Information and commentary on interreligious issues and events in Silicon Valley, the San Francisco Bay Area, Nationally, and worldwide.

Dahlia Lithwick writes an excellent article in Slate this week on the case recently decided by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals which declared that it was inappropriate for meetings of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners in North Carolina to be opened with specifically Christian prayers. It is, the judges declared in a 2-1 decision, a violation of the First Amendment establishment of religion clause.

Many people were outraged, declaring that those offended by the ruling were a decided minority in the community. But, as Lithwick notes,

It doesn’t matter if only 4 percent of the community is expressly excluded by references to a certain deity. It also doesn’t matter if only 1 percent of the community feels that way, or even if only two “hypersensitive” non-Christians object. The Bill of Rights is not subject to popular referendum. That’s why it’s called the Bill of Rights and not, say, American Idol.

Well worth reading the full article.

Responding to the events in Norway last week, a fellow Baptist writes:

Breivik viewed Christianity as a means to control, manipulate and ultimately kill. Some observed that his views of religion are similar to those of Timothy McVeigh, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Religion, yet again, is on display as that which injures, not fosters; as that which incites pain, not healing.

Conservative Christians should not be lumped in with Breivik any more than all Muslims should be lumped in with Islamist extremists. Unfortunately many conservatives have been ready to “lump” all Muslims together, and not stand up for their Abrahamic siblings. For conservatives this has become a matter of politics, not humanity. Conservatives fail to see their own double standard, and in so doing miss an opportunity to be the love of Christ.

You can find the rest of Zachary Bailes’ commentary at the Associated Baptist Press.

A Gandhian legend will be in the South Bay, speaking about compassion, dialogue, interfaith understanding and community service. Dr. Subba Rao is a fellow of the Gandhi Peace Foundation, founder of National Service Scheme and National Youth Project of India, and internationally known for a wide network of Gandhi Youth Camps. Taking seriously Gandhi’s famous words, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world,” Dr. Subba Rao has dedicated his life to bringing people of all religious traditions together.

Fearlessness. Peace. Everyone wants it, many rally for it, but few actually have it. At 82, Dr. S. N. Subba Rao – a Gandhian legend respectfully called “Bhai-ji” – still has a habit of doing the unimaginable: whether it means confronting bandits with compassion, engaging in peace dialogue with world leaders, promoting interfaith understanding, or running youth camps with thousands of participants doing community service.

Rao began to follow Gandhi while still a teenager and has devoted his life to teaching and spreading a vision of nonviolent living. Each year, he comes to teach at the Gandhi Peace Camp held at the Vedanta Center camp in Olema. The Camp offers an opportunity for youth ages 10-18 to practice service and teamwork through the Gandhian principles of truthfulness, non-violence and self-help.

“There is a beautiful saying from maybe 5,000 years ago,” Dr. Rao has said, “`People with small hearts have small homes with four walls. But people with large hearts have the whole world for their family.’ I think all human beings must cultivate large hearts and consider the whole world as their family.”

Dr. Subba Rao will be speaking at two gatherings in the South Bay next month:

• On Wednesday, August 3, at 7:00 pm, he will be at the Addison-Penzak Jewish Community Center at the Levy Family Campus, 14855 Oka Road, Los Gatos. The meeting will take place in the Adult Lounge, Second Floor. Refreshments will be served; please RSVP to Sulochina.Lulla@kp.org. For directions: contact Diane Fisher (408) 357-7504. This event is Co-Sponsored by Jewish Federation of Silicon Valley | Community Relations Council; Silicon Valley Interreligious Council; and the India Community Center. DOWNLOAD A FLYER.
• On Thursday, August 4, at 7:00 pm, Dr. Rao will be at the Jain Center of Northern California, 722 S. Main Street in Milpitas.  Also RSVP to Sulochina.Lulla@kp.org

While digging through my unread e-mail from the past few weeks, I ran across an item from the Huffington Post, describing the World Culture Festival, organized to commemorate the International Art of Living Foundation’s 30th anniversary and held in Berlin’s Olympiastadion.

Founder of the Art of Living Foundation Sri Sri Ravi Shankar led a group meditation that included 70.000 participants. One of them was the Muslim director of the Gulf and Middle East division of Art of Living, Mawahib Shaihaibani. He remarked:

When you meditate with the mass, you all become one and times stops. . .  This event is very unique because people from 150 countries are coming together to celebrate their culture, food, dance, music and belief for a united world full of tolerance, love and peace. This means a lot to me because these days we have so much … unrest in the Middle East, and the youth need to broaden their vision and see that we are one world family.

It seems that it’s been a while since I’ve posted here- and now that we’re into a slower time in the Summer months, I have time to catch up on some of what’s been happening.

The Interfaith Alliance and Human Rights First invited congregations to celebrate Faith Shared – crossing religious boundaries on June 26, sharing scriptures from the varied traditions and affirming the freedom of worship.

In his report of the events, Tad Stahnke, Director of Policy and Programs at Human Rights First, observed:

It is true that in recent years the United States has seen a disturbing trend of anti-Muslim violence, discrimination and rhetoric, as well as a general lack of understanding about Islam. We’ve seen Qur’an burnings, individuals attacked only because they are Muslims, a pipe bomb explosion at an Islamic community centre in Florida and a surge in reported cases of discrimination against Muslims in workplaces and schools throughout the country.

But those incidents – all of which have grabbed headlines – don’t represent the views of so many Americans who respect religious freedom and the diversity of faiths that freedom brings.

Across the country, people gathered to share their scriptures and to hear from religious leaders of their different communities. “Americans are a nation not of the few who burn Qur’ans and incite hatred, but of the many who fully embrace religious freedom, tolerance and pluralism.”

• Churches across America read from the Qur’an
  (Common Ground News Service)

At last week’s annual Holocaust Memorial service, sponsored by the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, Imam Suhaib Webb of the Muslim Community Association spoke of his experience as part of a delegation of Muslim leaders who visited Auschwitz together.

What bonds us together is stronger than what pulls us apart as communities. And we can no longer allow within our own communities the rhetoric of racism in the name of truth, and bigotry in the name of self-righteous assumptions to dominate.

Here’s the imam’s presentation:

ING is a internationally respected educational organization based in San Jose that has been providing education in religious literacy for schools, hospitals, governmental agencies, law enforcement personnel, congregations, and community groups since 1993. It began with an Islamic Speakers Bureau to educate people about Islam and Muslims, but a couple of years ago it expanded to include an Interfaith Speakers Bureau, which include speakers from Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, and Jewish traditions as well as Islam. (Full disclosure- the writer is a member of the Scholars’ Advisory Board of ING and helped develop the curriculum for the Christian speakers.)

In response to the current fuss over “Sharia Law” in the US, often used by politicians to stir up anti-Muslim sentiment and drive wedges between people in this country, ING will offer an online webinar on Sharia Saturday, May 7, 2010, from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm.

The webinar will be led by ING Content Director (and co-founder) Ameena Jandali and ING Content Manager Haroon Moghul. It will feature a slideshow presentation about Sharia and answer common questions about what it is and what it really means.

Registration is required for the webinar; there is no cost to sign up. Information and registration is available on the ING website. For more information, contact Ali Rangwala at 408-296-7312.

At a time when State Legislatures in Missouri, South Carolina, and Oklahoma have debated anti-Sharia laws and notorious Qur’an-burning pastor Terry Jones was prevented from holding an anti-Sharia demonstration in front of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan, it is important to understand what Sharia is and what it is not.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011 will be celebrated as “American Sikh Day” with a rally on the State Capitol steps in Sacramento, CA. The program will feature speakers on the Sikh experience in California, with special remarks by California State Senator Darrell Steinberg.

Following the unprovoked attack on two elderly Sikh men in Elk Grove in March, Senator Steinberg promised to wear a turban for a day on April 13th. The turban is a distinctive part of the Sikh dress, and unfortunately, Sikhs have been attacked more than once by people who believe they are attacking Muslims.

You can find information about American Sikh Day at www.americansikhday2011.com, or on their Facebook page.

Members of the Sikh Community in San Jose hosted thousands of Sikhs and community members including California Governor Jerry Brown and San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed at the dedication of the second phase of the San Jose Gurdwara, the largest facility of its kind in the U.S.

• CA gov attends opening of largest US Sikh temple
  (San Jose Mercury)
• San Jose Sikh Gurdwara: www.sikhgurudwarasj.org/

“Tolerance” is often the word invoked when people talk about attitudes toward others who might not share their background or attitudes. Tolerance is a minimum requirement, if it at least means not attacking the other, but it is a poor substitute for more constructive relationship building based on mutual respect.

Over at Religion Dispatches, Baptist minister Cody J. Sanders muses on the meaning of “tolerance” in the context of attitudes toward gay and lesbian individuals. Although he is specifically thinking about “toleration” in relation to issues of sexuality, I think his observations are valid for other forms of relationships across perceived boundaries of religion, race, and culture. He writes:

What exactly does it mean to be tolerated? Those who were once persecuted are later tolerated. Those who were once treated with violence are now allowed to exist in an atmosphere of “beneficent” tolerance. Tolerance says, “You shouldn’t be here, but I’ll allow you to exist.” We commit ourselves to overlooking the offense, the annoyance, the violation to our senses caused by the things and people we merely tolerate. Indeed, toleration is no gift to the tolerated.

- – -

Above all, the trouble with tolerance is that it presumes an acquiescence to, even an acceptance of, an oppressive status quo. There is no prophetic imagination or dream of justice embodied in a resolve to tolerate. If our goal is to practice tolerance, then we have given up on a quest for a more radical acceptance and embrace of difference and Otherness. Tolerance assumes that the hierarchical theological constructions we hold are “natural” and that the binary ways that we construct the group we call “us” and the groups we call “them” have some basis in reality. Tolerance allows our unearned privilege (whether racial privilege, class privilege, heterosexist privilege, etc.) to go unquestioned and unchallenged.

You can read more at Religion Dispatches.

In recognition of my work with Interfaith Space, I was recently named as a  “Silicon Valley Sparkplug,” part of a project being done by CREA-TV and San Jose State University, with funding from the Knight Foundation. Over the past several months I and many of my colleagues have been interviewed for that project, and the cameraman was present at our March kickoff meeting to capture more footage for my segment.

The Sparkplug Videos will be premiered on Thursday, March 24th, from 5:30 – 8:00 p.m. at Camera Cinemas 3 in San Jose. CreaTV San Jose and San Jose State University will co-host a screening and conversation about “community sparkplugging” with the American Leadership Forum-Silicon Valley (ALF), and will feature documentaries on each “sparkplug,” seven grass roots activists in our region, followed by small group conversations with the featured subjects.

You are invited to attend, and can register here. You can also take a look at the Sparkplugs Project website at www.sparkplugsproject.org. The videos are not yet posted (they’ll be added after the gathering on the 24th), but there is other information and background materials.

Thanks to those of you who helped with this; I’m hoping it will be yet another way to get SiVIC into people’s awareness.

The Sparkplugs are:

• Adriana Garcia, a community organizer who builds leadership and connections in the Latina community.
• Raj Jayedev, helping the community of “outsiders” in Silicon Valley to be heard.
• Andrew Kille, a Baptist minister in the Bay Area.
• Raul Lozano, former Executive Director of Teatro Vision, made a shift in his career by starting La Mesa Verde in 2009.
• Javed Mohammed, a Bay Area writer who produces fiction and non-fiction books.
• Jasmine Rast, creates communal spaces for the larger Japantown community.
• John Waszily, former director of Goodwill’s Homeless Veteran’s Reintegration Program.