Interfaith Alliances

Tim Ahrens leads the First Congregational Church of Columbus, Ohio.

[[[[How did you end up to lead First Congregational Church of Columbus and not base your work at a UU ‘Church’?]]]]

[[[Unitarian Universalism would seem to involve a social structure for not-necessarily-theological ethical growth, that one applies interpersonally and in organized ways in communities societies whereby we strive to live by the golden rule. —-To what extent could there be an alternative to a faith community such that social cohesion stems from an ethicof loving kindness, intuitively expressed interpersonally and expressed in organized ways, in our communities and politically on all levels ? It probably wouldn’t be best to call it a ‘church of loving kindness.’ What mught it be that it is lacking, in terms of loving kindness, when it comes to secular groups, NGOs, and institutions? ]]]]

[[[What psychological need are churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples serving that aren’t typically served via secular community and political organizations and institutions? ]]]

[[[To what extent are ‘self-consciously secular’ organizations (those organizations for whom being non-religious is a primary goal) engaged in ‘community service’, that is ‘philanthropic’ and otherwise…what are the best words for it, ‘humanitarian’, ‘social justice-based,’ compassion-based’, ‘loving kindness-based’….?

[[[The main concern I have had regarding religion is that there are in scripture many sorts of messages (much of it unloving and unkind) mixed in with passages about loving kindness.

[[[[Consequently, it seems fair to ask. Why not just focus on loving kindness? Why do we need the ‘complications’ within scripture? Isn’t it challenge enough to figure out how to put loving kindness into practice in a politically and economically organized way?

[[[When you say your soul is saved, to what degree does that pertain to an afterlife or heaven and hell ?

[[[ If salvation pertains to life after death, what does it mean for the soul of society to be saved? To what extent do you mean this, metaphorically?

[[[[In what ways have you been advocating for prisoners or ex-prisoners or ‘restored citizens’ and to what degree have you done this with religious organizations that represent non-Christain faiths ?

[[[[What LGBT organizations have you worked with ?

[[[[To what degree would you say LGBTQ issues involve love, that is, the freedom to love oneself and others in the way that’s truest to one’s understanding of oneself ?

[[[[ To what extent do you view Matthew 26:11 and Mark 14:7 as being out-of-character for Christ, in that he’d surely want us to work to minimize poverty and prevent people from being poor in the first place ?

[[[[You said Judaism is based in hesed. If that is the case, how do we explain the books of the Old Testament that describe God as angry, authoritarian, jealous and vengeful? I’ve read that hesed applies to love between God and his chosen, and not necessarily to human-to-human relations. ]]]

[[[[Christ’s message of love which some say is his primary command can inspire people of all faiths, as well as those without religious faith.

[[[[However, others have extolled love or loving kindness long before Christ and since. On top of that, Christ’s message of love is mixed in with messages about heaven and hell.

[[[[Regarding heaven, one might argue that virtue is based in acting on principle according to one’s concern for others, not on seeking a reward in heaven nor seeking to avoid punishment in hell.

[[[[According to that standard, how might we make sense of Christ’s promises of rewards in the Sermon on the Mount and Sermon on the Plain ?]]]

“My foundation for the values in my life is the teachings of Jesus Christ. My interpretation of Christ is —speaking of maximizing kindness— that he wasn’t out to found a religion. He was, in a sense, out to form a movement. The movement was one in which the Kingdom of Heaven was the centerpiece of his teaching, and that is — if you read the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount—– the core values were founded on bringing the best out of people, the blessedness out of people. That’s without a doubt the foundation of my faith, and shapes everything I say or do. Or I hope that’s the case, on good days at least.”

[[If Christ intended to start a movement,  not a religion, how has that movement manifested itself through out history during the past two thousand years? How do the wars of conquest, of slavery, and genocide pertain to that manifestation?

To what extent does secular ethics include those values that you say Christ was exemplifying?]]]

“The Kingdom of Heaven in scripture is actually very interesting. Jesus clearly says the ‘kingdom of heaven is within you’ in one Gospel, and he also talks about the Kingdom of Heaven being outside of ourselves, that he’s here to bring about the kingdom on Earth, if you will, which actually fits in to my understanding of social justice, and that is that salvation for some people is only an internal and an internalized transformation, that makes me closer to God thru Jesus. That’s what many people would tell you salvation is about.

[[[I thought Christian theology holds that salvation is a matter of being spared from eternal torment in hell thru our acceptance of Christ dying for our sins]]]]]]

” I happen to believe it’s more than that. If the Kingdom of God is inside myself, that’s where it ends. But I think it’s also in a symbiotic relationship with that which is outside of ourselves. It’s not outside or inside. It’s not either/or. It’s both/and. So, I have a strong sense of social salvation. It’s not enough that my soul is saved, but (it matters that) the soul of society, the larger, the goodness of all (is saved and ) is the work of God.”

[[ Would you say your ideas here are metaphorical, and not necessarily theological ?  This reminds me to ask. To what extent do you think that (a) poetic (non-literal) understandings of scripture, such as yours, are part of a process toward non-belief; and that (b) related to this process is the rise of religious fundamentalism as a reaction against secularization, and as a reaction against nonliteral interpretations of the Bible? ]]]]

“In terms of tradition, there’s the Social Gospel tradition, and it’s very rich in the story of this particular congregation, but it certainly has been part of Dr. King’s and part of other movements of faith such as Dr. Barber who’s now leading Groundswell in North Carolina.  The Moral Movement is certainly about the Social Gospel, social transformation, not just individual. It’s both/and. It’s not either/or.”

I asked Ahrens about secular principles that are similar to or the same as Christian principles regarding justice and love. I asked him what he thought of the claim that justice is the public face of love.

“I think that’s a good definition of what justice looks like. ‘Justice for all’ is a foundational belief about the way justice should roll out, both Biblically and legally in a social setting. It doesn’t get worked out that way. We can talk about that whole story, but the sense is that justice should be for all, and not just for some, that’s love. That really is the definition of love, something that is shared acrosss all faiths, all traditions, all economic backgrounds.[[[[If it’s a core value irrespective of religion and other cultural variations, then how is it that we need theology? ]]]]

I asked Ahrens how he decides which causes to get involved with.

“The places where injustice seems to reign supreme, where lack of love is guiding a power stucture, definitely draws me in, in terms of responding to that. There are a number of places where there’s too much injustice and too much love missing. That calls me in. Certainly education is an area. The criminal justice system itself, both the incarceration and the release of men and women back into society. The laws are set up against them. If you come to bat in a baseball game, and you have three strikes against you, then you’re already out. Why even show up to the ballpark or show up for the game, when you’ve already been counted out…I’ve stood up for folks who’ve been treated horribly in the LGBT community. We add letters and question marks to that label but foundationally, for over twenty years I’ve been working on LGBT equaliity and rights. So I think particularly where people are mistreated or left behind, I guess those are the places that call me in.” [[[[The recognition you’ve gotten for your social justice work is impressive. As I read your accouhts in the Yale publication and what others have written about you, I keep coming back to this sincere, nonrhetorical question. To what extent would it make sense to you to lead or help found and organize an institution which is based on applying, interpersonally and in organized ways, loving loving kindness, where the institution neither promotes nor rejects any form of religion? –The UU ‘church’ might involve this type of ‘spirituality’ but I’ve heard the UU Church being criticized as esoteric and not deeply or warmly involved with helping people in communities where there is a lot of unmet material and psychological needs. ]]]]

He said that pertains to what Jesus Christ taught about obligations to “the least, the last, the forgotten, the forsaken.”

“If I see a pattern that’s systemic, or just individuals who are hurting, I’m called to that. It’s not necessarily a particular issue. It’s larger than an issue. It’s about people, ultimately. ”

I asked Ahrens what red letter passages in the New Testament compel or inspire him the most.

“It’s the things that Jesus tells you to do, first of all.” [[[But to what extent would you say, upon further thought, that this seems an authoritarian, fundamentalist approach if you strive to do it just because it’s something an author of the New Testament claimed Jesus Christ to have said? You yourself said you’ve had to determine which red letter quotes are from Christ and which are not. If you use your own ethical judgment. If you do that, and if Jesus’ most important command is to love one another, how important is the rest of the story? There is no disputing the worldly reality of some humans having power over others, but to what extent might we be feeding our authoritarianism by bekieving in otherworldly figures that have power over humans? How about a view of the human condition such that we acknowledge the indisputable limits to our psychological and physical abilities, without assuming the existence of a being who is all knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving? —]]]]

“There’s really only one commandment that Jesus gives, and it’s very clear. ‘I command you to love one another.’ He says it three or four times.” [[[But he was not the first or the only person to say this? How is it humans need a supernatural authority figure to command us to love? To what extent might (all else being equal ) humans bring about more loving kindness in the world if we focus on it as a principle, doing such collaboratively, thru observable and disprovable systems of knowledge? To what extent do you think such systems of observable and otherwise disprovable knowledge are a sort of universal reference point, applicable irrespective of culture?]]]]

“Red letters are anything that Jesus said. There is a lot of discussion about which things Jesus said and which things were written in there later for the church. It’s almost to say, if you think of a friend, who, by his or her nature, presents themselves one particular way all the time, then you got to ask yourself why they would say this thing (something out of character.) Jesus said love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself. But then he says, ‘I tell you to leave your father and mother, your wife, your children, split everything up. Then you say, whoa, whoa, whoa, that doesn’t sound like Jesus, and you think, who wrote that ? What was the purpose of that? So, it can go in the red letter section , but it sounds like a different color than red in this case. It sounds like someone else wrote that in. If you dig deeper, you find that for the church’s purposes, in the first century, they needed to separate themselves in a way that established identity. To say to people, ‘come and be in this movement,’ you might have to leave family. You might have to separate yourself from what has been, to be a part of what will be. But that’s the motivation of the disciples, not the founder of the faith. It’s interesting because Jesus identifies himself pretty clearly in his language and his motivation with compassion and kindness.” [[[How do you reconcile that with unloving, red-letter parts of the New Testament? Maybe the author of Matthew lied about or misunderstood what Christ said in Matthew 10 : 14-15; 33-38 ; Matthew 11: 20-24; Matthew 13: 38-43, and in other unloving red-letter statements ? ]]]

[[[[To what extent do you relate to secular critiques of religion that are based on the claim that religion–in so far as it involves the threat or fear of punishment in hell or the promise or hope of reward in heaven–skews our moral calculus? ]]]

I asked Ahrens if it’ s the case, as some scholars [[[[Cite scholars]]] contend, that Jesus Christ made enemies because he didn’t deliver political revolution against the Roman occupiers, but instead preached a type of spiritual revolution, and that if it’s also the case that he preached love and that that message of love was doctored up by writers of the New Testament, in order to establish a religion….then how far can a Christian go in selectively following New Testament teachings before it’s no longer honest to call oneself a Christian? Or does it still make sense to call oneself a ‘Christian’ but not in the case of any existing form of organized religion?

[[[[Some scholars or writers [[[Citation Joseph Campbell? ]]] suggest or argue that human beings can best connect with the divine via living according to a principle, instead of striving to have a relationship with a divine personality.

Applying that principle, what would you think or feel would be the benefits or drawbacks of living more according to what you consider to be the best principles within the teachings of Jesus Christ and less according to what Christians refer to as “having a relationship with Jesus Christ”? ]]]]

Regarding where to draw the line in determining what it means to be a Christian, Ahrens said, “Those are the struggles of the ages. They’re not insignificant. When people raise those questions, they are legitimate. You had mentioned Dr. King. Of all the hundreds or thousands of sermons he preached, of all the books he wrote, of all the articles he authored, we probably have boiled down it all to about a couple hundred King quotes. I have a wonderful collection of his sermons and other primary writings. If you go thru his sermons, and he’s talking at a church in Birmingham….”There’s a sense with scripture that we take what we like, and leave the rest, if we’re honest about it…The mistake is to throw it all out just because we don’t like parts of it…I’ve spent my life is these texts, and I think it’s a mistake to throw it all out, if we don’t like some parts of it, because —–

[[[[ Please say what you think of the following. It’s not that secularists claim we should throw out the entire Bible due to the parts that we don’t like, but rather, non-believers and perhaps also some believers think we’d do more good in the world if we saw the Bible as literature, as texts that are maybe inspired by the divine but not the literal word of God, as you yourself had said during our interview but in your own words. Why can’t people gather to support one another and those in the broader community, without believing that a person called Jesus suffered and died so that we’ll be spared from hell?]]]

“In my mind, scripture is the inspired word of God. It’s not written by God, and infallible as some would tell you. Anyone who’s taking time with the scripture would look at it with that language, instead of a small group of people carrying a tradition forward which says it’s infallible, and saying we can’t possibly question anything that’s in there. The truth of the matter is we question things all of the time, in our lives and in the world and in the scripture. So we need to be honest about what we’re doing, and it’s all interpretation when we get into it. We’re doing our best to figure out what it means. ” [[[[How far can you go with this approach before it’s no longer truthful to describe yourself as a Christian ? To what extent does this relate to the claim by some atheist writers that all forms of religion, no matter how liberal or moderate, ultimately are based in fundamentalism; and that to let one’s questioning run its course, is to eventually let go of one’s Christian faith? This would apply also to other religious faiths. As for a positive claim to be subject to skeptical inquiry, the ethic of loving kindness seems the core value with which to measure the efficacy of theology. Saying, “I believe in loving kindness” is a useful response to those who seek to impress upon me their religious views, but do I believe in or do I actually know about the efficacy of loving kindness? ]]]]

I asked Ahrens what thought processes might be involved for or against interfaith work.

“We don’t pick our neighbors. In my neighborhood, there are Hindus, Christians, Jews, Agnostics, Atheists. There are some Jains that live down the street.” He lives in Northern Columbus.

“To say I’m only going to relate to the neighbors that are Christian means I’m going to miss out on the relationships I can have with everyone else. The Bible does say ‘love your neighbor.’ [[[Something we’ve yet to clarify seems awry about seeing this effort at common ground as remarkable and worthy of a term such as ‘interfaith’ to distinguish it. Maybe 50 years ago people spoke of ‘inter-racial’ alliances. Maybe cooperation that we call ‘interfaith’ means that people of a variety of religions are using their faith communities as a key part of their community organizing and political involvement. How is it important to recognize social cohesion correlated with organized religion? To what extent is there a type and degree of concerted focus within organized religion not generally found within secular NGOs and community groups? What roles are organized religion playing in terms of meeting the needs of humans and other lifekind? ]]]]

[[[Indeed the Bible includes the directive to love one’s neighbor, but it also says a lot of other things that you probably don’t want to follow. To what extent is the principle of loving our friends, family, neighbors, and people in general necessarily based in Christianity ? If loving people in general isn’t necessarily based in Christianity, then what remains of the foundation of your faith? To what extent is what remains the belief that Jesus Christ died for your sins so that you may have eternal life in heaven, instead of oblivion or instead of eternal torment in hell?]]]]

“Interfaith work is a lot like living in a neighborhood. It’s about acknowledging those who are in relation to us and who also have some very clear understandings of their relationship to God or their lack of relationship to God. It’s a messy world. You enter the mess. The root of the word ‘humility’ is humus or mud. It means you get into stuff… I don’t feel I have enough time on Earth– and some people might feel that they might—to be exclusive and get away with it.”[[[[What comes to mind when I read your comment here is that there is a type, degree and scope of caring that correlates with religion but is also found among some non-religious folk. I’m reaching here, but maybe this sort of ‘deep and broad caring’ exists within a percentage of humans irrespective of religious faith, but that the majority of humans ‘believe’ in a ‘higher power.’ I’m trying to say that lovingkindness cirrejates correlates with theology but is not dependent on it. ]]]]

He said we lose out when we’re exclusive.

” We lose out on relationships we might have had from new understandings. When I’ve encountered interfaith settings, I’ve actually returned to my own faith with a deeper understanding and appreciation, not to wall myself in the fortress of my faith, but to understand how it relates to the world. Actually, I like my faith. So, interfaith work doesn’t threaten my beliefs. It enriches them. [[[To what degree might ‘interfaith’ have limitations as an operative term, in that people of no religious or ‘spiritual’ faith ought to be accounted for as we work within community alliances and political alliances ? ]]]]

“I’ve spent most of my life here in Columbus working on relationships between people, myself and others. Washington Gladden was a pastor of this church for 36 years and a prolific writer….In his book Recollections, he said when it all comes down to it, religion is about friendship, between God and humanity, and friendship with one another. He said that’s all there is to it…When you cross lines, almost like it’s this tapestry that’s woven of many different fabrics of people, you’re stronger, and you can resist demagoguery. It’s the relationships that will hold us together when confronted with crises.”

I asked him to say more about how an ethic of loving kindness, if politically applied, could be empowering, and reduce the chances of people being manipulated by demagogues seeking to divide and rule over people by stoking hatred.

“I’ve spent most of my life here in Columbus working on relationships between people, myself and others, and one of the pastors of this church, his bust is no the wall over there (in his office), Washington Gladden was the pastor of this church for 36 years. At the end of his life he wrote one of his last books, called Recollections. One of my favorite passages of anything he wrote, he wrote 66 books, he was an amazing, prolific writer. [[[ALREADY HAVE THE REST TRANSCRIBED IN THIS FILE]]] By the way, I think when you close ranks, or you have what I would call a closed system of religious values, no matter what the religion is, a lot of it depends on this internal friendship that is the glue to that. You can follow a demagogue if he, generally demagogues are ‘he’s’, if he can lead you in a way that convinces you that you are a tighter community and more closely bound because of your friendship to him or to one another. It can get scary. But I do think when you cross lines, almost like this tapestry that is woven of many different fabrics of people in this case, you’re stronger in the long run, and you can resist that kind of demagoguery. It’s the relationships that will hold us together when confronted with crises. There are plenty of crises right now, and I count on those relationships.”

I asked Ahrens what he thought of the idea of global solidarity, or the idea of unity among human and other beings on Earth, as something to draw from for our ‘spirituality.’

“To a greater or lesser extent, different frameworks of thought and connection and reality, if you will, in spirituality, have greater strengths in certain areas than others do. For example, a wonderful book that was written by a professor at Union Seminary in New York, Paul Knitter, is Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian.

“At the end of the book, he talks about how thru Buddha he learns to be peace, thru Christ he learns to make peace. To use that illustration, I think Buddhism is better at the interior work for a peaceful being, and Christianity has been better, when it’s working well together— and I’m not going to claim it always has— for making peace in the world. Some of the great peacemakers of our time and thru generations have been people who find their being, their essence in Christ. [[[I need to research for examples on my own, but would be grateful if you cite any that come to mind. Thanks ]]]]

” Why I say that is I think we gain strength from different traditions. For example, there are certain things I learn from my environmentalist friends and from people who have really given of themselves to the care of the Earth.

“The Green Bible is made on recyclable paper, and in green letters are all of the passages in scripture that talk about care for creation. It may surprise some people, but care for the Earth is actually a dominant theme in the Bible. So, more than 1500 passages, at least, talk about caring for the Earth. Christians who don’t have a connection to caring for the Earth are missing their connection to their own scripture that guide them that way…Sometimes we don’t know the richness and depth of our own traditions and in fact they would lead to doing more care for the Earth…

“We’re better served if we’re communicating with one another the strengths of our traditions and beliefs. There’s more strength in the vastness than in the singleness of beliefs.”

“There are more than 2000 passages in the Bible about care for the poor, the widow, the orphan. In the New Testament, Jesus’ main concern is stewardship of gifts, not just how much you give to the church, though we in the churches sometimes frame it that way. Jesus was talking about stewardship for the Earth, stewardship of our resources, and how do we share what we have and how do we care for those who don’t have resources. It’s a very economic way of looking at the universe. There’s an economy of scale in how we care for the poor and care for our own material resources. It’s a big theme for him.” [[[If it’s the case that mixed in with what Jesus Christ says about care for the poor are red letter statements that are unloving and otherwise unhelpful, how do you explain the inspiration you get from the New Testament regarding loving kindness? To what extent are there other texts that more clearly lay out the case for loving kindness? To what extent are there considerations that are just as important, if not more important than loving kindness? My guess is there aren’t, given that you said Christ’s core command was to love God with all our hearts and to love one another. What do you mean by an “economy of scale in caring for the poor”? ]]]

I asked Ahren’s about his understanding of conservative Christian interpretations of the Bible.

“If I want to push you away, I’m going to find something to do that with, right? It might be a taser, or a cattle prod, or it might be a book of the Bible or a passage in the Bible. I’ve seen people beaten with the Bible, spiritually, emotionally, and apparently people do that physically. People have told me they’ve been literally beaten with the Bible.

“So, you can use mechanisms, including the Bible, as I like to call it, The Gospel Gun, to shoot people, but I don’t see that as being the purpose of it (the Gospel.)

“I’ve done a lot of writing, preaching and teaching on questions about homosexuality. There are maybe seven texts [[[or verses ?]] that have reference to that, but until the middle of the 19th Century, ‘homosexuality’ wasn’t even a word, so for it to appear in the Bible is ludicrous. It’s not in the Latin, not in the Vulgate or Aramaic or Hebrew or Greek. There’s not a word for it. So, we sort of impose that in later translations. But those are bad descriptions of what even those seven passages are talking about.

“But, without a doubt, there are seven questionable texts about a thing that’s not even validly addressed in Scripture, compared with 2,000 texts [[[ or ‘verses’ ?]]] talking about care for the poor…A lot of people will say, ‘the Bible is against homosexuality.’ Well, that’s not fair to the Bible, let alone all of its authors and the spirit of God that’s there.”

I mentioned to Ahrens that within most, if not all, religious faiths there are conservative, fundamentalist strains.

“Movements of intolerance within religious communities grow from fear, not faith. There’s plenty in this world that I can wake up in the morning and be afriad of. But I think faith calls you to overcome fear. You overcome fear in many ways. As for loving kindness, the word in Hebrew is hesed [[ or chesed?]]]] [[[Does chesed or hesed connote God’s love for humans only or also a love for our fellow beings thru which we seek to love others in the way that God loves us?]]] which is the centerpiece of much scriptural writing in the psalms and even in the prophetic writings.—-[[[ If hesed is the center of Judaism, then how can we explain the books of the Old Testament that describe God as angry, authoritarian, jealous, and vengeful ?]]]]]

“Hesed is loving kindness, and it gets strangely interpreted sometimes [[[how so ? ]]] but it really is that sense that kindness in and of itself, has to be wedded with love. [[[Bertrand Russell makes this point in his book What I Believe]]]] ….I can be kind in a functional way….loving kindness goes beyond a measure of a pact, agreement, or contract. It’s greater than that. Loving kindness is what changes the world. A good example of loving kindness is the Bishop in Les Miserable. One of the characters has been put in prison for 30 years because he stole a loaf of bread. When he gets out, he’s hungry, and the bishop takes him in. While the bishop is asleep the thief runs off with the silver candle sticks. He gets caught and the police take him back to the rectory. The bishop tells the police, ‘No, no, no. He didn’t steal these. I gave them to him. It was a gift.’ That’s loving kindness. It’s grace upon grace. It’s giving someone an opportunity.”

I asked Ahrens about the extent to which he thinks atheism stems from a misunderstanding of religion.

“Religion has a bad name because we’ve earned it. We’ve gone out there and done some stupid things. …A young man wrote to Washington Gladden and said, ‘What I don’t like about religious people is that they’re hypocritical.’ Gladden wrIote him back and said, ‘You’re right; religious people are hypocritical because they are people and people are hypocritical.’ He said, ‘the difference is that every Sunday morning I have to come and name out loud and face my sins and say that this week I’m not going to be a hypocrite again. And when I walk out and I’m a hypocrite again, judgment is heaped on me, because I didn’t keep the promise I made. [[[What promise is that, to love others?]]]]

“I have to keep coming back to face myself. At some point I might break the pattern of my hypocrisy. The discipline of doing that means you have to face yourself. [[[How does Gladden’s answer compare with a non-religious person holding herself accountable to the principle of being as lovingly kind as she can be? To what extent might the doctrine of orginal sin and Christ’s sacrificial redemption of that distract us from focusing on the crux of morality : how our actions affect the well-being of others? ]]]]

“What is it that gives us the chance to break that pattern (of hypocrisy)?”

[[[How about an ethical standard based on how our actions affect others? A problem atheists cite about religion is that it skews our ethical calculus. Instead of just focusing on how our actions affect the well-being of others, when we’re religious we factor in considerations that don’t lend themselves to clear understandings, such as the Hindu and Buddhist concepts of karma, or the concept that Christ suffered and died so that God the father would forgive us for our sins, sparing us from eternal torment in hell. All due respect, I don’t grasp how you can focus on what Christ said about love while not accepting the idea of his sacrificial gift of salvation. Again, to be honest, the question that keeps reemerging is how one can get around these theological tenets and still describe oneself as a ‘Christian.’ ]]]]

[[[How might we use anthropology or social-psychology to understand the origins of the concept of sin, and the need for salvation thru Christ’s sacrifice ? ]]]]]

“I’ve had lots of wonderful conversations with friends and others who call themselves atheists. One of the things I love about all of the atheists I’ve known is they talk about God more than anyone I know. They’re the most engaged in any conversation about God. I really love that. So, send them my way.”

I asked Ahrens why we need theology, and why not just focus not on religious doctrine but on loving kindness.

“In the world we live in, we can’t go wrong, with more understanding of loving kindness. I would never contend that Christianity has, or that Judeo-Christian texts, the Old and New Testaments, have it all together, with loving kindness. I have this book that just came in the mail from a friend in the Philippines who is Bahai. So, I’ve been looking at that. It’s magnificent. I love it. It’s the richness. I always tell the teenagers in the church, ‘ I’m sort of like a frog. I’m in a pond and I like to visit other lilly pads and rocks and I like to go to the shore, and I like to learn about the pond from other perspectives, and every day I return to my rock in the center of the pond. For me, that’s sort of what my faith is….I have a universal understanding of God’s grace and love, and of loving kindness.

“I find it appalling that someone would see a Hindu from India and say they’re going to hell, simply because they are not a Christian. [[[[To what extent do you invest yourself into a belief in heaven and hell? ]]]]] I don’t get that. I certainly don’t think that’s what Jesus was about. Even the passage John 3:16. I used to see it in football stadiums all the time. When a player would go to kick the extra point, someone in the stands would hold up a sign with John 3:16. Even there, Jesus is saying he’s come for all. When I read something that says he’s come for all, it means that his message is for everybody.”

[[[[To what extent are you saying his message of love is for everybody? If that is Christ’s message, how does it compare with others who’ve preached love before Christ and since? All due respect, if loving one another as members of the family of life on Earth is what matters, then why be a Buddhist, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Muslim, or an adherent of any other religion? For a Buddhist, it might be reincarnation in a process leading toward a higher state of being. For a Christian, it might be the prospect of eternal life in heaven. ]]]]]

“Does it mean you have to follow his message and believe in his message just as the person next to you does, who says they’re also a Christian? I don’t think so. We have a saying in our church that says we respect and hold sacred everyone’s interpretation of the principles of the Christian faith.

[[[ I’m not clear on this. To what extent is there a basic minimum of agreement to be a member of your church? Actually, there probably isn’t because anyone who is basically respectful can attend your services, regardless of what he or she may believe, including monotheists. But to what extent are there stated principles in your church ? For example, the UU Church has a set of principles. To what extent do your sermons involve the idea that in order to be saved we have to believe Christ died for our sins? ]]]]

“That’s been with us for 164 years. That’s our covenant. You might consider that to be a radical Christian concept but to us it’s not. It’s part of our tradition in this church. It’s just who we are. That’s where I come from. You don’t have to call yourself a Christian but you interpret the principles of the Christian faith a certain way and I hold that as sacred too.”

“It’s a very open understanding of who you are and what you believe.” [[[[What would be your response to sommeone who criticized your approach as ‘anything goes Christianity’? If the minimum requirement is to follow Christ’s command to love one another, we can do that apart from Christianity, given that many people before and since Christ have taught the importance of love. To what extent might people of religious faith, who aren’t fundamentalist in their beliefs, eventually walk the path toward non-belief, when examining the tenets of their faith ? ]]]]

“Washington Gladden is the only Protestant mentioned in the history of the Catholic diocese of Columbus. That’s because he stood up for Bishop Watterson when Catholics were being railroaded and treated badly, Gladden stood with them. I always appreciated that. That’s who we should be.”

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A merit of interfaith alliances is that they can include people of all faiths as well as people with no religious faith, so long as we are willing to prioritize common values over our respective dogmas and ideologies.

There are interfaith alliances in Columbus and beyond that pertain to addressing climate change, opposing corporate personhood, promoting animal liberation, and so on. But as far as reducing gender-based and sexuality-based impediments to that which makes human beings thrive, love is at the core of the common values upon which interfaith alliances can be based.

The emerging Queer aspects of our species may be an evolutionary process of developing more options for love, and thereby, all else being equal, greater social harmony. But that claim requires more research.