Religion and diplomacy: Let the conversation begin

Sukkot, the Festival of Booths, invites us to join together to erect a haven of calm, peace and beauty amid a changing, challenging world. The work of erecting a sukkah is communal — we team to build the walls, to arrange the s’chach (roofing) and to decorate the sides to make our booths habitable and beautiful. That festival project is precisely what humanity is called to do with our human home, too: to convene to fashion the kind of world in which all people can thrive.

I recently returned from a two-day trip to Washington, D.C., and a conference devoted to the shared project of fashioning a haven for all people:

• Standing in the corridor, I chat with a Buddhist priest about the role of humor in her tradition and in my Jewish culture. We reflect that millennia of coping with suffering have honed our capacity to laugh and to joke as a way of retaining perspective, values and humanity.

• Seated next to an imam from the Middle East, we listen to a panel explore how countries with Muslim majorities are seeking Islamic sources to authenticate notions of equal citizenship and leadership roles for non-Muslim minorities. We exchange cards and promise to keep the conversation going.

• I chat with a Jewish human rights activist who has worked across the Arab world on behalf of refugees and is a tireless teacher of conflict resolution around the world.

• One of the leaders of a Christian organization reflects with me on ways our traditions can muster sustained effort to reverse our addiction to the consumption of carbon-based fuels that is threatening the future of human life.

• A Muslim activist agrees we should meet to discuss advancing the dignity of LGBTQ members of our respective faiths and ways we can work together to advance women’s rights.

• A young Hindu leader sits with me to think about ways his outreach has been modeled after Jewish materials he has seen, and we agree to explore deeper partnerships together.

All of these discussions took place in a single day, at one extraordinary gathering.

From Sept. 26-27, the United States Department of State convened the Religion and Diplomacy Conference, a gathering of religious leaders from across every region of the U.S., representing every conceivable religion, along with diplomats, leaders of nongovernmental organizations and nonprofit agencies, and several activists from other nations. They came to discuss the ways that religious representatives and their communities could play a positive role in advancing American diplomatic priorities, such as universal human rights, women’s rights and LGBTQ rights, as well as participating in mobilizing effective responses to the refugee crisis, climate change, and resisting anti-Semitism and anti-Islam, among other issues.

Under the leadership of Secretary of State John Kerry, the State Department has created an Office of Religion and Global Affairs. The premise of the office is simple and self-evident: Religion matters. For a vast majority of humanity, and for most human cultures, religion includes far more than just doctrinal points or ritual observance. Religion reflects nothing less than the integration of the strands of one’s culture, identity and values. Religion blossoms into meaning-making stories and life-affirming practices that create rich and layered communities of belonging. Across the globe and through the ages, religion has had the power to energize human passions and mobilize action, for good and for ill. Great human suffering and awe-inspiring heroism both grow from the soil of religion. In a very real sense, to be human is (for the vast majority of people who have ever lived) to be religious. 

If we are to have a hope of engaging the nation and the world in conversations about human rights and dignity, if we seek to enlist the broadest coalition on behalf of welcoming the tidal wave of refugees now desperately seeking to build new lives and homes, if we dare hope to reverse the climate change that is already creating chaos and devastation in locations around the globe, we dare not quarantine religion or banish it from the conversation.

So, I took two days and flew to Washington to meet and converse with thought leaders representing a panoply of the world’s wisdom traditions: Baha’i, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism and Islam, as well as a range of high-level diplomats engaged in the work of human rights, environmental sustainability and peace.

For two days, we enjoyed keynote addresses on the need to bring religious representatives into active engagement on a wide range of diplomatic initiatives. We witnessed panel discussions with professional diplomats, nonprofit agency leaders, White House officials, clergy and activists thinking together, sharing diverse perspectives and, most important, to my mind, listening to one another across all the lines that so often divide us.

Know this: The State Department is not about to advocate for being religious, nor for any religion in particular. It shouldn’t (and legally, it can’t). Obviously, we need the passion and perspectives of secular people, of those who do not consider themselves religious, of those who don’t fit into any particular religious label. All must be welcome at this inclusive table. But that broad inclusiveness cannot afford to remain ignorant of religious perspectives or insights that might help provide real understanding, provide access to cultural tools and resilience, and give voice to the vibrant traditions that provide meaning and community for so many. We must all be welcome as we are, which for many of us includes our religious character and commitments.

We came together not to hammer out a theological consensus or to flatten our differences into a religious porridge of bland trivialities. No, we came to contribute the rich resources of our particular histories, sacred writings, and the examples of our saints and sinners, as well as the myriad men, women and children who have lived their religions as ways of affirming meaning and identity throughout the ages.

I return to my daily life filled with renewed hope. I celebrate the vibrant American democracy in which our government functions as a convening catalyst for such raucous diversity. I rejoice to live in a country in which every religious (and non-religious) community is well represented and whose diversity enriches us all. And I thrill to return home with a global perspective of what being human can truly provide: a rich particular identity, made deeper and more vibrant by its being part of a wider human family. 

That we will meet our challenges together and fashion a true Sukkat Shalom, a shelter of peace, I have faith.

RABBI BRADLEY SHAVIT ARTSON (bradartson.com) holds the Abner and Roslyn Goldstine Dean’s Chair of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies and is vice president of American Jewish University in Los Angeles.