An Interfaith Vision For The Future Of Faith

[cbayer]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-bailey/interfaith-future-of-faith_b_7205184.html

Jennifer Bailey
Founder, Faith Matters Network. AME Minister. Millennial. Interfaith Leader.

Posted: 05/07/2015 11:11 am EDT Updated: 05/07/2015 4:59 pm EDT

Several times a month, I have a standing lunch date with three of my favorite people. We gather online over laptops and our meals in Boston, New York, and Nashville to form what we have come to call our "community of praxis." This sacred space is a place where we, as young adults working in interfaith movement, can reflect our experiences, ask challenging questions, and be vulnerable enough to confess that we may not have the answers

We are Millennials. Our praxis community is a snapshot of the diversity and fluid identities that has become defining characteristics of our generation. Among our flock is a Jewish yogi who chants with Hare Krishnas every week, a seminary grad organizing local communities to combat Islamophobia, a social movement strategist discerning a call to the priesthood, and myself--a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church who began my journey in the interfaith movement as a senior in high school. Though distinct in our identities, we are united in our belief that communities of faith can be a force for good in helping combat the most pressing social concerns of our day from economic inequality to ecological devastation.

Our idealism is pragmatic. As young adults who emerged into adolescence in the post-9/11 era, we are not naïve about the challenges to making this vision a reality. Our social and political identities were shaped in response to ongoing narratives of war and religious conflict: spiritual versus religious, Islam versus the West, and fundamentalism versus rationalism among others. In the face of these narratives, it comes as no surprise then that nearly 30 percent of our peers reject labels of religious affiliation. Even the non-religious financial institutions that we were told to put our faith in because they were "too big to fail" faltered. Within this context, we cultivated a deep commitment to social justice and a sincere aspiration to make the world a better place.

In the interfaith movement we found a framework for connecting our organizing and activism to our deepest moral and ethical commitments. Interfaith voices have played an essential role throughout American history, inspiring and animating movements for social reform from the Civil Rights movement to the fusion politics of the contemporary Moral Mondays protests in North Carolina. Yet, like so many of our social institutions, the interfaith movement finds itself at a crossroads. Models of dialogue and cooperation, so crucial to the movement's work over the past quarter century have begun to fall flat in the wake of demographic trends that have called into question the relevance of religious institutions in public life.

more at link

[bvf]

1. "Our idealism is pragmatic."

That's as big a contradiction in terms as I've seen in quite some time.

Meh. More kumbaya crap.

[trotsky]

2. The Interfaith "movement" is killing itself.

This article shows precisely why. They spend so much time promoting themselves and their wonderful universal ecumenicalism, they lose focus on what their actual purpose was supposed to be.

A better way forward is for people to understand that their faith must be put on the back burner when it comes to politics. If you don't want to live by the tenets of someone else's faith, they probably don't want to live by yours. Even if you can find areas where your beliefs intersect, there are always going to be a lot where they don't.

Better to take the secular route - identify the best underpinnings for a fair, stable, peaceful society, independent of anyone's religion - and work towards that. Then you're not having to swim upstream against the rapid decline of religious belief.

[bvf]

3. There it is.

"A better way forward is for people to understand that their faith must be put on the back burner when it comes to politics."

Agreed, but not easy to do when so many of your leaders invoke god at every turn.