Religious interconnections can seem as tenuous and delicate as the strands of a spiderweb, easily blown to tatters by politics, tribalism, fear, fundamentalism, misunderstanding. But in the decade since 9/11, the yearning for interfaith dialogue and religious tolerance has begun to create a critical density of interwoven threads, more akin to shimmering silk cloth than a fragile web. As the real world shrinks and the online world expands, we have growing opportunities to meet, to exchange ideas and to share religious perspectives.
Interfaith children have intimate lifelong experience with finding and creating these interconnections. We see the common ground: We were born on that ground. We see the differences: We have been grappling with them since birth. We see how to create bridges of understanding: We are those bridges. We see cause for optimism: How can we feel otherwise about our very existence?
And yet, despite these qualifications, despite our lifelong immersion in interfaith reality, interfaith children have rarely been formally included in the "interfaith movement." The dominant, and safe, prescribed model for interfaith discourse follows this formula: two or more people with distinct religious labels meet to shake hands across a boundary, come to a deeper understanding of their own traditions and then retreat to their own closed religious boxes.
These interfaith encounters are carefully structured: invite one Jewish organization, one Christian organization, and one Muslim organization to the podium, or share a meal with one Buddhist, one Hindu, one Pagan, one Secular Humanist. In the acute concern for balance and respect, interfaith children seem to represent the alarming consequence of interfaith dialogue gone wild, of tolerance transformed into physical passion.
Interfaith families quite literally transgress ("step across") religious boundaries to pioneer a new life in the liminal space. We meet the other, embrace the other, fall in love with the other, have children with the other, and many of us refuse to get back inside neat religious identity boxes. As an interfaith child, I celebrate the discovery that the barrier is permeable, that cognitive dissonance can lead to creativity as well as chaos, that I can (as Walt Whitman declared) contain multitudes.
Recently, I have admired the way atheists and secular humanists have staked out a role in the global interfaith discussion. Secular activists including Chris Stedman, Jesse Galef, Roy Speckhardt and Lyz Liddell have overcome their own reservations about being involved in anything with the word "faith" in it, and made a persuasive case for secularists to get involved in interfaith activism.
Meanwhile, organizations devoted to interfaith understanding are reaching out to secularists. Most notably, Eboo Patel's Interfaith Youth Core, a campus phenomenon, now includes many representatives of secular student associations. And President Obama has specifically invited secular "nonbeliever" and "no-faith" students to join the nationwide Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge, a national project kicking off this fall.
But interfaith children, natural experts in this field, have not been officially welcomed, whether in high-level interfaith dialogue between religious institutions or in more local grassroots interfaith activism. Perhaps religious institutions fear that acknowledging intermarriage will destabilize the precarious balance of Christians, Jews and Muslims. At the campus level, a growing percentage of students are interfaith children, ready to bring their particular skills and viewpoints to the broad interfaith project. Some interfaith children are providing leadership in these interfaith efforts, but without dwelling on their interfaith status. My point is that we should acknowledge their potential contributions, not ignore them.
"The increasing tendency to overlook the many identities that any human being has and to try to classify individuals according to a single allegedly pre-eminent religious identity is an intellectual confusion that can animate dangerous divisiveness," writes Nobel laureate and Harvard professor Amartya Sen. In his book "Identity and Violence," Sen analyzes how, historically and politically, the reduction of people to a single religious identity can spur conflict. People who assert multiple identities, on the other hand, can be catalysts for positive change. Sen writes about the multiple identities held by each of us (I am a writer, a mother, an American, etc). But as an interfaith child, I make the immediate leap to claiming (the power of) my multiple religious identities: Jewish, Christian, both.
At a press conference for Karen Armstrong's Charter for Compassion project not long ago, I encountered a prominent clergy member involved in interfaith dialogue. When I explained that I was there as a religion blogger chronicling the role of interfaith families in interfaith dialogue, and that this might be of interest to him, he responded, "I work on interfaith relations, not interfaith families." For those of us who are interfaith children, the two subjects are inextricably linked. It is no mere coincidence that the word "interfaith" describes both our personal reality, and our aspirations for the world.
Follow Susan Katz Miller on Twitter: www.twitter.com/beingboth
American Jews - Jewish Children of Interfaith Couples - Christmas ...
I'm a Jewish agnostic and take a wry look at my faith on my blog Confessions of a Worrywart. http://bit.ly/nbYGRT
NO....... just worse interfaith confusion....remember you're not talking about mental giants with reasoning powers.... you're talking about emotional animals that always react before thinking.
Religion should be the same thing.
The “Bad” comes from ignorance and greed, seen everyday in the form of wars, and bigotries!
The “Good” is reflected in people that have discernment as to man’s calling – stated clearly in scripture by Jesus:
Jesus was questioned, “Tell us, is it lawful to pay head tax to Caesar (citizenship obligations)?”
Jesus, knowing their wickedness, said (Mathew 22:18/21): 18 “Why do you put me to the test, hypocrites? 19 Show me the head tax coin.” 20 Jesus said: “Whose image and inscription is this?” 21 They said: “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them: “Pay back, therefore, Caesar’s things to Caesar, but God’s things to God.”
Again questioned! “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied @ Mathew 22:37/39: 37 “Love Jehovah your God with your whole heart, your soul, and mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 The second, ‘You must love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Jesus said: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples (a follower), if you love one another.” (John 13:35)!
Question! Should God’s command to “love thy neighbor as thyself” be suspended when politicians chooses to fight a neighboring country?
Ask yourself, ‘Does my religion, or self brand, display love toward all men at all times in both words and actions?’
After children learn the principles of the major religions, we should ask them:
What is similar? What conflicts? Can they all be different, yet all be true ? If something is an established belief, does that make it a fact ? Why do people need religion ? Is religion necessary to acquire whatever it is that people gain from religion ?
It is much easier to live a religious free, human based life.