by Bettina Gray

I found myself explaining to my school age children recently that while the discussion of and education about sex had been the taboo subject in my generation, in their generation the taboo subject seems to be religion. Sexuality, something so vital to life experience, was at one time surrounded by a bizarre silence in which one of the most vital parts of life was not discussed, was treated as taboo and was handled with kid gloves in any public forum. Fortunately, this has changed dramatically. However a new taboo has taken its place with equally bizarre implications. Religion, which defines cultures, explains much in human historical behavior, and is the wellspring of the traditions of human rights, law, compassionate action and a vast treasure of human art, has been missing from public education and in general, the media.

This is quite odd in the light of the fact that statistically, the people of the United States are far more likely to profess a religious belief than the populations of most other countries. Generally the material which is available in the media is a narrow band of Christian Evangelical paid broadcasting, or the brief news format coverage offered in most newspapers and journals, which fosters misunderstanding, highlighting the conflicts, reporting the scandalous and the absurd in religion with stereotypes which trivialize, polarize and perpetuate ignorance. We often hear of the worst of religion but seldom the best.

Meanwhile, as I write this, today's newspaper headline describes the murder of a five year old boy who was dropped out a fourteenth floor window by two older children because he refused to steal candy for them. What is gut wrenching about this, besides the horror of children for whom life has little or no value, is that it is one story among an almost daily barrage. In the past religious ceremony and myth conveyed to the next generation the values and beliefs of a culture. Who now serves to pass on values, enlighten, encourage, redeem? Children are our mirror, they emulate what they see in the society around them. They learn our loyalties. As in some Grimm fairy tale the mirror on the wall is telling us who is not the fairest of them all.

Feminists often use the term "conspiracy of silence" to describe the way in which women's contributions are ignored and thereby trivialized. This could well be applied to the treatment of the broader subject of religion in the media and in education. The examination of religious belief and the discussion of the values most religions uphold is not trivial but vital. Our basic decisions about value systems, social and personal loyalties and the way these convictions are implemented will determine the shape of civilization (or the lack of it).

The religions have much to say to us of both the prophetic and the practical. There is surely a middle road between single viewpoint evangelism and the journalistic or scholarly "objective" observation (and all too often over-simplification) of religion that stands aloof from personal soul searching and from the broader examination of ethics, value systems. Dr. Hans Küng, in a most eloquent and spontaneous comment at the end of our interview said: "Are all these Mosques, and Churches and Synagogues built around a nothing? I don't think that is the truth. It is, of course, important to know that this ultimate reality we call God is precisely something absolutely different. You can not prove this as you can prove in mathematics or in physics that it is. If it would be that, it would not be God. And so, it's a challenge. It's an indication for what I call a reasonable trust that there is an ultimate reality which sustains us, which is ahead of us, and which ultimately will save us."

In the past two decades I have participated in dozens of inter-religious dialogues on the local, regional, national and international level, and have watched the birth of a forum for inter-religious communication, the North American Interfaith Network, as well as the growth of compassionate multi-faith co-operation where once there had been suspicion, contention and sometimes violence. Over the years my personal motivation to continue in this arena could not have been sustained on the basis of intellectual curiosity, idealistic social convictions or theological belief. It is, however, sustained by the discovery of and deep affection for those remarkable individuals from all of the traditions, who continually give definition and incarnation to the highest aspirations of their traditions and of humanity: love, compassion, non-violence and unselfish generosity. The study of comparative religion, taught as it usually is from books and lectures, cannot begin to tell this story. For me the face to face encounter with those individuals who have sorted through their own tradition to discover and live out that which is vital, that which is gives meaning and direction, that which offers hope for a humane future is a profound inspiration. These have been the most memorable conversations of my life.

I first encountered the existence of Jainism, for instance, when it was described to me as "those people who don't step on bugs, who won't kill a fly but allow thousands of people to starve around them." I was taught in those few words a contempt for a faith I have now discovered through living examples to have a tremendous resource for us in the understanding of non-violence. Jains not only believe in non-violence they lives non-violently and judge all actions by that standard. I found my own standards and definitions of violence and nonviolence considerably expanded by my contact with Jains. This has had an influence on a number of my daily decisions and those of my children who also reacted as I did to the friendly contacts we have made. It has increased the simple joy in life, the happiness and sense well being. We have in Jainism a tradition which represents at least four thousand years of the study of the meaning of non-violence. And yet most people look at me blankly when I mention Jainism. My computer spell check doesn't even recognize the word. Webster's Dictionary gives inaccurate information about the dates of origin of Jainism.

I grew up on the idea that the Jewish tradition was one confined by law, ritual and rule bound, inflexible and probably irrelevant to the contemporary world. It was represented to me as all law and no heart. These were blind misrepresentations, for the most part, impressions which I picked up from the general environment of my small-town Kansas upbringing. I have found, instead, a tradition in which justice, fairness and the law of Torah represent the deepest study and practice of compassion in action. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind and your neighbor as your self." The Jewish tradition represents a profound and personal encounter with that reality to which Hans Küng refers in his interview and has repeatedly provided guidance to a source of strength that goes beyond human limitation and human tragedy. My discussions with Emil Fackenheim, Rabbi Greenberg and Susannah Heschel about survival, hope and transcendence in the face of the unimaginable atrocities of the Holocaust could not stand in more striking contrast with my original vague notion of Judaism.

Without neglecting the others, I can spare you my many misconceptions and unexamined assumptions which have been exploded. Honest encounter eventually means a surrender of misconceptions in the face of contradictory evidence, but much much more has been added than taken away. Honest encounter also make us open, forthright and able to suspend preconceived notions, at least for the moment of conversation. It means we take each other seriously and do not trivialize or minimize the importance of each other's beliefs. We do not need to suspend critical evaluation, and we should not become blind to the abuses and excesses of religion. However, no religion has an exclusive claim on authoritarian abuse, hypocrisy, the perpetuation of violence in the guise of religion, and the manipulation of religious belief to maintain the status quo. Knowing the worst is not a reason to avoid examining the best, and it is unreasonable to compare the worst of one tradition with the best of another.

More often than not, the setting of our first encounters with people very different from ourselves can shape the future of that exchange. My first conversations about religion began many years ago around my kitchen table when I was a child. I would quiz any stranger who came into our home. I was eager, hungry to understand other beliefs and hopeful to find anything that I could use. In a sense, my approach to the interviews in this series could still be called a "kitchen table" approach, for it is in our homes, around the kitchen table, face to face with immediate human need and concern, that we examine our lives and our values with friends to try to find out what works. It is at our kitchen tables where women, so often restricted in the formal rites and rituals of institutional religion, have reached out to one another to understand what is vital for the training of the next generation. This is were an honest examination of the basic questions often takes place. I hope that these interviews convey such an atmosphere, and that viewers who may never have met or ventured a conversation with a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Zoroastrian, a Jew or a Jain, a Baha'i or a Christian might very well have an opportunity to invite someone unfamiliar into their home, vicariously, through the medium of television and print, to begin to discover the treasures humanity has encoded in its religions, and be encouraged by these representatives of the various faiths to find what works both individually and socially.

As we packed up our cameras to go home on a hot Chicago morning in the late summer of 1993, I stood in the empty Presidential Suite of the Blackstone Hotel, the original "smoke-filled room" where decisions that shaped this century were made and where we had just been privileged to glimpse and film a collective representation of human spiritual striving, inquiry, and faith. I had found in that room an assurance I had been seeking most of my life: regardless of the worst in human nature, there is a “best” and it is alive and well all over the world in all shapes and cultures.

Did I learn anything from this extraordinary opportunity? That the basic truths are still simple, and that though they repeat themselves in a wide range of variations, they are centered in compassion. That spiritual awareness is something so simple and so direct but so challenging that we often attempt to obscure it in elaborate theologies, incarcerate it in institutions, or argue it rather than accept the challenge and live it. In these people I saw the reality that truth knows no human boundary--that the Transcendent is alive and well with or without us and above and beyond our attempts to control and it continues to manifest itself throughout our world with surprise, joy, renewed hope, creative freedom and above all, compassion.

Preface to A PARLIAMENT OF SOULS
Published by KQED Books and Tapes