Engaging Interfaith in the Heartland
Multi-Faith Relations in Rural Settings
by Najeeba Syeed
Earlier this year, the Interfaith Institute collaborated with the Minnesota Multi-Faith Network and Shoulder to Shoulder campaign to organize and host a statewide summit on hate prevention. Below are a few reflections based on what was discussed at the Institute and my years of engagement on multi-faith relations around the country.
Centering the National Discourse
I’ve written about “casserole” hospitality, an ethic of care demonstrated in America’s Heartland found in communities of various traditions who welcome new members into their midst. It may be in church, the casserole may be an Eid baklava dish offered by a Muslim neighbor to a new friend. It may have many iterations depending on the cultural context and religious practice of a community. What I mean to emphasize is that each region of the country has their own unique modalities and methods of welcoming and opening doors. The center of this country has many rich examples to draw upon.
Tri-Faith’s Campus - Photo: Tri-Faith Facebook
Small towns and sparsely populated regions can be, and often are, home to some of the most innovative multi-faith programs and organic sets of relationships in the country. Smaller communities create an interdependence of resources of all types. An example of innovative interfaith work includes the Tri-Faith Initiative in Omaha, Nebraska the first jointly developed site to include Muslim, Christian and Jewish entities on a shared campus.
Very often, when I am at the national tables I am invited to, the norm being discussed is an assumption of a diversity of communities that are present in large urban settings. I’ve been struck by the relationships that exist between religious communities of vast difference in what is often called fly-over country. My experience has been that these are not regions to fly over, but to learn from.
When I first came to the US, in the 1970s my father landed in Bloomington, Indiana for his doctorate program. In those years, as immigrants we had little to no access to zabiha markets where we could find meat that was permissible to eat. My father heard that my school bus driver, Mrs. Anderson, had a farm and he proceeded to speak to her about going out to her farm and we found her open to our form of Muslim ritual slaughter of animals on her farm. This relationship created a relationship for both our family and community to fulfill our religious obligation for ritual slaughter and long-term friendships that persisted in a time when immigrant Muslims were not often understood in many communities across the US.
ISNA Headquarters - Photo Islamica
Let me share another example from the same region, something I learned when I was attending a Quaker college in North Carolina. The headquarters of the Islamic Society of America (ISNA) was in Plainfield, Indiana. The campus minister at my college recalled how his extended family in Indiana had reached out to support Muslims when the sign for the organization had been shot at in the 80s. Some of these local Christian communities stood with this new institution as partners in protection and also understanding. ISNA went on to pioneer national interfaith work that is now a well-established feature of American religions.
These are a few of the many stories of the central part of this country in which solidarity and just pure necessity created deep and lasting multi-faith relations. It is important to remember that it was on the ground, intimate community relations that led to the larger structural interfaith work that is now taken for granted in interfaith circles. What I mean to say is this is not new.
Scholars like Edward Curtis have documented the multi-racial, multi-religious histories of communities in Indiana and beyond. We can celebrate the work of organizations and efforts, while also recognizing this is often built on the contributions of many communities and leaders who preceded us and that multi-faith relations are not new to this region and can date back even hundreds of years. A national picture of interfaith should and must include all of these elements.
Diversity and its Multi-Dimensional Presence
Interfaith efforts in Minnesota, mapped during the statewide summit
If you look at the map to the left, you see that there are groups of people doing multi-faith work across the state of Minnesota. It may not always be by faith-based actors or congregations who lead these efforts. In one conversation I had at the summit I was struck by how community development organizations are harnessing opportunities to do multi-faith engagement without utilizing the terminology or traditional venues often associated with interfaith work.
Civic engagement opportunities for religious pluralism are and can be created by non-faith actors. Universities, local and municipal government, Rotary clubs, and other types of service organizations can be sites for conversations on religious literacy and education about local interfaith histories. I love the example of the Abdel Kader project which, among other things, has used the fact that Iowa has a city named Elkader after a major Muslim historical figure to develop materials on religious pluralism and practices. The very name of a city has inspired a deep connection of a small town in Iowa with a global view and vision for interfaith peace and solidarity.
During our summit, we discussed the idea of invisible diversity. When one walks into a room, religious diversity may not be apparent if one judges it by their own experiences and standards. We live in a moment when many Americans also join new communities besides their religious communities of origin through conversion, marriage, or other means. You cannot assume the religious identity of someone based only on how they present themselves to you in person; you must listen to stories and history as well.
Rev. Jim Bear Jacobs - Photo: Augsburg Interfaith Institute Facebook
I also noted that in many communities there are religious identities that span a wide spectrum of different communities beyond the Abrahamic. Shamanism, Buddhism, Hinduism all find homes in rural and small towns across the country in addition to the Abrahamic religions. It is important to recognize the complex definition of religion and the presence of a wide array of religions and spiritual practices that exist. At our Summit we also engaged Rev. Jim Bear Jacobs who spoke about Native traditions and histories of hate and policies against Native communities. In many rural areas the US, including Minnesota Native communities need to be present and engaged at interfaith tables and enrich the religious diversity and discussions that in the past may have not been open to leaders whose stories and histories were pushed to the margin by some religious actors,
Many faith communities may not have the symmetry of a congregational home or the kind of brick and mortar space that some of us are used to. For example, in some communities that are newer or have a minority status, religious instruction may happen in someone’s home, rather than in a large building downtown. People may congregate at a coffee house that serves the local community and engage in spiritual formation.
We cannot assume our city or town is not diverse just because communities may not look like what is viewed as a common calculus of a religious entity. It takes work to know one another; it takes time, patience and the understanding that religion and spirituality look different and we can learn so much just by listening and hearing how people construct their own communities before assuming what they will look like our own.
If you’re interested in hearing more about what we are learning from our work across the state, I invite you to reach out at syeedn@augsburg.edu.
This article is a lightly edited and expanded version of a piece Najeeba originally wrote for Augsburg University.
Header Photo: Kenneth Spencer, CC 2.0 BY NC SA