At a March 27, 2014, forum in Martin Chapel, two professors of religion at EMU debated approaches to interfaith engagement that lie somewhere in the middle. Amir Akrami, a visiting Muslim scholar from Iran, argued for 鈥減luralism鈥� as the best approach, while , professor of at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, promoted what he calls 鈥減articularism.鈥�

The forum was led by CIE director .

Every person adheres to a 鈥減articular鈥� belief system and wants others to join him or her in those beliefs, said Nation. At the same time, that doesn鈥檛 mean exposure to other beliefs has no value, he added. 鈥淚 can believe that someone of another faith is profoundly wrong but still learn from them,鈥� he said.

Nation, who did not grow up Christian, expressed concern that many Christians in general 鈥� and Mennonites in particular 鈥� are too willing to allow specific, 鈥渢extured鈥� Christian beliefs to be displaced by more vague, pluralistic ways of thinking.

He was drawn to the Mennonite faith through theologian John Howard Yoder鈥檚 seminal work, The Politics of Jesus, and he is particularly concerned that Mennonites not water down their stance on peace. 鈥淢any young people especially don鈥檛 want any clear convictions and are gravitating towards pluralism,鈥� he said.

Pluralism, though, is exactly what Akrami wants to see. Too many people think their religion is superior to all others and that they have nothing to learn from other faiths, he said. 鈥淲e must hold our particular beliefs but acknowledge that others hold particular beliefs as well,鈥� he added.

To Akrami, pluralism means people must accept that other religions contain truth. 鈥淧luralism is not a new religion or an attempt to reduce our religions to the least common denominator,鈥� he said. 鈥淧luralism is not wishy-washy relativism.鈥�

Akrami, who has been involved in many interfaith dialogues over the years, argued that religious interaction often leads to pluralism. 鈥淚 have learned that I do not possess the whole truth,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 want to be enriched by the truth in other religions while at the same time we challenge each other.鈥�

A visiting scholar at EMU from 2012 through August 2014, Akrami has taught several courses on Islam. This semester he is co-teaching a class on comparative monotheisms with a visiting Jewish scholar and a Mennonite professor.

In Iran, Akrami was a researcher and lecturer at the Iranian Institute of Philosophy. Before that he was a visiting research fellow at the Centre for Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at the University of Birmingham in England. He earned a doctorate in the philosophy of religion at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Nation has taught at for 11 years. Before joining the faculty, he was founding director of an ecumenical peace and justice organization, pastor in several denominations and director of London Mennonite Centre in England. His doctorate is in theological ethics from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif.

CIE, founded in 2009 and funded by grants and private donations, promotes interaction between people of different faiths, especially the three world religions that worship one God and claim Abraham as one of their forebearers 鈥� Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The highly engaging Drs. Akrami, Rasoulipour and Mousavian emphasized the eager willingness of many Iranians to promote interfaith dialogue among ‘people of the book’ who share a common heritage as Children of Abraham. Their visit to the EMU campus was jointly sponsored by Abraham’s Tent and Mennonite Central Committee. (Photo by Jim Bishop)

Jointly sponsored by Abraham’s Tent and Mennonite Central Committee, the visit included meetings with top school administrators, personnel from the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and an afternoon forum on the topic, “Why Faith-based Peacebuilding is Important.”

Importance of interfaith dialogue

An active proponent of interfaith dialog, Dr. Rasoulipour works closely with the Center for Interreligious Dialogue in Tehran where he formerly served as director. In recent years he has been instrumental in arranging MCC learning tours to Iran.

Two Iranian colleagues, Dr. Seyed Mousavian and Dr. Amir Akrami, both professors of philosophy and religion in Iran, were able to join Dr. Rasoulipour for the EMU meetings.

The late afternoon forum drew an unexpectedly large group of about 100 persons.

East Coast learning tour

Ed Martin, formerly of MCC, helped to organize an East Coast tour for the three interfaith dialogue proponents. Their visit included meetings in Charlottesville, Washington, DC., and Cambridge, Mass.

Dr. Rasoulipour has spent the past year as a visiting professor at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Ind., and returned to his teaching post in Tehran on June 5.

Prior to the forum, Dr. Rasoulipour talks with Robert Lee, retired Mennonite Mission Network missionary who worked with his wife, Nancy, for many years in Japan. (Photo by Jim Bishop)

“We feel highly honored by Dr. Rasoulipour’s visit and his willingness to not only lecture on this important topic but to share his personal commitment to interfaith dialogue,” said Gretchen H. Maust, associate director of Abraham’s Tent.

“It’s important for us to know that the Iranian people long to build relationships and welcome opportunities to debate our differences so we can grow in respectful understanding of each other,” she added.

Learn more

• Abraham’s Tent: A Center for Interfaith Engagement at EMU
• Center for Justice and Peacebuilding
• Undergraduate peacebuilding and development studies

Keith Graber Miller, professor of Bible, religion and philosophy at Goshen (Ind.) College, will speak Wednesday and Thursday, Jan. 28-29, on the theme, “Embodying Sexual Wholeness in a Broken World.”

Miller will open the series 10 a.m. Wednesday with a university chapel presentation “On Loving Sexuality and Living Faithfully.”

At 6 p.m. that day, he will focus on “Negotiating the Young Adult Sexual Landscape” in Martin Chapel of the seminary building.

A “talk back” will follow at 9 p.m. in the Common Grounds Coffeehouse of the University Commons. Miller will recap his evening talk and speak briefly on pornographic seductions with opportunity for questions and responses.

Miller will continue the series 9:30 a.m. Thursday in Martin Chapel with the topic, “Sexuality in the Ministering Person.” He will conclude with a luncheon talk at noon Thursday in the west dining room of the university cafeteria (Northlawn ground floor) on “Emerging Sexuality Themes: Listening to the EMU Campus Community.”

Miller’s specialty areas at Goshen College include contemporary Christian ethics, religion and politics, religion and sexuality and adoption and childhood issues. He has written four books and speaks frequently in congregations and at conferences on these and other topics. He has co-led Goshen’s SST (Study-Travel Term) semesters with his spouse Ann in Cambodia, Cuba and Costa Rica, China and the Dominican Republic.

He has a BA degree from Franklin (Ind.) College, an MDiv from Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, and a PhD from Emory University.

“Keith Graber Miller is uniquely gifted and prepared to guide our campus-wide conversations on sexuality,” said Brian Martin Burkholder, EMU campus pastor. “He brings a wealth of experience engaging the themes and dynamics of sexuality with young adults both in the classroom and as a faculty mentor.”

The series is sponsored by EMU Campus Ministries and is open to the public free of charge.

For more information, call 540-432-4115.

The annual faculty-staff conference will be held Wednesday and Thursday, Aug. 16-17, on the theme, “Mindfully Serving Together.” Wednesday sessions will be held at Massanetta Springs Conference Center east of Harrisonburg, and Thursday’s program will be held in Martin Chapel of the seminary building.

John LeMond will give three presentations on the program theme during the conference. He will speak 10:45 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Wednesday and 8:30 a.m. Thursday.

Dr. LeMond is an ordained pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He has lived in Asia for 22 years, serving first in Taiwan and for the past 15 years in Hong Kong, where he currently is professor of church history and world religions at Lutheran Theological Seminary and director of the Bridge and Dialogue Division of the Tao Fong Shan Christian Centre.

The Bridge and Dialogue Division that LeMond works with arranges programs in religious dialogue, operates a Christian guesthouse called “Ascension House,” serving backpackers and travelors from around the world, and offers ecumenical Sunday worship services and prayer times using the Taize style of meditation.

Both days of the conference will include worship led by Kenneth J. Nafziger, professor of music. There will also be a time for recreation, an ice cream social with storytelling and a cholesterol screening.

A picnic for all employees and their families will be held on the front lawn of campus Thursday evening.

Student leaders – including community advisors and campus ministry assistants – will begin arriving Aug. 18 for orientation, and student athletes will arrive Aug. 19 to begin practice on Monday (Aug. 21) for fall sports.

New students will check into the residence halls Aug. 26. Orientation programs for new students run through Sunday noon, Aug. 27.

Returning students will arrive on campus Sunday, Aug. 27. Fall semester registration will be held Tuesday, Aug. 30. Fall semester classes will begin 8 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 30. President Loren E. Swartzendruber will speak at an opening convocation 10 a.m. that day in Lehman Auditorium.

EMU’s fall semester runs through Dec. 15.

By Tom Mitchell, Daily News-Record

Loren Swartzendruber quickly points out that schools like once reflected an academic norm.

“Most colleges started out as Christian colleges,” Swartzendruber told his audience at Wednesday’s Downtown Prayer Luncheon at First Presbyterian Church.

New times and attitudes made higher education’s EMUs an exception, said Swartzendruber, EMU’s president, and a considerably larger secular academic world poses obstacles to spiritually-based colleges.

EMU’s comparatively lower paid faculty, Swartzendruber says, swap higher salaries for a chance to teach in a more religiously free school.

“We are blessed with people committed to the values of EMU,” said Swartzendruber.

Such values include a campus ban on alcohol and drugs and a healthy nudge toward church attendance, though EMU does not enforce the latter practice, Swartzendruber said. Besides Sunday service, EMU offers chapel worship twice a week

EMU, while hardly shedding its old denominational roots, has added new branches. With a charter governed by , EMU’s enrollment of nearly 1,300 students shows more women than men – 61-39 percent respectively – a ratio of Mennonites and non-Mennonites that is virtually 50-50.

A more unbalanced quota, Swartzendruber says, is EMU’s fiscal disadvantage in matching other schools’ operating budget. “We aren’t heavily endowed,” he said, citing EMU’s endowment of $17 million from former graduates and other supporters.

Setting stricter behavior standards for students and staff allows schools like EMU to be more selective. Both parties sign contracts binding them to EMU’s standards of demeanor.

“We can discriminate in hiring,” Swartzendruber said, referring to his school’s employing of persons deemed compatible with EMU’s personal standards. Such philosophies aren’t meant to demean other colleges’ hiring and admission policies, he said. “We’re just different from schools like JMU.”

EMU’s mantra of “nurture and discipline” meets mischief halfway.

“We don’t necessarily expel a student for something that another school might,” Swartzendruber said. “I accept the community’s high standards and expectations, but we’re human.”

Right Fit

EMU students Joel C. Lehman and Erica Kraybill, co-presidents in the university’s , took different paths to the Harrisonburg college, but found at EMU an ingredient both felt they might have missed at other institutions: compatibility.

Lehman, a senior from Lancaster, Pa., who is studying , found EMU to be something close to a second home.

“Two things drew me to EMU,” Lehman said. “First, the fact that it is a small liberal arts college that’s religious. Secondly, I grew up in a church family and wanted to attend school where I could talk about my faith. ”

Lehman said that EMU’s conservative climate and comparatively low profile don’t faze him. “I knew if I chose to come to EMU, I wouldn’t be challenged as much by other religions. EMU doesn’t have as large a reputation as schools like UVa or places like that, but people are very intrigued and impressed by it. Even though it doesn’t carry the same prestige, it doesn’t mean that the education is not at the same level.”

EMU caught Kraybill, 23, on the rebound. Kraybill, a major from Columbus, Ohio, transferred in last year after two years at Guilford (N.C.) College. Guilford, Kraybill said, “wasn’t the right fit,” for her.

“I took a year off after I left Guilford and visited EMU but I didn’t expect to end up here,” said Kraybill, whose parents graduated from EMU. “What attracted me to EMU was its really strong academic program. What kept me here, in addition to the academics, was its Christian focus.”

Another draw for Kraybill was EMU’s campus chemistry.

“I really felt people at EMU were connected with each other and had strong sense of common mission in terms of their goals in life, that people here know who they are and what they stand for.”

EMU’s Mennonite foundation welcomes diversity, said Kraybill, who eyed Ohio State but balked at a vision of life at a larger school. “EMU is very spiritually minded and very Christian centered, but it’s not exclusive and its focus is on reaching out to the community and wider world of people in need.”

When they graduate next spring, Lehman and Kraybill may perform public service abroad. Kraybill attributes her interest in such global work to attending college on a campus that encourages such callings.

Said Kraybill: “EMU’s focus on mission comes through.”

Pleasant Valley

Carissa Sweigart, 25, a senior from Hesston, Kan., transferred to EMU last year from Hesston (Kans.) College, a small 2-year liberal arts school, to study . While knowing Swartzendruber, who served as Hesston’s president before coming to EMU two years ago, eased Sweigart’s transition, EMU’s place in the Shenandoah Valley’s cultural and geographical mix drew her to the Harrisonburg school.

“”I looked into a lot of different public [colleges], including some in my own state,” said Sweigart,. “I like the diversity and the idea of knowing the professors and most of the other students. The area here attracted me, too.” Sweigart added that coming to EMU “gave me a place where I could be part of a community.”

Contact Tom Mitchell at 574-6275 or mitchell@dnronline.com

WEMC, 91.7 FM, the non-commercial, educational radio voice of EMU, has added three programs to its broadcast schedule, starting in October.

WEMC general manager Jon Kauffmann-Kennel announced that the new additions include two nationally-renowned programs from National Public Radio, “Fresh Air” and “Talk of the Nation.” The third program is “Speaking of Faith.”

“Talk of the Nation”

Hosted by Neal Conan, this midday show includes conversation about news and issues from politics and education to religion and the arts. Its call-in segments give listeners opportunity to join the discussions with decision-makers, authors, academicians and artists from around the world. On Fridays, Ira Flatow takes over as host to discuss all things scientific for “Talk of the Nation Science Friday.” More than two million people already listen to “Talk of the Nation” on some 200 stations. It will air 2-4 p.m. Monday through Friday on WEMC.

“Fresh Air”

Host Terry Gross is a Peabody Award-winning magazine of contemporary arts and issues. More than four million people tune in to the show’s intimate conversations broadcast on more than 400 stations across the country. The program features Gross’ in-depth interviews with prominent cultural and entertainment figures as well as experts on current affairs and news. “Fresh Air” will be heard at 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

WEMC

The language and literature department will hold its first “Writers Read” program of fall semester 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 16 in Martin Chapel of the seminary building at EMU.

Author Lauren F. Winner of Charlottesville, Va., will read from her works, Girl Meets God and Mudhouse Sabbath, published by Algonquin Books (Chapel Hill, N.C).

The child of a reform Jewish father and a Southern Baptist mother, Winner became an Orthodox Jew. But as she faithfully observes the Sabbath rituals and studies Jewish laws, she finds herself increasingly drawn to Christianity. Eventually she converts, but finds that her world is still shaped by her Jewish experiences.

Girl Meets God, by Lauren Winner

Winner

Jayne Docherty, associate professor of conflict studies at EMU

Jayne Docherty, an associate professor of conflict studies at EMU, spent three years studying what went wrong in 1993 in Waco, Texas, during a 51-day standoff that produced one of the bloodiest episodes in U.S. law enforcement history.

She interviewed FBI agents with expertise in standoffs, including one of the Waco siege’s lead negotiators. She read studies and reports. And she pored over more than 12,000 pages of the government’s transcripts of the failed negotiations.

All this led her to the conclusion that government agents and Branch Davidian leaders came to the confrontation with such divergent worldviews that they ended up talking past each other.

The Branch Davidians saw the FBI agents as representatives of an ungodly system. The FBI saw the Davidians as deluded, and couldn’t understand why they would see government bargaining attempts – such as offers to trade media access in exchange for the release of women and children – as offensive and immoral.

As the people on the inside used more biblical language and resisted bargaining, Docherty has written, the people on the outside “concluded the Branch Davidians were more deluded than they had originally thought. As the FBI responded with harsher measures, the Branch Davidians concluded that the United States was more evil than they had originally thought.”

It was, Docherty says, a “clash of worlds” that ended in tragedy – in a conflagration that killed more than 70 men, women and children inside the Branch Davidian complex.

Now, Docherty has turned the lessons she learned from Waco to another conflict – the United States’ campaign to gain military supremacy and win hearts and minds in Iraq. Docherty sees disturbing parallels.

“As I watch what’s going on in Iraq,” she said, “it just looks like the same stuff over again.”

A Bad Situation Made Worse

Both confrontations pitted groups of people with starkly different worldviews against each other, producing an atmosphere ripe for fatal misjudgments. Just as FBI agents couldn’t fathom the religious beliefs of the Branch Davidians, Docherty said, U.S. foreign policy planners proceeded with little understanding of how devout Muslims would react to an American invasion and the chaos that followed.

In recent weeks, she argues, U.S. policy makers made a bad situation worse by attacking the Iraqi holy city of Najaf, the home base of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who has led an insurrection against the occupation. Last week U.S.-led forces announced a fragile truce with al-Sadr’s Mahdi militia.

“There’s a failure to recognize that when we fulfill the predictions of this religious leader by invading sacred space,” Docherty said, “more and more people who are on the margins are going to become more radical, because our actions actually validate the worldview of the leaders.”

Similarly, FBI agents in Waco “didn’t understand those Branch Davidians who felt that safety was staying in the sacred space – in the building,” Docherty said. “Safety for them was measured on a sacred scale. The belief is: Even if you die, you’re better off being with God than being outside, living in sin.”

Political leaders don’t have to approve of another group’s religious motivations, she said, but they do have to understand them in order to make informed decisions – “so that you understand what their reactions will be to your actions.”

Docherty is a faculty member at EMU’s Conflict Transformation Program, which brings together scholars, activists and aid workers from around the world to discuss how to prevent violence and help heal the wounds after it happens. She’s drawn on a number of perspectives as she’s watched events unfold in Iraq – as an ex-Army brat who grew up steeped in military culture, as a one-time member of an outside-the-mainstream Catholic community, as a scholar who studies confrontations between government authorities and unconventional religious groups.

Docherty’s book on the Waco standoff – “Learning Lessons from Waco: When the Parties Bring Their Gods to the Negotiation Table” – was published by Syracuse University Press. She is currently working on a book about “how we get authentic security in an age of terrorism,” which will incorporate her analysis of the war in Iraq.

Clash Between Good and Evil

In comparing Waco and Iraq, she cautions that there are many differences between the Branch Davidians’ Christian millennialism and the Islamic religious beliefs of those who are fighting to end the U.S. presence in Iraq. But a common thread, she said, is the conviction that life is a clash between good and evil and “you must chose between the two.”

In a world that’s changing rapidly thanks to globalization, she said, many Christians, Muslims and Jews are grasping for identity and meaning. Some embrace a belief that “the world is a mess, it’s evil and the way you handle that is to be faithful to a higher law; if you follow that law, the world will be transformed and become right – or at least you’ll get saved.”

In the case of Iraq, she said, the “good vs. evil” narrative is embraced not only by those who are fighting the occupation, but also by U.S. leaders who see their adversaries simply as evildoers, rather than as people who are striking out because they’re frightened by events they can’t control.

In a speech in March, President Bush called the war on terrorism “an inescapable calling of our generation. The terrorists are offended not merely by our policies – they are offended by our existence as free nations. No concession will appease their hatred. No accommodation will satisfy their endless demands.”

Docherty said some religious leaders in Iraq are trying to exercise a moderating influence, but there’s been little discussion in America about how we chose to paint all our opponents as unmitigatedly evil.

“I think the prison abuse scandal has opened the door for that kind of discussion in a way that it wasn’t opened before,” she said. But that discussion won’t last, she added, if the media and Congressional leaders define the problem as the deeds of a clique of renegade, low-ranking troops.

On the ground, she said, American policy makers have heightened tensions because they have failed to understand that providing security requires not only force but also real efforts at nationbuilding. This would include greater efforts to restore Iraq’s physical infrastructure and a commitment to building a political infrastructure that takes into account Iraqis’ history and culture.

The ‘Get-Tough’ Approach

“You basically have two approaches to policing – the SWAT team approach or the community policing approach – and we went with the SWAT,” Docherty said.

Some commentators view a get-tough approach as exactly what’s needed. William Arkin, a military analyst who writes for the Los Angeles Times, argues that America actually underestimated the need for force in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s ouster. “As far back as memory extends for most Iraqis, the spoils (and the power) have gone to the tough,” Arkin wrote in April. “Brutality – and the fear it inspires – have been the central organizing principle of Iraqi society. That can’t just be turned off overnight. … In the short term, force may be necessary, because it is what Iraqis understand.”

Docherty, in contrast, argues that the only way to begin
to make the transition from violence to order is to rachet down the use of force, and to internationalize the work of nationbuilding by bringing in the United Nations.

“I’m not some naive person who says, ‘If we were nice everything would be OK,'” she said. “The threats are very real. And the people who are suffering are the Iraqi people on the ground who are caught in the crossfire. And our troops, too, who are also caught in the crossfire. Lots of times they don’t understand where it’s coming from.”

She said this week’s announcement that nine Iraqi militias would lay down arms as part of a rewards and retraining program is a hopeful sign. But whether the deal holds depends on whether U.S. and Iraqi leadership can maintain a consistent posture, “which has been lacking on the ground there.”

Beyond that, she said, there’s still a complicated mix of groups from inside and outside Iraq – including al-Qaida – that will continue to press the fight.

To end the violence and bring stability, she said, “we have to start sorting out who’s motivated by what factors. Violence is interactive. That means any time you want to talk about reducing violence you have to look at everybody involved – including yourself.”

reprinted with permission of The Roanoke Times