Interfaith Lecture Previews

Discussing the intersection of religion and politics is hardly a lighthearted conversation, historian Spencer McBride admits. But analyzing this connection is vital to understanding American identity.

At 2 p.m. on Wednesday, July 4 in the Hall of Philosophy, McBride will confront this topic head-on in his lecture “Religious Awakenings and America’s National Identity Crisis” as part of Week Two’s interfaith theme, “Religion and American Identity.”

“People want very clear answers, they want the role of religion in America’s past to be very neat and clean and to sit in a box,” McBride said. “The reality is that it was just as complicated back then as it is now. It’s really enlightening in some ways just because it shows that this has been a messy, contentious issue from our country’s beginning.”

McBride, a documentary editor at The Joseph Smith Papers, believes America’s “identity crisis” is a constant within the culture that cannot be understood without considering the role of religion. During his lecture, he will take Chautauquans through the sweeping history of the Second Great Awakening, a revival that led to a rapid rise in religious participation by Americans.

“I’m going to show how these religious awakenings affected the American identity. … I’m going to show that sometimes we think of religion in a very general sense,” he said. “We think of religion’s role in America’s national identity in today’s terms of the secular versus the religious. But even within American religious communities, there’s different approaches.”

As a historian specializing in the American Revolution and the early American republic, McBride attests to religion’s prominent role in shaping the country’s identity. Religious beliefs, he said, have often vindicated social change.

“These religious revivals really drummed up a lot of support for the abolition of slavery. … Yet there’s people using the same Bible, the same religious views to argue that slavery is justified and approved by God,” he said. “So when I talk about a national identity crisis, it’s in a sense that there’s never been a steam-rolled, uncontested national identity. It’s always evolving, it’s always up for debate.”

Amid studying 19th-century movements like the Second Great Awakening and the abolition of slavery, McBride has experienced his own “awakening” as his research has uncovered patterns of religion colliding with politics.

“The first two decades in the 2000s have been very divided, polarized times in our political culture,” he said. “You hear religion invoked again and again by politicians on either side of the aisle, … and people debated the proper role of religion and religious leaders then just as they do now.”

On his very first visit to Chautauqua, the historian and author of Pulpit and Nation: Clergymen and the Politics of Revolutionary America,” said he is enthused about sharing his research with the community.

“I’ve known about Chautauqua for a long time, but it’s great to be a part of it,” he said.

Since declaring independence, America has prided itself on being the “land of the free.” After a fight for liberty, the Founding Fathers had clear intentions to establish a democratic nation of diverse people, far removed from British control.

This freedom, however, has borne its own set of challenges.

At 2 p.m. on Tuesday, July 3 in the Hall of Philosophy, award-winning author and journalist Colin Woodard will address the struggle of defining freedom in modern America during his lecture “American Character: The Struggle between Individual Liberty and the Common Good and the Survival of the Republic.” Woodard’s lecture, moderated by Interfaith Youth Core founder Eboo Patel, marks his first visit to the Institution.

“Are we building a free community or are we trying to maximize individual freedom?” Woodard said. “The raucous nature of many of our conflicts and our internal crises boil down to the clash of those two things.”

Woodard’s lecture will draw from his most recent book, American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good, a 2017 Chautauqua Prize finalist and winner of the 2017 Maine Literary Award for nonfiction. In his book, Woodard defines American freedom as a regional struggle. Given the distinct cultural, social and religious differences that exist within one nation, the attempt to define freedom is often overshadowed by disagreement.

“Where’s the equilibrium point for our particular federation, given our different regional cultures, and how could you build a super majority that would have enough public support through various regions that could carry it forward?” Woodard said. “We’ve done that for decades in the past, precisely because regional coalitions were formed that gave you a super majority. It’s the fact that in recent decades, we haven’t had that.”

In order to reach the “equilibrium point,” Woodard said liberal democracy needs to be redefined and expanded. In a country that once described itself as a melting pot, a two-party system is a feeble attempt at inclusiveness.

“How can you have the Christian right and Ayn Rand libertarians in the same party? Philosophically speaking, they don’t share a lot of fundamental things in common,” he said. “Both parties are coalitions of things that don’t really go together. Realizing that and understanding the actual spectrum of options is a clarifying thing.”

But before citizens can begin rethinking the bipartisan system, Woodard believes the nation’s lens needs refocused. Currently, political conversation is dominated by a desire for power and control.

“American conversation has circled around freedom and a competition with how you secure that,” he said. “The conversation in the past year and a half has been about fear and resentment, which I think everyone should find worrying.”

As an international correspondent in the 1990s, Woodard brings years of reporting, research and reflection to Chautauqua. While working as a journalist in eastern Europe, he covered the aftermath of the Cold War and the region’s struggle to rebuild after the fall of communism.

These experiences, he said, have been used to inform his research on American democracy.

“How do you build a liberal democracy and then how do you sustain one has become one of the things I’ve dealt with throughout my career,” he said. “The past informs the present and only by understanding where we come from can we understand where we’re at.”

Using visuals in the Hall of Philosophy is uncommon; however, visuals are important to Woodard’s lecture.

“We are going to initiate a grand experiment by asking attendees to bring their smart devices with them to the lecture,” said Director of Religion Maureen Rovegno.

Emma Morehart | Staff Writer

Students in Chautauqua’s School of Music have more to learn than technique, intonation and timing. They also have to grasp time travel.

“The difference is that, whereas the Beethoven symphony hasn’t changed since it was written in the early 19th century, the context in which it’s being performed and heard is dramatically different,” said Timothy Muffitt, music director of the Music School Festival Orchestra. “So we, as musicians, have to have an awareness of that.”

Muffitt said the school trains students to be 21st-century musicians. This type of musician faces a new set of responsibilities, challenges and opportunities, but all are actively engaged in it every day.

At 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, Muffitt will explain these differences, how the arts have engaged with society historically and how that engagement continues to evolve. His lecture will be called “Chautauqua and the 21st Century Musician: Preparing Emerging Talent for the Challenges and Opportunities of Today’s Artistic Climate.”

Muffitt himself is a 21st-century musician and conducts the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra and the Lansing Symphony Orchestra during the off-season. In these roles, Muffitt learns the same skills he teaches to Chautauqua’s young musicians.

The way students perform the music does not change, but the approach to marketing, education or program planning has to cater to a different era and audience.

“I think all of us are trying to realize the composer’s intentions when we approach a piece of music,” Muffitt said. “And now as we look back over those hundreds of years between choose-your-favorite-composer and now, what has happened is what we, as musicians, can offer that will shed light on understanding and creating … a deeper and more powerful experience for the listener.”

Chautauqua is one of the best places for this kind of music education. The Institution is uniquely conducive to developing the 21st-century musician because of its global perspective, Muffitt said.

Chautauqua also can be a place for spiritual growth, which is made clear by the Department of Religion’s outreach to the art departments. Part of the benefit of studying at Chautauqua is the interdisciplinary perspective students can learn from lectures like the “Art and Soul” Interfaith Series this week.

“The two go hand in hand,” Muffitt said. “Art is not without soul.”

Emma Morehart | Staff Writer

Opera is part of Jay Lesenger’s soul, but his soul has been burdened lately.

At 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, Lesenger, the general and artistic director of the Chautauqua Opera, will explain the challenge the arts are facing right now. His lecture is titled “Opera as a Spiritual Journey: My Confession.”

“I also will talk about the time that we’re in right now, which is a very difficult time,” Lesenger said. “Our souls are burdened now because of the economy and because of the lack of exposure to the arts in schools. So the focus will be on how we got there and the impact of what’s going on today.”

Although Lesenger said he does not consider himself an especially religious person, he is spiritual, and that spirituality is reflected in the opera.

When it comes to spirituality, Lesenger puts religion and opera on the same level. Everybody has some amount of spirituality in them, and religion can be an expression of that spirituality. Opera, he said, can be another.

“I think (religion and spirituality) are the same; I just think some people are religious because they follow the road of organized religion. … Religion is part of spirituality,” Lesenger said.

For many performers and audience members, the opera also can reflect the soul and spirituality, Lesenger said.

“For many people who are not performers, just the act of going and hearing and listening and being moved by it is a form of spirituality,” he said.

Historically, there are interesting tie-ins between opera, theater and religion. In a nutshell, theater evolved out of religion, and opera was originally an attempt to re-create theater.

For a period of time during the Middle Ages, secular theater was banned, so a form of theater appeared in churches that sparked opera. In the 1500s and early 1600s, operas could not include any reference to Christianity. So any religious content in operas at this time was mythological, Lesenger said.

“I think there is a lot of religion in opera, clearly. … I just think that opera is spiritual because of the way it moves you, the way it infects, the way it gets inside of you, the way any good theater or music does,” Lesenger said. “I think it’s so important because if we don’t have that expression in our culture, we’re going to be in a lot of trouble.”

Several years ago, Lesenger put together a season of religious operas called “Opera and the Almighty,” for which the Department of Religion planned a week of lectures to complement the opera’s theme. This week is the first time since then the two departments have worked together so directly.

“I think that’s part of what Chautauqua really does,” Lesenger said. “There’s an opportunity here to mix different disciplines … and I think Chautauquans love it when they see the different disciplines find ways to interact in ways that they wouldn’t expect.”

Although even Chautauqua’s soul is burdened with the challenges facing the art world, Chautauqua is still a special place to perform, Lesenger said.

“I don’t think you’ll find a lot of places or go to a lot of cities where the religious leaders call upon the artistic leaders … to be a part of what they’re doing,” he said. “And yet, it should, because there is an interrelationship. The festival of opera also is related to the festival of religion.”

Emma Morehart | Staff Writer

At age 10, when most kids pretended to fight fires or dreamed of performing surgeries, Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux decided he wanted to be a dancer.

Since then, Bonnefoux has accumulated countless awards; performed with the Paris Opera, Bolshoi and Kirov Ballets; and choreographed for the New York City Ballet. He co-founded a dance company that toured the U.S. for four years. He has taught at prestigious dance schools, and he now is the artistic director and president of the North Carolina Dance Theatre.

Since 1983, Bonnefoux has served as the artistic director, resident choreographer and principal teacher for the Chautauqua Dance program.

But none of these accomplishments could have come about without Bonnefoux’s deep connection with one thing: his spirit.

At 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, Bonnefoux will add another element of art to the theme “Art and Soul” in his lecture “Inspiration and Passion.” Great dancers should be in constant connection to their soul, he said.

“I think to be able to get to that level of dancing, you need to be inspired, and you need to be more in the spirit than you have to be in your head,” Bonnefoux said. “You have to do the work very well, you have to show up … but you have to go deeper; you have to commit to the spirit.”

Like Bonnefoux, many dancers decide at a very young age that they want to pursue dance. Then, they draw inspiration from the places they dance and the people who have danced before them, he said.

The dancer is inspired, internalizes that inspiration and then draws from it while he or she is dancing. This search within is vital to the creative process of dancing, Bonnefoux said.

“That’s what’s really unique for an artist,” he said. “Creation doesn’t come from the conscious mind. To create is really to go into the subconscious and what you have inside of you, that spirit.”

This explains why often, at the close of a performance, dancers may not remember how they danced or what happened around them. The dance was a deeply personal experience for them.

At its core, dancing is a soul search. Spirituality and religion can play a role for many dancers, but the spirit is the driving force, Bonnefoux said.

“For many people, the soul, or the spirit, is sacred and comes from a deeper place that many people call God,” he said. “My lecture is about creation, but also the spirituality of the body, the spirituality of what we do as an artist.”

When Bonnefoux dances or choreographs, his faith is part of his inspiration. He said he finds God in his spirit, from the same place that he finds inspiration for his dance.

Dance also is directly related to his faith in a physical sense. Though some religions condemn dancing, Bonnefoux said he uses it as an expression of his religion.

“Its such a natural thing to be moving,” he said. “A direct way to express yourself is through dance. It’s strange for me to hear or to know that there are religions that don’t think that you can dance, because I think it’s a celebration of the body, a celebration of the God who made you.”

Emma Morehart | Staff Writer

Although Ethan McSweeny and Vivienne Benesch have known each other personally and professionally for 15 years, there’s still more to learn.

At 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, the two will interview each other about “Art and Soul,” the theme of this week’s Interfaith Lecture Series, as it relates to the theater, in “Soul and Story: Choosing a Life in the Theater.”

“When it comes to issues of our journey in art and the spiritual nature of that journey, I think there are always new mysteries to uncover,” said Benesch, who shares with McSweeny the title of artistic director of Chautauqua Theater Company.

The two are not co-directors, though. They posed the double-director idea to the leaders of the Chautauqua Institution in 2005, and the company has since reached new levels of popularity and creativity.

The company’s most recent production, “Three Sisters,” has received mixed reviews. But Benesch said that this is one of the things she loves about the theater.

“I think a lot of (the lecture series’ theme) is what it is about our profession that brings us … back to it,” Benesch said. “Why do we keep coming back to theater as the mode to express what is in our deepest soul? Because (the audience) gets to have an opinion. … People feel — because we are, as artists, reflecting human beings as themselves — that they have authority over that. And they do, to a certain extent.”

Often, the way a play resonates with audience members may reflect their religious or spiritual convictions, Benesch said. The theater does not impose a particular message on people. The theater reflects life, and the way a person reacts to life depends on their perspective.

That is one of the challenges Benesch faced with religion. She said she is Jewish by heritage, Catholic by culture and a mixture by practice. She often went to church and temple with her friends and was drawn to the feeling of community, but said she could never identify with one particular denomination — nor did she want to.

“I was raised with a certain amount of confusion about my own religious background … so for me, it did become then about spirituality,” Benesch said. “The best replica of that (feeling of community) is theater in many ways. … Where words about ethics, mortality, future, all of those themes, are dealt with, there’s a different dialogue all to the same questions.”

For McSweeny, religion is culture. He grew up a “Protestant Catholic,” and those traditions influenced his work as an artist. Art, he said, can transcend religion and meet with a more general spirituality.

“So art has a very useful role to play in a diverse society as a place where we come together to experience something live,” McSweeny said. “And by that I mean (in the theater) that we are sharing it. … There’s the similarity that the audience comes together in a collective community, and that is without direct religion.”

The difference between religion and spirituality is blurry. Often, spirituality is an umbrella term for faith-based beliefs, which include religion. In the theater, religion cannot be placed into a well-defined box. But Benesch said there is a place for it.

“‘Yes’ is the easy answer,” she said. “Of course there is a space. But the reason there’s a space is because it’s all in the beholder’s eye. … And what I take from that, or what any audience member takes from it, may touch them in the deepest part of the dialogue they’re having with themselves as a religious person. I believe the best theater touches people accidentally. … It doesn’t tell you how to listen to it or what to do with the information you’re getting.”

Both Benesch and McSweeny have close ties to Chautauqua through each other and through the theater company. Benesch began studying theater at Chautauqua in 1989 and has returned to direct, act and teach almost every year since. McSweeny, on the other hand, came to Chautauqua once when he was dating Benesch and did not expect to return.

“I didn’t have any imagination that (Chautauqua) would come to me as a dominant force as an artist,” McSweeny said.

At the lecture series today, the Chautauquan pillars of art and religion will cross in a more direct way than the theater company has yet to experience. The Department of Religion has always supported the theater, Benesch said, but this work is consistent with the Chautauqua mission.

“This is a lovely opportunity to share,” Benesch said. “And I’m curious if people who don’t normally come to the theater will come and hear us. I hope if they do, that our passion for what we do and that it is very much a spiritual quest will lead them to the theater.”

Emma Morehart | Staff Writer

What do Pompeii, jazz, the Information Age and art have in common?

Interruption. And this interruption inspires the kind of creativity seen in some of the most ambitious and successful pieces of art, said Don Kimes, the artistic director of Visual Arts at Chautauqua Institution.

Kimes will explain how interruption can be a catalyst for creativity in all forms of art in his lecture, “Interruption, Transformation and the Creative Act,” at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy.

“These interruptions can be major and catastrophic, and the way one responds to them determines whether or not one digs a hole and climbs into it or manages to come through with it and maybe even something better happens as a result of that interruption,” Kimes said.

The theme of this week’s Interfaith Lecture Series is “Art and Soul” and analyzes how spirituality and faith influence art. Often, art and soul are inseparable, Kimes said.

“When I touch the walls of Pompeii, or I touch a stone carving that was there when the Venetians lived, it does something in terms of understanding your place in the universe,” Kimes said. “Art is really about a kind of transcendence. What else is it if it’s not about transcending?”

Kimes lives in Washington, D.C., but has spent a large portion of his life studying in Italy and still travels to the Italian city of Umbria. In 2010, he helped an Italian painter named Rossella Vasta write “Interruptio,” a collection of essays that discuss the role of interruption in the creative process.

“It’s only in really being lost do you have a chance to make a discovery,” Kimes said. “Otherwise, you kind of depend on what you already know.

He added that all of his most creative work began as an interruption.

“So it’s a way of looking at things that happen in our lives that we maybe don’t like at the time, but if we can manage to hold ourselves together … it’s possible that we’ll ascend in an even larger way,” he said.

Kimes has been the artistic director of VACI for 26 years and said collaboration with the other departments at Chautauqua has been essential to the smooth success of the Institution. But Kimes said he has never collaborated with the Department of Religion this directly.

The lecture allows Kimes to access an audience that he normally would not have the opportunity to engage with, he said. Even though interruption can be crucial to creative art, it is a topic well suited to a general audience as well.

“You’re looking for the thing that isn’t what you expect because in connecting to that thing … there’s a chance that you’ll find something you don’t already know,” Kimes said. “And to me, that’s the definition of art. That’s what education is, taking a chance on something you don’t already know.”

“Ascendence” and “transcendence,” the words Kimes uses to describe the core components of art, are familiar religious words as well. But art is more about spirituality than religion, he said.

“When I walk into a museum, and I look at the work of (someone else), the work that really calls me is the work that I can’t explain, that somehow talks about the healing spirit on some level, that can’t really be articulated,” Kimes said. “To me, that’s a kind of spirituality.”

He added that this is similar to the common religious concept of “blind faith.”

Although Kimes went to church as a kid, he said his faith does not shape his work as much as his spirituality does. But he said he does believe in God and often jokes that he works with God every day.

“Things happen, and then I respond to them and then the image comes out. I say that it’s just me and God. He does his thing and I do mine,” Kimes said with a laugh. “It’s like the saying, ‘Man plans and God laughs.’”

Emma Morehart | Staff Writer

From makeshift jail cells across the U.S., Al Staggs brings to life the letter that a distraught Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from his German prison in the early 1940s.

“We have for once learnt to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled — in short, from the perspective of those who suffer,” the letter states.

This line inspired Staggs, a performance artist and former minister, to create a one-person play based on Bonhoeffer’s life and legacy. At 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, Staggs will re-create the scene from the cell in his performance, “A View from the Underside: The Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”

“I combined that pivotal statement with my study of Latin American liberation theology, which contends that God has a preferential option for the poor and the oppressed,” said Staggs, referencing Matthew 25:31-46 and Jesus’ sermon in Nazareth. “When one reads Scripture … you come away with the concept that it does appear that God has a special concern for the poor.”

Bonhoeffer often sacrificed his safety for the advocacy of social justice and the equality that his Christian background inspired in him.

“I think that Bonhoeffer reminds us in his advocacy for those who were disenfranchised, Jews and other victims of the Holocaust … of what we are about, and that is people of faith,” Staggs said. “So I brought this into dramatic form in a sense to highlight what Bonhoeffer was about and also how that can be instructed for the church and for people of faith.”

Staggs grew up in a Fundamentalist Baptist church in rural Arkansas and took a more activist look at religion while at Harvard University’s Harvard Divinity School. There, he began to consider economics, politics and the structural aspects of life as they related to his faith and religion in general.

Although his early religious education continues to influence his worldview, Staggs said his studies at Harvard set his faith on a new trajectory that examines how faith impacts structural evil and injustice. In this sense, Bonhoeffer’s work and theology often resonates with him.

“Bonhoeffer was a federal agent and put himself in a very political situation,” Staggs said. “Here he was a pastor and a noted theologian and became an operative in the affairs of state to try to arrest control of its demonic machine.”

Staggs also performs speeches and teachings of other leaders who can be considered “spies for God,” like Martin Luther King, Jr., Clarence Jordan — and Jesus. In one program, Staggs performs the Sermon on the Mount in a way that “brings Jesus’ words to life in such a way that we hear them afresh,” according to a review by David Hindman, a United Methodist campus minister at the College of William and Mary.

Bonhoeffer’s combination of faith and activism and Staggs’ use of performance and history makes it possible for the audience to relate to the message in a personal way.

“The goal of my performance is to provoke the audience to think about what were Bonhoeffer’s actions and his challenges and how that relates to the challenges we now face with the issues we confront today,” Staggs said. “And there really is no answer, but at least it will hopefully be invocative and stimulating for people to think about what all of this means for us today.”

Emma Morehart | Staff Writer

The Rev. Frank Chikane has been tortured, detained, put under house arrest, suspended from his ministry, criticized and nearly killed because of his fight for equality in South Africa. But he doesn’t name any of those when speaking about the biggest challenge he has faced so far.

“The challenge was I had to accept that Christians can do horrible things,” Chikane. “That’s why you will hear me talking about it (in the lecture), that I’m scared of religion. I’m scared of it. Because people can kill you in the name of God and believe in it.”

This is the perspective from which Chikane began his activism. And though his political activism put him at risk and his own religion betrayed him, it is his faith that inspired his work.

“So I had to answer to that, and then conclude that evil forces are able to use religion against people, and my response to it from high school … was that the people who oppress, the very people you are preaching to, are Christians,” Chikane said. “So we had to begin to think about rereading the Bible, reinterpreting the scriptures and ended up talking about liberating the Bible from the oppressor … and ultimately it ends up liberating your oppressor.”

Chikane learned this mutual liberation concept from his friend, mentor and fellow activist Beyers Naudé. Chikane met Naudé in college in the early 1970s, after Naudé broke away from the powerful South African brotherhood, Broederbond, and risked his life to advocate against it.

“His main argument was that you can’t save yourself by oppressing others,” Chikane said. “You can’t secure yourself by making other people insecure. You can’t have your future guaranteed as long as others are still oppressed. … That was his message to them. But at that time, he failed. They persecuted him.”

Chikane and Naudé’s first meeting marked the beginning of years of teamwork. When Nelson Mandela clashed with South African State President F. W. de Klerk over the transfer of power to Mandela, Mandela called Chikane and Naudé to intervene and resolve the standstill. When the church got involved in the anti-apartheid efforts, Chikane called Naudé for guidance.

So when Chikane was asked to speak about “spies for God,” Naudé became his lecture topic. Chikane will speak at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy about Naudé’s courage in his lecture “Daring Death to Save a Nation.”

“For us, who were black and victims of this white establishment … the risk was that we would then hate all whites as the oppressors,” Chikane said. “And the heroic stance of Beyers Naudé, in my view, helped to humanize us in the sense that we couldn’t say all whites are like that. You needed a Beyers Naudé to take a stand, and he’s with you in that fight and faces the might of the state with you, and he is ready to die for it.”

Naudé helped many Africans be human, Chikane said, because he helped them recognize the difference between the system and the people.

“He helped us to think about life differently. … He did not win many whites to his side, but he remained a witness to many whites in the community,” Chikane said. “He was like a prophet, rejected amongst his own people.”

The parallels between Naudé’s and Chikane’s lives reflect Chikane’s courage as well. Both were tortured and rejected for their activism, and both fought for justice, even when it meant rejecting the beliefs of their own institutions. Chikane said that he and Naudé were window reflections of each other. Their main difference, though, was their race.

Chikane said he grew up in a very conservative white church and fought racism and division within his own environment. Naudé fought these same struggles, and consequences, from a white perspective.

Although Chikane received criticism for his political involvement, he said it never interfered with his work as a pastor. Before 1994, when apartheid ended in South Africa, Chikane’s faith called him to work for justice and equality. In 1995, Chikane began a 14-year career working for the government under former Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe and serving as a member of the African National Congress.

But Chikane never left his church, and he said his congregation welcomed him despite his political work.

“There was not tension in terms of time, because the people I ministered to were victims of the same system,” Chikane said. “So there was, I call it, continuity. It was a holistic faith. So I continued to be a pastor, and the congregation said, ‘It doesn’t matter where you go. When you come back, you are our pastor.’”

Now, Chikane dedicates the majority of his work to the church but still advocates for the liberation of society in a permanent way. The consequences of years of racism and injustice cannot simply disappear with the abolishment of laws, he said.

“What scares me most is that our generation is capable of doing exactly the same (as past generations), and we do the same in a different way that is more sophisticated,” Chikane said. “Human beings are children of their time. They repeat what those who came before them have done in a different way. … We commit the same atrocities. Because it’s sophisticated, we can’t see it.”

Emma Morehart | Staff Writer

Geffrey Kelly has made studying the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer a second career. He has written four books about the German pastor and activist, teaches about him at La Salle University and was a board member of the International Dietrich Bonhoeffer Society for 26 years. He received an honorary doctorate for his research on Bonhoeffer and has edited translations of Bonhoeffer’s writings.

Bonhoeffer broke a lot of the rules of his time and taught that faith should be external and active, Kelly said. To Bonhoeffer, pursuit of justice and faith were inextricably linked. These teachings resonated with Kelly during an unexpected time in his life when his faith most needed it.

“When you’re in a monastery like I was, life is pretty much mapped out,” said Kelly, a systematic theology professor at La Salle University. “I thought maybe at that point in my life, I was following a rule, but I had lost contact with Jesus Christ, and I think that’s what really turned my life around — being on the receiving end of (Bonhoeffer’s) criticisms.”

Bonhoeffer was, as fitting with the Interfaith Lecture Series theme this week, a spy for God. At 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, Kelly will discuss Bonhoeffer’s dichotomous life in a lecture called “The Costly Grace of Christian Discipleship in the Life, Writings and Espionage Activities of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”

However, his desire for justice and active faith often put him in conflict with his own pacifism. Most notably, he was a double agent — both a spy for the Third Reich and an active member of the conspiracy to overthrow and kill Hitler, Kelly said.

“We can search the writings of religious writers of that period, but there’s no one who spoke so forcefully or eloquently on the need for peace on earth, so it seems a bit incongruous that he will then join the conspiracy to kill the head of state,” Kelly said.

Bonhoeffer wrote, questioned and re-questioned his ethics several times to reconcile the two desires. Out of this came the double effect of morality, in which Christians recognize sinful behavior but trust they will be forgiven and accept the fault, Kelly said.

Bonhoeffer lived by the double effect of morality standard, which was reflected in the political and espionage work he did in Germany that eventually led to his execution.

“He understood that when you are confronted with an evil that is so systemically rooted in an entire country and an entire ideology, that violence may be necessary,” Kelly said.

In Kelly’s own teachings, he said he takes a cue from Bonhoeffer and encourages his students and audiences to challenge their own faiths and influences.

“A lot of it comes down to sharing our faith and sharing aspects of our lives when we wonder what will be our contribution to the future of our country and our personal lives,” Kelly said. “I think all of us need mentors, and we also need those who can be integrated into the ideal that we need. … It’s simply taking the action of their lives and responding to their challenges.”

Emma Morehart | Staff Writer

Gary Dorrien will take the Interfaith Lecture Series audience on a century-long journey this week. He will begin with the life of Reverdy Ransom as a civil rights activist in the early 1900s and will end with Benjamin E. Mays’ work with Martin Luther King Jr., stopping on the way to discuss social and religious turning points that led to the concept of the Black Social Gospel.

The theme of the week is “Spies for God,” which focuses on people who are following Christ in dangerous ways, Dorrien said. At 2 p.m. today and Thursday in the Hall of Philosophy, Dorrien will address the topic in two unique ways.

Most people have probably never heard of the work of Ransom or Mays — especially when mentioned in the same sentence as historical figures like Martin Luther King Jr. or Abraham Lincoln, Dorrien said. But both Ransom and Mays made a profound impact on the development of the civil rights movement and worked as “spies for God” in America.

In today’s lecture, “Defying White Supremacism: Reverdy Ransom and the Black Social Gospel,” and Thursday’s lecture, “Defying White Supremicism: Benjamin E. Mays, ‘The Negroe’s God’ and the Black Social Gospel,” Dorrien will tell both men’s stories.

“I thought it was important to talk about Christians from the United States who also experience their country as a site of oppression,” said Dorrien, a professor of social ethics at the Union Theological Seminary. “I’m going to talk about the founding of the Black Social Gospel tradition that was the wellspring of the civil rights movement.”

It is safe to assume that most Americans know a lot about Martin Luther King Jr. and other prominent civil rights activists, Dorrien said, but people know very little about the leaders who shaped and created the ideologies behind the activists.

“The movement didn’t just come from nowhere,” he said. “I’ll be telling a story that has been largely forgotten, and wrongly so.”

The fact that these leaders are American is just as important as their civil rights activism, Dorrien said. It is too easy for Americans to admire leaders in other countries without recognizing the parallels. The important question to ask, he said, is what these parallels mean for people today.

Most of Dorrien’s work is divided into two broad categories: historical theology and social ethics. In these lectures, Dorrien said he will try to bridge the gap between the two but will stay primarily on the social ethics side. His particular interest, though, is in the Social Gospel because of the vast implications it had on American history.

“Chautauqua wouldn’t exist except for the Social Gospel,” Dorrien said, because of the Institution’s Protestant roots and dedication to social justice.

The Social Gospel movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries applied Christian ethics to social problems such as inequality, crime and racial tension. Out of this movement grew the Black Social Gospel, which applied the same concept specifically to racial inequality. The Social Gospel also involves the idea that salvation is not an independent act.

“Society itself needs to be saved,” Dorrien said. “It’s not just a question of bringing individuals to Jesus. To be a follower is to find yourself (and your faith) in one social situation or another, and often people end up finding themselves in situations they didn’t expect.”

Even Dorrien’s experiences parallel Social Gospel ideals. Dorrien was not raised in church but was always involved in social justice organizations. When he was in his late 20s, he began to combine this involvement with a Christian faith. Now, his faith is inseparable from the rest of his life.

“My faith journey has everything to do with it,” he said. “It’s something I chose to take over my whole life.”

Dorrien said his faith influences his actions and decisions. Approximately 50 percent of his lectures are to secular audiences, and though he does not feature his faith, he often mentions it.

“There’s usually a point in those talks where I’ll say something like, ‘In my experience, it helps to be religious,’” Dorrien said. “In most social justice work, it’s the religious folks who hang in there. It’s not about success (for them), but about faithfulness.”

Emma Morehart | Staff Writer

One of the critical goals of government is to give people the ability to run without stumbling, said the Rev. Barry C. Black, the U.S. Senate chaplain.

At 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, Black will explain in his lecture, “Running Without Stumbling,” that one of the government’s roles is to prepare people for “seasons of emergencies.”

“Seasons of emergencies require the ability to run without stumbling, to exert oneself in an extreme way without stumbling, and good government ultimately not only prepares people for the sunshine, but it prepares people for the storms of life,” Black said.

Leaders like Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were just some of those who advocated running without stumbling, Black said, but his lecture will address other aspects of government, as well.

There is an ethical foundation to government, and this is made clear in the preamble to the Constitution. The document opens by listing five goals of the government: establishing justice, ensuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare and securing the blessings of liberty.

These goals reflect the ethical responsibility the government has to its people, but the goals also resonate with religious tradition, and according to Romans 13:1-7, the government is ordained by God, Black said.

“Religion is what ethical foundations are all about, and it is religion that provides people with the responsibilities of citizenship,” Black said. “In Romans 13, he talked about the responsibilities of Christian citizenship. In Matthew 22:21 it says, ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give to God what is God’s,’” Black said. “Religion informs what good citizenship should look like and what responsible citizenship should look like.”

Black’s background, which includes decades with the Navy and government, as well as what he said is his lifelong calling to ministry, gives him a distinctive mindset as the Senate chaplain.

“I think he has a very unique perspective, because obviously, he has a fair number of political views, but he doesn’t really have a forum to express his views on specific issues,” said Jane Campbell, chief of staff for Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and a longtime Chautauquan. “He’s always sort of one step outside of the current debate, just talking about maintaining a level of respect, maintaining a level of integrity and focusing on the common good as we know it.”

Campbell has been attending Black’s Bible study group for two years and will introduce him at the Interfaith Lecture Series.

Black grew up in the Seventh-day Adventist Church but attended both a Baptist seminary and a Presbyterian seminary. He was a pastor in the military for 27 years and is now a pastor for 7,000 people on Capitol Hill.

“I’m probably a theological eclectic,” Black said, adding that he has served people of all different religions and denominations of Christianity.

As Senate chaplain, Black leads four Bible studies each week, officiates weddings and funerals, makes hospital visits, counsels his congregation and advises senators regarding ethical dimensions of the topics they debate in their chambers.

“I have performed ministry in a variety of venues, and this is just another one of those venues,” Black said. “It is very exciting, but it’s just another one of them. It is (different) in the sense that you’re pasturing very prominent people and their families. Not very many pastors have that opportunity, but in many ways, people are people. In some ways it is (different), and in some ways it isn’t.”

Emma Morehart | Staff Writer

E.J. Dionne opens his book Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right with an anecdote about Jesus’ political party.

In this story, a son asks his “straight Democrat” mother if she would change her ways if Jesus came back and voted Republican. “Aw, hush, why should he
change his party after all these years?” she replies.

This woman’s opinion is not uncommon, but many Americans have come to believe that all religious voters also vote Republican. The point Dionne will make in his Interfaith Lecture is that the principles behind religion should set the standards by which people live. His lecture will be at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy.

“Religious people should always be wary of the ways in which political power is wielded and … mindful of how their own traditions have been used for narrow political purposes, and how some religious figures have manipulated faith to aggrandize their own power,” Dionne said in his book.

Dionne said that even he cannot explain his views on many topics, like poverty, without referring back to what he learned about Christianity and Judaism.

Although “religious right” has become an everyday phrase, Dionne said he jokes that he is a liberal because he is a Christian, not despite the fact that he is. He also said he grew up in a household where religion and politics were discussed together and where religion was attractive and relatable.

“I always joked that I grew up in a household that violated the rule that you never talk about religion or politics at the dinner table. We always talked about religion and politics at the dinner table,” Dionne said.

He said his parents were religious in an open way and taught him by example. Now, he said he sees faith as something that inspires people to do good things.

“My neighbor was an Orthodox Jew, and she and my mother would regularly sit down and kind of compare notes on their view of God,” Dionne said. “So sort of the idea that religion was automatically closed-minded, which a lot of people have, was not the way I experienced it.”

As a result, Dionne said, the questions surrounding politics and religion have fascinated him, and most of his work is related to them. In addition to Souled Out, Dionne has written three other books and writes a twice-weekly political column for The Washington Post. He also is a professor at Georgetown University and a commentator for NPR.

His interest in politics allows Dionne to take a unique historical perspective on the meaning of the week’s theme, “The Role of Religion in Engaging Citizens for the Common Good.”

“I think we live in a world where a lot of people wonder if there is such a thing as the common good, that we are very divided politically and people are suspicious of anything that doesn’t really talk about individual freedom,” Dionne said.

However, there is a lot of evidence to the contrary, he said. In the Declaration of Independence, for example, the tax grievance never included the words “private” or “sector” but instead spoke of the public good, Dionne said in a recent column.

“(The signers) knew that it takes public action — including effective and responsive government — to secure ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’” the column read.

There is also religious evidence that the common good should be the goal. For example, many religions call followers to believe that the community should be valued over the whole, and that only a strong community can best defend the freedom of individuals, Dionne said.

“Particularly the prophetic books of the old testament … and the social parts of Jesus’ teaching, the Sermon on the Mount notably, are all about the good, and I think that we misunderstand Christianity if we think it is only about individual salvation,” Dionne said. “So much of what Jesus talked about was about our imperative to change the way we live in this world.”

Dionne will discuss this, as well as the country’s need for openness and how it applies to religion.

“I want to talk about how, if you look at both the Old and New testaments, there is a constant call to be open to people who are called aliens or strangers,” Dionne said. “I want to talk about what a world without strangers would look like.”

Emma Morehart | Staff Writer

Rabbi David Saperstein has been called many things in Washington. A profile of him in The Washington Post called him “the quintessential religious lobbyist on Capitol Hill.” Newsweek named him the most influential rabbi in the country in 2009, and major news outlets like The Wall Street Journal and Religion News Service identified him as one of the most influential people in shaping religious issues in elections.

But Saperstein, the director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said he works for the common good, which is why at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, he will continue the Interfaith Lecture Series with “The Use and Abuse of the Jewish Tradition in Contemporary Political Debates: A Jewish Perspective.”

Saperstein and the Religious Action Center work with other public interest groups to find the common good in the nation and its public policy. Although he will speak from a Jewish perspective, he said the work he does applies to all religions.

“A central challenge facing all religious communities in America is how within the internal value system of our respect of religious faiths, we are taught that we ought to use the lessons (of our personal faiths) and applying them to nonreligious societies, such as the United States,” Saperstein said.

Different faiths take different sides of this debate. Some believe it is their mission to impose their religious law on American policy, Saperstein said. Others believe that their religious laws are binding only for themselves, but their ethical values are universal.

Saperstein said that he will explore how the Jewish tradition sees its laws and values as being applicable to America, and how these values can and should enhance the moral debates in America.

“I’m going to set forth a methodology that I think comes within the Jewish groups and that links together not just all streams of Judaism, but I think is very close to the way that other faith traditions think about the same challenges,” Saperstein said.

Saperstein’s background in both religion and politics gives him a unique perspective. He comes from a long family line of rabbis and Jewish scholars but is also an attorney and a professor of Jewish law and of First Amendment church-state law at Georgetown University’s law school.

“For 3,000 years, the Jewish tradition has held social justice to be central to the religious life and communal life of the Jewish people,” Saperstein said. “We brought forth to the world a vision of relationship, of a God who calls on humanity to be God’s partners in shaping a better world … so that’s woven into the ritual, the liturgy, the sacred text, the historical experience of the Jewish people.”

His career represents the vast applicability of the Jewish tradition in American policy. He has served on the boards of several national organizations, like the NAACP, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life and the People For the American Way. In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed him as a member of the first White House Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

In his lecture at Chautauqua, Saperstein will take the same interdisciplinary approach.

“I really just hope the audience walks away with a deeper understanding of how Judaism thinks about how religious values of one faith can be applied in a universal sense to a nation of many faiths,” Saperstein said, adding that he will address topics like economics, gay rights, abortion, the environment and foreign policy.