Interfaith Lecture Recaps

Due to rapid advancements in technology, Maggie Jackson knows the art of asking for directions is dying. However, she still believes it is worth asking because the benefits of face-to-face interaction — even with those who disagree — are endless.

At 2 p.m. Tuesday, July 31, in the Hall of Philosophy, Jackson, a journalist and author of Distracted, gave her lecture, “Outside the Walls of Our Perspective: How Tolerance Sets Us Free,” as part of Week Six’s interfaith theme, “A Spirituality of Work.”

“The moment when I am asking (for directions), I am placing myself in the hands of a stranger, I am trusting their take on the world, and they too gain by offering the gift of their knowledge and by interacting with someone who, for a little while, sees the world with very fresh eyes,” Jackson said. “You might say that what is really going on here is the gift of a second chance. New connections are made, new perspectives are constructed before two people head off in new directions.”

According to Jackson, only a quarter of Americans talk regularly to people with opposing political views, and social circles are shrinking. She said that applies to both core networks: the intimates or family and friends we talk about important matters with, and larger networks or one’s “weaker ties.”

“We are essentially talking to the mirror,” she said. “After all, it is easier, quicker, smoother to keep behind the walls of our perspective and affirm the rightness of our tribe. As a result, common ground shrinks, science tells us, and differences in perspectives widen.”

Jackson said staying behind these walls leads to “clashing realities” among different groups of people.

“Interactions with others, when they do occur, seem to be chances to do battle with an online comment, a dinner party rebuttal or a street confrontation and then retreat, retreat, retreat,” she said.

Jackson paraphrased the novelist Richard Wright and said, “We are hugging the easy way of damning all we do not understand.” She posed three questions to the audience: How can we? How can we start getting along together? How can we rediscover the humanity of those most different from us?

Answering Wright’s questions is where Jackson said many people tend to “give up the fight.”

“Here is where some might say ‘get real,’ ” she said. “Democracy is under threat; this is an age of anxiety and anger. Sixty percent of Americas call this the lowest point in U.S. history in memory, across generations. Some might say we need to ‘take our country back’ and that ‘the time for compromise has passed.’ ”

Jackson referred back to a moment in history when a metaphorical “green shoot of hope sprouted in a desert of hate.”

Durham, North Carolina, was one of the last towns in the country to formally desegregate its schools in 1970. When a federal court-ordered ultimatum came down that the schools must be integrated, school administration set up a 10-day series of town hall meetings to prepare for the changes to come.

Two co-chairs were named: Ann Atwater and C.P. Ellis. Along with being co-chairs, the two also happened to be mortal enemies.

Atwater was an eighth-grade drop out, a sharecropper’s daughter and a tireless advocate for Durham’s poor, black population. Ellis was a gas station owner and the local chief of the KKK in Durham, the most active Klan chapter in the country, Jackson said.

“Atwater and Ellis knew one another well,” Jackson said. “They had met on many battlegrounds such as marches, boycotts and city council meetings.”

In the lead up to the town meetings to discuss desegregation, Atwater and Ellis refused to speak to or even look at one another, Jackson said. However, after the first meeting, Ellis called Atwater and proposed that they set aside their differences for the sake of their children.

After finding common ground stemming from their shared roles as parents, Jackson said the effect of Ellis’ call on the second meeting changed their relationship entirely.

“Both (of their) kids had been taunted and bullied at their schools for what their parents were doing,” Jackson said.

Although their rivalry could have ended there, Jackson said Ellis continued to retreat to the “comfort of his assumptions” and still pushed back on Atwater’s principles of belief.

In planning for one of the last nights of the meetings, Atwater invited a celebratory gospel choir, and Ellis retaliated by demanding he be able to set up a exhibit to display KKK, Nazi and white supremacist paraphernalia.

To everyone’s surprise, Atwater stood up for him, Jackson said.

That night of the final meeting as he sat in the classroom with his exhibit, a group of angry black teenagers headed his way.

“The city was tense; the time was right for a riot,” Jackson said. “They headed to the classroom, and Ann Atwater stood and blocked their way. She said ‘If you want to know where a person is coming from, you have got to see what makes him think what he thinks. Step closer. Take a look. What is on the other side of the divide? What are we failing to see?’ ”

According to Jackson, Atwater countered Ellis’ gesture of contempt with “the gift of deep regard.”

“She answered his retreat by stepping forward and standing up for her enemy, calling on all around her to see the world from his point of view,” Jackson said. “This perspective-taking was a folk wisdom that is now being understood scientifically as one of the most powerful antidotes to prejudice that we have. Perspective-taking is the cognitive side to empathy. It is reaching out for fuller understanding of another. By taking one another’s perspective, we begin to flesh out the stereotype. We look past the labels.”

Jackson said by taking a new perspective, Atwater and Ellis called on the people around them to probe opposing views, not to condone or destroy them and to cultivate something Jackson called miraculous: the gift of another chance.

“In one masterful moment in 1971, Ann Atwater gave both herself and C.P. Ellis a new beginning that neither opposed,” she said.

After the meetings, Ellis left the KKK and was labeled a pariah in his KKK chapter. He went on to help lead a mostly black union at Duke University. Although Atwater was accused by some in her community of “selling out” by working with Ellis, she became one of the city’s greatest activists.

“Each learned how to stand up for what they believed was right, while adjusting what right might be,” Jackson said. “Step closer, imagine (a different) point of view and this thoughtful regard sets people up for mutual discovery. This is how tolerance can be freeing.”

Jackson believes the hope for tolerance displayed through this unlikely friendship represents the importance of both the “science of prejudice and the lessons the past can teach us.”

“Division breeds hatred, quickly and easily,” Jackson said. “While seeing the other up close, taking on another’s perspective, engaging with others despite inevitable discourse, all of this opens and then changes minds.”

In the fifth edition, July 27, of the Interfaith Friday Series, the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, vice president of religion, moderated a number of questions with interfaith advocate Simran Jeet Singh, who represented Sikhism.

Singh is an assistant professor of religion at Trinity University and senior religion fellow for the Sikh Coalition, a civil rights organization based in New York City. This year, Singh is serving as the Henry R. Luce Fellow for Religion in International Affairs at NYU’s Center for Religion and Media. Simran is also on the board of the Religion News Association, a fellow for the Truman National Security Project and a term member for the Council on Foreign Relations. Simran has received various accolades and awards for his teaching and social justice work. Most recently, he received the Walter Wink Scholar-Activist Award from Auburn Seminary, the Presidential Excellence Award for Teaching from Columbia University, Educator of the Year from the Dialogue Institute of the Southwest and the Community Pillar Award from the Northside Education Foundation.

What follows is an abridged version of Singh’s conversation. Singh and Robinson’s remarks have been condensed for clarity.

From where you sit in your tradition, why should we be moving in an interfaith direction either here at Chautauqua or in the world?

Singh: For communities like mine that are so often invisible, marginalized or disempowered, interfaith can serve as a vehicle for lifting up these communities. I have been involved in interfaith work since elementary school; we were the only (Sikh) kids in San Antonio, and my parents would have us perform, speak and represent interfaith programs. For me, I have found that at that time, no one thought about Sikhs. No one in Texas was thinking about interfaith any more broadly than Jewish, Christian and Islam — if they could find a Muslim. That is what interfaith looked like to us then. Now, 30 years later, (there is an) increasing inclusion of minority communities, the affirmation that we belong, we matter. Even sitting on this stage with you, I could not imagine doing something like this when I was kid, and I feel like myself and members of my community have fought tooth and nail just to be seen. I know this is happening more and more on a national level, but it is not happening at a lower level. People aren’t reaching out and making the effort to do that.

This interfaith (dialogue) historically has been and continues to be a power play. There are certain people who get seats at the table, and there are certain people who don’t. In a sense, it is not different than how power works in any other context, whether we are talking politically, in local communities or in your own household. There are people who have power, who can open up spaces for people who don’t have power and create equity. We can produce equal footings for other people in our community. For me, that is what I really appreciate about interfaith.

When you come to the metaphorical interfaith table, what gifts do you bring as a Sikh to that table?

Singh: So one of the things I am working on and writing on is this idea called the “technologies of the self.” It is something that I find to be incredibly powerful in a world where it seems to me that people are becoming disillusioned with discipline and practice. So many young people that I encounter in my classrooms and outside of them say, “I am spiritual, but not religious.” And I am all for that, but what I often interpret from that as we talk further is that they are interested in this concept of spirituality and meditation and yoga, but don’t want to commit to any sort of daily ritual because they find that to be meaningless. In many ways, I completely empathize with them. I felt that way growing up. As my daily discipline as a Sikh, we are supposed to do prayer five times a day, and as a teenager, I found it ridiculous that I was saying the same thing five times a day. (When) I came across Saba Mahmood’s book, Politics of Piety, it completely changed how I understood the importance of the practice of discipline, and that is what gave me the insight into what is different about the Sikh community that we are seeing right now: why is it that in every single incident that I have encountered and studied, Sikhs respond with their values? It’s always love, it’s always optimism, it’s always justice. The only answer I have is this idea of daily sustained discipline. Every single day, do the right thing, so when push comes to shove, you do the right thing. That is something I have seen from the Sikh community, and it’s the most powerful lesson that I have taken in the last 10 to 15 years.

What gifts do other religions bring to the table that you might benefit from?

Singh: The past few years I have been teaching Islamic studies at Trinity University in San Antonio. One of things I have really appreciated from studying Islam has been this concept of Ahl al-Kitāb, the idea that there are “people of the book” and that they share a fraternity of Jews, Christians and Muslims. The idea of “book” has transformed over time, but they have a core identity that stays together. What I love about that is that it gives us a language for this idea of familyhood. I would love for us, Sikhs especially, to think about what it would mean to develop language that extended beyond our identity. This idea of Ahl al-Kitāb allows us to do that, to imagine what a community looks like and what they have in common in a way that is actually tangible. We can identify based on that single term that there is a set of core values, of a shared history, of shared texts, of shared ritual and of shared culture. We have language that does that for us in a broader way. We can say “humanity,” we can say “familyhood,” but those terms, when we use them to talk about one another, have become so watered down that it doesn’t really do any work for us. So what does it mean to develop language that we can institutionalize in a way that really means “I have a connection with you”? I don’t know what the answer to that is, but I look into that concept and say, “I want some of that.”

Do you have any sacred texts or holy teachings that are telling you that yours is the one true religion?

Singh: In our tradition, we have a scriptural text that was compiled by our gurus themselves. It is all music, it’s all written to song and it is all poetry. It is not just their own writings; they included the writings and songs of other traditions. It is a sort of devotional and mystical literature and music that essentially communicates two messages: What it’s like to experience that connectedness with love, and how does one get to experience it? There is not much of anything else. What we find in our tradition and our theological belief is that one can reach this goal of love from any religious path. It is this true, essential idea of pluralism to the point that we have other religious figures in our own Scriptures, and we have no problem with that because our idea is it doesn’t matter what your background is, as long as you live a life of love. We don’t care too much about afterlife, we don’t have a concept of missionizing or conversion, and it is because we have this core, deeply held belief that one should be devoted, and one should be loving, and it doesn’t matter where they are coming from. So there is not anything to be interpreted as “You have to be a Sikh in order to be a good person” because we explicitly believe the opposite.

Do you have extremist practitioners of Sikhism?

Singh: Just like any religious tradition, we have extremists, and just like any other religious tradition, we have them of all stripes. I think the violent extremism is boring, and so I don’t want to touch on that because that is what we always talk about as a society. What I think is super interesting, what I am constantly trying to wrap my head around, is the type of extremism that I find reads religion in such a way that it flips the core idea on its head, and then you end up with something that seems exactly opposite of what was intended. For example, I have talked about how oneness is the ultimate principle and so much of the Scripture talks about “How do we break down these divisions and dichotomies we have produced in our heads, not just about people we encounter, but how we organize our understanding of the world?” The most common in the context of religion is what’s pure and what’s polluted. In the Sikh tradition, a lot of work is done by our gurus institutionally, scripturally around destroying these ideas of divisions, destroying the idea that there is something better than something else and the constant reminder that God is in everything. But still, there are Sikhs who end up living in such a way that they have very strong beliefs that there are only certain things that are divine and only certain things that are profane. That strikes me as fascinating because the entire logic of the Sikh theological system relies on this core principle of divine presence in everything. To then say this particular site is holy because God lives here, or this particular day is the most holy because this is divinely sanctioned, or this material substance is something we should eat, or that we should touch because God is here or God is not there — that is extremism. They take those ideas to their edges, and it completely changes the way we understand what Sikhism is about.

The minute Sally Kohn’s 9-year-old daughter, Willa, was told ethics were the study of right and wrong, she knew there was no way it could be that simple. To Willa, even though people can be wrong for believing in something that is not morally right, she believes there is no such thing as wrong people.

And that, Kohn said, is where her daughter is exactly right.

At 2 p.m. Wednesday, July 25, in the Hall of Philosophy, Kohn, author, progressive activist and CNN political commentator, gave her lecture, “The Opposite of Hate,” as a part of the Week Five theme, “The Ethics of Dissent.”

“The question is, can we dissent from the bad things happening in the world without resorting to the idea that the people behind those bad things are permanently and irredeemably bad?” Kohn said.

Kohn said her politics come from a deep belief in equal dignity and justice for all people, along with the belief that if one shares those principles, dissent is not only necessary, it is the only ethical choice.

“In the face of extraordinary and mounting injustice, I think silence is immoral,” she said. “Dissent is not only just and justified, but required.”

Kohn began her career traveling as a senior campaign strategist with the Center for Community Change, helping communities band together to “make change in policies and institutions.”

One day, a producer saw Kohn speaking at a conference and told her she should be on television. She promptly dismissed the idea.

“The whole point of being an organizer is (that) you’re behind the scenes helping other people be in the spotlight — the people doing the work, the people affected by the issues,” she said.

In 2009, Kohn finally agreed to work with the TV producer to learn more about media in hopes it would make her a more well-rounded organizer. However, that decision progressed beyond her job as an organizer, and Kohn ended up spending two years as a progressive political commentator on Fox News.

“This is the part I should probably mention: I’m gay,” she said. “As you might expect, a lefty lesbian community organizer on Fox News is kind of a strange thing.”

Kohn said the first day she walked into Fox News, she was “prepared for battle.”

“I was up in arms,” Kohn said. “Not just politically, but emotionally.”

Kohn believed the people she had watched on air and the viewers who supported the ideological beliefs of the network would be “completely and totally hateful people in every sense.”

But two things happened on her first day. One, Kohn realized the Fox News employees were merely people. Two, she realized where the hate she feared receiving actually stemmed from.

“I am the one who hates them,” Kohn said. “I was the one who had all of these stereotypes and preconceived notions. I made these blanket generalizations and judgments about people, whole groups of people I had never even met.”

Kohn’s revelations at Fox are what led her to investigate hate in society, which she did in her most recent book, The Opposite of Hate: A Field Guide to Repairing Our Humanity.

“I wanted to look at the science and psychology of why we hate and why we demean and dehumanize people and groups of people because of their ideas and their identity,” she said.

In addition to examining why people hate, Kohn also compiled a series of stories about people like former terrorists and neo-Nazis who left “lives of extraordinary hate behind.”

“I figured, if they can do it, there’s got to be hope for me and the rest of us,” she said.

Kohn said her journey gathering information for The Opposite of Hate reaffirmed her core values, something she thinks is difficult to do in America.

“In moments of struggle, especially in the sort of ethic, political struggles our country is facing now, it can be easy to lose sight of our values,” Kohn said. “Or worse, to let our opponents shape our values for us.”

Just as Kohn believes there is right and wrong in the world, she also thinks there is a right and wrong way to dissent.

“When we seek to protect the equal dignity and treatment of some by attacking and demeaning others, we violate the principles we purport to defend,” she said.

To Kohn, it is unconscionable that certain world leaders, and by extension their followers, treat entire groups of people “like disposable trash.”

However, the problem to Kohn is that people direct their anger not only at the opposing side’s beliefs, but at the people behind the beliefs “in broad and totalistic ways.”

“We are fighting the incredibly unjust and offensive generalizations on Muslims, for instance, based on the heinous acts of a small handful of extremists, and in turn making generalizations about all conservatives, all people from the South or even all Trump voters,” she said.

Kohn recognized that while some people may believe it is a “blind rationality” to dismiss President Donald Trump’s supporters, it is still wrong to assume those supporters believe everything he stands for. However, Kohn said instead of questioning the morality of Trump voters, it is more important to believe that they can change before the next election.

“To me, ethical dissent means we stand up for the equal dignity and humanity of those on our side while not rejecting the dignity and humanity of those opposing us,” she said. “This is only possible if we believe that all people are inherently good and full of the intention of goodness.”

To contextualize her argument that anyone can be good, Kohn explained why she opposes the death penalty.

“I believe no person should be condemned to death, that no person should be judged for the worst thing they have ever done in life,” Kohn said. “People are inherently possible of change and redemption and deserving of forgiveness. Can I have that same grace for Trump supporters?”

Kohn said Trump followers deserve grace because it is “important to separate leaders from followers.”

“We blame the people themselves and blame their angry (reactions), not as a condition created by leadership and context, but as inherent to them,” she said. “Isn’t it wrong, not to mention inaccurate, to portray people who are following the context set out by leaders and media as inherently wrong?”

Kohn believes being angry toward people for falling prey to hateful views and feeding into them is valid, but it does not justify hatred in response.

“Hatred is never the answer to hate,” she said. “Just like cruelty is never the answer to cruelty, and injustice is never the solution to injustice. We should hate problems, not people. We should fight ideas, not individuals. Dissent should not be personal, it should be principle.”

On the other hand, Kohn said it is natural to believe it is naive to respond with compassion and kindness in the face of injustice.

“I understand the impulse — suggesting that to be kind in the face of cruelty is not only naive, but tying one hand behind our back in the fight for our lives,” Kohn said. “At moments, I want to come out with both hands swinging.”

However, in studies of of revolutionary movements and movements of dissent for justice around the world, nonviolent movements have always been more successful, she said. Therefore, Kohn will continue to practice what she preaches by teaching her daughter that violence is never justified, people are inherently good and change is always possible.

“While I still believe there is right and wrong, and I still try to teach (Willa) there is right and wrong, she is right that there are no wrong people,” she said. “When I keep that principle as the north star in my dissent, then I really am creating a possibility for change and, I believe, doing what’s right.”

With great power comes great responsibility, and the only people who know that better than superheroes are the comic book artists responsible for creating them.

Comics have gone from the pages of the Sunday newspaper to movie screens, breaking records at the box office. They have shifted from humorous diversions to a source of cultural influence, a long, powerful journey rivaling only those of the characters within them.

At 2 p.m. Monday, July 23, in the Hall of Philosophy, the Rev. Otis Moss III, senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, gave his lecture, “Wakanda Forever: Comics, Subversion, and the Moral Imagination,” as part of Week Five theme, “The Ethics of Dissent.”

Comic books are a form of sequential art, a series of images arranged in a specific order to tell a story. This form of art originated with cave paintings in Egypt that were shared with the Greek and Roman empires, Moss said.

Constantine the Great, Roman emperor, recognized that his people were followers of Jesus and decided to convert to Christianity. He then became head of the church and implemented sequential art within cathedrals in the form of stained glass windows.

“It was a subversive, nonviolent, radical action that happens in Rome where sequential art became a part of the liturgy of worship,” Moss said.

Over time, sequential art evolved from stained glass windows, to graphics and then into comics that can be defined by five components: the moment frozen in time by the artist, the frame, the image in the frame, the words, and the flow, Moss said.

“When you are reading, you become a collaborator and a co-laborer with the artist,” he said. “You fill in the blanks with your imagination.”

According to Moss, the birth of modern-day comics came about in the “shadow of Nazism,” when weekly pamphlets were made about Superman, Batman and Captain America from 1938 to 1941.

In 1938, Jewish artists Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman.

“(Siegel and Shuster) took their immigrant sensibilities and the subtext of being an outsider and placed them on paper to create Superman,” Moss said. “Superman is an immigrant story.”

Superman was an undocumented immigrant because he was sent away by his parents from the challenges and trials that were happening on his home planet. Once he arrived on earth, Superman was adopted by an American family and given the name Clark Kent. Moss said Siegel and Shuster did this to provide a subtext of their parents’ and grandparents’ experiences on Ellis Island.

In addition to immigration, there is also a Christ narrative in the comic.

“Superman was the only son of Krypton; his father sent him to Earth. He has powers that no one else does, and his job is to save everybody,” Moss said.

In 1940, the first “Batman” comic was released. Moss said Batman’s story is the most amusing because he has no real superpowers.

“Batman’s only power is privilege,” he said. “He is a millionaire; that’s really where his power comes from. The fact that I have all of that money gives me privilege to train myself, so I can fight against crime.”

Batman was also a representation of nonviolence, as he refused to kill because his parents were killed by gun violence.

In 1941, the first “Captain America” comic book was released. According to Moss, Captain America’s primary goal was to fight fascism and represent a “critique on masculinity.”

This superhero started as Steve Rogers, a normal man who was injected with a super-soldier serum and then became “powerful” and “a great soldier,” Moss said. However, Rogers began to criticize the military industrial complex and decided he did not want to fight for the military, but for the people.

“He eventually says, ‘It does not make me a man by my strength, it makes me a man by my ethics (and) what is in my heart,’ ” Moss said.

In 1942, Wonder Woman made her entrance. As an immigrant from the Amazon where there were no men, Wonder Woman became the first feminist character in a comic book.

“She brings to life this idea of ‘I will not define my humanity solely by a male hierarchy,’ ” Moss said.

Readers’ initial response to these characters was positive, but that changed in 1950 after Joseph McCarthy said comics were a danger to children’s minds.

“(McCarthy wondered), ‘What will happen to the minds of girls if they think they are a hero?’ ” Moss said. “What will happen to this world if kids think they are Superman or Batman or Captain America, and they begin to critique their generals and say, ‘What you ordered me to do is immoral?’ ”

Many comic book writers were frightened by McCarthyism, and started to rewrite the superheroes’ stories to make them more patriotic.

In 1955, comic books made a shift in a racial direction when Moss said a young man named Stan Lee witnessed Rosa Parks refuse to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

“As he was witnessing it, he said, ‘Bigotry and racism are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today,’ ” Moss said. “But unlike a team of costumed villains, they can’t be stopped with a punch. The only way to stop them is to expose them.”

As a way to expose bigotry and racism in the United States, Lee created a series of characters known as the X-Men.

“He could not make his way down to Montgomery, he could not join the movement, so he said, ‘You know what? I am going to put the ideals of the movement in the comic book as a subversive idea that when any time a child reads it, they will understand what is happening out in the South,’ ” Moss said.

The X-Men story begins with the idea that there are certain people on earth who have the X-Gene, a mutant gene that gives each person a particular power. The main character in the book is Professor X, who is symbolic of Martin Luther King Jr. Professor X is a great visionary who believes he can teach the younger generation to not only be liberators, but also to participate in relieving suffering in the world, Moss said.

“He has a dream that those who have the X-Gene, who are different from the majority, can live in harmony with the majority even though they physically look different from it,” he said.

Another character in the comic is Magneto, symbolic of Malcolm X, who believed that people with the X-Gene had to build their own institutions because society would never accept them.

Moss said those differing opinions led the main characters to the overarching plot.

“The narrative was, ‘I look different and you treat me different,’ but here was the interesting thing: the American government wanted the labor of those with the X-Gene but did not want to give them citizenship,” Moss said.

The X-Men comics also contained symbols of immigration, most prominently symbolized in the “Mutant Registration Act.” Every mutant was required to register with the government to make sure they were not a danger to people around them. As a result of this, people began siding with and against the immigrants, and a civil war broke out.

“There is one group that says, ‘We need to document everybody and we need to make sure they do not come to our country,’ ” Moss said. “But there is another group that says, ‘Wait a minute, don’t you know that mutants make the country better?’ ”

According to Moss, the civil war in the comic series predicted the current “fight between red and blue states in America.”

“When art allows imagination to flow, and you are examining what is happening in the world, you can sometimes be prophetic in your communication,” he said.

Along with immigration, “X-Men” also contained a queer subtext because some mutants were forced to “live in the closet” to prevent registration or being placed in an internment camp.

Whether they are superheroes or X-Men, Moss said all comic book characters share the same “moral center.”

“All of them do not want to kill, and all have a vision of what the world and the nation can be,” he said.

The most recent example of a comic character with a moral center comes from “Black Panther.”

“Black Panther” is set in Wakanda, a technologically superior African country in the Marvel Universe. Wakanda is ruled by the Black Panther, also known as King T’Challa.

According to Moss, T’Challa’s power comes from the “ancient and holy spirit of the panther.”

“Anyone can be endowed in this spirit, and it is not your strength but your integrity that gives you your real power,” Moss said. “If you have a moral center, then anyone can be a hero.”

However, it is not just big name superheroes who symbolize greater issues. One example of a less well-known comic is “Jessica Jones.” Jones is a detective whose character symbolizes the #MeToo movement through her experience with sexual assault.

“She was attempting to do (an) investigation when someone assaulted her, someone of great power who had power by using their voice to force people to do what they do not want to do,” Moss said. “It is a painful story, but also critiques what is happening in the world today.”

In modern times, graphic novels like Black Panther and Maus are used in schools all over the world to teach about subjects like racism, the Holocaust, faith, life and death.

One that stands out to Moss is a graphic novel he gave to his daughter titled I Kill Giants. The story begins with a young girl who isn’t paying attention in school. When her teachers ask what she’s doing, she says she’s busy killing giants. Later on in the comic, it is revealed her mother was dying of cancer and that was the giant she was trying to fight.

“It is a powerful book that helps you understand grief, and that everybody will have to face the giant,” Moss said.

Ultimately, Moss believes the only way comic books can be be used to their full potential is if children and adults alike indulge in the messages they represent.

“Maybe if we had a narrative like Clark Kent, we wouldn’t be seeking so many walls,” Moss said. “Maybe if we had a narrative like Luke Cage, we would understand that everyone has worth. Maybe if we had a narrative like Wonder Woman, we would not have to deal with so many hashtags. Because if they are imagining a world that is not yet, there is a moral center.”

Gorbachev, Lenin, Stalin and Putin went beyond imagining the godless world John Lennon sang about — they built it.

At 2 p.m. Thursday, July 19, in the Hall of Philosophy, Ori Z. Soltes, a professor at Georgetown University, former director and curator of the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum and lifelong scholar, discussed how Russia’s most memorable leaders of the past 75 years have shaped religion in his lecture, “The New and Old Russia: Between Millennia: Religion from Gorbachev to Putin,” as the last of Week Four’s interfaith theme, “Russia and Its Soul.”

Soltes was in Kiev when the Russian government officially returned control of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra monastery to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1988.

“This was a very important moment and obviously symbolized the (need) to reopen the open acknowledgment of the importance (of Russia’s religion),” Soltes said.

As conversations about religion made a transition, so did government leadership. Three years after Soltes’ trip, Boris Yeltsin replaced Mikhail Gorbachev and became president in Russia’s first direct election.

Throughout the 1990s, Chechnya, a predominantly Muslim-occupied Russian republic in the North Caucasus, was a tipping point in Moscow conflicts.

“The Chechens were feeling pressed upon by the Russians, and the Russians were feeling pressed upon by the Chechens,” Soltes said.

In 1999, Russia went to war after Shamil Basayev, a Chechen Islamist and rival of secular leadership, led an invasion of Dagestan. Vladimir Putin took the lead in ending the spread of the insurgency to neighboring republics by starting a campaign to defeat the rebels.

That same year, Boris Yeltsin resigned as president, and Putin won the following election.

“(Putin) won rather quick popularity for suppressing the Chechen insurgency, although erratic violence continued for sometime thereafter,” Soltes said.

To contextualize this time period, Soltes quoted a 1993 article from The New York Times titled “Religion Returns to Russia, with a Vengeance.”

“While tradition put the Orthodox at an advantage, the established Church’s long coexistence with the Soviet state left it tainted,” he read. “All priests were carefully screened by the state, and many bishops and priests are still hounded by accusations of collaborating with the K.G.B.”

Soltes went on to explain how the article said even though the Russian Orthodox Church finally won freedom from state control, it still finds itself “bowed under the baggage of its past” in present day.

Soltes also referenced a section in the Times’ article about an event at the Lokomotiv Stadium in Moscow. In 1993, more than 20,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses gathered and stood and applauded for more than an hour as 2,000 neophytes took turns being baptized. In 2017, Putin classified Jehovah’s Witnesses as an “extremist organization.”

“Clearly, that must have been in response to what this article said back in 1993,” Soltes said. “The Church is running to the state to protect us from the invasion of all of these improper, incorrect, inaccurate Christian denominations and the like.”

Soltes believes Putin’s decision to outlaw Jehovah’s Witnesses makes it clear that throughout human history, “religion has never, ever, ever been disconnected from politics.”

“The Pharaoh rules because you believe if you are part of his constituency that he is at least ruling with the dignity of the gods, or at most, the god itself incarnated,” Soltes said. “Whether it is the Pharaoh, those desperate monarchs or whether it is the occasional American presidential candidate, religion and politics have always been interwoven.”

Soltes saw the intersection of religion and politics in the streets of Kiev in 1988 during a Pamyat rally. Pamyat is is an anti-Semitic organization that identifies itself as the “People’s National- patriotic Orthodox Christian movement,” Soltes said.

“I do not mean that the Church has associated itself with right-wing nationalism,” Soltes said. “I think that more often than not, the right-wing Russian nationalists associate themselves with the Church, (believing that) to be Russian is to be Russian Orthodox, and that’s how you have to be. There are not two ways about it.”

Soltes believes the “politics over religion” mentality is why some people might long for the return of the Soviet Union.

“We want to be dominant; we want not to be respected as much as feared,” he said. “And that is one of the things the young people who were mentioned this morning (at the 10:45 a.m. lecture) like about Putin — that he has made (Russia) feared again. A disturbing thought, at least in my mind.”

Soltes compared Putin to a leader of a cult, and said that there is something mystical to him about political figures who are seen in the public eye as someone “larger than life.”

“By mystical, I mean they’re perceived to have some more of a connection to something beyond them, and I think Putin has captured some of the imagination of his population with respect to that,” he said.

However, Soltes said, mysticism and masculinity go hand in hand for Putin because he is admired for “his macho as well.”

The same fear was directed toward Joseph Stalin. Soltes said even though Stalin murdered 30 million of his own people, he is still rising in popularity in present day as a symbol of another era when Russians were feared.

Soltes believes, in terms of fear, there is both a conscious and unconscious association between Putin and Stalin. And the comparisons do not end there. Although the two figures do not share the same name, Putin does share the same title “apropos of Jesus,” just like Vladimir Sviatoslavich, who brought Christianity to the Kievan Rus’, and Lenin, who created the Soviet Union.

“What a convenience,” Soltes said. “We’ve got the three Vlads, another trinity.”

Another similarity among these Russian leaders is the shifting support of religion.

Construction and restoration of Orthodox churches started in the 1990s and has continued under Putin’s leadership, as has the teaching of religion in schools. In January, Putin announced his initiative to incorporate Islam’s beliefs and language in Russian schools’ curriculums. However, in July, he approved a package of anti-terrorism laws that sent the opposite message. These laws forbid sharing faith in homes, online or anywhere other than recognized church buildings.

To Soltes, a symbol of these leaders’ fluctuating religious viewpoints is St. Isaac’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg. The cathedral was built under Nicholas I, completed under Alexander II and was designed to make a statement that St. Petersburg was the real capital of Russia, not Moscow.

It operated as a church until 1931, the same year Stalin blew up the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Although Stalin did not blow up St. Isaac’s, he did convert it into a museum of religious history. However, at the end of the Soviet period, it was decided that the cathedral needed to be reverted back to an active church. It took until 2017 for the cathedral to be revived, and while there is currently an active chapel inside, part of the building still functions a museum.

“Of course, you pay to go in the museum,” Soltes said. “So, we are not stupid, are we? It is a source of income; why would we give that up just for faith?”

Soltes finished his lecture by reading a poem by Joseph Brodsky, a 20th-century poet who shifted from writing poetry in Russian to writing in English. The poem, “Elegy,” depicts the battle of spirituality in the heart and soul, Soltes said.

“ … now the place is abuzz with trading / in your ankles remnants, bronzes / of sunburnt breastplates, dying laughter, bruises, / rumors of fresh reserves, memories of high treason, / laundered banners with imprints of the many / who since have risen,” Soltes read. “At sunrise, when nobody stares at one’s face, I often, set out on foot to a monument cast in molten / lengthy bad dreams. And it says on the plinth ‘commander in chief.’ / But it reads ‘in grief,’ or ‘in brief,’ / or ‘in going under.’ ”

Joseph Stalin was not shaped by the Russian Revolution. He was one of its architects — a crude Georgian national who rose up the ranks of a Russian political movement to bring down the Romanov dynasty, taking all of its citizens down with them.

At 2 p.m. Wednesday, July 18, in the Hall of Philosophy, Ori Z. Soltes, a professor at Georgetown University, former director and curator of the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum and lifelong scholar, gave his lecture, “God within the Godless Soviet Union: Majorities and Minorities,” as part of Week Four’s interfaith theme, “Russia and Its Soul.”

“Our Lady of Kazan,” also called “Mother-of-God of Kazan,” was one of the most revered icons within the Russian Orthodox Church, representing the Virgin Mary as the protector of the city of Kazan and a guardian of all of Russia.

There were multiple copies of “Our Lady of Kazan.” The original icon disappeared from Constantinople in 1438 and miraculously appeared in the 1550s. After that, the icon was stored in Kazan until it disappeared again in 1904.

“This explains why and how the Russians lost the Russo-Japanese War. ‘The Lady of Kazan’ was not there to protect the nation,” Soltes said.

To prevent a second defeat, Stalin ordered the icon to be attached to a plane to protect the city during the Battle of Moscow in 1941. Soltes said this “offers a paradox to Stalin” because he had previously blown up the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. Stalin had intended to use the land to build a palace for the supreme Soviets to meet, but this never happened and the site remained fallow.

During the same time period, Stalin decided that only “Soviet socialist realism” could appear in art, music and literature. Soviet composers such as Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev felt the pressure to scale back their work to align with Stalin’s requests.

“Within the musical world of the Soviet Union under Stalin, you have a two-world condition,” Soltes said. “The stuff (the composers) want to write that really feeds their own souls is not the stuff that they could have performed.”

Where literature was concerned, Soltes said, it was far more difficult for writers to incorporate their feelings toward Stalin and Russia because written language is more concrete than music, which is more open to interpretation. Because of this, writers were the most prominent group of people who perished under Stalin’s rule.

“There were some who managed to survive, (without whom) the Russians could not have survived,” Soltes said.

One poet in particular was Anna Akhmatova. Akhmatova’s work flourished from the 1890s to the 1930s when she mastered the art of symbolism that “reacted against the realist literature that proceeded.”

“(Symbolism) meant that, sometimes, what I am writing has a meaning beneath the surface that only those really attuned to it can discern,” Soltes said.

Akhmatova became part of a symbolist poetry group called “acmeist,” whose members believed they were the “spiritual height of things.” Soltes said this group was important because its works caused the direction of spiritual writing to move away from traditional religious beliefs.

“I am not talking about Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim or Catholic,” he said. “I am talking about something which encompasses all of that and transcends all of that.”

In terms of visual art, artists from all over the country came together to create an underground world that was used to practice freedom of expression.

One team of young artists, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, created a form of subversive art that countered socialist realism.

“They take Soviet socialist realism, and they turn it on its head,” he said.

Another visual artist was Grisha Bruskin. Bruskin was Jewish and learned Hebrew from his father, although the teaching of that language was not sanctioned in Russia at the time. The background of Bruskin’s paintings were filled with Hebrew writing. Sometimes it was just a random combination of letters, but other times entire phrases or tracts could be interpreted.

Soltes said it was not that Jewish people like Bruskin had a different religion from other Russians, but a different nationality.

“The perspective of the Soviet Union of classification, with respect to Jews, is it’s a nation,” Soltes said. “(However,) that does not mean that you don’t make use of the old religious prejudices when you need them in order to suppress that particular group.”

According to Soltes, this nationality concept exhibits a “three-world condition.” Artists who produced their art for public consumption was one world, art produced to express one’s soul was the second and the the third was the question of to what extent can or should one express their nationality in their work, something Bruskin mastered by incorporating the Hebrew language.

During this period in Russian history, the population’s smallest minorities were Jews and Muslims.

In the 1700s, Poland was divided into sub-countries three different times. The third Polish division took place under the rule of Catherine the Great, empress of Russia.

“She suddenly found herself, by acquiring a piece of Poland, acquiring a substantial amount of Jews that she did not want,” Soltes said.

Catherine’s response was the Pale of Settlement, a designated territory within Russia where Jewish people were required to live, therefore restricting their rights.

Alexander II, the next emperor of Russia, tried to lift the settlement but was assassinated in 1881 before he could sign the necessary documents. After his assassination, Alexander III became emperor and enacted the May Laws, which Soltes said only further restricted Jewish rights with rules that prohibited them from living outside of larger cities and towns, owning or managing real estate, leasing land and operating their businesses on Sundays or other Christian holidays.

The May Laws were intended to be temporary restrictions, but were not lifted for 13 years until the start of the first Russian revolution in 1905. Soltes said the Jewish people identified strongly with the concept of a revolution.

“The idea that the problems of society are a function of uneven finances, if we can level that playing field then all the other kind of religious, racial and ethnic prejudices will go away, would — needless to say — appeal to the Russian Jews,” Soltes said.

In 1917, Vladimir Lenin, a Russian communist revolutionary, became Soviet Russia’s head of government. In 1922, when the revolution ended, Lenin decreed that the Jewish people’s official language in the new Soviet state would be Yiddish, as opposed to Russian.

“He thinks of the Jews as a national group more than as a religious group,” Soltes said. “A symptom of that mentality is that he starts to plan for a Jewish Autonomous Oblast.”

The Jewish Autonomous Oblast was a federal entity of Russia in the far east that was created to be the new area in which Russian Jews would reside.

In 1924, Lenin died and Stalin continued planning the JAO. In the spring of 1928, Soltes said 654 Jews arrived to begin the new settlement.

“The summer was filled with torrential rains. It was a mess,” Soltes said. “By October, more than half of (the Jews) had left.”

In 1930, the capital of the JAO, Birobidzhan, was completed. In that same year, a Soviet propaganda film was created in Yiddish to encourage Jewish people to come settle in the capital. However, it took over a decade before the population increased.

“By 1937, the population was rather desolated because that is when Stalin had already begun to turn a corner with respect to all kinds of things, including his attitude toward Jews,” Soltes said.

When World War II started, there was an influx of Jewish people in the JAO, a majority being refugees from Nazi Germany. The population in Birobidzhan was rising, and at its peak reached more than 30,000; however, Stalin’s relationship with the Jewish residents was “uneasy,” Soltes said.

The culmination of that uneasiness occured in 1950 with “The Doctors’ Plot.” According to Soltes, Stalin came up with the idea that all of the Jewish physicians in Moscow were engaged in a conspiracy to slay the Soviet leaders. Stalin began a series of trials to test his theory, but died in 1953 before he could finish.

In 1961, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, a poet, released a poem called “Babi Yar” that revolved around the slaughter of nearly 34,000 Jews in Kiev by the Nazis in 1941 and denounced the anti-Semitism that had spread throughout the Soviet Union. Readers responded to Yevtushenko’s poem with outrage because there was no monument commemorating the massacre. Although a monument was erected in 1976, the Soviet Union claimed the fascists had massacred the Kievans.

During this era, Soltes said the Soviet Union supported the state of Israel because it thought Israel was going to become a socialist state, until it aligned with the United States in 1950.

“There (were) all kinds of ins, outs, up and downs in (the Soviet Union and Israeli) relationship over the course of decades,” Soltes said.

These “ups and downs” pertained not only to Judaism, but also to Islam.

“Russia, the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia have dealt with Islam in a number of ways which are different from the ways in which they have dealt with Judaism,” Soltes said.

From the time of Kazan’s conquest in 1552 to the time of Catherine the Great, there was a systematic repression of Islam in the growing Russian empire, according to Soltes. Ultimately, six out of the 15 Soviet republics were Islam.

“Now, we are not dealing with the Muslims ‘on the other side of the fence’ in a political and not just religious way, but we have actually got them within (the borders),” Soltes said.

In 1910, the first mosque was built on Soviet soil. In 1917, there were 25,000 mosques across the Soviet Union, but Stalin turned in the other direction and started closing them down. By 1970, there were only 500, according to Soltes.

The Islam republics are demolished and during World War II, Stalin deported 500,000 Russian Muslims.

As the dominant religion in India and Nepal, Hinduism is a popular practice that exists around the world, complete with sacred and serious traditions. Yet the religion also recognizes the importance of play.

“Yes, there’s suffering, yes, there’s compassion, but one should not think of religion simply as a serious part of life in which you’re always answerable for judgment,” said Vasudha Narayanan, a distinguished professor in the department of religion at the University of Florida. “Play showcases the celebration part of life.”

At 2 p.m. on Wednesday, July 11, in the Hall of Philosophy, Narayanan will address the importance of play within Hinduism during her lecture, “Creation, Re-creation and the Joy of Play,” as part of Week Three’s interfaith theme, “The Spirituality of Play.” Narayanan’s research encompasses Hindu traditions in India, Cambodia and America, and she also studies gender issues.

During her time at Chautauqua, Narayanan will discuss different facets of play, both cultural and religious.

“I’ll be talking about traditional games that originated in India which were used as pedagogical tools for ethics and morality,” she said. “We’re thinking about a global movement of games and cultures without us even knowing about it. That’s the background idea.”

As the author and editor of seven books and the associate editor of Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Narayanan has spent countless hours researching and writing about her faith. Narayanan described the Hindu festival, Holi, as a “springtime festival to show the birthing of leaves and color after winter.” She said the festival encompasses the importance of celebration and showcases the idea of play within Hinduism.

“When I think of play, I think of a springtime festival called Holi in which people in many parts of India flash each other with colors,” she said. “This is the joy of play in which you don’t see rank or distinction; men and women will throw color on each other in the exuberance of play.”

In addition to addressing the games and exuberance emphasized in Hinduism, Narayanan will also discuss how play is a pathway to God and the divine.

“If you have surrendered yourself to God, according to Hindu texts, if one has surrendered to the divine power, you’re waiting in life and serving others in life just like one plays a game,” she said. “You’re doing it as an end in itself, to attain salvation.”

Though the afterlife is an important part of Hinduism, Narayanan said there is also a large focus on enjoyment during life.

“While many Hindu holy texts and practices are intended to provide the devotee with spiritual paths to liberation from the repeated cycle of life and death, many other aspects of Hindu life and ritual do not lead directly to such transformation, but are perceived to enhance one’s quality of life on Earth,” she wrote in her book Hinduism (Understanding Religions).

Therefore, within the Hindu traditions, acts of play and relaxation are emphasized.

“Such activities as tree-planting, singing, dancing, healing, archery … might all be considered part of the religious domain,” Narayanan wrote in her book.

Narayanan’s lecture marks her fifth visit to Chautauqua. The professor and Hindu scholar will also be speaking Friday as part of

Although the proverb “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” was coined in 1659, Rabbis Samuel M. Stahl and Zalman Vilenkin believe the current generation of workaholic Americans still need to acquire a great deal of wisdom from the centuries- old phrase.

At 2 p.m. Monday, July 9, in the Hall of Philosophy, Stahl and Vilenkin delivered a joint lecture on the importance of the Sabbath as part of the Week Three interfaith theme, “The Spirituality of Play.” Stahl’s portion of the lecture was titled “Sabbath: A Foretaste of Utopia” and Vilenkin’s was “Sabbath: A Gift of Rest.”

Stahl first came to Chautauqua in 1998, served as theologian-in-residence in 2003 and now spends his summers at the Institution. During the winter months, he advocates for interfaith work as rabbi emeritus of Temple Beth‑El in San Antonio, Texas.

Workaholism is not a new phenomenon in American life, in fact, it has been present for the past five centuries. It began with the Puritans in 1620 when they arrived at Plymouth Rock and established a work ethic they believed to be derived from God.

“They considered those who have been favorably successful to have been blessed by God and that they would be guaranteed salvation,” Stahl said.

However, instead of support from God, Scripture from two books in the Bible provide examples of workaholism. In both the book of Exodus and the book of Deuteronomy, the Ten Commandments are mentioned. These commandments are the moral code of Judaism and mandated the Sabbath, a day of rest that was highly controversial when first introduced.

“Critics of the Sabbath accused ancient Jews of being lazy,” Stahl said. “They scorned the Sabbath, and they failed to realize the dire necessity of refraining from mundane affairs for an entire day.”

The failure to see the need for a day of rest is what has carried over, and worsened, in modern-day America, Stahl said. Americans skip lunch, rush through dinner and cheat themselves out of hours of sleep in an attempt to match the quickening pace of everyday life.

“Today, we are enslaved to work,” he said. “I think workaholism has become a national addiction. We tend to work compulsively and aggressively.”

Stahl said the constant advancement of technology makes it nearly impossible to catch up.

“Many of us are chained to our computers, typing madly, claiming that our keyboards can’t keep up with our thoughts,” Stahl said. “Not long ago, our telephones were confined to our offices and our homes. Now, mobile phones are ubiquitous. We talk on our cellphones at restaurants, in public bathrooms, in our automobiles and even in lecture halls. It seems like our cellphones are appendages to our ears.”

Although workaholism can lead to destructive behavior, Stahl recognizes that the Bible displays another side of this debate in saying that work-based achievements can bring a mixture of personal satisfaction and a feeling of contentment.

“When we have profitably and successfully closed a sale, when we have published an article or a book or when we have performed a life-saving surgery, a warm sense of fulfillment and joy fills our hearts,” he said.

Stahl believes this sense of fulfillment is what causes an addiction to work, as people begin to intertwine their job and their self-image.

“We believe that by working longer hours, completing more projects and making more money, we are going to enhance our selfworth,” he said. “Unfortunately, we will discover that this approach is a terribly misguided one.”

According to Stahl, the sense of fulfillment received from these tasks is temporary and leads to a feeling of emptiness and despair as people consistently want more than what they have. As a result, the approach “distances one from oneself.”

“We are so busy we have no time to reflect, to involve ourselves in deep self-exploration or to engage in the kind of reflection that each of our religions obligates us to perform,” he said. “We have to search our souls, face our shortcomings and correct our errors.”

Without time to self-reflect, workaholism stunts spiritual growth, as people become unable to appreciate all of the blessings God has made available in the world, Stahl said.

Along with workaholism, Stahl said Americans are living in an age of isolation and individualism that leads to a feeling of overwhelming loneliness. The day of the Sabbath can alleviate these feelings by providing a sense of community.

“The Sabbath provides (a) community where we go to a synagogue and we pray next to the people we love, people who love us and care for us, where we dine at each other’s tables and find a strong human connection,” Stahl said.

Whether for the sake of community or personal growth, Stahl believes it is more important than ever for Jewish people to take the purpose of the Sabbath seriously and to use it as an example of what the world could be.

“On the Sabbath, we are obligated to be and not to do,” he said. “We must reflect and not produce. We must contemplate and not create. The Sabbath provides us with a utopian vision and gives us a chance to gain a foretaste of what the perfect world of the futurecould be like.”

In Vilenkin’s half of Monday’s lecture, he discussed what God has provided through the gift of the Sabbath, also known as the “Shabbat.”

Vilenkin is a longtime Chautauquan and executive director and spiritual leader of Chabad Lubavitch of Chautauqua. He teaches Jewish philosophy and Kabbalah at the United Talmudical Seminary in Brooklyn during the off-season.

The purpose of Shabbat is explained by its very definition, which is “to rest” and “to return.”

“It is not just about working, but really an opportunity to return to oneself,” Vilenkin said, “to return to one’s origins and connect to God.”

Vilenkin referred to the same two passages of the Ten Commandments in the Bible, but focused on their differences.

In the book of Exodus, it says to remember the day of the Shabbat.

“For six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, and he rested on the seventh,” he said. “Therefore, the Lord was the Shabbat.”

In the book of Deuteronomy, it says not to remember, but to protect and preserve the Shabbat.

“You should remember that you are a slave of the land of Egypt and that the Lord your God took you out of there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm,” he said. “Therefore, Lord your God commanded you to observe the Sabbath.”

Vilenkin said these differing messages are not contradictory, but rather complimentary in the way that both affirm the Shabbat as an example of how God’s efforts are continuous and everlasting.

“God continuously is creating, sustaining and vitalizing the world,” he said. “When we rest on Shabbat, we are confirming our belief in God as a creator, but we are also attesting to the fact that God did not create the world within limitation, but that God is actually continuously involved and invested in our lives, the good and the bad. He is always there.”

Shabbat is not only a testimony of faith, but a test of faith to see if one will rely on God to continue to provide for his people.

“Although the world might appear autonomous and independent, the truth is that every additive, every cell, every weight of energy is constantly dependent on his existence,” Vilenkin said. “On a personal level, it is the acknowledgment that all of the talents we have, all the skill that we have, all of the work that we do is really a gift from God, a continuous gift from God for which we can’t claim credit.”

According to Vilenkin, this continuous effort shows God’s intent in making work a permanent part of life on earth.

“If God wanted to look at work just as means to an end, he could have created and designed the world a little bit better,” he said. “He could have created a world where we don’t have to work, where we can rest and celebrate Shabbat 24/7. Yet, he designed a world that is incomplete without work, that assesses human effort and human involvement because it is a part of the plan. There is a spirituality to work.”

Although Vilenkin stressed the importance of giving credit to God, he is still convinced that the greatest lessons learned through the Sabbath are through self-discovery.

“The journey of life is through our own efforts, our own struggles, our own turbulence and with our own free will, to discover the underlying truth of God within the devices of creation,” he said.

The United States is comprised of several different regions, each with its own cultural identity and rich history. Exactly where those regions start and end has been a long-running debate, but according to Colin Woodard, it is simple: the United States can be divided into 11 distinct sub-nations.

At 2 p.m. on Tuesday, July 3, in the Hall of Philosophy, Woodard — award-winning author and journalist — gave his lecture, “American Character: The Struggle between Individual Liberty and the Common Good and the Survival of the Republic,” as part of Week Two’s interfaith theme, “Religion and American Identity.” Woodard’s lecture was moderated by Interfaith Youth Core Founder Eboo Patel. Patel, who is moderating all of the Week Two interfaith lectures, is an advocate for religious tolerance and wrote a set of essays on religious pluralism that will be published in the fall by Princeton University Press.

“You can’t understand American history, American identity, or indeed our current political cleavages, which are geographic even as they are ideological, without knowing that there has never been one America but rather several Americas,” Woodard said. “We are not a nation-state, we’re a federation of several stateless nations.”

These “Americas” are what Woodard calls “regional cultures.” These regional cultures have their own distinct characteristics, most of them tied to past differences between Euro-American colonies that took shape in the 17th and early 18th centuries on the eastern rim of what is now the United States.

These cultures laid down the sub-cultural DNA of their respective regions. Woodard said in modern-day America, there are 11 of these cultures that divide the nation.

“For generations, these discrete Euro-American cultures developed a remarkable isolation from one another,” he said. “They consolidated their own cherished principles and fundamental values.”

Woodard used the region “Yankeedom” as an example. It encompasses the entire Northeast: north of New York and spreading through Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Residents of Yankeedom value education, intellectual achievement, communal empowerment and citizen participation in government as a shield against tyranny. Yankees are comfortable with government regulation, and Woodard noted they have a “Utopian streak.” The area was settled by Puritans who believed it was their God-given purpose to establish it.

“The early Puritans believed that they were in covenant with God, that they were a chosen people tasked with working together to create a more perfect society on Earth, that down the hill there would be a beacon for humanity in troubled times,” he said.

The way Yankeedom was created differs from that of the other parts of the American frontier. A second culture that provides a counterpoint is the Greater Appalachia region. Colonized by settlers from the war-ravaged borderlands of northern Ireland, northern England and the Scottish lowlands, Greater Appalachia is stereotyped as the land of “hillbillies and rednecks” and includes parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Indiana, Illinois and Texas. Woodard said Appalachian values include personal sovereignty, individual liberty and being “intensely suspicious of lowland aristocrats and Yankee social engineers alike.”

“Appalachia has shifted alliances based on whomever seemed to be the greatest threat to their freedom,” Woodard said.

The biggest difference between Yankeedom and Greater Appalachia are the differing beliefs of each region’s founders.

Woodard said that during the Second Great Awakening, the people of Greater Appalachia “embraced individual creeds, whereby each person might meet God personally … and be guided without the mediation of institutions, a clerical hierarchy or literal interpretation.

“The emphasis was not on improving this world, but on one’s personal salvation in the next,” Woodard said.

Out of this set of beliefs came many denominations different than those of Yankeedom including: the Disciples of Christ, the Churches of Christ, primitive Baptists and a constellation of evangelical churches, often led by charismatic preachers of the very same origins as the people they served.

“Religion informed and was itself informed by these cultures it was embedded in, right down to the interpretation of what was and was not righteous,” Woodard said.

Woodard believes understanding this regional separation helps Americans understand why the nation is politically deadlocked and divided.

“There are shifting coalitions as you follow the history of these regional cultures,” Woodard said. “These coalitions shifted the prospects and, therefore, the needle between individual liberty and common good persuasions.”

He said the present-day problem is that neither the blue nor the red coalitions consist of enough regions to give a candidate the necessary electoral votes or dominance in Congress, therefore leaving all final decisions up to the “swing regions.”

In order for one coalition to gain majority votes, Woodard said both parties must acknowledge what he calls the “key conflict point.”

“In our political conversation, unlike other nations, the key thing has been a discussion about freedom and conflicts about the competing definitions of it,” he said.

Woodard views freedom as a spectrum; America works best when leaders find middle ground between unfettered individualism and unrealistic communalism.

“If going to far extremes destabilizes a liberal democracy and ends up in tyranny, then logically speaking, somewhere there is this happy equilibrium point where these two essential aspects of freedom counteract and symbolically put you in a balance where you reach that point of being able to enable maximum universal individual liberty,” he said.

According to Woodard, it is easier to find the balance between individualism and communalism in countries like Japan because it is essentially a nation-state with a unified culture, the opposite of the United States.

“It is hard for us because of that balkanization,” he said. “The fact that we are separated cultures, each of which have radically different ideas about where the correct stance is, makes every conversation a difficult negotiation.”

Over time, attempts at individualism control in America have failed, but Woodard said the same guardrails are not succeeding in protecting against the tyranny of a laissez-faire form of government.

“It is this extreme we have been slowly marching toward since 1980 or so,” he said. “Each decade’s policy decisions bring greater inequality, a higher concentration of wealth and power, reduced prospects for generational advancement and less democratic responsiveness from those elected in office.”

Woodard said this resulted in a clear destabilization of America’s civic, economic, and political realms, opening a window to extremists — a window Donald Trump stepped right through in the 2016 election.

Trump earned his Electoral College victory by winning the votes of counties in two specific regions: the rural counties in Yankeedom and the Midlands, which stretches through Iowa into the Midwest. These counties voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and flipped to support Trump in 2016, Woodard said.

Woodard crunched the numbers himself and found that rural counties in Yankeedom went for Obama by six points in 2008 and for Trump by 18 points in 2016. In the Midlands, rural counties went for Sen. John McCain in 2008 by 15 points, but went for Trump by more than 40 in 2016.

“The results of those particular marginal gains, when you overlay them with state boundaries and thus the Electoral College, were devastating to Hillary Clinton, allowing Trump to capture the electoral votes where a Democrat has to win by large margins to counteract staggering victories every year in other regions,” he said.

All of the regions where Trump won by the widest margins were communalistic sub-cultures. Woodard said this is because Trump ran as the most communalistic Republican candidate since Richard Nixon.

“He was the only one of the 16 GOP candidates to spread the laissez-faire mantra that less regulation would give you more freedom,” Woodard said. “He was able to do it because people in rural areas took him at his word when they voted in the general election.”

Woodard said the reason voters in rural areas were affected the most is because Trump did not run in the “normal liberal democratic tradition” but rather as a European-style authoritarian providing government protection for the “good Americans” and extra-legal and extraconstitutional punishment for internal problems and undesirable foreigners.

“In office, (Trump) has backed this up with detention camps for migrant toddlers, the embrace of foreign dictators, the burning of our alliances with other liberal democracies and an inability to condemn neo-Nazis marching in the streets of an American city carrying torches and shouting ‘Jew will not replace us,’ ” he said.

With so many of Trump’s campaign promises still unfulfilled, Woodard said he is unsure of how long Trump’s supporters in these communalistic regions will actively endorse his authoritarian means. Woodard believes that as long as they do, these supporters are participating in an unconstitutional way of life.

“In the preamble of the Constitution, which lays out the purpose of our federation, it says to ‘promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our (posterity),’ ” Woodard said. “In other words, ensuring the common good and individual liberty intergenerationally. There is nothing, I would argue, more American than that.”

BRIAN HAYES / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Colin Woodard, author of American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle between Individual Liberty, talks about the different cultural identities of regions in America Tuesday in the Hall of Philosophy.

Introducing John Shelby Spong the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson was able to publicly thank the man he said “are the shoulders on which (Robinson) stands.”

Robinson, who is the first openly gay priest to be elected bishop in Christendom, attributes the opportunity he had to serve as a leader in the church to Spong, who he said supported LGBT rights before it was popular.

“It is because of that early work that he did and all of the work that built on it that lets me wear a purple shirt today,” said Robinson, who currently serves as Chautauqua’s vice president of religion and senior pastor. “There is no one who has been braver and ready to take whatever came his way for saving the truth.”

At 2 p.m. on Thursday, June 28, in the Hall of Philosophy, Spong, retired Episcopal bishop of Newark, discussed Matthew, his mantra and his legacy during his last lecture of the week and his career, titled “Universalism: The Future of Christianity and Why I Remain a Christian,” for Week One’s interfaith theme, “Producing a Living Faith Today?”

“Today’s the day,” Spong said. “The final address of this week, the final address in Chautauqua, the final address of my life. It has been a wonderful trip, and I am sad it is coming to an end.”

But before he talked too much about the end, he went back to the Jewish roots of Matthew’s Gospel.

According to Spong, when Matthew said to “go and make disciples of all nations,” he placed words in the mouth of the risen Jesus.

“Matthew was sounding the call to a universal humanity,” Spong said. “It meant to go beyond the boundaries of your religion, to go beyond your security system, to go beyond your fears. It meant go beyond the boundaries that you directed in your biologically driven search for survival.”

Matthew was not alone in his understanding of Jesus’ message. When the Gospel of Luke was being written, the Holy Spirit fell upon the disciples of Jesus and all the world. The author made sure that it was understood as a universal happening, Spong said.

Then there was Paul. Paul tried to explain to the Galatians what it meant to “put on Christ” in the verse that reads, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”

Spong said this means human division must disappear.

“Christ must be served in every person,” he said. “There is no longer Jew nor Greek. There is no longer male nor female. That is what Jesus meant and that’s what the original Christ experience was, before we became Scripture defenders, and before the creeds became the essence of our faith.”

While Paul left off there, Spong believes there is a lot more to modernizing Christianity than erasing those dividing lines.

“When charting a new reformation, we must engage in a task of getting even deeper into the vision of universalism,” he said. “It has not only to do with erasing human divisions, but about revitalizing our most cherished beliefs.”

For the reformation to work, Spong said creeds can no longer be used to bring Christians together.

“The Christianity of the future cannot live inside the doctrines of the past,” Spong said. “Doctrines are never a description or definition of our God experience. My experience is my ability to perceive God, but the nature of God is beyond my ability to describe.”

The same thing is true of Christianity’s fundamental doctrine, known as “the Incarnation.”

“That doctrine makes Jesus not unlike the comic strip character Clark Kent who turned out to be Superman in the skies,” he said. “We must move beyond the now irrelevant dualistic patterns and discover the holy at the heart of the human. Incarnation will never give us that.”

With the need for constant evolution in mind, Spong created his personal mantra.

“My mantra is intended only to be my statement at this time, of where I am today (and) the place of which I have arrived on what might be the last days of my journey,” he said. “I want to say something positively, something about the conclusion that I presently hold and bear witness to why I continue to be a member of this community.”

He began by admitting he still has no way of knowing “who” or “what” God is.

“No one can do that,” Spong said. “Why don’t we understand that? That is not within the capacity of the human mind to embrace the nature of God.”

Next, was his belief that God is a source of life.

“As far as we know, a creature who can: define life, contemplates its beginning, anticipates its termination and raise the question of its meaning, is a rare thing,” he said. “So if God is a source of life, then the only way I can appropriately worship God is by living fully.”

God is also a source of love, Spong said.

“If God is a source of love, then the only way I can worship God is by loving, loving wastefully,” he said. “I mean the kind of love that never stops to calculate, never stops to wonder whether the object of its love is worthy to its recipient. It is love that loves not because it has been earned. That’s where I think God is made visible.”

After love, he shared his beliefs about experiencing God.

“If God is the ground of being, then the only way I can worship God is by having the courage to be all that I can be,” Spong said. “The more deeply I can be all that I can be, the more I can make God visible.”

However, there was one last thing he wanted to add.

Although he has been a Christian his entire life, he does not believe it makes him superior to anyone. It is simply a fact of his upbringing, along with a personal desire to continue being a disciple of Jesus.

In the way Jesus, whether being praised with flattery or diminished by the threat of death, remained unchanged, Spong was moved to affirm his faith. In the way that God brought “oneness out of diversity, wholeness out of brokenness and eternity out of time,” Spong realized the version of faith he wanted to spread.

Spong said the only way his mission can be successful is if his mantra is carried out without any set of boundaries.

“Even in the widest variety of our humanity, in our deepest set of beliefs, there is no outcast in this community,” he said. “There can be no one regarded as unclean, no prejudice allowed to operate inside this vision of Christianity.”

Since then, he has answered the call to try to transform the world so that every person living in it will have a better opportunity to “live fully, love wastefully and be all each of them was created to be.”

Now, that job belongs to everyone in the Christian faith who wishes to carry out his vision to fruition.

And to that, Spong said, “Good luck.”

What do Charles Darwin and sex have in common?

John Shelby Spong’s answer is simple: nothing. Nothing other than the vast amount of time the Christian Church spends engrossed in these two subjects.

On Tuesday in the Hall of Philosophy, Spong explained how Darwinian and Christian values came to divide the Christian faith in his lecture titled, “The Assault of Charles Darwin and Why the Christian Church Retreated before Darwin.” Spong continued Week One’s interfaith theme, “Producing a Living Faith Today?”

To contextualize his argument, Spong began with a look back at topics that have seized space in newspapers for the past 1,500 years. Those included abortion, birth control, marriage, divorce and homosexuality, all concepts Spong said have a track record of “turning the church on.”

“The church has fought about these lock, stock and barrel, to the point where individual churches have broken apart, denominations have broken apart and whole movements have been expressed,” Spong said. “The church was so sure they were right, and yet on almost every issue in the sexual debate, the church has lost.”

Spong spent a lot of time in the beginning of his career arguing that women can be priests. The opposition he heard shocked him. He was told women were not capable of being priests, were not created to be priests and could not represent the image of God.

Spong put forth a hypothetical experiment: Place a man and a woman in front of the podium and take away every biological similarity. There’s only one thing left, Spong said.

“You get down to that single organ that is supposed to distinguish men from women, and you say, ‘There’s where the image of God is?’ ” Spong said. “Truth does not lie at the end of majority expression. Truth challenges it.”

Truth challenged the differing stances on homosexuality, too. The church believed it to be an act of evil, using a verse from Leviticus that reads, “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination,” to support the claim that the act was unnatural.

Spong believes an argument can be made only if homosexuality is in fact a personal choice, but science has already disproven that.

“There is not a scientist in the world who thinks that people choose their sexual orientation,” he said. “We cannot blindly follow tradition when everything we know … tells us that it is not so.”

One of the scientists who pushed the status quo was Charles Darwin, who Spong called the second “obsession of the church.”

Darwin began his work in 1831 when he got a job as a naturalist on a five-year survey voyage around the world on the HMS Beagle. It took him 25 years after the trip, but Darwin claimed his place in history when he released the Origin of Species.

The book sold out immediately and raised questions that had previously been debated, but were never analyzed from a perspective like Darwin’s. Christians did not welcome these findings with open arms, Spong said.

“The war was on,” Spong said. “Darwin was now an enemy to the Bible, as the Bible was interpreted literally, and he was an enemy to the church in the way (Darwinism was) interpreted theologically.”

In an attempt to set the record straight, a debate took place in 1860 between Thomas Huxley, a biologist and an avid defender of Darwin’s, and Samuel Wilberforce, the bishop of Oxford and an advocate of biblical literalism. Wilberforce resorted to ridicule and at one point asked Huxley which side of his family was descended from apes. Wilberforce won the debate, but Spong said it was not enough to earn him a lasting legacy.

“Sam Wilberforce was hailed as a hero, but what’s interesting is that heroes don’t last forever,” he said. “He was very popular in his lifetime, but his reputation has faded.”

After the debate, Darwin’s theories made their way into the bloodstream of western civilization. At first, evolution was taught in small, private settings, but as it began to gain momentum in 1910, the Christian Church decided to tackle the issue head on.

A group of Presbyterian divines proposed a series of pamphlets on the fundamentals of the Christian faith. Once the project received funding, more than 500,000 were sent out each week. As time went on, the pamphlets became more popular, and by the 1920s, every church in the world was divided over being classified as fundamental or modernist.

“You can’t force truth into popularity,” Spong said. “Darwin seemed to have the truth, and after a while, these fundamentals of the Christian faith did not seem fundamentalistic after all.”

The Presbyterian leaders published five fundamentals all Christians were required to believe in order to identify as Christian. Among them were the ideas that the Scriptures are the infallible word of God and human beings are created perfect but fell into sin. Spong said those fundamentals were too similar to the myths of the religion to survive.

“They were so absurd, no one in the academic world would give them credibility,” he said.

The problem facing modernists, on the other hand, was that they knew too much to be fundamentalists, but did not know how to be Christian, Spong said.

“That is reflected in the world today,” he said. “The major mainline Christian churches are all in a frantic of political decline. The fundamentalistic churches are strong, but they are also declining. The world is catching up, and fundamentalism is not a viable option any longer.”

The fall of these ideals caused a rise in Darwin’s ideals. At that time in history, there was no longer a medical school in the western world without a foundation built upon Darwinian principles, and hardly a science department in the United States that was not embracing evolution. That was until the public school system implemented “creation science,” Spong said, designed to be a fair alternative to Darwinism. Although creation science is not taught in public schools anymore, Spong reminded the audience it was not that long ago that former President George W. Bush endorsed it.

“Bush wanted people to be fair, to have a chance to voice an opinion,” Spong said. “He thought you could decide by majority vote what truth is. It doesn’t work that way.”

After Bush’s endorsement, the U.S. Supreme Court declared creation science unconstitutional.

“By virtue of its own strength and integrity, Darwin became stronger and stronger,” Spong said. “There is hardly an educated person in the western world who does not accept Darwin’s point of view as truth.”

Spong asked why Christians fought so hard when they knew they were wrong. The answer, once again, was Darwin.

“There was something about Darwin that challenged not just the Christian story, but the way in which we told that story,” he said. “Darwin said there was ‘no perfect creation,’ but the church said we were ‘created perfect and then all fell into sin.’ You can’t fall into sin if you are not perfect to start with.”

Spong acknowledged how difficult it can be to accept the similarities humans have with the apes, but in a time where millennials check “none” for their chosen denomination more than the rest of the other options combined, he believes the dialogue has to continue between Darwinism and Christianity in order for the faith to survive.

“I think we have a wonderful faith,” he said. “Not the only faith, but a wonderful faith. And we have to work hard to make it live in our generation, and I think we can.”