In ‘God on Psychedelics,’ Don Lattin offers a roadmap of congregational tripping

The veteran religion reporter investigates how various religious groups are using psychedelics to inspire chemically induced mystical experiences.

Author Don Lattin and his new book "God on Psychedelics." Photo courtesy Lattin

April 10, 2023

By 

Yonat Shimron

(RNS) — Decades after being forced underground by the war on drugs, psychedelics are going mainstream. Researchers are rediscovering the possibilities of using psilocybin, ketamine, MDMA and LSD as tools in treating depression, addiction and psychological distress.

Oh, and they may spark a spiritual awakening, too.

In his new book, “God on Psychedelics,” Don Lattin, a veteran religion journalist, investigates how some religious groups are encouraging chemically induced revelatory experiences of human interconnectedness and unity.

Lattin, who for years covered religion for the San Francisco Chronicle and has written six other books, mostly about psychedelics, said things are changing fast. Though mostly illegal for recreational use, universities around the world are studying psychedelics in clinical studies, and some states are taking notice: Oregon last year approved the adult use of psilocybin, the hallucinogen in “magic mushrooms,” though it is still hammering out the rules for its production and sale.

Five years ago, people — and particularly clergy — didn’t want to be quoted about their experiences with psychedelics. Now they’re far more open. Lattin said tripping is being explored in congregational settings and in chaplaincy.

RNS caught up with Lattin, who lives in the Bay Area, to talk about his new book. The interview was edited for length and clarity.

Your book introduces readers to the term entheogen — drugs taken for religious or spiritual purposes. Are psychedelics really God-enabling drugs?

They can be. “Psychedelic” means “mind-manifesting,” while entheogen refers to “the divine within.” I write about rabbis, priests and other clergy who do see entheogens as a way to renew the faith. Then there are the “nones” — people of no particular faith — who are consciously using psychedelics as a spiritual practice. Some are affiliated with new religious movements, including two originating in Brazil that use ayahuasca, a tea brewed from two plants native to the Amazon. A lot of ayahuasca or magic mushrooms churches based in the U.S. are underground, but some are going public as the legal situation shifts. They see sacred plant medicines as sacraments.

Another congregation I profile is called Sacred Garden Church. It seeks divine communion with different kinds of psychedelic drugs and sees itself as a “postmodern church” that follows the “path of least dogma.”

You point out that psychedelics don’t always induce feelings of unity with all humankind. They can also be terrifying, right?

Aldous Huxley, the famous British writer who wrote “Brave New World” and “The Doors of Perception,” called them heaven and hell drugs. They can give you a taste of heaven and they can send you right to hell, too. It really depends on the intention and context.

Even people who use these substances cautiously and carefully to open up to greater spiritual awareness or psychological insight may have very difficult experiences. You can have a bad trip. You can feel like you’re dying. You can feel like you’ve lost your body. You can feel you’re going crazy. These drugs can fuel feelings of unity, awe, compassion and gratitude. They can also induce paranoia, grandiosity and existential dread. But with an experienced guide, it can be fruitful. It’s like in therapy — trauma from your past can come up. Having someone help you through those feelings in a safe, contained environment can be really helpful.

Author Don Lattin. Photo courtesy Deanne Fitzmaurice.

It’s been eight years since scientists at New York University and Johns Hopkins University recruited clergy for a study to see if psilocybin deepened their spiritual lives. Will it ever be published?

It’s taking longer than most people thought, but researchers expect to publish a paper sometime this year. I tracked down four or five people in the study who were comfortable talking about their trips. Some people, like an Episcopal priest I write about, saw his psychedelic experience as “a second ordination” — for the first time, he felt the power of the Holy Spirit as bodily energy. Before, his faith was all in his head, too intellectual. Psilocybin inspired him to start an organization called Ligare, which is already having church retreats where other clergy can have these experiences. Currently, they can only do that in the Netherlands or a handful of other countries with less repressive drug laws.

But now Oregon and Colorado have legalized magic mushrooms and are regulating supervised psychedelic sessions. Under federal law, hallucinogens are only clearly legal in clinical trials or among churches that get a formal exemption, such as the Native American Church, or certain ayahuasca fellowships. But more than 20 cities in the U.S. have directed their police departments to stop arresting people for using certain types of drugs and plant medicines, so the legal situation is rapidly changing.

Is ‘mystical’ really the right word to describe the experience of psychedelic drugs?

Researchers have surveys they give people to measure if they had a mystical experience: Did you feel a sense of unity with the cosmos or with nature or other people? Did you feel awe and wonder? Mystical experiences are not always positive, but they’re profound, soul-shaking experiences that can crack people open. Then there’s the question as to whether psychedelics produce just altered states of consciousness, or whether they encourage altered traits of human behavior. Do they make us more aware and compassionate? I think that’s an important question, but not everyone does.

Mysticism itself can be dangerous to religious orthodoxy, no matter how it’s induced. The mystic often challenges the religious authorities of the time. That explains the hesitancy that many Christian leaders have toward mysticism, especially when it’s drug-induced. Some may also feel that it’s too much of a “short cut” to God.

What are the chances of finding a church that does psychedelics?

I bet you could, or at least a spiritual retreat center where you could experience this. Informed insiders estimate there are hundreds of these psychedelic churches. Some are very small — maybe a dozen people. Others may have 100 members. Then there are people who go down to Peru or Mexico or Brazil and work with shamans or indigenous medicine people and come back and start their own groups. Some are sincere. Others are charlatans.

There are several national networks of people lobbying now to reform drug laws. In Oakland, the city council passed a law a few years ago directing the police department to make these drugs their lowest priority. Sacred Garden Church came out of that local campaign. But this is not just happening in pockets of woke enlightenment like Berkeley, Boulder or Boston. There are big psychedelic churches in Utah, Arizona, Florida. It’s happening all over.

A lot of these new psychedelic churches keep certain Christian elements, right?

Yes. Take Santo Daime, one of the syncretic religious movements I profile in the book. It’s a mixture of folk Catholicism, spiritualism, African and Indigenous religion. You’ll see a Christian cross in their ceremonies, but also the Star of David. Many people in Santo Daime still consider themselves Christian or Catholic. What I found interesting was the large number of people in these groups in the U.S. who were raised Jewish. They probably wouldn’t call themselves “Christian,” but might say they are connecting to “Christ consciousness.”

You tried to join a couple of these psychedelic churches, but in the end, you went in a different direction. Describe the group you belong to.

“God on Psychedelics: Tripping Across the Rubble of Old-Time Religion,” by Don Lattin. Courtesy Lattin

It’s just a meditation group that I started working with about a dozen years back. We meet at a retreat house in Oakland run by a Catholic religious order. But it’s not Catholic. It has nothing to do with psychedelics. We employ a mix of contemplative prayer and Buddhist meditation. Many of us — but not all — are also involved in 12-step recovery groups. On some days, we’ll hear a dharma talk from a teacher from the San Francisco Zen Center who is also a recovering alcoholic. On another day, we’ll employ a lectio divina reading, perhaps a passage from the gnostic Gospel of Thomas, or a Rumi poem.

This is something I was already involved with before I started experimenting with psychedelics again as part of my research for my previous book, “Changing Our Minds — Psychedelic Sacraments and the New Psychotherapy.” I joined these psychedelic fellowships as a reporter, as a participant/observer who was sincerely open to the possibility of becoming a member. In the end, I decided none of them were for me.

I don’t really see psychedelics as a lifestyle. A lot of people may have one or two experiences with psychedelics. They will call it one of the most significant experiences of their lives. But it’s not like they want to do this every weekend, or even every month. I’m in that camp. There’s a famous line by the spiritual commentator Alan Watts, “Once you get the message,” he said, “hang up the phone.”

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PSYCHEDELIC 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for LSD 

 Martini Judaism

Why I am saying kaddish for Al Jaffee of Mad magazine

A childhood literary hero has died — the man who taught me the art of snark.

April 12, 2023

By 

Jeffrey Salkin

Mad magazine was the haggadah of my childhood.

It was my sacred text, my script and my constant companion — so much so that I cannot imagine my childhood and early adolescence without it.

That is why these past few days have been sad for me, and for so many others.

Al Jaffee, perhaps the last of the creators of Mad, has died at the biblical age of 102. In 2016, Guinness World Records recognized him for having had the longest career as a comic artist.

Let me go through that haggadah — that “sacred” script — of my childhood.

I lived for Mad. 

Every month:

• “Spy vs. Spy” was a playful, silent introduction to the Cold War (along with Boris and Natasha from “Rocky and Bullwinkle”).
• Dave Berg’s “Lighter Side of…” introduced me to the small absurdities of life (and when his daughter attended my college, and I met him on the first day of the fall semester, it was one of the most memorable days of my youth).
• Don Martin’s cartoons. Yes, they were, in their own way, a little sadistic. But, as a 10-year-old, what did I know about sadism and borderline-inappropriate humor? They were hysterical.

Then, of course, there were the satires on movies and television shows. Those satires would introduce me to the art of satire and parody, which is a love I have maintained for my entire life.

Some of those satires became famous.

Who can forget “Antenna On The Roof,” which updated “Fiddler on the Roof”? It was more than a satire; it was a piece of American Jewish social commentary. It suggested the shtetl world of “Fiddler” had morphed into a world of bourgeois acceptability (and if you were paying attention, you could see an homage to that satire in the Coen Brothers’ “A Serious Man,” with Larry on the roof, fixing the antenna).

But today, we mourn Al Jaffee, who was responsible for two of Mad’s most iconic features.

First, the fold-in of the back cover. This was Jaffee’s sardonic response to “Playboy” magazine’s fold-out in the center of the magazine.

To quote The New York Times:

It was in 1964 that Mr. Jaffee created the Mad Fold-In, an illustration-with-text feature on the inside of the magazine’s back cover that seemed at first glance to deliver a straightforward message. When the page was folded in thirds, however, both illustration and text were transformed into something entirely different and unexpected, often with a liberal-leaning or authority-defying message.

For me, and for many others, the fold-in was a monthly experience of subversive origami. For this former 10-year-old, the idea that you could take a picture, fold it and manipulate it, and come up with something entirely new was a monthly artistic revelation.

But, second — and even more important — was “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.” For me, this was inspirational.

It was also, in a sense, aspirational. I knew that if I ever responded to stupid questions the way he did, I would get into serious trouble.

Which is why when people ask the 6-foot-4 me, “Did you play basketball?” I have (thus far, pretty much successfully) suppressed the inner response: “No. Did you play miniature golf?”

That is the point. Al Jaffee, and the rest of the Mad artists and writers, created a world of response that we only wished we could emulate.

Mad Magazine’s cartoon for Al Jaffee’s 100th birthday in 2021. Image via Mad Magazine

Al Jaffee was deeply Jewish — born in Savannah, Georgia, as Abraham to Lithuanian Jewish parents; his mother actually took him back to the shtetl in Lithuania for what was supposed to have been a brief sojourn, but which turned into years. (How Mad — to do the American Jewish immigrant journey in reverse.)

He faced antisemitism in his career. He reminisced about applying for positions in advertising agencies:

In a lot of firms, there was an unwritten policy that no Jews need apply … You went in and sat down with your portfolio and the message came through clearly: “Look, your work looks pretty good and I wouldn’t mind taking you in, but there’s a policy here. We don’t hire too many Jewish people.”

That was what was amazing about the comic book industry. It was brand new. Jews could forge their own path.

Mad magazine was also deeply Jewish. It was a piece of modern, secular Jewish literature — almost up there with Philip Roth. The list of the members of that fabled “usual gang of idiots” reads like a Jewish accounting firm: Al Feldstein, Harvey Kurtzman (who once drew a caricature of me), Mort Drucker, Will Elder, Dave Berg and, of course, Al Jaffee. (No, no women. This was the era of “Mad Men.”)

Contrast Mad with my second humorous love, the National Lampoon, which I started reading in college.

If you wanted to extend Lenny Bruce’s famous shtick: “Mad magazine was Jewish; the National Lampoon was goyish.”

The National Lampoon emerged from the decidedly gentile and genteel walls of the Harvard Lampoon. Its creators were gentiles — Doug Kenney and Henry Beard. So, it seemed, were many of its writers.

As Thomas Carney wrote:

The “National Lampoon” was the first full-blown appearance of non-Jewish humor in years —not anti-Semitic, just non-Jewish. Its roots were W.A.S.P. and Irish Catholic … This was not Jewish street-smart humor as a defense mechanism; this was slash-and-burn stuff that alternated in pitch but moved very much on the offensive. It was always disrespect everything, mostly yourself, a sort of reverse deism.

Mad was not that way. It did not snarl. It soothed. It told you life could be funny, but it did so in a way that was rarely cruel. It was the gentle, knowing joking of your uncle — not the elitist prank of the frat boy.

At this moment, I flash back to a personal memory.

It is of a photograph.

Decades ago, I was visiting my sons at summer camp. I picked up a copy of Mad magazine that belonged to one of them. I also grabbed a Hebrew Bible that seemed to be lying around.

The photo is of me in a chair, reading Mad, with the Hebrew Bible peeking out from behind it.

Yes, that was me.

Mad magazine, but with the Hebrew Bible behind it.

The sacred text of my childhood and the sacred text of my adulthood.

So, in saying kaddish for Al Jaffee, let me acknowledge my debt to him. The fold-in showed me that creativity could be disruptive, and vice versa. “Snappy Answers” gave me an attitude toward the absurdities of everyday life.

But, more than that. I go back to my childhood memories and honor this fact: Mad magazine made life bearable for so many nerdy kids.

Like me.

So, Al, when you get to heaven, God will ask you questions. The Talmud even lists them for us.

Those questions won’t be stupid.

Just do yourself a favor.

Don’t — I repeat, don’t — give any snappy answers.

  

 

A grain farmer applies Buddhist principles to preserve the land — and maximize taste

Food and farming have always served as outlets for Mai Nguyen’s Buddhist practice. But a decade ago the Californian applied the faith's teachings of interconnectedness to a holistic approach to farming.

Mai Nguyen at their farm operation, on a small experimental plot, near Petaluma, California, on Dec. 30, 2017. Photo by Lance Cheung/USDA Media/Creative Commons

April 12, 2023

By 

Shaina Shealy

(RNS) — The first time Mai Nguyen tried bread made with hard Red Fife wheat, it was unlike any bread they’d tasted. It was nutty and sweet, like marzipan. Later, Nguyen tried a slice of milk bread made with Chiddam Blanc de Mars, a soft spring wheat that Nguyen had planted and harvested on their own. The wheat smelled like pecans and honey, and like bright sage. It was umami and creamy, said Nguyen, like a bowl of porridge.

On a farm in Sonoma County, California, Nguyen grows heritage grains cultivated centuries ago in Kazakhstan, Mexico and South Africa, using organic, drought-tolerant and soil-enriching methods. Instead of spraying synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, Nguyen keeps the soil healthy with crop and animal rotations.

This holistic, diversified approach to farming requires less water than most conventional grains and relies on human and animal power as much as possible. The only water Nguyen uses is rainfall, even in California’s driest years.

Nguyen’s approach, based on Buddhist principles of interconnectedness, is designed to minimize negative impacts on the larger community of animals, people, plants and air.

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“My Vietnamese and Buddhist upbringing taught me about interconnectedness and how we need to be concerned not only about our consumption, but about how we’re connected to everything in the world’s ecosystem,” Nguyen said. “I feel that as a farmer I have a responsibility to the other parts of our planet’s ecosystem.”

But not least among the benefits, Nguyen said, is the expansive flavors the farming techniques yield.

Mai Nguyen poses with some of the garbanzo beans they used to seed one of their fields near Petaluma, California, on Dec. 30, 2017. Photo by Lance Cheung/USDA Media/Creative Commons

Nguyen’s parents fled Vietnam as young adults and landed in California as refugees in the late ’70s and early ’80s, after losing nearly everything to the war in Southeast Asia. Food functioned as a way to connect to ancestors and the past. Nguyen’s grandmother grew rau rum, chile peppers and bitter melon in the back yard, and Nguyen, who uses the pronouns they and them, remembers helping harvest these vegetables for weeknight family dinners.

Their grandmother also taught them about medicinal plants and boiling herbs down to healing concoctions. The two often made jars of fermented baby eggplant together to sell at temple on Sundays.

In this way, food and farming have always served as outlets for Nguyen’s Buddhist practice, which, growing up, they said, was “not just a spiritual practice, but one that is very socially connected and informed. It’s hard to say it was a religion … It was more just life.”

Studying ideas about matter in her college physics course, Nguyen couldn’t stop thinking about the waste that humans make and the Buddhist idea of reincarnation. “This waste isn’t going anywhere,” Nguyen recalled thinking, “so we must figure out how to give it a new life.”

Nguyen began leading a composting initiative for their cooperative housing unit. One day, after a shift of shoveling rotten food into a mound of compost, they wandered off into a campus garden plot. They plucked a berry from the field and noticed that it tasted completely different from the berries from the grocery store. “The berries had this vibrant and milky hue to them,” Nguyen said, “like they were already swimming in whipped cream.”

Standing in the campus garden, eating berries grown in composted soil, Nguyen recognized a profound dynamic of farming: giving waste a new life; connecting to family and Vietnamese culture; paying respect to ancestors through land stewardship; protecting nature; and building something that brings not only nourishment, but delight.

After college, Nguyen apprenticed on farms, including a stint raising grain and Vietnamese vegetables — gourds, chiles, squash, purple shiso — at a Buddhist monastery in Ukiah. There, Nguyen reveled in a feeling of closeness with their ancestors, a duty to living in a healthy environment, “out of a deep respect for a longer lineage of people who have done the work of land stewardship and seed saving,” they said.

Nguyen became fascinated with grain farming that improved the earth. They learned how to use the plants’ stalks as straw to create swales to reduce floods and how to increase organic matter in the soil. They also learned how to help rehabilitate land and reduce carbon emissions, while also making the land productive.

Mai Nguyen, left, talks about the importance of local grains at a farmers market in Torrance, California, on Jan. 15, 2017. Courtesy photo by Jessica Blackstock

About a decade ago, Nguyen leased land to start their own grain farm. Many of their friends and family turned their noses up at the idea of a career in farming, but Nguyen’s conviction was deep.

Today, Nguyen produces over 20 varieties of grain, including drought-resistant wheat, barley, rye and millet, making them one of the very few California wheat farmers who has been able to produce substantial crops in the recent dry years. Nguyen has also developed commercial relationships with some of California’s most renowned bakers. The San Francisco Chronicle has called Nguyen’s grains “a coveted insider’s secret among top bakers and a favorite of breweries and distilleries.” 

The biggest challenge to achieving sustainability is finding the right equipment. The machines needed to harvest, clean and mill the grain can cost upwards of $400,000. Much of this equipment is miles away and is sized for industrial operations — for years, the only grain cleaners Nguyen could find had grain minimums of 20,000 tons, about twice Nguyen’s annual production of any variety.

The best option was a melon seed cleaner on a family farm, where it took Nguyen three hours to drive to. Even then, the grain was often returned with vegetable seeds and small rocks. 

Nguyen’s goal is to create an equipment cooperative with other small-production farmers, which she believes would encourage more small staple-food farming in California and model local, sustainable food production for other regions of the U.S.

Despite Nguyen’s success, farming can be heartbreaking. Even treating the land with intense care and love, crops sometimes fail. Climate change has increased rainfall’s unpredictability, which can throw off Nguyen’s entire harvest schedule. Without herbicides, organic crops ripen at different times, and weeds and other grains often aren’t eliminated before harvest. Because Nguyen does their own seed saving, they must help diverse varieties of seeds adapt to a California climate, which can take time and patience.

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RELATED: Zimbabwean nonprofit promotes ‘God’s way’ of farming

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Then there are the problems that any farmer might have: fungus or mold infections; storms that damage equipment; backups at the mill. Nguyen wears a gold chain necklace with a jade pendant of female bodhisattva. In moments of loss, chaos and frustration, they reach for the necklace and think about the Buddhist Way. It’s like having a mentor, Nguyen said.

Nguyen knows that their small grain operation in California won’t solve climate change. But when Nguyen loses faith in their farm or feels overwhelmed by the vastness of climate change, or frustrated with corporate agriculture leaders who aren’t adapting to fight the global crisis, they turn to Buddhism.

“In Buddhism, there’s a strong focus on a kind of acceptance for what things are,” Nguyen said. “It’s the hardest thing you can do.”

We know Americans have become less religious. Surprising new data shows us where.

North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Michigan saw drops in total religious adherents of at least 10%.

A view of Lewiston, Idaho. Photo by Ethan Grey/Unsplash/Creative Commons

April 12, 2023

By 

Ryan Burge

(RNS) — One of the most fascinating aspects of American religion is the peculiarity of its distribution across the United States. We know that large swaths of New England are dominated by mainline Protestants and white Catholics, while parts of South Florida have large Jewish enclaves, and Utah is the base for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Seeing these geographic affiliations up close, however, means looking at religious populations at the county level, which is notoriously difficult. Many local religious bodies do not keep accurate membership rolls, and among the influential non-denominational Christian congregations, there is by definition no central recordkeeping about weekly attendance or even the number of houses of worship.

To remedy that, the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies conducts a decennial census with the aim of collecting information about the number of “congregations, members, adherents, and attendees” of as many religious groups as possible, including county data. This group has just released preliminary data from its collection efforts in 2020 and posted it in the Association of Religion Data Archives. Given that the Religion Census has been conducted for decades, it’s possible to measure religious change at the county level, too. 

“Percent of Each County That is Part of a Religious Body” Graphic by Ryan Burge

The data solidifies what we know about American religion: Faith is particularly strong in what has traditionally been known as the Bible Belt. In many counties in states like Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, over half of the county-level population is aligned with a religious tradition.

That high level of religious adherence also extends northward through the Great Plains in states like Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas. Out West, meanwhile, counties in Washington and Oregon have fewer than 35% of their populations aligned with a faith tradition. The same trend is apparent in New England as well.

With the share of Americans with no religious affiliation rising dramatically over the last few years, it stands to reason that the Religion Census would also note this decline at the county level. What’s surprising is where the largest drops in religious adherence came from. 

“Change in Rate of Religious Adherents, 2010 vs 2020” Graphic by Ryan Burge

Between 2010 and 2020, many counties across North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Michigan saw drops in total religious adherents of at least 10%. That same decline appeared in Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts, as well.

However, South Florida and many of the least-populous counties in Texas close to the border with Mexico saw notable growth, as did parts of New Mexico and Arizona. Additionally, counties in Idaho became more religious in 2020 over 2010.

One obvious cause is the growing so-called God Gap — the expanding chasm between areas that vote Republican in high numbers and display a higher level of religious devotion and counties that favor Democrats and are frequently less religious. To test the strength of the God Gap, I created a scatter plot of the relationship between the vote share in the 2020 presidential election and the growth or decline in religion between 2010 and 2020. 

“Did Republican Counties Gain Religious Adherents Over the Last Decade” Graphic by Ryan Burge

On the right side of the plot are counties where Trump got a larger share than Biden in 2020, while the left side are more Democratic-leaning counties. At the top of the graph are counties that added adherents between 2010 and 2020, while the bottom half are those counties where religious adherence dropped.

A simple linear model indicates that the relationship between these two variables is essentially non-existent. Counties that were more Trump-friendly actually seemed to lose religious adherents at slightly higher rates than predominantly Democratic counties, but the impact was so subtle as to not be statistically or substantively significant.

Obviously, religious change is tied up with a number of factors, including immigration, age, economics and fertility. Those are the types of puzzles that social sciences will try to piece together with this tremendous source of data over the next decade. With some solid theorizing and strong data analysis, the academic community will develop a clearer picture of the dynamics of the American religious landscape.

Ryan Burge. Courtesy photo

(Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and author of “The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going.” He can be reached on Twitter at @ryanburge. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Ahead of the Trend is a collaborative effort between Religion News Service and the Association of Religion Data Archives made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation. See other Ahead of the Trend articles here.

 Opinion

This holy season in six faiths is a rebuke to Christian nationalism 

If this nation does not provide full rights for believers of all faiths, I don’t want any part of it.

A whirling dervish spins during a traditional performance during the holy month of Ramadan at Al Muezz Street in Cairo, Egypt, late Tuesday, April 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

April 10, 2023

By 

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush

(RNS) — Over the past week, my closest cousins and I have been exchanging greetings and best wishes for holy observances. My cousins are Jewish and celebrating Passover, and I’m a Baptist minister enjoying Easter Monday today. I once wrote about my belief against an exclusive understanding of heaven, pointing out that if it didn’t include my Jewish cousins, I certainly didn’t want to end up there.

I feel the same way about America. If this nation does not provide full rights for my Jewish cousins, I don’t want any part of it. The same goes for my friends and neighbors from all different backgrounds and beliefs who will celebrate holidays this month — Ramadan, Vaisakhi and Holi, to name just the most prominent. The concurrent holy days form a portrait of the faith life of the United States as our founding fathers ordained it.

Unfortunately, not everyone sees it that way. Christian nationalism has been on a precipitous rise since the late days of the Trump administration and has continued through last week, when his most fervent supporters likened his arraignment on fraud charges to Christ’s crucifixion. Adherents of this vitriolic ideology do not share in the vision of love and abundance common to so many of the world’s faiths. Rather, Christian nationalists seek to impose their narrow worldview on others, to the detriment of racial and religious minorities, LGBTQ+ people and anyone else who dares to challenge their bigotry. 

Christian nationalism is the most potent threat to this nation’s democracy and diversity. But as Christ has taught us, love is more powerful than tyranny. We can defeat the tyranny of Christian nationalism through love for our siblings who live and believe differently than we do. It will require a shared commitment to defending our right to believe and the ability of our neighbors to do the same.

Many are already championing a path forward into a multi-faith future. One need look no further than the Christians Against Christian Nationalism campaign, spearheaded by our friends at the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty; the advocacy of Rabbi Jonah Pesner, who has spoken about the tradition of welcoming the stranger during Passover; the work of  Najeeba Syed, who spoke with me recently about the importance of interfaith relationships during Ramadan; Hindus for Human Rights, who are pushing for interfaith justice during Holi; the list goes on.

Just this past weekend, my family and I went to Easter services at the Washington National Cathedral, where Bishop Mariann Budde preached about the value of religious diversity — a sentiment she also shared when I interviewed her this past week.

Promoting interfaith harmony is in itself a powerful act of resistance. Christian nationalists and their allies in office can continue to spew hate. They can continue to claim that their vision of America is blessed by God. They can continue to deny the truth that this nation, while never perfect, was founded on the idea that people of all faiths and none have a divine right to participate in our democracy. But they can’t take away our solidarity and our commitment to building a nation that works for all of us. 

When my sons ask me about the meaning of Easter, I tell them it’s about God’s love. Jesus rose from the dead to remind us that there is always hope and that God’s love is more powerful than any oppressive ruler or system. 

This simple message — that God is love and that all of creation is part of God’s Beloved Community and, therefore, deserving of dignity and respect — is at the core of my faith. And it is because of my faith, not in spite of it, that I will continue to fight for a country where all of us have equal standing.

My version of Christianity means I believe that religious diversity, the separation of church and state and religious freedom for all are foundational principles of the American project. We are all welcome in this country. We are all afforded dignity. And we all have a responsibility to stand up for the rights of our neighbors across faith and place. 

(The Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush is a Baptist minister and president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)