Keynote Address by The Rev. Victor H. Kazanjian Jr.
at the 11th National Forum in Auckland, New Zealand
February, 26 – 28, 2016
Peace, Shalom, Salaam, Shanti, Sat Nam, May Peace be with you.
It is such a pleasure to be with you today at this National Forum and to be in the company of such dedicated bridge-builders whose work is to stitch together the diverse threads of humanity into a beautiful tapestry that reflects the hearts and minds of your communities, this country and the world. Two years ago, I visited Auckland shortly after I began my work as Executive Director of the United Religions Initiative. It was my first visit to New Zealand and my first face-to-face encounter with Jocelyn and George Armstrong. Now as those of you who know them can well attest, one is changed forever by meeting them, and this past week I have had the pleasure of long conversations on long drives and long walks about all manner of things social, political, religious and so much more. They opened their home and their hearts to me and I am so grateful. Thank you both for your deep kindness and boundless generosity. And many thanks to the Sikh community, who touched our hearts and filled both spirit and body with their love and generosity in feeding us last evening, and for the Anglican Church and the Cathedral for hosting last night’s dinner.
Let me begin this evening by also honoring the first peoples of this land, the Maori peoples, the ancient ones whose wisdom teaches us of living in the right relationship with one another and creation, and that in the reluctant separation of earth and sky, light and life came into being. With full recognition of centuries of the pain and suffering of Indigenous peoples here and everywhere, we honor the ancestors of this land and the great wisdom that they continue to offer the world.
We walk side by side, you and I: fellow travelers on life's pathways. We speak of being awakened to the wonder and mystery of the world, using words that reflect our windows to the Divine mystery of life around us and within us - words expressed through the teachings of the Buddha, of Baha'u'llah, of Lord Mahavir, of Jesus, of the Prophet Muhammad, may peace be upon him; words expressed through wisdom from the Vedas, the Torah, the Guru Granth Sahib, in Maori Whakatauki, and through the writings of poets and philosophers, saint and sages.
The words that we use to describe our beliefs come from different ancient sources. And while our traditions were born from different mothers and fathers and are often spoken in different languages using different symbols and stories, when we look into each other’s eyes and when we take one another’s hands, we see and feel in each other the light of which all of our traditions speak. As I hear you speak and as I look into each of your eyes, I see this light. I feel this light. I experience this light that I may call God in you, but not just a partial reflection of my Christian God, but the Creator, the Divine Spirit known by so many different names and yet in whom we all live and move and have our being. How magnificent is this force of life and love that it should appear across the earth like the flowers of a garden in so many different shapes and hues.
Mahatma Gandhi, Great Soul, looked into the eyes of those around him and said, “I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings. My wisdom flows from the Highest Source. I salute that Source in you. Let us work together for unity and love.”
Let us work together for unity and love.
Let us work together for unity and love.
Working together for unity and love, and for justice and for peace through intercultural and interreligious understanding and cooperation, this is the human spirit at its best. This is building bridges, heart to heart, community to community, in a way that will ensure the flourishing of humanity and of the earth which is our planet home.
Today, as we explore together the ways in which people of different cultures and religions can build bridges of understanding in service of healthy, thriving, peaceful communities, I would like to offer several ideas that I hope will help prime the pump for our conversations.
The first is about how perspective shapes our lives and our world.
The second is the notion of the world and our communities as a global commons.
The third are the ways in which communities of belief and practice function in our societies on this global commons.
And finally, what it looks like when people of different belief communities bring their different perspectives together and work to improve life in their communities, countries and world.
1. Perspective and the limits of our lenses
When I look out at this gathering, I see those flowers in the garden of humanity, each different in shape and form, color and hue. Each of us with our own perspectives on the world around us. We all have perspectives that are formed by our unique life experiences and circumstances. Our perspectives are the lenses through which we see the world and through which the world is interpreted by us. Those of us who wear glasses or contacts understand all too well the impact of lenses on our vision. In this same way, the experiences of our lives form lenses through which we see and interpret the world. The contexts of our lives, the families and circumstances into which we were born; the cultural, ethnic, and religious frameworks that we inherited or chose, our gender and sexual identities; our beliefs both spiritual and secular; the disciplines that we have chosen to study, all of these things form lenses through which we interpret the world. If we are unaware of our lenses, if we believe that our view is the only view, then we are living in the prison of our own arrogance and lack of self-awareness, and we fail to value the perspectives of others as essential to understanding this wondrous, complex world in which we live.
Over the years, as a dean and professor in the United States and India, I used a very simple exercise when working with students around issues of perspective. I call the exercise “The Box”. Now I will need your help in imagining that you are taking part in this exercise. Imagine that you are sitting in a circle with other colleagues, and in the middle of that circle, I place a box, a box that has a symbol on each side. As you look at the box, you may find yourself looking at a familiar symbol or a completely unfamiliar one. As you are looking at the box, I ask you the following question, “How do you know what the box looks like?” Now some ground rules… In seeking the answer to this question, you can not move from your place, because in our human forms, we are all bound to these bodies and the perspective from which we see the world. And rule number 2, you can’t move the box. So if you were sitting in this circle, looking at the box, how would you know what the box looks like? Take a moment and turn to the person next to you. Talk together about what, given your perspective, the box looks like.
To know what the box looks like, you have to inquire as to what others see from their perspective. If we were sitting is a circle around the box, we would go around and listen to each person’s perspective on the box. Each person will see something different when they look at the box. Even if they are sitting right beside each other looking at the same symbol, they are likely to describe it differently. Hence the first lesson of perspective: we are limited by our perspective and therefore need others in order to have a more complete picture of the world around us. But the converse is also true. Others need our unique perspective to fill out their picture of the world. Each of our perspectives is uniquely valuable, and contributes to an understanding of the whole. Now it should be noted that there are parts of the box which none of us see: the bottom and the inside. So there is always mystery. I find that people who believe that their perspective is the only true perspective do not even realize that they are looking at a box. They are too close. All they see is a flat surface. But the world, or truth, or the Divine, is much more than any one of us can see and comprehend. Therefore, we need each other. We need each other’s perspectives to have a more complete understanding of the world around us. Appreciating the diversity of different perspectives is an essential ingredient to intercultural and interfaith understanding and appreciation, and essential to building healthy and peaceful diverse communities.
2. The Global Commons
There is a picture on the wall of my office that was given to me by a friend who is an astronaut. It is a picture that she took from the space shuttle, which she was piloting: a picture of the earth from deep in space. Perhaps you have seen something similar. The blue, green earth, a perfectly round ball floating in a sea of black - earth and ocean the only visible distinguishing features. It is a magnificent image: so beautiful, so peaceful, so serene.
Gazing upon that image, it seems unfathomable that upon that beautiful sphere moving through the universe, its inhabitants are locked in life and death struggles with each other. From thousands of miles up in space, one is free from the sounds and stench of war and violence, of poverty and oppression, of misogyny and prejudice that plague the peoples of this planet. Reading the daily papers or watching the news rife with stories of this violence, one perhaps yearns for such distance from the suffering below.
But if this were our only view of humanity, as an observer from so far away out in space, we would be unaware that on this same planet, amidst the violence, miracles are occurring every second. At this very moment, new life is being born in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka, in Iraq, Iran and the United States, in Uganda and Nigeria, Argentina and Chile, in the Philippines and Malaysia, in Australia and New Zealand, to Palestinian and Israeli families. And in each of these places and so many more, people are engaging in acts of compassion and kindness. In each of these places, people are falling in love and forming friendships. And in many of these places, people of different cultural and religious traditions are gathering in circles in their communities; gathering in Councils to forge bonds of friendship and to work together to create cultures of peace, justice and healing.
When we look at the earth from the distance of thousands of miles up in space or the closeness of sitting in a circle of friends and colleagues, we need to see not just the potential for peace, but the reality of peace. We know that peace is not just that which we seek, but that which we know in the embrace of a loved one, through the warmth of friendship, in extending oneself in compassion and empathy towards a stranger, in standing together against prejudice, discrimination, violence, injustice and oppression, and in working for interfaith and intercultural understanding and cooperation.
The earth community is a “global commons,” a shared space in which limits on resources and the environment are planetary. Economies as well as human systems are inextricably interconnected, and human diversity is ever more apparent among the occupants of this planetary home. By the time current human population growth trends are expected to peak at mid-century, bringing with them cascading changes and dislocations, new generations of world citizens will be called upon to lead in addressing the myriad challenges that arise as we better learn to live together on the commons of our communities and the commons we know as Earth.
The term “commons” is derived from its ancient use in many languages describing land that in used “in common” by the people of a village. The village depends upon access to and use of a shared landscape that provides many necessities: grazing land, water, wood and fuel. Today, in an increasingly globalized and interconnected world, the commons might also be thought of as those things that are essential to members of the human community who share the planet. In this context, as Richard Bocking wrote in Reclaiming the Commons, the commons would include the air we breathe, the water we drink, the seas, forests, and mountains, the diversity of life itself and also that which humankind has created – language; scientific, cultural, and technical knowledge; and health, education, legal, political, social and economic systems. The commons, then, is synonymous with that which we must engage together to sustain life, implying a shared commitment to community, cooperation, respect for the rights of others, and the corresponding responsibilities that we each bear for life on this planet.
Our communities are also commons, and increasingly they are made up of people of different beliefs and perspectives, traditions and practices. Whereas once upon a time, it was perhaps possible to live one’s life only in the company of those like us in race, religion, and political perspective, today our communities reflect much more of the diversity that is the human community. Today, it is much more likely that those whom were once considered foreigners are now our neighbors, our colleagues at work, classmates of our children, and our family as marriage among people of different backgrounds increases. And such diversity requires that each of us deepen our understanding of self, other and the world in order to be a positive part of building peaceful communities. Here in Auckland or in towns to the north and south, communities are microcosms of the larger universe of ideas, perspectives, and people throughout New Zealand and throughout the world. In some areas that diversity is still barely apparent, but it is coming; I can promise you that. And if we embrace this growing diversity as an opportunity to grow in new and exciting ways, then the commons in which we live our lives can indeed be envisioned as a space which enables a unique kind of dialogue; dialogue that is not merely political or polemical, but humanistic and ecumenical. For then our communities will not be places dominated by a particular ideology nor theology, but rather an environment where a diversity of all viewpoints and all perspectives becomes the central ingredient of a vibrant community.
In many ways, people in communities around the world fall short of this ideal. We continue to struggle to engage diversity in all of its forms, and we have yet to find adequate ways in which the philosophy, structures, and programs of our institutions lead not to continued fragmentation, but rather to a public square of conversations. Were we to move closer to the goal of diverse communities, we might then indeed create a commons in our communities where we move from seeing difference as a barrier to difference as a resource; from seeing difference as a problem to difference as a promise. Too often, however, the answer to this conundrum of engaging diversity has been to mute different voices in favor of a single normative identity most often defined by the majority or by those in power. We need a different paradigm; one in which we have the opportunity to grow in ways that make us better at encountering difference and of discovering ways that lead to collaboration rather than to conflict, connection rather than isolation. Such a paradigm would invite the unique stories and experiences of each person into the commons where they are honored and recognized in such a way that our communities become a place of dialogue and interaction, of encounter and conversation, of inevitable conflict, but conflict that ultimately seeks a common cause. Such a paradigm is being experimented within the interfaith movement through organizations like the United Religions Initiative and in Centers like the proposed Center for Religious Diversity.
3. Diversity of Cultures and Religions and Human Societies
Different cultures and religions have emerged over time, either in relative isolation from each other, or by separating from a tradition of origin and forming a new tradition which often rejects at least parts of the old. As people who have grown up within a world defined by their particular culture or religion begin to encounter each other, this encounter provokes a series of responses. Let me illustrate this with a kind of parable. It is called the People of the Wells.
People of the Wells:
Imagine a group of people, a small community, living together in a harsh, dry, barren land. At the center of this community is a well - dug deep into the ground - from which the people who gather around it draw the water that sustains them in the harsh environment of their lives. In fact, there are scattered across this desert many communities, gathered around many wells, but because of the distance that separates them, each community lives in relative isolation from the other. The people of each well believe that they have found at their well the only way to survive in the desert of their lives. They celebrate this discovery with stories, songs and rituals, and they guard their precious water that gives them life. From time to time, travelers from other parts of the desert visit with stories of other wells which also provide water and similarly sustain the lives of other people. But the people of each well generally discount the possibility that any other well could provide the kind of nourishment that theirs does. So in their separation, their lives go on.
Over time, improved methods of transportation increase the ability of people to cross the desert. People of different wells begin to encounter one another with increasing frequency and learn more about each other. At first there is great fear and confusion at the discovery of these other foreign communities with their strange stories and incomprehensible rituals. Fear spreads throughout the various peoples of the wells. There is a sense that something must be done about the foreigners so that the purity of each community’s wells will not be polluted by other. In response, some groups withdraw into isolation, erecting unassailable walls around their well. Other groups see the only remedy as attacking those whom they see as a threat to their well and their existence. They move against their neighbors, brutally treating those different from themselves. For still others, a general attitude of tolerance begins to emerge. Some groups learn to tolerate one another and accept the fact that each well seems to provide water of a slightly different consistency and of a slightly different flavor. While publicly and politely practicing tolerance of each other's claims, each community privately maintains the superiority of their water. Each is convinced that their own experience is evidence that their well is the true well of the water that sustains life in the desert.
The reactions of people in our world as they encounter others from different religious traditions, much like the people of the wells in the parable, tend to fall into several categories.
Fear – fear of people different from ourselves.
Isolation – separation, withdrawing back into enclaves.
Othering – seeing others in a different group as a threat to one’s own group and making the other bad or evil.
Exclusive Truth Claims – proclaiming one’s own perspective as representing the absolute, only and incontrovertible truth.
Tolerance – yesterday I spoke about the problems of tolerance as keeping us in a suspended state of ignorance.
Certainly not to be overlooked are those who respond to diversity with curiosity or excitement at the opportunity to learn from people whose practices are different from their own. In the end, these are the ones who explore what lies beneath the surface of the desert. They are the ones who dive deep into the exploration of diversity and discover that there is deep in the earth beneath the desert, a great ocean that is the common source of all the wells in the desert.
Like the water of the wells, different cultures and religions have their flavor, their own systems of language, symbols and stories. Too often we assume that just because we are using the same language of English, we understand what a person of a different culture or religion is saying. But this is rarely the case, and what we need is translation. We need to learn more about each other’s traditions and practices so we can understand each other’s perspective and not only understand but learn from one another. And this is a great promise of interfaith understanding, dialogue, and action. After two decades serving in colleges and universities, I am convinced that education about different cultures and religions, through classroom learning and outside the classroom experience, is essential. If we fail to provide this education, we are sending out leaders into all sectors of society who are ill-equipped to lead amidst the diversity of our communities. While intercultural and interreligious education is an imperative, a second, crucial aspect of engaging diversity is action. Let me share with you a little about one community’s journey towards interfaith action; the global community known as the United Religions Initiative.
4 - Interfaith in Action – URI
In my role as Executive Director of the United Religions Initiative, I have the opportunity to experience the vast diversity of perspectives of the different peoples of this planet and to see many people bring their different perspectives together in a powerful coalition of interfaith bridgebuilding.
In the 15 years since its founding, the United Religions Initiative has become the largest grassroots interfaith peacebuilding organization in the world. During this time, URI developed and piloted a new approach to building diverse and cohesive communities while engaging the causes of conflict and injustice that have plagued the global community.
URI Cooperation Circles actively engage in daily interfaith cooperation by rallying people of different faiths to address critical issues in their community, such as health, education, economic justice, caring for the environmental, women’s empowerment, and youth leadership. People who would not otherwise interact are collaborating on solutions and establishing bonds as human beings, breaking down harmful religious and cultural barriers that fuel religiously-motivated violence.
Despite being more interconnected than at any point in human history, global events highlight a world ravaged by deep divisions among people of different religions and cultures. These divisions are rooted in historic grievances and are perpetuated by discrimination, prejudice, and fear of “the other”, which collectively lead to social unrest, and ultimately violence and human suffering around the world. Military solutions have continued to fail in delivering sustainable solutions to interreligious conflicts and in countering violent extremism. Time and time again, interfaith organizations such as the United Religions Initiative and Religions for Peace have been held up as the kind of positive, non-military, non-violent approach to dealing with rising violence, including that of religious extremism, which we must support
When people of different faiths and cultures work together on issues that improve their community, it fosters conditions that reduce the potential for religiously-motivated violence. This model has been highly effective for reducing violence and achieving long-lasting peace. URI’s work combines interreligious bridgebuilding with community-based actions that address the causes of conflict. This dual strategy is at the heart of URI’s success.
At the same time that individual Cooperation Circles are creating impact in their communities, URI as a global network connects Cooperation Circles to one another in world-wide web, creating unprecedented opportunities to share strategies and collaborate in interfaith peacebuilding efforts. Through interfaith education, interreligious dialogue, community organizing, skill building and peacebuilding training, URI is building a cohesive and connected grassroots movement committed to a world living in peace. In addition, URI’s work with religious leaders and at the United Nations connects the voices of the grassroots with institutional leaders and policy makers.
So what does this work look like on the ground for interfaith organizations?
Where active violence is occurring, interfaith groups intervene by bringing together combatants into dialogue - using conflict resolution and peacebuilding strategies to stop the violence, build relationships and create the conditions for developing lasting peace.
In the Philippines, URI groups built bridges between the government, military and rebel leaders, creating a foundation of relationship that has been essential to the creating of the Bangsamoro Peace Agreement and the still-fragile peace.
In Pakistan, URI’s more than 40 grassroots groups train young people of all religions in peacebulding by forging powerful partnerships among the same youth who are the target of the recruitment by the Taliban.
In Nigeria, URI Cooperation Circles work amidst extreme violence to create lasting connections among Muslims and Christians, providing a peaceful alternative to the violence of terrorism.
And in Yemen, an extraordinary group of young leaders is standing up in the middle of the horror of war to proclaim that non-violence is the only answer path to peace.
Where the legacy of violence and war have left deep scars on communities, interfaith groups are creating coalitions of people from different groups who are working together to restore relationships and rebuild communities and countries.
In Sri Lanka, URI Cooperation Circle Sarvodaya works in 1,500 villages across the country organizing interfaith coalitions to continue the rebuilding of the country after years of war.
In Bosnia/Herzegovina and Serbia, deeply rooted ethnic prejudices are being transformed by URI’s work of interfaith bridgebuilding.
Where conflict has not yet erupted into violence, but issues of poverty, injustice, human rights violations and deteriorating social conditions are creating an environment highly vulnerable to the rise of violent extremism, interfaith groups work to address issues such as economic development, education, health, women’s empowerment, and youth leadership.
In India, Cambodia, Argentina, Colombia and across the world, URI interfaith groups are working to make the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations a reality community by community.
Where ignorance and prejudice erode civility and fragment communities, interfaith groups build bridges of interreligious and intercultural understanding enabling diverse communities to establish cohesive relationships.
In Europe, URI Cooperation Circles have long worked for affirming diversity as an essential value for all communities; a task even more urgent in the midst of the refugee crisis. And in Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, interfaith councils are working to deepen understanding that dispels stereotypes through education and through community-based action programs build strong, connected, diverse communities.
From ignorance to understanding
One of my favorite stories of Interfaith in Action involves a URI group in Africa called Bloodlife Initiative Kenya. Bloodlife Initiative is motivated by the need to save lives through blood transfusion. It is headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya and works against cultural and religious stereotypes associated with blood transfusion, bringing together Roman Catholic, Protestant and Pentecostal Christians with Muslims, Baha’is and tribal peoples. In one of their clinics, a Muslim patient was refusing to have a life-saving blood transfusion unless he could be assured that the blood he would receive was from a Muslim. One of the interfaith workers got two bags of blood and held them up before the man, saying, “If you can tell us which of these is from a Muslim, we will happily give it to you.” Needless to say, the man was stumped, agreed to receive the blood, and has become an interfaith worker with Bloodlife Initiative Kenya.
From exclusivism to pluralism
“Religions are different roads converging to the same point,” wrote Mahatma Gandhi. “What does it matter that we take different roads, so long as we reach the same goal. Different religions are beautiful flowers from the same garden, or branches from the same majestic tree. Therefore, they are equally true, though being received and interpreted through human instruments, equally imperfect.
One interfaith group that models the moving from tolerance to interdependence is Coexister, which is based in France and works across Europe. Coexister’s motto is “Diversity in Faith, Unity in Action.” Their membership of more than 2,000 young people of all religious and non-religious backgrounds engages communities through dialogue forums, community action projects and study trips. They emphasize respecting people of all beliefs and have been particularly active in engaging Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, hostility towards Christians, Indigenous rights and most recently have been focusing on anti-refugee attitudes across Europe. Coexister members also travel to many countries carrying messages of peace through diversity across the world.
From tolerance to interdependence
In creating an interdependent world, interfaith work has stretched beyond traditional areas of conflict transformation and dialogue to action areas such as the environment. In Jordan, Christians, Jews, Muslims and Druze peoples have come together around equal access to and sustainable use of water from the Jordan River.
In the United States, the interfaith group Interfaith Power and Light is a national network of religious communities committed to addressing global warming. Member congregations are making energy and water conservation improvements to their houses of worship, installing solar panels, holding environmental training programs and lobbying state and local governments for stronger climate policies and investments in renewable energy.
And finally, when I was in Australia last weekend, I met folks from the Faith Ecology Network, based in Sydney, which brings people from Aboriginal, Anglican, Baha’I, Buddhist, Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Jewish, Hindu, Islamic and Quaker communities together with scientists to foster reasons for environmental advocacy.
For us to begin to understand the creative possibilities that are held within the diversity of human experience and to embrace the complexity of the human community, we must take the plunge and dive deep into the waters that lie beneath the surface of our lives. We must move beyond exclusive claims of truth, whether they be religious, political or ideological, and embrace a relational understanding of how truth becomes known only as we encounter one another and share our perspectives. If we are to move in the direction of peace, then we must first move out of our fearful isolation and ignorance, risk encounters with one another, move beyond tolerance and develop a sense of mutual respect for the diversity of each other's experience. Then, only then, will we be equipped to weave together the strands of our diversity into that beautiful fabric of our common humanity.
