Good Morning!
Last
week I was privileged to attend the President’s Interfaith and
Community Service Conference in Washington, DC. A specific
presentation caught my attention. Dr. David
Campbell, professor of political science at the University of Notre
Dame, spoke about his co-authored book titled
American Grace, which examines a powerful, and somewhat surprising, source of unity in civil society — religion.
My
recent move to the far more religiously diverse Salt Lake City from a
relatively homogeneous Montana has had me thinking a lot about
religion’s role in our civil society—where
it unites and where it divides us. For example, chronic and acute
conflicts around the world often flare in the name of religion or
religious differences. Families can spar over how members practice or do
not practice their faiths. Communities can sometimes
segregate themselves and their activities by church affiliation.
Conversely,
data are showing that faith-based communities— churches, temples,
synagogues, mosques, and others— account for the most common form of
volunteerism. In the
U.S. more people volunteer on faith-based projects than any other type
of service. So, if our goal is to get more people, especially
students, engaged with the issues in their communities we might take a
lesson or two from the faith community. But, don’t
Catholics just volunteer with Catholics? Isn’t it just Jews serving
together with other Jews? Mormons volunteering with Mormons? Buddhists
with Buddhists? Muslims with Muslims? Evangelical Christians with
other Evangelical Christians? Is there a civic
component to any of this in which we can show people coming together
across faiths to serve and improve and advance their civic communities
and not just their faith communities?
According
to Campbell and his colleague, Robert Putnam, the answer is YES, but
more could be done. While Americans hold intense beliefs and belong to
many different faiths
and denominations, data indicate that religion can work as a kind of
“civic glue” that unites rather than divides the population. The next
question is WHY might religion have this effect?
The
U.S. Constitution of course protects religious freedoms. But Campbell
and Putnam say the answer lies with your Aunt Susan. That is to say
that most Americans seem to
have someone in their family—an aunt, uncle, cousin, brother, etc… who
in spite of the fact that he or she doesn’t practice the family’s
traditional faith, still deserves a place in heaven. We feel Aunt
Susan is a wonderful person even though she doesn’t
believe, pray, practice, or worship, the way we do. Many of us also
have dear friends who practice another faith or have no religious
affiliation at all. The rise in loving and successful interfaith
marriages also contributes to the Aunt Susan theory. All
of the interfaith relationships that we have warm us to other faiths,
beliefs, or non-beliefs, and solidify the potential for a civil society
in a religiously diverse world.
I
think this type of work is teeming with possibility for the Bennion
Center. The conference highlighted interfaith community service and
how it brings together different religious and
non-religious backgrounds to tackle community challenges – for example,
Protestants and Catholics, Hindus and Jews, and Muslims and
non-believers -- building a Habitat for Humanity house together. It
shed light on utilizing different faith traditions to
thematically undergird projects (i.e., Golden Rule; My Brother’s
Keeper; asking Big Questions). Certainly, interfaith service can impact
specific community challenges that we have in Salt Lake City, from
homelessness to illiteracy to refugee integration to
environmental degradation, while creating social capital and civic
prosperity. Please give some thought to how and where we might make
this work in a welcoming, inviting, non-threatening, and
non-proselytizing manner. Let’s begin the conversation.
Have a terrific week!
Warm Regards,
Dean
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