can really have the voice I hear. I wonder if it can shed its pathetic refrain of vague, self-congratulatory liberal notions of tolerance. I wonder if, amid the noise and haste of talk-show evangelism and televised extremism, we can discern the more powerful alternative stories: of Mahatma Gandhi and Badshah Khan, of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. I wonder if our silence, our inability to tell these stories as they affect us, cedes the terrain to agents of destruction, who would have only their group dominate and others suffocate.

In truth, I don't know. Our public discourse on religion is too frequently filled with violence and virulence, endowing the so-called clash of civilizations with the sheen of inevitability. It's this very uncertainty, however, that urges me to change the conversation from conflict to cooperation. So I'd like to tell you how I spent the last days of my winter break. The Hindu community in which I was raised bought a new property some two years ago--an old church in the foothills of San Jose. The final day of our New Year's Retreat involved a special Vedic fire ceremony to pray for, among other things, spiritual maturity and mutual cooperation with our neighbors: a Polish church which has been particularly warm and welcoming. I love these rarefied rituals: the smells of smoke and mystery and tradition, the joyful liturgical harmony of the priests, the deep sense of the height and glory of this sacrifice. But my favorite part of the day was to hear the following from several attendees, my mother included: "There's something about this place, this church. People have really prayed here. It's those blessings that are coming to us."

For her, the dialogue of religious experience did not simply override cultural boxes; it drew on their deep wells, and breathed their spirit across space and time. I don't think we require some mystical assertion to recognize that, as Gwendolyn Brooks says: We are each other's magnitude and bond. Like the faith heroes I mentioned, I believe my religious tradition calls me to build mutually enriching relationships with those different from me, by working together to serve others. Religious particularity is not only about domination, or persecution, or political intransigence; it gives us the ability to interrogate ourselves, to take learning seriously, to be surprised and humbled by the fact of existence. I am not interested in apologetics, but in fellowship; not merely in hearing another's story, but in writing a new chapter together.

This is what I hope Stanford F.A.I.T.H will begin here: countering violence by confronting the triple threats of racism, economic exploitation, and war; countering hatred by advocating for feminist and LGBT rights; countering mistrust by preventing deaths due to malaria. These are concerns which call on the best of our traditions--religious and secular alike--and require us to engage our deepest identities in common action. Please join our weekly meetings: Wednesdays at 7:30 PM in the Common Room in the CIRCLE (3rd Floor Old Union). Help us transform interfaith cooperation from an anomaly to a social norm. Every student is a potential interfaith leader. We need only have the words and the heart to act.

International Religious Freedom Report 2009

2009-12-27T10:53:00.000-08:00

Happy Break, everyone!

I'd say that I'm procrastinating - but since there's nothing to do over break... I'll say that I'm having fun with random acts of entertainment. Anyhow, I started reading the 2009 Report on International Religious Freedom (from the International Religious Freedom department (under the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor -- which I didn't know even existed!) and I thought I'd share in case anyone else is interested in the state of "religious freedom" in the world. So far I've read most of the "executive summary" which has great paragraph summaries for each country of interest. There is even a section of the "executive summary" about interfaith actions!!

What surprised me most is that the United States is not analyzed at all in the report. I guess the goal of the department is not supposed to be focused on the internal state of affairs... but whose job is it to figure out what's going on in our own country and subject us to the same kind of strict guidelines? I'd really like to know how the US would measure up to its own standards.

~ Jenny

Four Months and Seven Meetings Ago...

2009-12-04T22:40:00.000-08:00

As the quarter comes to a close, I want to reflect on where we have come, and where we have yet to go. At the beginning of the year, F.A.I.T.H was essentially Ansaf and myself (with Jenny's loving technical support) running around to every possible faith event, religious chaplain, and student leader on campus with evangelizing fervor, throwing out a big idea and a whole lot of hope. Some of you were at our first meeting, where we described a world in which the dominant public discourse on religious interaction is of violence and mutual incomprehensibility, perpetuated by a minority--a loud, vociferous minority--of religious totalitarians. We questioned our complicity in facilitating the rise of such polarizing voices, either through our personal unwillingness to engage the faiths of others, or through institutional failures to encourage such initiatives. We articulated the need for a more visible, active engagement between the vibrant and diverse religious, secular, and service-oriented communities on campus: providing the lie to the clash of civilizations by organizing interfaith cooperation for social justice. We figured it would take about a couple of weeks.

Now, four months later, we are a full-fledged (albeit very penniless) VSO, with a motivated core leadership team, and (way too many) exciting projects on the table. We have been featured in campus newspapers and national journals alike. We have already built partnerships with the tireless Faiths Act Fellows, Initiative Against Malaria, and Challah for Hunger; while quickly moving on to collaborative projects with MSAN, the Haas Center, and Teach for America. And we are operating on multiple levels at once: both organizing direct interfaith service opportunities on the ground, and working to institutionalize interfaith cooperation from the top.

The latter has become critical to the way we view our success over this year. Increasingly, our focus is on changing the very ecology of campus with regard to interfaith relations. We want to understand the mechanisms by which Stanford understands its religious diversity, and takes active measures to translate that diversity into pluralism. And we want to function both as instigators of and conduits for such change on campus: through the Office for Religious Life, Office of the Provost, Haas Center for Public Service, Residential Education, ASSU Diversity Chairs, Alumni Network, and New Student Orientation, among other institutional entities.

Most importantly, however, we want to insert the identity category of "interfaith leader" into the consciousness of all Stanford students. This year, for Ansaf and myself, can only be about planting seeds in as many corners of campus as possible. But these need to be nurtured by successive individuals who take ownership of that same identity category: who can read a story like the recent atrocious act of the Swiss government banning the presence of minarets, and instead of dividing it along traditional religious or secular lines, advocate for the rights of others through their own shared experience of marginality.

I think of people like my friend Joe Gettinger, president of the Jewish Students Association, who immediately after this news emerged, sent me this article on Jewish criticism of the ban. Joe's awareness, attitude, and actions demonstrate to me the fundamental characteristics of interfaith leadership: a clear vision of the faith line, a knowledge base of one's own tradition and those of others, and the skill to build positive relationships between different communities. A recent IFYC poll showed that while 70% of college students have heard derogatory comments about other religions, only 25% would have spoken out against them. What are these statistics at Stanford, and who will take the lead to change them? If Joe is any indication, we are beginning to receive answers to the latter.

The work ahead is considerable, but significant. We have the potential to make interfaith cooperation--like environmentalism, human rights, and other movements--a social norm and not just an anomaly. That "huge, foolish project," as Rumi would call it, is well underway at Stanford. Will we turn out like Noah? You tell us. Better: We'll tell each other.

May you all have a blessed winter break.

Love,
Anand

On Giving Thanks

2009-11-21T00:33:00.000-08:00

As a student of history, and as any descendant of the multicultural movement, I tend to be ambivalent about national holidays. However, as is appropriate to this occasion, I am thankful for our week-long vacation. For me, these betweentimes are for repose and reflection; a reprieve from the exaggerated sense of self-importance I carry around too often. The fact that I am inside and warm on these frigid nights reminds me of the constant need for gratitude and humility. As the lyrics to one of my favorite devotional songs runs:

My Lord, my guide, take me to that shore.
After all, you brought me this far;
Won't you take me from here?

I was also raised in a religious setting with an emphasis on worship of the Divine Mother: always compassionate, always giving. It would be our privilege, in this life, to attempt to return the favor; to make of our lives a continuous expression of gratitude. The Mother's grace was a constant presence in the way our values were shaped; we could not be angry with others, be cruel to others, when we were being forgiven at every moment. Rumi says: We are here to be a forgiveness door through which freedom comes.

Gratitude, humility, compassion, forgiveness--these form the core of my own religious vocabulary. But I am most thankful for the diverse people who share them with me, each in their own particular language, their own unique beauty. I remember them--all of you, and other friends yet to be made--in my prayers this Thanksgiving, alongside the poor and homeless and wartorn and unloved. May the efforts of our group the rest of this year continue to put our shared values into direct action.

Love,
Anand

Thoughts on the Eve of Children’s Day in India (Jawaharlal Nehru Day)

2009-11-13T18:04:00.000-08:00

“The only alternative to coexistence is codestruction.” –Jawaharlal Nehru

I feel it appropriate to remind ourselves that for an interfaith movement to be successful we must reach out to humans of all religious beliefs and to those who lack them. As an atheist I often feel caught between the spheres of belief and skepticism. On one hand I have such an immense appreciation for religious thought; it provides solace in times of loneliness, it promulgates human goodness, and is often incredibly selfless in the service it renders to the marginalized. These are all products of the sphere in which I don’t inhabit.

Or do I? My own set of morals, my set of beliefs, the very foundations of my identity are born from the sphere I do not claim as my own. My vegetarianism stems from my close friendship with a Jain. In high school I was highly involved in the Honor Code – a stance that directly reflects the 9^th Commandment in Christianity, two branches of the Eightfold Path, and Allah’s forewarning for the Day of Judgment in the Quran (to name just a few). To say that my ethics are not influenced by a variety of faiths would be an ironic contradiction of my commitment to honesty. In this light, I am very much a religious man.

The reason I often find myself caught between these two spheres is the virulence these bodies emanate within and towards each other. Even in this increasingly globalized world, people of faith often go out of their way to hunt the differences between their faiths rather than relish in their similarities. So many core values are shared between religious groups – why do we not seek the beauty in this path? But it doesn’t stop here. Atheists can be just as guilty. The virulence with which some atheists attack religion can be equal or worse than their religious counterparts. Yet once again, I find that at the core of their being, in the depths of their heart, atheists are no different from theists.

I wish to live in conflict no more. I don’t want to join a sphere; rather, I want the spheres to join in a pluralistic, peaceful coexistence. On this day we must remember the caution offered by Nehru: that we must live in a peaceful coexistence or, as Martin Luther King said, “perish together as fools”. It comes with little surprise to me that an atheist and a Baptist minister share, quite literally, an identical worldview.

I leave you with the 14 Precepts of Thich Nhat Hanh, a source of great inspiration to me.

I remain optimistic about our ability to reconcile our similarities and appreciate rather than oppose our differences. I am hopeful because I know that intrinsically we are overwhelmingly similar – we belong together in a single, loving sphere.

Happy Jawaharlal Nehru Day!

In harmony,

Alex

What do we stand for?

2009-11-13T00:21:00.000-08:00

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, "To be is to stand for something". One of the many quests of our lives is to find that thing for which we stand. Almost a week after our Day of Interfaith Youth Service, I have been thinking a lot about this group and what we value in our mission and how we can extent these values above and beyond this Stanford community. How awesome it was to have a group of college students get together to serve the greater good (especially when Stanford football was playing!) and to share the experience of having personal interactions with those we were helping was really quite powerful.

At Sacred Heart during our volunteer introduction, the coordinator mentioned that last year the organization served 3,300 families. This year, due to the economic troubles, they would be serving 4,000 families. On average, each of the families I registered had three children and two adults. If that were to be true for each family, that is 20,000 people who would have not had enough to eat at their holiday table, or maybe could not afford toys for their children at Christmas. The sheer numbers were astonishing to think about. The 20,000 people we helped register live in about 12 zip codes in California, and is certainly not indicative of all the people who need assistance. In our discussion afterwards, Anand prompted, "Why is it that in the wealthiest country in the world, we have so many people who still go hungry?". This is a very important question, but seems so daunting. There are so many infrastructural, educational, socio-economic problems that would need to be dealt with in order to answer that question; however, I think an equally important question (although perhaps easier to answer) is "How can we use what influence, power, funds, or resources we do have to make a difference in the lives of others?". This, is one reason I am drawn to F.A.I.T.H. Each religion has its own history of feeding the hungry, and clothing the naked, and it's own customs for hospitality. It is in recognition of this solidarity in thinking that unites us together and makes us stronger. It is in this way that we can, in Heschel's words, "be" and stand for something.

Stanford Interfaith Blog!!

2009-11-11T20:17:00.000-08:00

Apparently our F.A.I.T.H. group hasn't made it clear yet that we have our own website now! In addition to receiving e-mails over the interfaith@lists.stanford.edu chat-list, you can also post, read, and comment on our new blog. The site is: http://stanfordinterfaith.blogspot.com/ If you would like to post on the blog (as a "contributor" not just a "follower") e-mail me (wolochow@stanford.edu) and I will invite you to contribute! ~ ~ Much love, Jenny

Of Sacrifice and Service

2009-11-09T15:27:00.000-08:00

When I was growing up in a predominantly Hindu community in the South Bay Area, the spiritual organization in which I was most deeply engaged would have a weekly Sunday school, much like other religious communities around us. We would learn various hymns, stories, rituals, and songs in our individual classes; but in the large assembly, before everyone dispersed in a flurry of gossip and sports scores, we would recite our organization's Pledge. It began: We stand as one family, bound to each other with love and respect, and went on to affirm: We live a life of sacrifice and service, producing more than what we consume and giving more than what we take.

It was this dual ethic of love and service which I was fortunate to share with ten other religiously diverse young people on Saturday, during our Day of Interfaith Youth Service (DIYS). We volunteered in various capacities at Sacred Heart Community Service in Downtown San Jose, as part of their annual program to register the homeless and low income families to receive food and toy boxes for Thanksgiving and Christmas. After a little over three hours of sharing in the lives of Sacred Heart's clients--whose disenfranchisement spans ethnicities and languages, genders and ages--we returned to the Stanford campus for a brief reflective dialogue. There were a whole host of things we could have discussed: why the richest nation in the world allows for scandalous disparities in income, what systemic injustices cast people into poverty, how disproportionate numbers of those in the lines to register were women and children. But over sugar cookies and muffins at Hillel, in the fading light of evening, we spoke instead of ourselves, and learned of one another.

What inspires us to serve? What draws six freshmen, from Bangladesh to Kenya to San Francisco, to spend a day working together with total strangers to help the disadvantaged? For some it was an ethic embedded from a young age to repair the world, symbolized as pieces of shattered glass. For some it was a spiritual leader, advocating for the marginalized and the oppressed. For some it was our grandmothers: so generous, so compassionate, with never a thought for themselves. Everyone had a tradition; a tradition enriched by the stories of others.

In the wake of the recent attacks on Fort Hood, I'd been hearing a lot of the rhetoric flowing over the airwaves. But for a few poignant reminders of the tragedy's immediate victims, the attacker's religious identity was the only thing on everyone's mind. And the implications were not just about Muslims; the implications were: if you know someone who is devout, or who takes their religious identity seriously, you'd better watch out. I have a different vision of the world: a world in which a murderer is a murderer, and "does not deserve," as Eboo Patel says, "the honor of a religious label." That world was in front of me on Saturday. Our small gathering may not be on the evening news any time soon, but I sure hope people are paying attention. We were Hindus and Muslims and secularists, volunteering at a Catholic organization, and sharing a meal in a Jewish house.

For another take on this event, check out this post from our good friend Tim Brauhn of the Faiths Act Fellows. Please join us for the next meeting of Stanford F.A.I.T.H on Wednesday, Nov. 11th, at 7:30 PM in the Common Room (CIRCLE). Come and watch a video compilation and more pictures from the DIYS! Our meetings will now be weekly affairs, open to everyone to share their ideas, projects, and hopes for a future of consistent interfaith service on campus. The agenda for this meeting will be sent out soon. Please do forward the story of this event far and wide; we hope to see many of you on Wednesday!

Love,
Anand

“Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”

2009-11-02T08:46:00.000-08:00

“Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” (Harry, Emerson Fosdick, a sermon from 1922)

Has been described as a call “for an open-minded, intellectual, and tolerant ‘Christian fellowship.’”

Thankfully, my studies often resonate with my genuine interests because I am able to pursue a major (Religious Studies) that I enjoy (regardless of next year’s job opportunities, or lack thereof). This week’s assignment “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” sparked something unusual in me – enough so that I felt inspired to write about it for the Stanford Interfaith Blog. I read Fosdick’s sermon this weekend because it was assigned as homework for my History class about Religion in America (HISTORY 154A) but as I was reading through the short document (only 8 pages!) I couldn’t help thinking how the sermon is a wonderful defense of the interfaith movement as I see it.

Fosdick makes the claim that Fundamentalism jeopardizes not only Christian unity and fellowship, but also tolerance and peaceful solutions to problem-solving in general. In this blog post, I want to share with you some of the quotes that I found most relevant to our mission as interfaith activists and discuss the reasons why I find his sermon inspirational. Its still difficult for me to comprehend how a sermon over eighty years old can still be relevant today. Have we progressed at all since then? How can we win the fight in the future?

1. “We should not identify the Fundamentalists with the conservatives. All Fundamentalists are conservatives, but not all conservatives are Fundamentalists. The best conservatives can often give lessons to the liberals in true liberality of spirit, but the Fundamentalist program is essentially illiberal and intolerant.”

This sermon sets out from the very beginning to identify the particular group of Christians with whom Fosdick has problems: the Fundamentalists – who are conservative in nature, but unique in that they are “essentially illiberal and intolerant.” I consider myself to be a liberal and tolerant person, and therefore flatter myself by imagining Fosdick on my side. But my identity aside, I am very glad that Fosdick makes the distinction between conservatives in general and the particular brand of conservatives that are Fundamentalist – since we often wrongly equate the two still today.

2. “This is a free country and anybody has a right to hold these opinions or any others if he is sincerely convinced of them. The question is—Has anybody a right to deny the Christian name to those who differ with him on such points and to shut against them the doors of the Christian fellowship? The Fundamentalists say that this must be done.”

Great point! How can we really look someone in the eye and say “Well, I don’t think you’re a Christian because you don’t believe x, y, and z! Stop calling yourself a Christian! Only people like me are real Christians!” How is it our place to judge others so harshly and shut them out from our brotherhood? [I believe same argument can be made for many other religions, by the way.]

3. “Here in the Christian churches are these two groups of people and the question which the Fundamentalists raise is this—Shall one of them throw the other out? ... Is not the Christian Church large enough to hold within her hospitable fellowship people who differ on points like this and agree to differ until the fuller truth be manifested? The Fundamentalists say not.”

Why can’t they just “agree to disagree” about the small points until the “fuller truth” is revealed? I guess one objection is that the Fundamentalist groups consider these “small points” to actually be “big points” deserving of such hatred and animosity. However, it would take a lot of arguing to convince me that anything is worth this kind of judgment and conviction. But if even one side of the debate sees it in terms of “who will win and get to throw the loser out of the ‘church’ officially”… then there will be a lot of ‘churches’ in existence. Too bad unity is so hard!

4. “The first element that is necessary is a spirit of tolerance and Christian liberty. When will the world learn that intolerance solves no problems?”

Genius: “intolerance solves no problems.” I agree. Enough said.

5. “…there is one thing I am sure of: courtesy and kindliness and tolerance and humility and fairness are right. Opinions may be mistaken; love never is.”

Another touching line: love is never mistaken. Why can’t we all love each other and get along? Boo reality; w00t idealists.

6. “Science treats a young man’s mind as though it were really important. A scientist says to a young man, “Here is the universe challenging our investigation. Here are the truths which we have seen, so far. Come, study with us! See what we already have seen and then look further to see more, for science is an intellectual adventure for the truth.” Can you imagine any man who is worthwhile turning from that call to the church if the church seems to him to say, ‘Come, and we will feed you opinions from a spoon. No thinking is allowed here except such as brings you to certain specified, predetermined conclusions. These prescribed opinions we will give you in advance of your thinking; now think, but only so as to reach these results.’”

This part of the sermon was extremely moving for me because I very much enjoyed Fosdick’s portrait of Science vs. Fundamentalist Religion. In this story, science is portrayed as a welcoming and challenging field of study with open-ended results. On the other side, Fundamentalist religion is portrayed as a confining and prescribed set of beliefs that minimize actual thinking. No wonder one is more attractive than the other (to me, at least, who likes to use my mind).

7. “The second element which is needed if we are to reach a happy solution of this problem is a clear insight into the main issues of modern Christianity and a sense of penitent shame that the Christian Church should be quarreling over little matters when the world is dying of great needs.”

I think that these lines will be particularly inspiring to those people who feel the call of social action and want to solve the world’s great problems together instead of arguing over each other’s minute differences. This quote forces me to broaden my perspective and realize that the little debates between sects are just the small problems in this world; and that instead we should focus our energy on solving the big problems --> like Malaria! (that one’s for you, Anand!)

8. “God keep us always so and ever increasing areas of the Christian fellowship; intellectually hospitable, open-minded, liberty-loving, fair, tolerant, not with the tolerance of indifference, as though we did not care about the faith, but because always our major emphasis is upon the weightier matters of the law.”

What a great ending note: let us be tolerant in a caring way.

Feel free to comment on the blog :-)

With love,

~ Jenny

More Like Hope

2009-11-01T21:46:00.001-08:00

After a whirlwind week in Chicago, and some frantic planning for our upcoming Day of Interfaith Youth Service (REMINDER--Saturday, Nov. 7th--please see the flyer on the blog homepage, and RSVP to doria@stanford.edu!), it feels strange to have spent this weekend in relative solitude, catching up on midterm papers and exam preparations. I've been looking over some of my old writings, and it's difficult to recognize the same person in those words. They seem so exquisitely crafted, elegant, opening to the heavens and receiving their waters. I am not so fluent in that language of heart any longer; I burn too much with the world's injustices, and those dark energies within of which they are reflections. At such times, prayer and surrender are my closest friends. I am more Catholic than I imagine.

How do we stimulate hope in our lives? This was a central question of a class I took last year called "Hope and Prophetic Politics: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King, Jr." To hear them re-appropriate that prophetic narrative of love and justice, as emerging from the worst depths of the worst indignity and degradation, shining out in the thick of the traumatic and the catastrophic, challenged me deeply. Their hope was, as Cornel West would say, "a blues-inflected, jazz-saturated, tragicomic hope." I came to realize slowly that my own hope was grounded in a specific context: namely, that religiously motivated violence can end through interfaith cooperation for social justice; and moreover, that I myself represented the potential and the proof.

Our identities are fluid things, whether or not we consider ourselves religious. They constantly fall outside the rigid roles we are taught—these sad, meaningless assignations of societies and civilizations. Young people of our generation are forever on the borders of things; the question for us is: can we of multiple narratives, while acknowledging that they are not juxtaposed equally (for the legacies of white supremacy, patriarchy, and other power structures remain strong), still find them in mutual enrichment? Eboo Patel dares to say Yes, as does President Obama. My heart agrees. I understand the third chapter of the Bhagavad Gita better because I have read Kierkegaard's Works of Love, but I understand Kierkegaard precisely because I have studied the Bhagavad Gita.

These happy encounters are part of what gives me hope: the hope that our history is still being written, and is for us to redeem. Hope is unapologetic, once wrote a dear friend of mine. We should try to be more like hope.

Love,
Anand

P.S. If you would like to post to this blog, or link it to other websites, please contact Jenny Wolochow (wolochow@stanford.edu).

OUR FIRST EVENT: Day of Interfaith Youth Service, November 7th

2009-10-30T11:13:00.000-07:00

Stanford F.A.I.T.H. is excited to announce its first event, on Saturday, Nov. 7th: A Day of Interfaith Youth Service, bringing religiously diverse young people at Stanford to partner with Sacred Heart Community Service, directly taking on poverty and homelessness in Downtown San Jose. Please RSVP as soon as possible, and advertise to your own lists and communities.

WHAT: Sign up homeless and low-income families to receive food and toy boxes for holiday distribution. The Days of Interfaith Youth Service (DIYS) is a campaign that pairs community service and interfaith dialogue.

WHERE: Sacred Heart Community Service, San Jose
* Transportation provided to/from campus!

WHEN: November 7, 2009 MEET: 11:15am at Haas Center RETURN: by 4:30pm for short discussion

CONTACT: Doria Charlson: doria@stanford.edu RSVP required before November 5th.

Rhyming Hope and History

2009-10-29T12:03:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the first blog for Stanford F.A.I.T.H: the virtual extension of our community we hope will give new and vital shape to the way we engage religiously and non-religiously on campus and beyond. This is YOUR space. Share with us relevant news items, public events, stories, poems, bits of rapture. We hope you will extend the invitation to post on this blog to your own communities; feel free to link this space to your websites, councils, and organizations. Here's a direct way to participate in the interfaith youth movement's quest to change conventional discourse on religious passion, pluralism, and the young.

There's a great line in the poem “Doubletake” by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, that “once in a lifetime...hope and history rhyme.” I can't think of a better way to describe the Interfaith Youth Core's Conference on Leadership for a Religiously Diverse World in Chicago this past week. There were over six hundred young interfaith activists, policy leaders, scholars, professors, university chaplains, foundational representatives, public intellectuals, and many more—all of whom had a vision of the world in which people of different faith backgrounds built bridges of cooperation by serving those in need and acting in solidarity with the oppressed. This is the vision that Stanford F.A.I.T.H. is trying to bring to campus.

We heard the Reverend Jim Wallis, evangelical Christian activist for social justice, and founder of Sojourners, speak of interfaith cooperation in these terms: “Get arrested for your faith, and talk theology in jail.” We heard Rabbi David Saperstein, one of the most prominent voices for Jewish social action in America, give a fiery sermon on the urgency of our cooperation in a fragile world riddled with injustice and indifference. We heard Dr. Eboo Patel, just named one of America's Best Leaders of 2009 by U.S. News and World Report, articulate what it means to institutionalize on our campuses the narratives of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, of Mahatma Gandhi and Badshah Khan, of Dorothy Day and Thich Nhat Hanh,. The IFYC's recent surveys showed that while 70% of students on college campuses have heard derogatory comments about the religious or secular traditions of others, less than 25% would have stood up and spoken out. When we have taken such critical steps to ensure that bigotry on racial, class, gender, ethnic, or sexual grounds is a moral violation, our exclusion of religion from the conversation has allowed others to appropriate that discourse. And when that discourse is one of violence, vanquish, and vitriol, our ignorance of the Other makes us silent accomplices to a totalitarian agenda.

But I have to tell you: Stanford is in the spotlight. When I spoke about the impact I felt we could have on campus at a VIP reception with Eboo Patel and Jim Wallis, there were dozens of people who approached us having already heard of our efforts. It felt a little like prematurely winning the Nobel Peace Prize, especially when someone like Jim Wallis shakes your hand and says in that deep voice: “That was very compelling.” The truth is, interfaith cooperation for social justice is a BIG DEAL. People are taking serious notice, from inner-city activists to state representatives, from AmeriCorps to Teach for America, from Offices of Religious Life to the Oval Office. They recognize how organizing meaningful social action events, and infusing them with a conscious engagement of faith identities and personal inspirations, can shape the discourse not only between religions, but on religion itself. And they are looking at Stanford as a model for interfaith leadership.

So Number One: Get pumped! This is a social movement; it's unique in that it goes to the very heart of our identity, and takes on our most pressing social issues explicitly from that inspirational source. And Number Two: There's no “feeling good” about interfaith. Jim Wallis spoke about three characteristics of an interfaith leader: remove prejudice about your identity and those of others; be humbled by your tradition; and draw on its deep wells to become socially engaged. Our heart's deep gladness is nothing if it doesn't meet the world's deep need. What we're creating is an identity category: a category which has always existed within our religious and secular traditions, but which we are merely defining. That is, the very measure of my identity is the extent to which I can connect with the suffering of a people beyond my borders, and outside my tribe. We want this category to be on every student's lips, both as a historical reality and as a contemporary movement.

Our first event to make interfaith action a reality on campus life is a Day of Interfaith Youth Service, on Saturday, Nov. 7th. Join 25 religiously diverse young people to volunteer at Sacred Heart Community Service, taking on poverty and homelessness in Downtown San Jose. Details are available on the flyer we are sending out to the lists. Help us make this a successful and meaningful event, to set the tone for the rest of the year!

Love,

Anand