The Role of Faith in Depolarization Work - A Much-Needed Conversation

Braver Angels, an organization focused on depolarization in the U.S. political context, and Rumi Forum, dedicated to interfaith dialogue, came together for a Braver Angels "America's Public Forum" event about the role of faith in bridging divides entitled "Interfaith Bridges, Intra-faith Divides, and Polarization." It was a fascinating event and only the beginning of the conversation that needs to happen on this topic.  Luke Nathan Phillips of the Braver Angels DC Alliance moderated the event, with Ibrahim Anli of the Rumi Forum and Rev. Rich Tafel of Church of the Holy City as panelists. Pretty much everything they said I found important so I have recorded it to share with you all here.  

Rumi was a jurist, a man of law as well as a man of spirituality. His first work on reconciliation between these two was through intra-faith efforts within Islam.  Some attendees expressed interest in learning more about the history of Islam during Rumi’s time to understand the dynamics and value of this intra-faith dialogue.

Rev. Rich Tafel who is on the board of the National Council of Churches (NCC) shared that NCC has held Christian-Muslim dialogue and Christian-Jewish dialogue but was not open to a dialogue with evangelicals. However, when he asked the head of the equivalent of the NCC for evangelicals, they were open to dialogue. 

We need to engage in the intra-faith and interfaith dialogue to learn what is keeping people away from organized religion, because people need something to believe in in order to make meaning of the world, and in some instances the alternative is “conspirituality,” or people developing their own and following others’ conspiracy theories, which can be quite dangerous. 

In the past, Christian denominations split over the issue of slavery. In today’s day and age, churches are beginning to split over the issue of LGBT issues. 

Politics, economics and culture influence on another.  Politics however is downstream from culture. This means that culture influences politics.

Protestant habits are part of the dominant culture in the US.

Seeing the “contractual” (which is important in politics) does not ensure seeing the “relational.”  This is why we need civic engagement, especially interfaith dialogue, to be an autonomous actor in order to build and secure relational power.  We have a loneliness crisis which leads to authoritarianism.  Just having a community of faith is a bulwark against loneliness and depression.

Christianity is countercultural in a culture focused on what is measurable and profitable. A focus on being peacemakers, on spirituality, and enchantment, brings an important dimension.

We are living in a time of theological deprivation. People are dissatisfied with the way faith is conveyed, organized, and manifested.

Within Muslim society, this is causing people to abandon the faith in Muslim-minority countries and to veer towards extremism in Muslim-majority countries.

Within Islam, as life changes, how the Muslim law is comprehended is supposed to change as well.

Braver Angels has a community of atheists and people who are not closely affiliated with particular faith traditions.

Nursi, a 20^th century Muslim theologian, observed sentiments of both superiority and inferiority against the secular west; however he said no, we will look eye to eye and engage meaningfully as believers, in the most inclusive sense of the term “believers.”

There is a lack of overall performance from the faith community to help humanity frame material and technological advancements over the past few decades. Whereas in past centuries, technological advancements were accompanied by intellectual and philosophical performance. Faith is an invaluable source of wisdom. Without adequate engagement, human dignity is at stake.

Rev. Rich comes from the Swedenborgian church, founded by a scientist who had a mystical experience. He sees science as a way of understanding God’s world.  The problem is that when science became a belief system, a religion, it became crushed into a one-dimensional world where spirit and faith became lost.  From a faith/spiritual perspective, however, we are all connected.

10 years ago, Rev. Rich was asked by people in AI what a person can do that machines can’t. Understand the good, the beautiful and true, and the meaning of life, he said. What about the transcendent?  We surely can’t understand everything God, the great spirit and Creator of the universe, can.  Sadly, the theological arguments haven’t kept up enough with the technology of the modern age. But perhaps the breakdown of community and society will force us to realize there is more.

During the enlightenment, an emphasis on the spiritual was taken over by an emphasis on machines and what is transactional.  This leads to depression, sadness, and nihilism.  People are rejecting the way they see religion in the world. 

There was a question about orthodoxy (focused on doctrine) vs. orthopraxy (focused on practice).  Literalism is a national security problem. Within Islam, Muslims have countered legalistic trends through Sufism.  Teachings are connected through the Qur’an, but it is also spiritual. It has helped to counter extreme forms of heterodoxy.  Scholarship, economy, and military being under one power leads to tyranny (“gunpowder empires”).  This can be countered with the power of spirituality.  Spirituality and legal studies have informed each other and prevented extremes.

Jesus’ opponents were also religious fundamentalists.

Literalism in Christianity can be challenged by pointing out when an extremist takes one passage literally but not another which may actually contradict the first. Extremists often interpret passages for their own ends.

Orthodox views can be helpful to certain people depending on where they are in life. For example, a man who was dangerously addicted to drugs, drinking and other vices who found power in the black and white teachings of a faith tradition changed his life and probably even saved his own life. People come to faith in different ways and at different levels and therefore the avenue through orthodoxy should be respected.  

A literal interpretation could mean many different things, and is not necessarily going to be top/down or aggressive. It is also about how a person interprets faith teachings for the place they are at in their life.  It is important to bring compassion into the situation.

A question was asked about Fiddler on the Roof and how people can be moved to acceptance of interfaith relationships.  It is important to anchor yourself to where you are and then explore the stories of others in a spirit of learning. Devotion and openness do not contradict one another, they are a fake dichotomy.  Some guidelines:

o   Ask people directly when you have a curiosity, rather than asking other people about them.

o   Don’t compare your best with their worst.  There is Christianity and there is Christendom. We all have moments where we shine and moments where we fail.

o   Hold space for “holy envy” in your heart. Reconverting to your own faith by interacting with the other.  Ibrahim shared how he was reconverted to Islam through deep conversations with devout Southern Baptist evangelicals when he was in Israel.

o   Have humility – be open to seeing the parts of your life that need to change. Having the person who will tell you the truth about yourself is the greatest spiritual gift.  Often there is a common value of love for kids across religious traditions.

Borders define but don’t divide.

There was better interaction in medieval times within the scholarly sense. There was more mingling. Interestingly, each branch of science was in its own language and was therefore siloed. Muslims translated them all into Arabic which ushered in a new era of understanding and cross-cultural exchange.

In the Swedenborgian church, all faith paths are considered good. A good person is in Christ consciousness regardless of whether they believe in God.

It’s important to have cultural translation and travel between different worldviews, to genuinely seek to understand where people are coming from in their perspective. 

We have too many “conflict entrepreneurs” who pay on divisions. We need more peacemakers.

G.K. Chesterton said “America is a nation with the soul of a church.”  If this is true, it is a fractious church. The great American spiritual and political leaders have used a mix of spiritual and political language to make people feel they are all part of the same thing.

There was interfaith activism after 9/11 but people had to be careful. This work started with highlighting similarities rather than differences. This may have been seen as diluting faith.

People who have power are less interested in interfaith dialogue, whereas people without power are more interested in interfaith dialogue. What would it be like if people who were involved in interfaith dialogue had the power?

“People of faith” actually is a rather exclusive term. There are not enough bridges being made to people who don’t claim to be of any faith.

Rumi Forum is modeled off of an Abrahamic group in Turkey.

The idea of “tolerance” is outdated and insufficient.

We need more “spiritual entrepreneurs” who practice both faith and action.

The biggest barrier to church work is the church.  Issues such as the pedophile scandal in the Catholic Church have pushed people away for decades.

People often come to terms with conversations about faith around times of significant life events such as funerals and baptisms.

Ibrahim describes himself as a persecuted dissident because he has seen religion be used for political ends in his home country.  Settling in America, he believes in the American ideal and sees the urgency of ensuring that we succeed as a country of religious pluralism and democracy rather than being overcome by division and polarization.

We finished with an iftar meal - the breaking of the day-long fast which happens every day during Ramadan. What better way to have interfaith dialogue than through enjoying a meal together that holds such significance to those who are fasting to make more space for God. 

For the Love of Neighbor

Catholics held a Day of Action for Migrant Children on Wednesday.  We wrote prayers for the children on strips of fabric and tied them to a metal fence representing the cages that kids are being kept in at the immigrant detention centers. Jean Stokan from the Sisters of Mercy spoke about the hypocrisy of the U.S. government, funding and fueling so much of the violence outbreaking in Central America, meanwhile we won’t even let migrants escaping the violence to find refuge in the U.S. without putting them in cages, without proper hygiene, food or water, and keeping them separated from their parents.  “Child detention is illegal under international law and causes serious mental, physical, and emotional health complications.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics and many other public health organizations have declared the policies towards immigrants a public health crisis. Immigrant policing has been found to negatively impact trust of government health information including vaccination of children.  The children are experiencing psychological trauma and may experience long-term mental health effects due to the detention and separation.  “The experiences may also exacerbate prior exposure to traumas in the home country (eg, violence) and during migration (eg, extortion).”  The children are not getting appropriate medical care; are forced to be in situations of poor sanitation and living conditions, and sit through long detention periods without the stimulation necessary to promote healthy child development. AAP past-president, Dr. Colleen Kraft, said “Separating parents from their kids at the border contradicts everything we know about children's welfare.”   

Indeed, any human rights crisis is a public health crisis, when people are not provided with the means by which they need to live dignified lives with nourishing food, clean water, clean air, shelter, clothing, bodily autonomy, and anything else they need to maintain hygiene and safety. 

Meanwhile, the public health community is also fighting for Child Nutrition Reauthorization, and ensuring the future of school wellness in New York State.  Almost 90% of school districts in New York State are missing at least one element of a comprehensive school wellness policy, as measured by the WELLSAT tool from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.  New York City school wellness advocates are trying to tackle support for school wellness, better school food and nutrition education at the city, state, and federal levels right now.   At the state level through the WELL Campaign, we want to see a model state school wellness policy that incorporates mental health and social and emotional learning alongside standards for school food, nutrition education, physical activity and physical education.   

And yet, the battle against inhumane immigration policies towards children seems totally disconnected from the battle for child health and well-being in schools.  Why can’t we see these efforts for the dignity & well-being of children as all connected, and work on them together?  Surely the faith community knows that public health advocates working on child nutrition also don’t want to see kids in cages, right?

Perhaps you think that nutrition education is not as important as immigration policies and ending child detention. (I for one have not seen many Catholic organizations promoting nutrition education, with exceptions including Altagracia Faith & Justice works in Northern Manhattan and the Mercy Center in the South Bronx - organizations serving immigrant communities while also protesting the root causes that cause people to have to flee their countries in the first place.) 

We cannot forget that everything is connected.  The Amazon and other rainforest areas are being destroyed to clear land for cattle that is used to produce fast food, palm trees to create an unhealthy oil which is used as a stabilizer for processed foods, and other consumer products such as paper, furniture and clothing which our consumeristic society is so dependent on.  If we do not each take a serious look at our lifestyles and examine how they are contributing to the destruction of human livelihoods and lives, and teach children to do the same, we will continue to perpetuate the crises in front of us. We live in an interconnected world and all our actions have consequences. We are called to co-create with our Creator, not destroy.  Youth are striking for the climate, some every Friday through the Fridays for Future movement, and some are just gearing up specifically for September 20.  

There are ways these youth can take action in their own schools though; we need to be proactive in our actions, not just resistant.  The Tisch Center for Food, Education and Policy at Teachers College, Columbia University has created a handout about what youth can do to demand more sustainability solutions in their schools. This could take the form of starting a school garden, participating in Meatless Mondays, campaigning for a Green Team, advocating for food and nutrition education, or decreasing food waste from school lunch. 

At the end of a “Climate Emergency and the Green New Deal” event at Riverside Church, a Fridays for Future climate strike march video was played with a backdrop of music from the song Bella Ciao which was used to protest the Nazis (re-written with lyrics to protest climate change), followed by the audience singing along. This was a chilling reminder of the connection between genocide and environmental destruction, which is all too close to home in the United States, with the founding of this country being at the expense of so many Native American lives, and too timely, with the killing of indigenous peoples in the Amazon and in other rainforests where the native peoples rely on the rainforests for their livelihoods.  

I have been encouraged to see youth leadership in promoting peace and living in harmony with creation, such as the Interfaith Youth Forum for Environment & Peace organized by JPIC Franciscans Africa.  However, the work of JPIC Franciscans Africa and the work of many other religious groups across the world are doing to promote this harmony is deeply underfunded.  For now, I have created a Go Fund Me page for JPIC Franciscans Africa, with hope and prayers that sufficient funds can be raised by the time of their 2019 youth forum which will be held during the Global Climate Strike on 20 September and World Peace Day on 21 September. The report about my trip to Kenya for the Laudato Si Generation conference, which I wrote about recently, has been translated into Spanish, French and Italian by the International Council of the Secular Franciscan Order.   

Recognizing the divide and silos between the public health community and faith-rooted social justice advocates, who seem to rarely work together for the same causes, several colleagues and I have decided to start the Interfaith Public Health Network, which seeks to engage and mobilize faith communities to improve population health, by addressing the underlying determinants of health (social, commercial, environmental, and political) through connecting, convening, cultivating, and catalyzing.  We want to bring the voices of healthcare advocates and the faith community together to advocate for things such as reduced emissions which lead to child asthma, promote agroecology projects and appreciation of plant-based meals which support the health of environment and people, support mental health services for people in need, and improve gun violence prevention measures.  

During a visit to New York by Olivier van Beeman from the Netherlands, author of the book “Heineken in Africa” the Interfaith Public Health Network organized an event with Olivier van Beeman along with Minister Onleilove Alston and Dr. Nicholas Freudenberg at the CUNY School of Public Health. We brought together the faith and public health communities to learn about the insidious practices of a multinational corporation that takes advantage of government tax loopholes in order to make its profits at the expense of the African community.  Some governments are even intertwined with the company, such as in Burundi.  This is the type of issue the Interfaith Public Health Network wants to raise awareness about: as Minister Onleilove Alston pointed out, in her religious tradition, it’s not a sin to drink, but it’s a sin to commit injustice.  And these injustices, involving government collusion with multinational companies, is what’s contributing to poverty, violence, despair and migration of our neighbors in many countries throughout the world, our common home. 

Breaking Bread and the Franciscan Solidarity Tables

I would like to share two of Fr. Richard Rohr’s daily meditations from this weekend, as I think they are particularly relevant to the Franciscan Action Network’s efforts to build Franciscan Solidarity Tables in cities across the United States.  I have shared some commentary in between as well.

Fr. Richard Rohr shared in his daily meditation on July 21^st: 

Again and again, Jesus demonstrated one of the simplest, surest ways to connect with others across differences: share a meal. Somehow in eating together our barriers lower. We sit across from and beside one another, at the same level. Perhaps we recognize the familiar in each other, the universal need to be fed.

He encourages us to “participate in some form of breaking bread… as a contemplative practice, a way to open your heart and be deeply present to someone else.”  He then shares,

The People’s Supper, a nonprofit “building community through better conversations,” offers a helpful framework for purposeful meals. Their goal is “to repair the breach in our interpersonal relationships across political, ideological, and identity differences, leading to more civil discourse. And, we plan to do it in the most nourishing way we know—over supper!”

This isn’t about a political party, or what is or isn’t happening in Washington. It’s about us, and our relationship to one another. Too often, we exist in echo chambers and see each other as monoliths: one-sided stereotypes who can be reduced to a single word or phrase.

Instead, we want to go beneath the headlines, to see each other as real people with real struggles, real fears, real hopes, and real dreams.

Suppers are a place where we can come together over one of humanity’s most ancient and simple rituals. A place where we can share meaningful stories, good food, and a sense of community. A place where we can build understanding and trust.

We invite you to pull up a chair. 

The People's Supper helps hosts create a safe, comfortable space. You don't have to be a professional chef!  Potlucks - where everyone brings something to share - are the best way to build community. 

This is precisely what the Franciscan Action Network is working to build: Franciscan Solidarity Tables where all are welcome and we can build understanding and trust and work for justice for the marginalized.  This frequently means engaging on political issues, which Fr. Richard quotes Peter Armstrong in saying that this is necessary to do for us as Christians to be able to claim we “have anything to do with Jesus.”

We need not seek division and further polarization; however, we can continue to engage in tough debate and conversation across dividing lines, expressing our own deeply held convictions and being willing to be changed by our encounter with the other, because that is the way that Jesus engaged with others.

He also quotes Parker Palmer on the topic:

When we forget that politics is about weaving a fabric of compassion and justice on which everyone can depend, the first to suffer are the most vulnerable among us—our children, our elderly, our mentally ill, our poor, and our homeless. As they suffer, so does the integrity of our democracy.

On July 22 in his daily meditation, Fr. Richard discusses “The Shape of the Table.”  He starts with the Eucharist’s relevance to the conversation about bringing people together around a table in today’s context: “the Eucharist is an invitation to socially experience the shared presence of God, and to be present in an embodied way.”

First, let me share some context. In Jesus’ time, the dominant institution was the kinship system: the family, the private home. That’s why early Christians gathered in house churches, much different from the typical parish today. In Matthew’s Gospel the word house is used many times. Jesus is always going in and out of houses (as in 8:14, 9:10). What happened around the tables in those houses shaped and named the social order. Table friendship ends up defining how we see friendship in general.

Jesus often used domestic settings to rearrange the social order. Nowhere was that truer than with the meal—with whom, where, and what he ate. This is still true today, more than we might imagine. (Another example of Jesus changing the social order is in the relationship between employers and workers.) Jesus’ constant use of table relationships is perhaps his most central re-ritualization of what family means. Note that he is always trying to broaden the circle (see Luke 14:7-24 for three good examples). Jesus brought this all to fullness in his “last supper” with “the twelve.” This was not to emphasize male fellowship, but the full quorum of the twelve tribes of Israel. (I know it does not look that way to us now, but the Eucharistic meal was from the very beginning a gathering of both women and men, which shows how Christians understood equality.)

Jesus didn’t want his community to have a social ethic; he wanted it to be a social ethic. Their very way of eating and organizing themselves was to be an affront to the system of dominance and power. They were to live in a new symbolic universe, especially symbolized by what we now call open table fellowship.

This has a particular relevance to food justice and climate change:

In all cultures, sharing food is a complex interaction that symbolizes social relationships and defines social boundaries almost more than any other daily event. Whom you eat with defines whom you don’t eat with. Certain groups of people eat certain kinds of food. Through our choices and behavior at table, we name and identify ourselves.

…today a vegetarian (or even vegan) diet has become a conscious choice for many because they’ve studied the politics of food: who eats meat and who can’t eat meat; what eating meat is doing not only to our health but even to the planet. Researchers surmise that the meat-heavy Western diet contributes to one-fifth of global emissions on our planet.  Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh writes: “As a spiritual family and a human family, we can all help avert climate change with the practice of mindful eating. Going vegetarian may be the most effective way to stop climate change.”

(While overall there are climate benefits to eating less meat, there are also health implications to consider in going completely vegetarian, and it is not something everyone should do.  However, the majority of people could eat less meat and adopt a “reducetarian” diet for climate and health benefits.  There also a host of complex economic, cultural, and social factors to consider to be able to answer the question, “Who sits at my table?” with integrity….to be covered in future dialogue.)

Another element of breaking bread together speaks to the statement that eating together makes about immigration policies: when citizens and immigrant families eat together, we are working to keep families together rather than break them apart. This is the essence of the movement “Break Bread Not Families.”  Breaking bread together with immigrant families not only allows us to get to know different peoples’ cultures and cuisines, but also gives us an opportunity to learn about the stories of what brought people to immigrate in the first place. Were they seeking refuge or asylum, escaping tyrant governments or violent gangs in their home communities?  Were they forced off of their land because multinational companies started pillaging the land so they could make a profit off of its resources, thereby leaving the families without a means to grow food, access clean water, and make a living?  Coming together around the table allows us to hear stories from our immigrant brothers and sisters and then see if there is anything we can do to help, both in their current situation such as with food, shelter, or healthcare, as well as the situations of their home countries, such as through working with Franciscans International and engaging at the United Nations.

In September 2017 when the New York City Franciscan Solidarity Table preliminarily began meeting, three of the topic areas people expressed interest in engaging on were immigration, health/food justice, and climate change.  There is certainly overlap between each of these issues; coming together around a table allows us to discuss the areas of overlap as well as how we can make progress on achieving justice and continue bringing more people to the table and building community.  

Kelly Moltzen, OFS, MPH, RD is a board member of the Franciscan Action Network, program manager of Bronx Health REACH, and 2015 Re:Generate Fellow of the Food, Health and Ecological Well-Being Program of Wake Forest University’s School of Divinity.

Reflections on Lady Liberty and Mother Mary This Fourth of July

I came across this poster in Washington, D.C. at a rally in support of Muslims, back in January. Six months later, the irony and its significance hits us like a ton of bricks, as instead of the United States welcoming the immigrant, children are being stripped away from their parents’ arms and separated at the border. 

This week, a church in Indiana put a statue of the Holy Family inside a cage, representing an ICE detention center.  Much like Jesus crying out at the end of his life, “forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do” – it is a wake-up call to those who do not see the similarities between the life and family of Jesus Christ and those being turned away and treated as less than human today.  If Christianity does not show us how to act in the face of such injustice, surely we will continue to live in a land of separation and lack of community. As Michael Moore said on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, “if we started acting the way we were taught, in Catholic school, or in Bible school, wherever you went, we will have a different country, but not until then.” 

As with the image of Lady Liberty holding the immigrant child in her arms in a time of separation of children from families at the border, a caged Holy Family shows the stark contrast between the principles that the U.S. was founded upon, and the Biblical call to welcome the stranger and the immigrant, and the reality of what the U.S. government and immigration officials are currently doing.  Instead of such hypocrisy, I believe we need to take a deeper look at Mary, the mother of Jesus.  As a woman who brought Christ into the world who continues to show us how to love and how to live, we would do much better than to dismiss her importance as many Protestants do.  As a willing participant in the co-creation of life with God, Mary represents a generative capacity of love and abundance we desperately need to reestablish.  Most of the immigrants crossing borders are doing so because they feel their lives are in danger, and/or they cannot live off their native lands any longer.  Corrupt governments allow corporations to plunder land and threaten, destroy and contaminate food and water sources in the name of profit or the fighting over natural resources. But the life-giving image of Mary, and the generative capacity of Mother Earth, provide us with an alternative of abundance, nurturing and welcoming. 

This 4^th of July, as we mourn the failure of U.S. to stand true to the words holding up Lady Liberty - “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” – may we reflect on how different the world would be if we took the example of Mary seriously, valuing the love and generative capacity of the feminine to give, nourish, and sustain life.  

We can all do something.  Seek out a group near you to support that is working in support of keeping families together. Cayuga Centers has an Amazon Wish List for the children in its care.  And the Franciscan Action Network is asking Franciscan churches around the country to send in their photos from local Keeping Families Together marches so we can start to build more unity and momentum.  As St. Francis of Assisi said, “Let us begin again, for up to now we have done little or nothing.”  

THIS IS MY SONG

This is my song, O God of all the nations,

A song of peace for lands afar and mine.

This is my home, the country where my heart is,

Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine.

But other hearts in other lands are beating,

With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,

And sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine.

But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,

And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.

O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,

A song of peace for their land and for mine.

Water and Health in the Bronx: Protecting the Sacred

It is hard to not be awed by the scale and tremendous care that goes into supporting the gigantic system bringing water to New York City and the surrounding counties. Flowing from the Catskill/Delaware Watersheds and the Croton Watershed, approximately one billion gallons of water are consumed in New York City every day, serving 8.5 million residents as well as millions of tourists each year. In all, the New York City Water Supply System provides nearly half the population of New York State with high-quality drinking water.

It is humbling to realize just how dependent all these millions of people are on the water supply functioning the way it is supposed to. Water constitutes about 50-70% of our bodies as human beings. Water from the reservoirs, aqueducts, and street-side sampling stations is quality tested by the Department of Environmental Protection’s scientists, with nearly 630,000 analyses performed on the samples in four state-of-the art laboratories (NYC DEP).

Photo © Kelly Moltzen, NYC Watershed Tour

In my own tradition of Franciscan Catholicism, we are called to protect water as a component of creation care, protecting the Earth and our bodies as temples of God. Saint Francis of Assisi heard a call from God to “repair my house, which…is falling utterly into ruin.” While initially he took this as a call to repair a physical church, he eventually came to understand it as a call to repair the institutional Church and the universal house of God, the common home that we all share here on Earth. His spirituality grew to such depths that he came to regard Earth as Mother Earth, and water as Sister Water. By protecting water, we are protecting our health and that of our fellow sisters and brothers with whom we share the Earth. Unfortunately, in many places in the United States and across the world, oil spills from pipelines, contamination from hydraulic fracturing, and runoff from nuclear power plants and industrial agriculture threaten water supplies. Thus, I see the call to watershed discipleship as extremely important for people of faith.

Photo © Kelly Moltzen, NYC Watershed Tour

Pope Francis explained the risks of water pollution in his 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’, which many people of faith are using to make the case for why we should care for our common home. He dedicates a whole section of the encyclical to the issue of water – noting the importance of fresh water for healthcare, agriculture and industry; the prevalence of droughts and water poverty; the outbreak of water-related diseases among the poor; water pollution resulting from certain mining, farming and industrial activities; the phenomenon of water privatization by large multinational businesses; and the link between water scarcity and the cost of food and various products which depend on its use. He also notes, “access to safe drinkable water is a basic and universal human right.”

Photo © Kelly Moltzen, NYC Watershed Tour

Yet, my concern about water quality and safety stems not just from the threats modern society and corporate greed pose to water safety. I am also concerned because water is the healthiest drink. I work at Bronx Health REACH, which partners with school districts and a number of faith-based and community organizations to promote water as the best alternative to beverages of poor nutritional quality. In this work, it is necessary to make sure we can point to sources of safe drinking water if we want people to switch away from unhealthy drinks like sodas and drinks high in sugar.

First, I’ll share a little bit about why we are advocating for people to drink more water, and then share about other environmental and health concerns related to our water system. Finally, I’ll mention the work of a number of faith-based and community organizations in and around New York City that work to ensure there is safe drinking water, and that people are accessing it in healthy amounts.

Photo © Kelly Moltzen, NYC Watershed Tour

Soda, sports drinks, fruit-flavored drinks, and other sugar-sweetened beverages may sound appealing and some drinks (such as sweetened teas) sometimes get marketed as “natural” and healthy. Society is swamped with marketing campaigns that make these consumer products sound appealing thanks to billion-dollar advertising budgets, but these products are contributing to high rates of diabetes, obesity, and other chronic diseases, with higher and higher rates of these diseases showing up in young children. In turn, this causes rising healthcare costs for dealing with these diseases.

Photo © Kelly Moltzen, NYC Watershed Tour

In the Bronx, a third of adults consume at least one sugar-sweetened beverage per day, and over half of children do. A third of Bronx children are overweight or obese, as are two thirds of adults (NYC DOHMH).

Not only do sugar-sweetened beverages contribute to the desecration of our own bodies, but often the industrial processes used to create unhealthy beverages also place undue harm on the environment and make public water sources less and less accessible to the people who need them most. None of this is healthy for people or the economy, but these practices line the pockets of corporate executives. By infusing a sense of value on drinking water, Bronx Health REACH is working to ensure the continued safety of our water supplies.

Photo © Kelly Moltzen, NYC Watershed Tour

In addition to drinking water directly, water is also used to grow food for our local food system. Some of us in the watershed are teaching children about growing food and getting local food into schools, restaurants, and churches. There is even a farm run by Catholic sisters who sell the produce to local parishes for use in farm shares, food pantries and soup kitchens. Bronx Health REACH has been instrumental in developing a “Bronx Salad” that encourages consumption of culturally relevant foods while also encouraging community members to grow some of the produce locally, such as in community gardens. A feature of this salad is the dressing made from the Bronx Hot Sauce, which is made by a local chef with peppers grown in the Bronx. A version of this salad is becoming increasingly available in NYC school cafeterias, thanks to a partnership between school gardening and Farm to School efforts in NYC. As we seek to develop a regional food system and reduce the environmental impact of our food system, we must also seek to protect the water supplies that nourish the crops.

Photo © Kelly Moltzen, NYC Watershed Tour

While the water delivered to NYC is pristine and high quality, many New Yorkers remain skeptical of its safety. Therefore, I recently took a tour of the watershed that supplies water to NYC to learn just how safe the water is to drink. The watershed tour guide was immensely knowledgeable, and I became even more deeply aware of the tremendous gratitude and respect we owe to those who work around the clock to make sure that our water is safe. I gained an even greater understanding of the importance of ecology when learning about how the Department of Environmental Protection plants trees upstream from a river to help keep the water pure by filtering out toxins and impurities.

Despite the fact that high-quality water is delivered to NYC, I hear a lot of anecdotal concerns about water safety, at least in the Bronx. Legitimate concerns have been raised since water testing in NYC was examined more critically after the Flint water crisis. It turns out that the pipes bringing water into homes and schools are often old and made of lead, increasing the likelihood of lead leaching into our drinking water. Water samples from 2016-2017 found high levels of lead in some samples of NYC water delivered to schools, leading to outcries about the water’s safety. Even though the NYC Health Department affirms that no cases of lead poisoning have resulted from the high lead levels found in water, any level of lead that makes its way into our bodies is too much. We can reduce the likelihood of lead leaching into our water supply at the individual level by letting the water run before drinking it, only drinking water that comes out of the tap cold (since lead dissolves in hot water), or using special filters that remove lead.

Ideally, we could have well-funded public education campaigns about how to drink water safely, and to replace old pipes with non-lead pipes. But in order to get government and funders to prioritize water safety and public health, we need to tap into our internal spiritual wells, which drive us to improve the quality of life for all, and build increased momentum for the needed changes through advocacy and organizing.

Photo © Kelly Moltzen, NYC Watershed Tour

A loose coalition of organizations in the New York City area partner to ensure a safe water supply and to encourage water consumption. Food & Water Watch has policy campaigns to improve pipe infrastructure. The New York City Health Department and Bronx Health REACH have campaigns to encourage water consumption and educate people about the health risks of sugar-sweetened beverages. Water2Kids is a business started by twin children in the Bronx (with the support of their mother) who wanted to see water — instead of sugar-sweetened beverages — marketed to their age group. Groups like Religious Organizations Along the River (ROAR), the Metro New York Catholic Climate Movement (a chapter of the Global Catholic Climate Movement), and the Center for Earth Ethics of Union Theological Seminary work to protect the New York water supply from projects that could threaten the safety of our water. Churches, including Franciscan and other Catholic parishes in NYC, organize film screenings about water and other environmental issues.

As interdependent creatures, human beings must rely on one another and our ecosystems in order to access the most basic of necessities required to sustain life on Earth. Because of our reliance on our watershed and other natural resources, ensuring our water sources remain uncontaminated is vitally essential and part of the call for us to steward creation. As we are interdependent with the Earth to meet our physical human needs, so the parts of the body of Christ are also interdependent with one another. We all need one another in order to make the impacts we want to make.

It can often feel overwhelming to try and address all of the overlapping and interconnected issues related to ensuring safe and healthy water and food supplies. However, as Wendell Berry says in the documentary Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry, we must work on putting the pieces together one at a time, rather than all at once — such as starting with our own watershed. By taking bite-sized steps to address our ecological crisis while continuing to recognize the interconnectedness of issues and our interdependence with the local ecosystem, we can put faith in action by creating a livable, sustainable future for current and future generations.

Reposted from Watershed Discipleship:  https://watersheddiscipleship.org/2018/01/27/water-and-health-in-the-bronx-protecting-the-sacred/ 

Some Thoughts on Accompaniment

Accompany.  This word struck me particularly as I finished reading “In the Company of the Poor: Conversations with Dr. Paul Farmer and Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez,” a book that makes connections between global health and liberation theology.  Dr. Farmer and Fr. Gustavo both share the importance of accompanying the poor in order to address a root cause of health disparities and the biggest scandal of theology: poverty.  When we accompany, we start from a bottom-up approach and acknowledgement that we are called to stand in solidarity with others because we are one. As Dr. Farmer reiterates again and again, we do not live in “First World” and “Third World” countries; we live in one world.  An example of this I learned when visiting San Diego recently is that there are pollution concerns in San Diego travelling up the coast by air and water from Tijuana; wouldn’t investment into the public health infrastructure in Tijuana lessen the burdens not only of the Mexicans but also the Californians? 

I am also struck by the world accompany for several other reasons.  First, its root is “con pan” – with bread.  When we break bread with others, we are standing – or eating – with one another in solidarity.  When we can ensure that no one is excluded from our table, but that there is bread for all, we are really living as if everyone on earth is our kin.  Next, this is a word used by immigration activists, as immigrants benefit from having people to accompany them to trials when they are facing deportation:  immigrants are often treated more humanely when accompanied by a U.S. citizen who recognizes their human dignity and knows something of the danger that often awaits those who are forced back to their home countries.  Also, I found out that there is a retreat within the Methodist/Protestant traditions that parallels the Day by Day Agape (DDA) retreat I went on as a teenager at Capuchin Youth & Family Ministries, that the Protestants call “A Walk with Emmaus.”  The Emmaus Walk as I have come to experience on my DDA and other retreats, is also one of accompaniment.  It’s accompanying a fellow human being on their walk with God – a shared experience that can be truly transformative for both parties.

Accompaniment in the search for global health, food justice, immigrant rights, spiritual discernment, or any other human journey has love for the other at its root in all cases.  It’s the same root as the motivation of St. Francis of Assisi when he decided to embrace the leper on the side of the road, and the same motivation that St. Francis spoke about when he told a fellow friar “charity, not food” is what was important in the breaking of bread with a hungry friar. Charity, that is, in the context of the original meaning of the word it is derived from (caritas) – love for one’s neighbor.  In this holistic understanding of the word charity, we come to accompany our brothers and sisters in a way that honors their dignity rather than sees them as recipients of handouts that does not allow them to have a role in their own liberation.  This type of accompaniment has allowed Dr. Paul Farmer to build up the organization of Partners in Health to have 13,000 employees, two thirds of them being local community health workers, many former patients who many have never had a job in their lives before.  It’s an accompaniment that sees people holistically, acknowledges the social determinants of health, creates jobs, and helps people lift themselves out of poverty. 

It’s this type of accompaniment we can use in building one to one relationships when organizing for a goal, for those who seek to do something to manifest hope as an alternative to the utter hopelessness we can feel in challenging situations where we see so much suffering around us.  Fr. Gustavo speaks a good deal about hope amidst suffering, as well – citing Jeremiah 32 and Job as influential Biblical texts to meditate upon.

Ultimately, it is especially up to those who have privilege to decide to accompany those who suffer at the hand of unjust policies and systems, recognizing that we can gain strength from the hope that lives in the wells of our own and others’ experiences.  And of course, the person being accompanied must choose to be accompanied. When we befriend those we accompany, the journey becomes a shared human experience from which both people can benefit.