LILY RESLINK
Staff Writer
“Just one more question for you,” I said to the Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde. “If you could flip a switch that changed one thing about Earth to make it a more peaceful and merciful world, what would that change be?”
After this interview at the start of the 2026 Summer Season, inspiration struck to incorporate a version of this question into almost all interviews I conducted while previewing the Interfaith Lecture Series.
The exact wording of the question varied from each interview to the next, but it remained something along the lines of, “If you could flip a switch that made one change in the world to make it a more peaceful place, what would that change be?”
The responses below are organized by common themes that emerged and reflect a selection of the lecturers interviewed throughout the season. Most quotes are shortened significantly, and some are paraphrased for concision, clarity and grammar.
TRANSFORMING NEGATIVE TO POSITIVE
Najeeba Syeed
Embrace “awkward spaces” as opportunities to learn from others without fear.
Terrence Johnson
“Find joy in the struggle” and build community to “minimize the degree of which we rely on one person to save us.”
George Tanabe
Citing Buddhist scripture, he said, “Hatred is never resolved by hatred. Only love can cure the problem of hatred.”
CHANGING HOW HUMANS SEE ONE ANOTHER
Mariann Edgar Budde
“If every human being could see other human beings through the eyes of God and prize and cherish each human being, a lot of the things that we fight and struggle over and hold onto would change.”
Yolanda Pierce
“Helping others to recognize that because each human being is made in the imago dei (the image and likeness of God), every single person is our neighbor.”
Norman Wirzba
“Start eating with people you don’t know, don’t appreciate, don’t understand, and maybe get to know them by eating with them because eating transforms our understanding of each other.”
LEARNING FROM THOSE WHO CAME BEFORE US
Susannah Heschel
For everyone to have the “greatness of mind and heart” of her inspirations, including Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama and her father.
Amy Bluemel
Referencing fear’s role in the U.S.’s history of racism, she said, “If we understand each other better, if you understand where someone else is coming from, then we’re not afraid of each other.”
CHANGING GOVERNMENT, POLICY, WEALTH AND CLIMATE
Rita Nakashima Brock
“Stop empires.”
Bill McKibben
“It would be the switch that switched off fossil fuel and switched on renewable energy. And it’s actually a switch that we’re turning, we’re flipping now in the world. We just have to do it more quickly so we can start to catch up with climate change.”
Natalie Wigg-Stevenson
“We have to stop the rich from getting rich,” she said. She added that addressing wealth distribution would help avert the climate disasters and wars that stem from it.
Manisha Sinha
“… I would end all wars.”
Naomi Riley
Achieving peace, she said, requires “a bigger defense budget for the United States because … if America wants a more peaceful world, unfortunately, we’re going to have to do a lot of the work to deter aggressors….”
David Waldstreicher
“If Congress would actually approve [the] United States’ acts of war rather than leaving it up to the president, that would make the world a more peaceful place.”
Derrick Weston
“I would eliminate billionaires and the desire to be a billionaire. I don’t want the people to disappear. I want the wealth consolidation to disappear….”
Wes Granberg-Michaelson
“If world leaders would recognize the grassroots potential of religious communities in creating change.”
Karen Florini
“Stabilize the climate.”
UNDERSTANDING OTHERS’ PERSPECTIVES
E.J. Dionne
“All of us (could) do a much better job of putting ourselves in the shoes of other people, particularly people who are very different from us. … I once said … that if I made a baseball hat, it would say, ‘Make America empathetic again.’”
Jeremy Ben-Ami
“I would force people to stand for a day in the shoes of the other that they demonize and to look at the world through their eyes for 24 hours and understand things the way that they see the world. And I think everybody would act differently if they could just better put themselves into the shoes of those that they think they have the deepest conflict with.”
Brandon Dillard
“For people to understand the importance and the value of empathy — especially for those people who we disagree with … and to have empathy for the environments from which we derive our life.”
Sonya S. Cronin
“Compassion.” Cronin added that positive change comes with combining smarts with hearts.
Randall Balmer & Peter Lawson Jones
“Humility.”
FINDING INWARD ALIGNMENT
Naaborle Sackeyfio
“Turn off the noise, and by noise, that can mean lots of things.” She stressed opportunities for stillness and reflection on how one contributes to the world.
Rosemarie Zagarri
“Turn off social media.”
Leah Naomi Green
“If I could give everyone that superpower of deep listening to themselves and to others, even others who don’t agree with them.”
