 Welcome to Abraham, out of one many, an engaging art exhibition brought to you by Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston and curated by Caravan and international arts NGO nonprofit that is recognized as a leader in using the arts to further our global quest for a more harmonious future, both with each other and with the earth. Interfaith Ministries is Houston's oldest service organization. Dialogue, collaboration and service have been at the heart of our work for over 50 years. Our programs fall into four areas. We are Texas's largest meals on wheels program covering six counties, but primarily in Harris and Galveston counties. We're one of the top 10 largest meals on wheels programs in the country. We also have a strong refugee services resettlement program working with Episcopal migration ministries to help resettle refugees into the Houston area. Volunteer Houston connects individuals groups and companies with nonprofit agencies to transform the greater Houston community for good through volunteerism and interfaith relations and community partnerships fosters understanding respect and engagement among people of all faiths. Our CP is thrilled to be able to host this exhibit. Please visit www.imgh.org to learn more about us between April 20 and May 21. We hosted Abraham out of one many virtual exhibit of 15 paintings by three celebrated artists from the Middle East. We had planned to host these paintings in person in our Brigitte and Bashar Kali Plaza of Respect and Great Hall in April of 2020, but COVID derailed those plans. We were thrilled to work with Caravan to create a virtual gallery experience so that we were able to reschedule the exhibit. A virtual experience allowed for a wide variety of accessible programs, including the program you're about to enjoy. We are grateful to the sponsors that made this event possible, especially our lead donors, Joni and David Andrews, Debbie and Floyd Kerns, Marion and Paul Cones, and Carol and Frank Grun. This exhibit came to us through the incredible work of Caravan. Its mission is based on the belief that the arts can be one of the most effective mediums to heal our world and to creatively foster peace, harmony, wholeness, and health in all its forms. Caravan originated out of an artistic bridge building initiative in Cairo, Egypt in 2009 that focused on addressing the then growing chasm of discord and misunderstanding between the people's cultures and creeds of the Middle East and the West. The nomadic Caravan team comes out of the founding vision to encourage and facilitate those from diverse backgrounds and worldviews to journey together through the arts. While Caravan's mission is global in focus, they maintain an ongoing program emphasis on the Middle East due to their founding. We invite you to visit on caravan.org to learn more about the organization. The third annual Gershison lecture honors Elliot and Allison Grishanson. Elliot was the president and CEO of Interfaith Ministries from 2004 to 2015, and was honored at his retirement with the title of President Emeritus. The Gershison lecture focuses on topics of religion, ethics, and peace. This year's Gershison lecture was given by the Reverend Gregory Hahn, IAM's director of interfaith relations and education. Offering commentary were two nationally recognized scholars, Rabbi Dr. Rachel S. Mikva, Herman E. Shalman, professor in Jewish studies and senior faculty fellow at the Interreligious Institute, and Hussin Rashid, PhD, an independent scholar based in New York City. Let's join Martin Kaminsky, president and CEO of Interfaith Ministries as he opens the lecture. I'm Martin Kaminsky, president and CEO of Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston. We gather tonight to celebrate my friend Elliot Gershison, who is my predecessor by serving as IAM's president and CEO of Interfaith Ministries for more than 11 years. We are honored to call him our president of Emeritus for his remarkable service to our organization. And tonight we celebrate his vision and passion for interfaith dialogue, collaboration, and service. This commitment to serving our community's most vulnerable people, homebound seniors, and refugees. Interfaith Ministries is stronger today because of his leadership. We appreciate both Elliot and his wonderful partner Allison for their past years of service and their continuous support of our work. In addition to our work to feed 5,000 homebound seniors and their pets every day, to resettle refugees fleeing persecution in their homelands and fostering interfaith understanding, we've added another pillar of strength to our family of services. And that's Volunteer Houston, which unites volunteers and their passions with nonprofits in need throughout the community. This week, we launch Serve Houston, which will engage 18 young adults in a program of servant leadership for 20 hours a week for the rest of the year. Tonight's third annual Gershenson Lecture recognizes Elliot and focuses on topics near and dear to his heart and all of Interfaith Ministries, religion, ethics, and peace. It's our hope that through this annual lecture and all of our programs, we can share messages of hope and build understanding and create a respectful community for all. Tonight, we also celebrate Abraham out of one many, the inspiring exhibition that reminds us that art is a universal language that can foster unity and understanding and bridge religions and cultures. Organized by Caravan, an international peace building NGO, the exhibit features the artistry of three celebrated Middle Eastern artists from the faith traditions of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. In partnership with Caravan, Interfaith Ministries proudly brought the exhibit to Houston virtually, a first time event for this exhibit. After COVID changed our plans to host the exhibit in our great hall against the beautiful backdrop of the Brigitte and Bashar Calais Plaza of Respect. Through a series of virtual events since April 20th and culminating in tonight's third annual Gershenson Lecture, hundreds of people in our community and around the world have enjoyed this beautiful, engaging exhibit and have participated in conversations about the inherited commonalities between the monotheistic, Abrahamic faith traditions of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Our Gershenson Lecture closes out our time as virtual host of this exhibit in Houston. And as part of our closing, we will explore Abraham and beyond the future of interreligious engagement and look at the commonalities of all faiths. That exploration tonight and through our multi-religious engagement is part of our quest to support harmony among the many diverse faiths of the world. Sadly, our world is fraught with an increase in prejudice and stereotypes, resulting in what some are calling a new tribalism and leading to the dehumanizing of the other. What role does interreligious engagement play in helping us to dispel stereotypes, prejudice, and hate? What divides us? And what are the shared beliefs that can bridge all faiths together? Our keynote speaker tonight is the Reverend Gregory Hawn, IAM's Director of Interfaith Relations and Education. After his address, he'll be joined in conversation by two noted scholars, Dr. Hussain Rashid and Rabbi Dr. Rachel S. Mikva, who with Greg will continue the dialogue on these important issues after his opening remarks. Before I formally introduce Reverend Greg Hawn, let me thank all of our sponsors whose generosity allowed us to bring the exhibit to Houston, to Joni and David Andrews, Debbie and Floyd Kearns, Marion and Paul Cones, and Carol and Frank Ruhlin, and all of our other generous sponsors who are listed on our website and have been recognized earlier as the program began. And now it's my honor to introduce my good friend, Reverend Greg Hawn. He's well known in our community for his expertise in interreligious engagement, religious literacy, interfaith dialogue, collaboration and service. Originally, Greg's from Wisconsin. He earned his degrees at the American Studies from Georgetown University and a Master's of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School. Since moving to Houston in 1998, Greg has served a year as a hospital chaplain before spending nearly eight years serving Presbyterian churches. He was then on the faculty of St. John's School for six years where he taught electives in religion and ethics, as well as directing the school's chapel program before coming to IM at the invitation of Elliot Gershenson in June of 2014. Since coming to IM, he has expanded our educational opportunities, enlarged our connections with faith communities, led seminars, visits to houses of worship and deepened our community's understanding of the rich diversity in our region. He's taught at the University of Houston Honors College, the Women's Institute of Houston, the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. And for more than 20 years, he's been an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church USA. He's a sought after speaker, a leader, a voice of reason in our community. And we at Interfaith Ministries are so grateful to have him as part of our team. Greg, thank you for your tireless efforts to build understanding and respect. We welcome you as our keynote speaker tonight and know it will be a great honor to Elliot Gershenson to hear your remarks. Thank you, Greg. Martin, thank you so much. I would like to start by first changing that over there. We go. I'd like to start by recognizing Elliot and Allison Gershenson for their dedication to service. It was Elliot who brought me to Interfaith nearly seven years ago. And in the year that year that we share that I am before he retired or perhaps I should stay started started to fail retirement, I learned a great deal from him about leadership service and getting things done. And he's offered wise and gracious counsel. Allison's role is in the Gershenson story is not a minor one. I also want to highlight that she is a deeply perceptive person with a strong voice of her own. She lets her opinion be known, which is good, as she often corrects a potential error that Elliot is about to make. A person as stubborn and as intelligent as Elliot needs someone like Allison, who is perhaps a little more stubborn and definitely more intelligent, who can match him step for step. And she is often one step ahead of him. The Gershenson's are good people. So thank you. There's a lot I could cover tonight, but I don't want to take a great deal of time so we can move into into dialogue. The intent of this lecture isn't a lengthy 45 minutes exposition on that could cover key issues such as how the study of religion is relatively modern. The idea of world religions is a relatively modern invention that is fraught with perils and pitfalls. So I'm going to move through these comments and hopefully in about 15 minutes, I would encourage you to please use the chat box or the question and answer function, which are both available for your use and would be and will be preferred over asking questions by voice. The title of my lecture tonight is Abraham and beyond the future of inter religious engagement. And I chose this title for three reasons, two of which I'm going to elaborate now, one I'm going to save until the end. The first is that this lecture does conclude our hosting of an incredible 15 pieces of art created by caravan created by artists of three faiths often called the Abrahamic faiths, which has been a wonderful experience. The comments, the insights, the opportunities to bring these works of art has been a rich experience. And the faiths of Christianity, Islam and Judaism have dominated the mindset and the worldview of what are often called the Western heritage that has built the modern world, at least here in the West in America. There are hopes of these three face their dreams, their aspirations, their fears have dictated where we are now to ignore the theological and religious underpinnings of how these faiths have interacted and how those underpinnings and foundations of much of the culture in which we live here in America to overlook them would be a dangerous oversight. The second part, the beyond is to recognize, though, that the 21st century cannot live in a tri monotheistic bubble anymore as if it ever could. In our dinner dialogue last week, we welcomed guests from the Buddhist and Hindu communities to discuss just for just about 20 minutes each the role of art in their faiths from their perspectives. What they said in those 40 minutes was mind blowing to many who attended ideas and concepts that are not new that have existed for 500, 1000 years but are just entering the public consciousness of many here in America. India and China, traditionally kind of the two homelands of Hinduism and Buddhism, Buddhism now both have over a billion people. And then there are the overlooked religions beyond these oft overlooked religions. So briefly just point my gaze over to traditional African religions practiced by a not insubstantial number of human beings. We also need to keep in mind that African religions and the Sonata Nadharma Hinduism, for examples, come to the American consciousness through both a colonial approach as well as a conquest approach. So our historical documents need to be approached with a certain amount of scrutiny. That's a lot to say. So perhaps what is most important in summary to say is that in the title Abraham and beyond, the beyond is a call and a plea to expand our understandings of religions far beyond where we are now. A little personal narrative of what has brought me to this work. I could certainly use the language of Christian calling of how my combination of pastoral experience academic background and teaching experiences brought me here. But I don't know if it's a particular call to use that language that has claimed to me through being a follower of Jesus, especially because when I've been told more than once that interreligious work actually makes me a bad Christian. I don't know if it's just the intellectual stimulation during my second semester of my first year at Georgetown took my opening theology course and I was hooked. I think perhaps for me it's my experience of being biracial of two worlds exemplified in the two races that inhabit my skin. So my experience often on this planet is one of liminality of walking lines of being of many worlds but also being of no world. Perhaps then one could look at the psychology of faith and I would say that a sense of God is a place of belonging. But I would say that people of multiple races experience liminality has for me become a spiritual place because the religious experience is also one of liminality of being in one place and another in walking the boundaries between worlds. I think it's a reason that I say interreligious engagement is a dynamic and not a static thing. It is not an identity. It's what happens when identities connect coincide and sometimes collide. Interfaith is an encounter that happens when we meet each other at the borders and then find ways to invite each other across those lines and create new space for understanding and for solving problems with fresh eyes and new voices. Let me make two claims. Claim number one. A continued concerted plea that the study of religion is crucial in and of itself. Religions are going nowhere and must stop being seen as primarily a conduit for other realms of influence. You know, often religion is talked about as a proxy for a culture war or used as a tool in some geopolitical chess game. And there's no doubt that much in those statements is true. But I don't want to put too fine a point on the statement. The study of religion has always appealed to me because it is the combination of so many disciplines. But to look at religion only to look through religion to what we actually think is the important factor to constantly say this isn't about religion. This is really about those sorts of statements are mistakes. I think as well I then this this topic is important to me because I've invested my time, my education and my life into this effort that religion as religion matters. I'm supportive yet also critical of the discipline into which I have been called just as I am devoted and yet critical into the faith into which I have been called. And if there's perhaps a takeaway message, then it's that one. We need more religious people to be both supportive and critical or at least thoughtful about the role of their faith. So to summarize, my first claim is that religion as religion still matters. And any thinking that it doesn't that we're entering the death of religion or the marginalization of religion, that religion is not a key part of our world would be a costly mistake. I agree with Ibu Patel when he writes in his 2010 book acts of faith that he says that the 21st century will be shaped by the question of faith. My second claim is this religions are not just miss are not just misunderstood, but not understood. And I want to highlight two reasons. The first is that we fall in prey to the idea that religion is personal and therefore subjective. I have my beliefs. You have yours. And therefore our beliefs are beyond critique. And this is not the case. The other concern is that since religion is personal, we are all experts in it. Religion, ironically, then sometimes I would look at it doesn't have a problem with not enough experts. In many ways, it has a problem with too many experts. To go down this road for a moment and I'm going to make a slight digression, but I think there is a method to my madness. And that is about information about religion, but it's actually about information in general. When I was a literature teacher, I would often begin classes at the beginning of the semester with the forward from a book that was published in 1985 far before where we are here with the internet age, but perhaps the most prophetic book that I've read about where we are epistemologically speaking regarding information. The book is by Neil Postman and it's called amusing ourselves to death. The forward lays out very clearly his concern. Remember this is written in 1985 and he compares two books, George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Again, since he wrote the book in 1985, he of course reflects on our culture's sort of collective sigh of relief. 1984, which was written in 1949, kind of came and went and everything and the world didn't fall apart. Liberal democracy did not fall apart. How we were all concerned about the censorship of information and groupthink and big brother and of course these concerns at then as now are not unfounded. But Postman argues that we were reading the wrong book. What Orwell feared Postman writes in his forward were those who would ban books. What Huxley and Brave New World feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture. As Huxley remarked and Brave New World revisited the civil libertarians and rationalists who were ever on the alert to oppose tyranny. As he says failed to account to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions. In 1984 Huxley added people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World they're controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book Postman's book is about the possibility that Huxley not Orwell was right. And I think in many ways Postman hit it right on the head. We don't have a censorship issue we have too much information and we often lack not only in the intelligence but the wisdom to discern. And while this brief deep tour through Orwell and Huxley may seem tangential let me bring it back to our conversation and my second claim. I think there's a reality of how little we know about each other. Yet we consider ourselves well versed because of this incredible access to information. We would take care to heed Postman's warning again written in 1985. A year when we could not have even conceived of what the internet and information age would become. We need to find ways to truly learn more about one another. And that happens always in the context of relationship. When I teach religion courses I often begin with a quote that I think encapsulates why studying religion is important. It makes the familiar strange and the strange familiar. It makes the familiar strange and the strange familiar. In a time when we can make ourselves the center of our universes when we can construct our own sources of information we need moments that de-center us. And interfaith work does this inherently. I'm grateful for the times that interfaith work has meant I've been in experiences when I've been a one of three non-black people in a sanctuary of 500 worshipers that my son has been one of five people who aren't Muslim at the grand opening of a mosque. Of attending puja at a Hindu temple listening to Sanskrit being chanted for 45 minutes. Having no idea what he's saying my Sanskrit's rusty as a non-existent. But also having this deep understanding of exactly what he's trying to experience. Because that longing that he has it's a longing that I have as well. To see that what I know is not to see that what I know isn't the only way of making things happen. And to see that the ways that others do have a positive contribution we need more moments like that. Let me conclude with the future and here's the third beyond. What is the future of interreligious engagement? It has a future and a bright one at that. Number one it needs to be a future where we see differences and similarities. There is no doubt we are all attracted to seeking similarities. And we don't have to look too far into the world to see how emphasizing our common humanity would be actually a really good thing. Yet we are finding that yet we will find I would propose in the differences are many gifts and perhaps the seeds of our liberation. And at the risk and at the risk of theological hyperbole our salvation. We are not meant to be the same. The second claim about the beyond the future of interreligious engagement is one that finds and uses new language. I sometimes talk about different stages in interfaith development. I would say that from 1950 to 2000 the idea of one mountain many paths as well as the word tolerance got us through those 50 years what I would call interfaith 1.0. Yes I know there are many examples of harmonious interreligious engagement across the centuries more focusing on where we are now. You could argue that we're currently sort of an interfaith 2.0 words of mutual understanding and using words like respect have carried the mission forward. I'm not sure what will be the next iteration but we need a new iteration to review our vocabulary and our approaches and the very nature of what we mean by interfaith for the next stage. And finally and here's the third beyond we need to be thinking beyond where we are now. It is a future that will require imagination and the religious imagination the theological imagination is probably one of the most potent imaginations there are and this is where I come full circle to our exhibit. It's easy to say that art doesn't do anything but I disagree. Bishop Chandler, Paul Gordon Chandler, the founder and president in caravan, the organization that brought the exhibit to us, quotes the Tunisian minister of culture creativity is the greatest way to approach our battle against those people who would destroy even the most elementary principles of life. Bishop Chandler notes the transcendent the creative the imaginative quality of how to look in new ways. Art is indirect in its approach. You also often find that the walls don't go up in in ways when you approach art that they often go up in other matters. It creates in counterpoints that are unique and invitational. Art is about change. Art transcends border. It pays no respect to those little lines that we draw on maps. To quote the poet Hafiz, art offers an opening for the heart. True art makes the divine silence in the soul break into applause. Religious belief has been one of the most enduring and perennial sources of transcendence, creativity, and hope. From cathedrals to frescoes from Hafiz's words to Dr. King's dreams from dance to meditation. One of the persistent qualities of faiths across the ages is the access that which is greater than us. It adds new data to often closed systems. The future of interreligious dialogue and perhaps our future as well depends upon such creativity, such imagination, and that hope. Let me now welcome our two guest respondents. Let me go ahead and add spotlight and introduce Rabbi Dr. Rachel S. Mikva, who I met a couple of years ago in the Interreligious and Interfaith Studies Unit of the American Academy of Religion. She currently serves as the Hermann E. Shalman Professor in Jewish Studies and Senior Faculty Fellow of the Interreligious Institute at Chicago Theological Seminary. During 13 years as a Congregational Rabbi in Chicago and New York, Rabbi Mikva earned a reputation as an outspoken advocate for justice, and she inspired her communities to reach deeply into the roots of Jewish learning and living as they strove together to tikkun olam repair the world. With academic expertise in rabbinic literature and the history of scriptural interpretation, her courses and research address a range of Jewish and comparative studies with a special interest in the intersections of scripture, culture, and ethics. She's the author of dangerous religious ideas, the deep roots of self-critical faith and Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, broken tablets restoring the 10 Commandments and Ourselves, and Midrash Vayosh, an evil Midrash on the Song of the Sea, and her latest book project will be published by Cambridge University Press, Introduction to Religious Studies. Let me now add to the spotlight I've met our second respondent when we were fellow students at Harvard Divinity School as we were, I am notwithstanding, co-workers at perhaps the best job I ever had working in the Divinity School bookstore. Hussein Rashid is an educator dedicated to working with people in different environments to create community and imagine possible futures. As a founder of Islamakhet L3C, he works in a variety of environments to increase religious literacy. As an academic, Hussein's interests focus on representations of Muslims in US popular culture and he's written on depictions of Muslims in film and television, Kowali in the US, the role of Malcolm X, and intramuslim racism. He's co-edited a volume on Ms. Marvel, the first Muslim superhero to have her own self-titled comic book. He's taught at Hofstra University, Fordham University, Iona College for Virginia Theological Seminary, Reconstructionist Rubinical College, SUNY Old Westbury Barnard College, Columbia University and the New School. He holds a BA in Middle Eastern Studies from Columbia University, a Master in Theological Studies and the MA and PhD from Harvard University. Rachel and Hussein, thanks for joining us. So very, very much. Let me start. Rachel, let me start with you. Just opening thoughts or reflections or questions based on my comments. And again, let me just say the chat box and the Q&A are open for you and the attendees. Well, thanks, first of all, for the invitation to join you in conversation. And as I was listening, I was thinking, as you were exploring your first claim that religion matters and that we need to do itself critically, I thought, great, I would write a book about this, except that's what I just wrote my book about. I mean, that was exactly the work I was trying to do. I did this nerdy, deep dive into how religion unfolds through our psychological needs and in terms of our will to meaning, our will to power, our will to pleasure. It unfolds in the way we create community. It unfolds in our cultural, the way we understand and create culture together. It even unfolds through our biology. And it doesn't diminish religion to say that it's intersected with all those things. It actually magnifies the power and presence of religion because it is so deeply woven into every aspect of humanity. And I think that that means that you're right. Religion is not going to go away even though it continues to be a dynamic force and the shape changes in our lives and in our world. And we'll come back to talk about that when we're talking about what's new in interfaith, right? But, and then the second claim I was listening and I was thinking, I was asking in one sense, are you telling us we need to read more and understand more about isms? Or, and then what it sounded like after that was, no, no, you're saying we need to talk to each other more and recognize that we are informed and coformed by engaging one another. And that I would absolutely embrace as well. I mean, I think that the question of the isms gets more complicated the more we think about it, the more we think about the modern study of religion and the way, you know, what shaped that and the more we think about lived religion versus what's in the book and the more we think about who owns religions anyway, right? These boundaries, which are helped an organism to cohere, right? But they're also meeting places, right? So at CTS, for instance, we have lots of folks who are interspiritual or pagan or or grounded in African spirituality in the diaspora. And these are quote unquote, you know, new in the interreligious world. They're not new. They're ancient. These are, you know, ancient, but but I think that it has us thinking about all kinds of religious and interreligious questions differently. And so I find a lot of tensions in the exploration that you were doing in that second claim a lot of generative tensions. And of course, my answer as the rabbi, you know, it's not either or it's always sort of both in and the tension in between the dialectical tension. So, you know, Huxley and Orwell, among other things. But but I love Postman's book. So the last thing I'll say that I was thinking about as you were talking was I often think about the development of interreligious work in waves that I think about through the lens of of gender studies, right? And the waves of feminism and womanism, right? There was this stage where we were fighting primarily for equality, right? We want our rights as religious minorities. But we often got those by acting a lot like the dominant religious Christian, then Protestant voice. And so there was this later stage that really developed where we began to embrace difference, right? That we don't have to be like Christians to religious in this space, right? And there's really interest in Jewish history around all of this in America. But then we discovered that we were still essentializing, right? Traditions a lot. And so that's sort of a third wave that I call diversity, right? Where we began to recognize intra faith diversity and that there are all kinds of voices still invisibleized. That kind of mixed metaphors. There are all kinds of voices still silenced or faces invisibleized in our inter-religious work. And I think the stage where we are now and this very much ties to your thesis, I like to call intersubjectivity, right? We it is again that that recognition that we come to understand ourselves in our co-formation with one another and we can't do that work in isolation. Josh, I'll be quiet. Those were all the things going on in my head while you were talking. Or Rachel, thank you. And I think that I think a lot about that final point about the how it's done in community and that we don't do it alone is also I think about that that a great deal. Hussein, same question to you. Kind of opening thoughts or reflections either based on on kind of what I said or kind of riffing off of Rachel's reflections as well. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. As-salamu alaykum. We are in the name of God, the most compassionate, the most merciful. May God's peace, blessings, and mercy be upon you this evening. I want to start off by thanking Elliott and Alison for starting this lecture series and the Interfaith Ministries of Greater Houston for having me and Greg for inviting me. We're approaching our silver anniversary of making trouble together. Wow. It has been a long time and of course Rachel meeting you as a new friend. So a lot of what I had to say about or what I was thinking about with respect to interreligious engagement, I think Rachel obviously is an expert in the field to set it much more eloquently and much more concisely than I could have. So I'm going to come at this from a slightly different direction. There were a few thoughts I had about what you said you started talking about the relationship between religion and culture and then you went into religion has value in its own right. And I think religion does have value in its own right and we can't look past religion to something else. But that doesn't mean religion is exceptional either. We always look at religion in context, in time and in space. And I think, you know, I work a lot with high school students and young adults who are in college and trying to figure out what is their religious identity mean and what does it look like. And oh, that's religion and that's culture. And I'm like, well, how do you neatly separate those two? You know, you can talk about, let's say patriarchal norms is that a religion or a culture issue. And so we can neatly separate those. But then what do you do when you look at grand cathedrals or mosques? So you quoted the poetry of Hafiz or the poetry of Rumi who are who are writing from a religious impulse, right. Rumi, of course, is not just a poet devoid or divorced from his Islam. He's writing because he is Muslim because he is a scholar of the Qur'an, right. This is his professional life and his religious life. So how do you separate these things when we think about music? How do you separate what's happening musically from religiosity? You know, we tend to think about, you know, western classical music as a classical tradition, but it's also a religious tradition, right. DS area has meaning. There is a substance there. And so really, for me, is thinking about that relationship between religion and culture. And I think for me, the other big point I want to talk about is that we've used religion and faith interchangeably. And for me, I'm really picking up that thread is thinking about difference where both you and Rachel raises this point is for me, that doesn't sit well, right. We've traditionally, as a Muslim, we've traditionally made a distinction between religion, deen and faith, iman. Right? So the Quran talks about your religion is completed, but it calls for those of us, yeah, you, Haladina Amin, those of you who have faith, faith is always seen as distinct from religion, right. And even in the academic study of religion, we tend to look at religion as a corporate, you know, that is a social construct, the rules, the boundaries that define us versus faith, which is our individual understanding and approach to God through those social constructs. So really think, or those communal constructs. So really thinking through some of that. So even there, as we engage with this and whatever wave of inter-religious engagement we're at, we're still using very Christian language that can be exclusionary. So can we even move beyond that? And I think even within that, and this is where I'll end, is even the language of Abrahamic, right. So even if we say, okay, that's Judaism, Christianity, Islam, we're the Baha'is in this conversation, right. They're most obviously part of the Abrahamic traditions, right. That they're not here at this time. And I'm going to throw in Sarah and Hajar too. Sorry? And we want to throw in Sarah and Hajar too. And Sarah and Hajar, right. Exactly, right. We're the women in this conversation. But also thinking about the ways in which the term Judeo-Christian was meant to be an appeasement to prove we're not anti-Semitic, but really has this very sort of anti-Semitic overtones to it. And Abrahamic seems to function in sort of the same way as a way to say, okay, let's bring in the Muslims, but it still has that bit of supremacist background to it. That I think actually hinders interreligious engagement because we're not looking at questions of building up and building out. And you had said something about being, doing interfaith work makes you a bad Christian. I hear this all the time. Doing interfaith work makes you bad. It's her name of religious tradition here, right? And there's a verse from the Qur'an. It's actually, you can't see it, but it's actually literally immediately to the left of me right here, that God created us tribes and nations that we may know one another. 4913. 4913 from Al-Husra. Yep. And to me, that has always been part of the work is that we know each other through difference. Not only each other, but ourselves through difference. So when we look for something that's Abrahamic, I feel like we're facing so much that it's not actually giving us a chance to grow. And it's not giving us a chance to think about how do we make a more inclusive world? It's always an opportunity to say, how do we make ourselves less exclusionary? And I don't want to be less something. I want to be more something else. Right. So that's where I'm at. Yes. Yes. Yes. And that's usually when I begin, in many cases, when I've begun my conversations about the art that, if we're talking Abrahamic, we need to talk. Rastafari, Yazidi, I mean, Baha'i, Druze. I know I'm missing one from my, from Mandians from my list. And again, there's a comment in the chat box. Again, thank you for acknowledging the Baha'is perspective and women's perspective as well. Absolutely. I'm wondering if I could ask just a little more, because your critique of my faith religion in using kind of Christian language is important. And I think you mentioned to me that you were working on a text kind of unpacking this as well. Do you have some thoughts Hussein about, at least recognizing, and Rachel as well, the dangers of our language and what could be next? Or improvements or at least understanding where the pitfalls are, particularly with language that we use both so comfortably and therefore kind of so carelessly. So Hussein, maybe I can start with you and then we'll kind of go backwards. Yeah, thank you, Greg. So yes, I am co-editing a volume with Jenna Gray Hillbrand and Beverly Maguire, if they might be listening in, but they will hold me to my feet to the far, if I don't hold them, if I don't hold them up. But it is looking at the world religions paradigm and the problems with the ways we think about world religion, like is Christianity not a world religion? Yeah. And the ways in which then world religions comes out of the study of religion, which you hinted at, at the beginning of your talk, really comes out of a colonialist mindset, right? So of course it makes sense world religions comes out of that. And then Rachel sort of brought us into that conversation about how in earlier iterations of inter-religious conversation, we're all trying to be Christian in some sense. How do we fit the Christian mold? That's what the world religions paradigm is. And so really what our contributors are looking at is what does this look like in the classroom? Like intellectually we know what this is, right? You and I trained together, we've talked about this. We intellectually know what that is and still we use this language. And so what does this mean? How does this actually hinder our education about other religious experience? And there's just a colloquialism involved, right? I mean, I grew up saying, oh Jesus, what does Jesus mean to me as a Muslim? But this is American slang. It is American popular culture, right? And this is this interrelationship between religion and culture. But now I go back and I reflect on it. It's like, why am I saying that? But also how does that desacralize the figure of Jesus both as a Muslim, but for Christians as well? How does that secularize? How does that secularize Christianity in a way that it's no longer religious, right? And I think about all the sometimes I hear these talks about war on Christmas. I said, do you really want Walmart to be the arbiter of what a good Christian is, right? And I think that that sometimes puts the perspective of a person, again, I'm not speaking as a Christian, I'm speaking as a scholar of religion. But to me, it seems odd to want a secular entity to determine what is correctly religious. And what does that imply for the ways in which we're desacralizing so many of our religious traditions in order to get cultural validation? Yeah. Rachel, kind of the same question about language, the future of religious language? Sure. Although I'm, of course, stuck trying to think about red coffee cups and why they're not Christmasy enough. So I, for a variety of reasons, have been looking for other language. And in Europe, they've made a little more progress about finding alternative language. And one of the terms that I have adopted from some European scholars is life stamps. And I do it not only to move away from sort of the Christian language that has dominated the field and, of course, raises questions of what qualifies as religion or what qualifies as world religion, right? Which is always a hierarchy, which has always put the universal above the particular, right? Which, so even the world religions, paradigm is problematic for that reason. But the other reason I like life stamps is actually that it includes what we might consider secular orientations, philosophical life stances, secular humanism, et cetera, and refers to them not by what they're not, right? Because otherwise we're calling them religious and not religious in order to include them. And that's like saying white and non-white. It's still privileging and centering whiteness. So I like life stamps. It doesn't conjugate well. So that's a problem, right? But I do introduce it in a lot of the interreligious work that I do, trying to find a more inclusive and less over-determined terminology. I forget what the term is that I came across, but the December before COVID, we had a group of four French young people that were doing this interfaith tour around the world. That stopped at interfaith ministries, and I showed them around the Bridgette and Bouchard Collipe last of respect. But just kind of their background, doing interfaith from a European, at least from a French stance. They, I forget what the term that they used, but it was really, really, it was really interesting. The other thing that I really love and appreciate in terms of interreligious space that I borrowed in this case from a French scholar, Danielle Huvéligé, is her thinking about secularism, because we tend to use the word secular as the opposite of religious, right? And therefore a lot of religious people see secularism as the enemy. And I think that that's problematic and sets up again another tension we don't, it isn't good for our social fabric. And she talks about secularism as not the removal of religion from the public space, but the creation of public space in which no institution has exclusive rights on meaning, right? It is the space in which we meet, and religion is in that space, and so are many other things in that space. It's a space where we meet. For me, I also bring this back, many of these comments to the fact that we have hosted this Abraham art exhibit. And again, and I think both of you, but I know Hussain for sure you've written on again the intersection of art and religion about how art is again this transcendent language that it speaks without perhaps the limitations of the spoken word that we've been spending some time on here. Let me go to again, one of the questions that I talked about proposing to you was actually proposed in the Q&A. So it's a wonderful segue. How do you think the increase of the nuns, the religiously unaffiliated, will play a part in inter-religious relations and dialogue in the coming future? I mean, this person worded it much better than I did in proposing that to you, the increase of nuns and the religious. How do you think that's going to change things or affect things? Rachel, can I start with you? Sure. I mean, again, we have some issues with language, because a lot of the people who describe themselves as nuns, meaning I don't fit any of those categories that I've been taught to think about as spiritual or religious or a life-stamp, but they have some kind of life-stamps, right? And they're part of the conversation about how we live our lives around our deepest convictions together in diverse company. Again, at CTS, we have a lot of folks, they refer to themselves more as spiritual but not religious. Again, saying I recognize that I have a spirituality. It just isn't any ism that I've learned about. And I've learned a lot along the way from folks sort of navigating that space with them, both how to create more space with them in the inter-religious space or inter-life-stamp space, where we are not by language or by frame, by topic, whatever, excluding their voices, their presence, their participation, their contributions. And it's also sort of pushed things, like I grew up worrying about appropriation. So what does an interspiritual person mean if I'm worried about... I don't think that Christians ought to have satyrs at their churches. If they want to know about satyr, they ought to have satyr with Jews, right? So there are certain things they don't think should be appropriate, but what about somebody who feels profoundly at their center with one foot, and their identity is not a singular, but is multiple? And what does that say about appropriation? But what does it even mean in certain instances? One of my African American colleagues involved in inter-religious work with me said, Black culture has been so decimated multiple times. What does it even mean for us to appropriate? So I think that the presence... So I think there are two issues. One is how to be more inclusive, and the other is what we learn about thinking in new ways, fresh ways, about life stances and our social fabric from them. I think that new and fresh ways very much speaks to, I think, what we were trying to do with the art exhibit. And what we're seeing as well about what the beyond really entails is we need to imagine, I think, new ways of community or articulating what we're talking about of being in community. Hussein, kind of the same question to you. The role of the non-religious, the nuns as we continue an inter-religious dialogue. I really just want to echo what Rachel said, is I think there's such a problem of language here. In terms of... And I'm going to name names. I think Pew, when they do their religious surveys, is still very Christian-centered. A lot of their language is still very Christian-centered, and they're trying to fit all these religious categories into particularly Protestant, and I think leaning a little bit more evangelical even within that, worldviews. So they had the recent study on Judaism in America. Came out of just about a month ago, and I know that my friends who are in Jewish studies were having a field day without those questions were framed. When they do their ones on Muslims in the US, the same thing. They had one on declining church attendance when they were looking at mosques and synagogues. And so religious studies as a whole. I mean, somebody's just going to start writing dissertations about Pew's methodology. PRRI, which also does specifically religious community polling, it's very interesting because they were one of the first to start looking at that spiritual but not religious category, this nun's category. If I'm not mistaken, they were actually the first ones to coin the term. But it's interesting to see how their polling questions have evolved over time. Where they're really trying to do exactly what Rachel said. It's trying to not make it an identity of negation, but to make it to look for more affirmative language that allows people to express who they are. And is it a question of people turning away, we talk about this and I'm going to look very specifically at the spiritual but not religious, which does have some overlap with nuns, but I would argue is a separate category. Is that coming back to this question of religion and faith? These are people who still have faith, but who feel let down by their institutions and by the communities in which they were raised. That doesn't necessarily mean that religion or religiosity is on a decline. It means that institutions need to reimagine and refigure and think about where they're at. We see these tensions within different churches. The Anglican Episcopal Church has been going through this for several years now and I think they're probably the most clear-cut case. The SBC is probably going through something similar now. But I think it's ways in which we don't understand, we don't have the language to talk about religion in ways that are beyond ABC for us to create. We're not even at the alphabet stage of religion to be able to string together words let alone sentences about what religion means in this country. One of the two things we're not supposed to talk about in this country, polite company in this country, religion and politics. And what are the two things that pretty much define everything in this country is religion and politics? And so how do we talk about what it means to be a citizen of the United States when we're told we can't talk about things that shape us as individuals? And our discourse demonstrates that we're not particularly good at talking about those things together when we have to navigate differences that matter. A couple of questions have come through one. Again, life stance seems like a meta-level concept. It seems very useful. Is there also a risk of losing some of the old meaning of religious faith, belief and identity in our dialogue? I think that's a really good question about how, because one of the things about religious traditions is that they weren't, many of them weren't born yesterday. They have a deep wisdom, the wisdom of history and always that challenge of the kind of the quote-unquote old and the new. So I very much resonate with that question. We just have a couple of minutes left. Hussein, can I just ask you if you've got anything that you want to say about kind of that old and new and the risk of losing the quote-unquote old? I will say something very quick because I really want to hear Rachel on this because life stance language is new to me. But for me, it feels like it's a question of categorization. So speaking from a theological perspective, we have language of religion. We have this language as a Muslim. That's not going to go away. But is that the appropriate language for me to use with other people? In other words, it's the language for me to use internally with my people. And when we're talking more broadly and I'm trying to think about categorization, is life stance a more useful and more productive way to think about that? From what I've heard so far, my gut instinct says yes. And so for me, it feels like the new and the old are not necessarily complicated. I'm going to come back and Rachel, I love that I use that all the time. It's always a both end. It's never an either or is thinking about the language of religion and the language of life stance can of course both coexist because they're describing different phenomenon at different levels. Absolutely. And the only thing I would add is an acknowledgement that change always involves loss. And that's true about language. It's also true about any efforts we see afoot to continue to disestablishment Protestantism. We see communities that feel profoundly threatened, a deep sense of loss. And we can villainize that, but I think we're much more better off by saying, I get it. I understand that sense of loss and let's figure out how to deal with it together. And for me, beyond kind of anything that I've learned, it's in many ways my pastoral experience that comes in the handiest of both of honoring where people are, but particularly the skills of listening to who people are. Let me move to this kind of final concluding question. Hussein, I'll turn to you. The question is what gives you hope? I know that's kind of a general question, but I think really in the context of interreligious engagement, its future where it could go, what are some signs of hope that you see in your work? Thank you, Greg. We just left it at work because you hope I have to go with God. In terms of interreligious work, I think for me, the thing that has been making me most hopeful is here in New York, really as we move beyond this idea of Judeo-Christian, this idea of Abrahamic, and are really looking at questions of, well, what is it religious communities are doing? What motivates people in those communities to do it? And how do we mobilize these things for a greater good? And I think you mentioned Ibu and the Interfaith Youth Corps in your comments, right? I think that this is a more organic model of the Interfaith Youth Corps, is that there is a social good that we need to drive towards. How do we pull people into there? How do we go to meet people where they are? How do we bring them forward? And we're finding people now, not just people like the three of us, or people who would be a part of the Interfaith Ministries who are very intentional about this work, but are now who are organically coming together. And it reminds me very much of the New York I grew up in. I grew up going to a friend's synagogue because I slept over at his house on Friday night. His parents were like, that's my parents. Would it be okay if he came with us to worship the next day and be like, yeah, okay, are you gonna feed him pork? No, okay, go, so have fun, right? And that wasn't, we didn't talk about it as Interfaith. We talked about it as living together, right? And I feel like that's the point we're coming back to again, and that gives me a lot of hope. Thanks, Hussain. Rachel, I'll give you the closing word what gives you hope. Three things I think that I would name right now. One is this intent that you named and that Hussain also identified that we weren't meant to be the same, right? And that in living out our diversities and discovering each other's diversities, we are unpacking a gift that God has given us. However, we conceive of the transcendence, the divine, that which connects us beyond our own cells. And I don't think it requires a notion of God to do that. The second thing is that I think interreligious work is increasingly intersectional and getting that we don't come to the table just with a religion. We also have our race and our class and our background and our gender and our sexuality and all of these things shape the way we interact with one another. And it's, I think, liberative to be able to come with our whole selves into that space. And the third thing that gives me hope, and maybe this is just because I've been thinking and talking with people a lot about it, is I think we're beginning to talk more about the need for self-critical faith and what that means to be, and it has at least two directions, right? The way we think about ourselves and our own traditions and the way we embody that. And also to recognize that if we're going to live in this multi-religious space, however hard and fraught it might be, we also have to be critical in the way we engage religious ideas together. And just because it's a religious idea doesn't mean it gets a pass in the public square. It's not exceptional in another way of the way of what Hussein said earlier. And that's hard, but I think we're beginning to recognize that. And I think there are more organizations, whether it be Christians against Christian nationalism or other intra-religious, self-critical voices that I think are doing really important work. I wish we had another hour, but we've amazingly come to 8 p.m. So let me go ahead and conclude. Thank you. And Dr. Hussein Rashid, Rabbi Dr. Rachel Mikva for your inspiring words. We all leave tonight hopeful and empowered as ambassadors in dialogue service and collaboration. Again, thank you to our sponsors. The generosity, your generosity has enabled us to share the exhibit and all our programs, including tonight's Gershenson lecture with our community. Thank you to Elliot Gershenson for being a guiding light in the important work of Interfaith Ministries. And thank you to the attendees, each of you for your time, your support, your involvement with IM. Together we can make a difference and we are making a difference. So this concludes the formal program, but don't hop off yet. I'm about to give the final half-hour virtual tour of Abraham out of one many, one last official time. So I invite you to stick around for about 30 minutes. Finally, be on the lookout for information about ways you can support our other programs at Interfaith Ministries, and in particular our empowered voices, a Unity concert, which will be on June 8th at 7 p.m., which continues on using the theme of art as a way to foster unity, harmony, and peace. Thank you all for being here. I will begin the virtual tour in just a second. I just need to bring up the webpage. Rabbi Mikva, Dr. Rashid, thank you so much for your time. Thank you all for being here.