interViews

Learn what some of today’s most exciting visionaries, thinkers, advocates, and activists are doing in the field of religion. Watch exclusive interviews, and read responses from the next generation of graduate students, seminarians, and civic leaders.

interView with Rev. Paul Raushenbush

Response by Anna DeWeese

Listening to Paul Raushenbush, it was very encouraging to hear him speak on ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ as two distinct, yet related, ideas. Often these words are used interchangeably, as if to believe in something is to have faith in that thing. But these words are much more complex than the above statement assumes, and each word has different meanings to different people.

This is why I have studied and continue to engage in interfaith work. I have struggled with the questions of ‘what do I believe’ and ‘do I want or need to have faith’, and have learned to embrace these questions in a way that opened me up – opened me up to my self and my tradition of Christianity, and to others and their traditions. These questions have opened me up to concepts and ideologies I would never have considered worth my while, but have come to enrich my life in fascinating ways. It is through these questions that I will continue to grow and learn, so that every encounter I have with another person helps us discover more deeply what our faiths and our beliefs mean.

Response By Liane Carlson

Rev. Raushenbush begins by asking why the bloggers have become invested in inter-religious dialogue, and ends by urging all people, regardless of affiliation, to “learn their traditions,” in order to have a firm place from which to argue. Rather than answer with an anecdote or quotation, I want to question the assumptions structuring his request. Such a question privileges the text and the personal experience as granting a particular authority or right to speak. That this dual emphasis on text and interiority are paradigmatically Protestant Christian preoccupations goes without saying. That it also assumes something like a common set of experiences which might unite us – exposure to relatives, friends of different faiths, belief in the heterogeneity of the canon – seems equally obvious.

But is this really the best place to start thinking about inter-religious dialogue, or is it, instead, symptomatic of the assumptions that make dialogue so necessary and so difficult? In responding by turning inward, both textually and personally, are we attempting to found dialogue on fundamentally incommensurable, unsharable, radically private experiences? So, rather than beginning with confession, might it not be better to start by turning outward, to a common world with common problems?

Response By Leigh Rogers

Rev. Raushenbush clearly explained why inter-religious work is important to him: he was raised in a Christian tradition that held these values, and he was shaped by experiences in an interfaith family. These two elements, tradition and experience, gave him a sense of why it is so important to get “explicit” about why inter-religious work matters: if we don’t know where we stand, as he puts it to his students, where will our voices be around the circle?

Being around the circle and including all voices is what makes inter-religious dialogue so important. Raushenbush said he wanted “as wide a spectrum of talking to one another as possible,” because its purpose is a shared dialogue answering two questions: What do I believe, and what does my neighbor believe?

I like that he said it doesn’t matter what level of orthodoxy your tradition is, or whether you’re conservative or liberal. For me, it reaffirmed my fears of being perceived as too “wishy-washy” as a spiritually promiscuous person from an agnostic household. I may still be figuring my spirituality out, but I can still know my values.

What matters is that you have something to say, and you’re willing to listen and learn about what the person next to you is saying. We have to understand our own values and our neighbor’s. Not only did Jesus teach the parable of the Good Samaritan as a Jew; he taught it from the perspective of the Samaritan.

This is the religious literacy that Raushenbush refers to, where the purpose is to “[be equipped] with language and knowledge of other religious traditions- to be respectful and aware of others’ beliefs but also our own beliefs.”

Finally, to answer Raushenbush’s question, I do interfaith work because I need to learn from others to really know where I stand. As an aspiring theologian, I have to be literate of others’ religious values, listen and reflect, then balance it with my own.

Response By Anthony Paz

The Catholic Christian tradition does not, as part of its everyday operation, promote interfaith understanding as central to its message. It seems that few religious traditions do. For Catholics, thinking about other religions has never happened except because of experience. Today's Catholic, especially in America, is constantly confronted with other worldviews. Raushenbush asks, “why are you doing this?” My answer: The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the conquest of the New World, the Troubles in Ireland. My tradition has, almost in secret, grown more interested in tolerating and understanding other faiths. I had to seek the 20^th Century pronouncements that quietly declare that non-Christians can, in fact, make it to heaven. So, while the tradition has a varied and mostly disturbing history of Raushenbush's “this,” I would not have known about it if not for my own experience of September 11, 2001, which triggered a desire to understand other religious and to be understood by them. Raushenbush hits on one of the great truths of religious belief, one that is central to our dialogue: the difference between tradition and experience. I may identify with a 12^th Century Catholic, but my experience creates an individual with a strikingly different set of values and beliefs. It is essential to understand individuals as representing only some of their tradition, since it is all filtered through experience.

Liane Carlson graduated from Washington and Lee University in 2007 with a B.A. in Religion. She then spent a year in Bayreuth, Germany on a Fulbright Fellowship for research. Upon completion of her fellowship, she decided to pursue a Ph.D in the philosophy of religion at Columbia University. She has since been named recipient of the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship.

Anna DeWeese is a graduate of Union Theological Seminary, where she received an M.A. in 2009. Her work focused largely on interfaith relations, affording her the opportunity to study under Dr. Paul Knitter. She currently works for the Garrison Institute and is exploring the intersection of contemplative practices and engaged action in the world.

Hafsa Kanjwal is a recent graduate from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where she studied Regional Studies of the Muslim World and International Development. She was previously a Leadership Associate with the Interfaith Youth Core and is a co-founder of Kashmircorps, an organization that provides volunteer and internship opportunities in Kashmir.

Stephanie Lin is a candidate for a Ph.D from the Department of Religion at Columbia University. Her area of specialization within the field of religious studies is that of Chinese Buddhism, for which much of her research focuses on Buddhist beliefs and ritual practices in contemporary mainland China and Taiwan. Her personal interests include music, meditation, and traveling.

Anthony Paz is a candidate for a Masters in Theological Studies at the University of Notre Dame. While an undergraduate, he helped lead the Newman Club at Amherst College and was an active participant in the Multifaith Council. As a Catholic, he is a particular fan Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement.  He grew up between the redwoods and the ocean in Eureka, California.

Nathan Render is a graduate of Tufts University and now serves as the Bronfman Fellow at Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life in Washington, D.C., working in the Office of the President and for the Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Experience. During his time on campus, he was a co-founder of the Pathways Interfaith Initiative as well as a summer intern and Fellow at the Interfaith Youth Core.

Leigh Rogers is a Public Relations Executive for United Methodist Women. Always interested in inter-religious dialogue and practice, she is co-organizer of the Inter-Seminary Network and a contributor to AJGita.com. While attending graduate school at Union Theological Seminary, she co-facilitated “Dialogue in Action” at the Temple of Understanding.

Andrew Rosenthal was raised in an interfaith family in Brooklyn, New York and  has both a personal and professional interest in a multiplicity of religious traditions and spiritual practices. Andrew graduated in 2009 with an MDiv from Union Theological Seminary, where he co-founded the Inter-Faith Caucus and was recipient of the Auburn Theological Seminary "Bennett Fellowship."

C. Nikole Saulsberry is a recent graduate of Syracuse University where she received a B.S. in Communications and Rhetorical Studies with minors in Religion and Strategic Management. At SU, Nikole was a Peer Minister for the Protestant Campus Ministry and a member of the Hendricks Chapel Choir. She was also a Fellow of the Interfaith Youth Core and is currently serving as a member of AmeriCorps.

Freeman Trebilcock is a 21 year old Tibetan Buddhist monk studying at FPMT's Chenrezig Institute in Australia.  He is actively involved in interfaith work in Melbourne and recently became a URI Youth Ambassador for the region. Freeman is Chair of "InterAction: multifaith youth network" a youth led interfaith organisation that promotes interfaith cooperation and service.