Loving the Stranger Prevents Complicity in HatredLet's Get to It!

I propose something new for us as a Christian community at the First Congregational Church of Webster Groves. Really, it's just something to be renewed, but we need to approach it as if we have never done it before. That is, to fearlessly and actively seek new opportunities for hospitality and love with people who do not believe or practice faith in the same ways we do.

We need to recognize and energize around the understanding in our sacred texts that loving the stranger is our greatest goal for faithfulness.

On Friday afternoon in New Zealand, you know by now, an armed white nationalist entered mosques in Christchurch and murdered dozens of people. On Friday afternoon in Ballwin, Missouri, I went to the Daar Ul-Islam mosque of the Islamic Foundation of Greater St. Louis for an interfaith gathering reacting to the Christchurch attacks. After about half an hour of greetings from leaders of Jewish and Christian communities and acknowledgments from the host imam and other Islamic religious leaders from the area, those of us gathered adjourned to a series of informal greetings and embraces with tears and words of affirmation for one another. Circulating around the room I ended up hugging my friend Imam Ibrahim Hasic twice, catching up briefly about our families and communities, and realizing that we don't make nearly enough time for each other outside of work.

As I left the mosque, I was keenly aware of the three uniformed men who were providing security and traffic control. It reminded me of a conversation I'd had, two days before. I had attended a clergy meeting in which a Christian minister and a Jewish rabbi reflected about their communities' experiences with an Islamic center, the three communities together developing a program for little children to teach them about their traditions' mutual values and different ways of expressing those values. The Christian mentioned the importance of a security guard, something he had not considered when he had first imagined the program. At every gathering of the "Sprouts of Peace" program, there is uniformed, armed peace officer for everyone's protection.

There came to my mind my words with church members, after shootings at churches that happened a couple of months ago, that arming our greeters would be foolhardy and that keeping our building's doors unlocked and unguarded is part of our hospitality. I am not sure I was ever quite so profoundly clear about the privilege my religion and my religious community's historic identity (as a liberal Christian group, dreaming of diversity but definitely white in the overwhelming majority).

At least as far as being targeted for being counter to the culture of the mainstream is concerned, First Church is safe from the threat of terrorism. The only possibility I see, of a need for a guard at the door, would be in a case like that which our presenters were providing, in which we might be sharing programming with a predictably targeted group.

On that Wednesday, I reflected about how, on Monday, I had spent the morning in a gathering of leaders from many faith traditions around a table sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council. We were discussing with Prof. David Oughton of St. Louis University the history of Christian anti-Semitism and just how intractable it can be. I ached to have a similar discussion among the people of my church and, by extension, my community generally. I longed to remind them that we are not blameless, even if we have distanced ourselves over the past many decades from the vilification or demonization of these others. The mere statement of suspicion by one faith-based voice against another implicates the first in the persecution of the other.

First Church has concentrated a lot, over the last few years, on anti-racism and the importance of recognizing our unintended complicity in the preservation of racism and racist expectations. We have heralded our church's history of promoting civil rights for people of different colors and cultures than our own. We haven't, however, looked as long and hard lately at the ways in which we perpetuate prejudice against other religious groups, either actively or passively.

Oh, I make our Confirmation students, their mentors, and teachers attend worship, prayer, and meditation gatherings at Jewish, Islamic, Baha'i, and Buddhist meeting places nearby; I assign them the task of attending services in at least two other Christian communities. (And I know some of the adults of my church go to bar and bat mitzvah celebrations, and many attended services at nearby synagogues, the Shabbat after the Tree of Life massacre.) But there needs to be a voice and example coming from among us, active and fearless (even if that fearlessness is based in entitlement and privilege). This voice may be, sometimes, even prophetic in affirming to our wider community those people who believe or practice faithfully, but differently, than we do.

We can face hatred and ignorance with love. We are privileged enough to be able to do this without fear. When we establish new love, when we cultivate our friendships across religions as well as across race, when we invite others into new relationships and networks of care and concern, we generate a process that can bridge the chasm of cruelty, of fear, of hate.

If we are silent and if we do nothing, we are implicated in the murderous actions of terrorist cowards. We can and must fearlessly and actively seek new opportunities for hospitality and love. We can and must change the course of our culture because we change our own expectations of ourselves and of others. We know the price that will continue to be paid if we do nothing.

Loving the stranger is our greatest goal for faithfulness.

Yes, the best way forward is to generate relationships and networks of care and concern that prevent Fridays and other days like the one Christchurch just experienced. This was true on Wednesday, as my clergy meeting heard about those Abrahamic young people in the "Sprouts of Peace" program. It is just as true on Mondays, as my colleagues and I are discovering monthly. It is true, every day, and will be always.