Minnesota’s multifaith leaders offer wisdom in this fraught political moment

Faith leaders in Minnesota are trying to build bridges at a time of intense political polarization.

A group of them convened recently at the Minnesota Multifaith Network annual conference at the Hindu Temple in Maple Grove to share ideas.

The conference took place about a week after the presidential election, and leaders in attendance shared wisdom about how to heal a divided electorate and find connection in this fraught time.

Organizers of the event say that they hope their interfaith community can work more closely with local government to bring people together.

Here are some of the leaders’ remarks about how to address the current political moment. Their comments have been edited for brevity.

Ustadha Kaltun Karani, Islamic studies teacher

We live in a world where the media fills us with stories, and sometimes we believe these stories, and we believe them to be true. In 2016 when Trump was being elected, I remember stories of white supremacy were all that I was seeing in my feed, in my social media. And it was scaring me so much that I was being cautious looking around. I didn’t feel safe in my body.

And I remember being at Menards with my husband and my son, who was little at the time. We were walking around, and I felt like someone was following us. The person that was following us was this white guy who was just shopping. But to me, I was thinking, “He’s going to do something bad to us.” And I was really scared.

The guy got closer to us intentionally and said, “I love seeing families spend time together.” And he gave us a Panera Bread gift card. He didn’t know that was our favorite spot to go. I remember that day praying at home and saying, “Oh, God, remove these thoughts from my head that are really scaring me and making me feel unsafe everywhere I go.”

And that led me to reduce watching social media so much. I share this because if we talk about healing, we have to address some of the things that contribute to our pain. And the stories that we’re hearing are part of that, and it makes us judge others. It makes us live in a place where not trusting other people anymore, when the reality is they could be tender.

Jen Nagel, Bishop of the Minneapolis area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

The ELCA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is divided. If I look at the statistics, I can make a pretty strong guess that 50 percent of the people in the churches that are across our synod, 137 congregations, perhaps voted one way, and 50 percent voted the other way, which is sort of a good reality check.

I might think in one way, I might act on my values in one particular way, but other people, even leaders in this community that I’m so intricately a part of, are doing something that’s very, very different. And I’m helped by that understanding of curiosity, you know, to figure out, “Why is it that? They’re not bad people, they’re not stupid people because they did something different than me. But what is it that makes somebody have values that are different, and yet we come from such similar backgrounds sometimes?”

So I’m really trying to lean into that curiosity and to live with that curiosity. I’m working really hard to look people in the eye and to dwell enough to really see you. I want to look into people’s eyes, I want to make that connection, and that, to me, is part of the curiosity. Maybe it’s also part of the courage and the compassion that I need to do all those things. 

Sheldon P. Wolfchild, Dakota Elder

An old saying from our elders is, “Always come from the heart, first before the mind.” And they had to figure out why did our Dakota ancestors have that philosophy. So scientifically, they had to look into it, and they found out that three seconds before you speak from your mind, your heart tells your mind what to say.

So our teaching and teaching and our elders, when they say, “Walk a good red path; walk a good road,” they mean, come from the heart. Keep your heart sacred and strong and good with love, respect, dignity, all of that first.

We have to have a spiritual bridge building amongst all of us. It’s about the goodness of our heart, a love and the dignity and respect of the two-legged who we are. We start from there and then from there, and we can all walk this good road together and then bring about balance and respect for one another.

Rabbi Adam Stock Spilker, Mount Zion Temple in St. Paul

On Yom Kippur, our holiday, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, I told a story to begin my sermon. It was about the first night of creation when darkness is coming. They had never experienced darkness, and it’s Adam, the first human being, never experiencing darkness.

And all of a sudden he starts thinking, it’s because of him, and he starts blaming himself and going into a lot of grief. And Eve sits beside him, opposite him, and she does not try to solve it. She does not try to say, “It wasn’t because of you.” She just weeps with Adam.

And so the point of that sermon was, sometimes we just need to sit in our grief, and that’s okay, and we need people to sit in our grief with us. And that's relationship, that’s community. That comes from curiosity and having the courage to not solve for a while– and that real fundamental connection. But we need a way out of that cycle as well, and that’s where I am right now.

We are all going to be confronting things in really challenging ways, when our values are going to be right before us, and the reaction might be to retreat away from connection. And the Jewish tradition, my tradition, is whenever we feel that unrest and that grief about something fundamental, we turn inward first and say it’s because somehow we didn’t do something well enough in our relationships with others.

So one of the things that I feel is fundamentally important right now is that we lean into our relationships and get out of the cycle of not seeing each other.

Ben Connelly, Soto Zen Buddhist priest from the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center in Minneapolis 

A basic tenet of the Buddhist tradition is that everyone, in any moment, always has the capacity to do something that will be conducive to non suffering. Everyone. And that every one of us also is completely our worldview. The way we perceive, our experience, the way we feel, is constructed by habituation.

So like my view is incredibly limited by my habituation and no offense, but from my religious tradition. As is yours, so at least we’re in the same boat. Hence, every moment that I meet someone there's a moment of encounter between two sets of delusions. Now I want to focus on my own because it’s impolite to focus on yours.

But every moment that I meet a person or hear from a person, I have an opportunity to try and understand what they are thinking, how they feel, what matters to them, and think, “How can I relate in this moment of relationship in a way that’s liberative?” If you share my worldview, that’s true, and if you don’t, that’s true.

Anantanand Rambachan, Professor of Religion at St. Olaf College

There is ongoing discussion on the nature and causes of our division and distrust from various perspectives that include history, sociology, political science and psychology, among other disciplines, the answers are varied, and you must be tired of some of the analysis. But the answers are varied and complex and do not often include suggestions for justice and for healing.

Academic disciplines often offer us diagnoses but no prognosis, and certainly very little therapy. We are told that we live in darkness, and we know this very well, but we are uncertain about a path towards the light which is what we need. What, therefore we may ask, is special about this convening that invites a multi faith approach to our division, our distrust and our trauma?

I think that we have come together to know each other and to speak and to listen to each other speak about these matters … we are doing so from the unique perspective of the wisdom and teachings of our faith and our spiritual traditions. This faith perspective is not an opposition to the insights of historical and social analysis, but I think that faith brings a very distinctive angle to our understanding of these challenges.

The faith view does not stop with analysis. The values of trust and unity, justice, compassion and peace express the very nature of that which we hold to be sacred and to be ultimate. Our commitment to these values, in other words, is not merely pragmatic and instrumental, but intrinsic and ultimate.

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