q & A with the founder
When and how did the FM Interfaith Center come into existence?
I established what was then called the Center for Interfaith Projects in 2010. We rented space at the Spirit Room on Broadway, creating an interfaith library with hangings on the walls and icons on tables representing major religious and humanist traditions. Our founding mission was fourfold: to educate the community about different faiths and secular worldviews; increase understanding and respect among people of different traditions; foster cooperation among local faith and secular communities to solve common community problems; and to help individuals in search of a spiritual or secular home to find one. It is, I think, a mission we need to look at again and try to figure out how we can better realize it.
What inspired you to create this organization?
I had been interested in interfaith dialogue and interfaith work for a long time. I was a co-creator of an earlier interfaith organization called the Abrahamic Interfaith Group whose members represented the three Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. One day when we were on what is now called the Veterans Memorial Bridge to support Muslims and Islam against attacks that were spreading around the country, a woman asked me how our group could be truly interfaith with only three religions represented. She was right. That was my incentive to create something new. Before this, I had been thinking about establishing a more inclusive organization. In January of 2010 I began recruiting individuals who were committed to different religious or secular worldviews. One of the first individuals who said yes to my invitation was an atheist, a former student, who told me he believed it was important to bring people together from different faiths—and those who are secular—for mutually respectful dialogue and cooperative projects that benefit the community. Before long, I was able to make the organization a 501c3 nonprofit that included individuals who represented a variety of traditions: Native American Spirituality, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, the Baha’i Faith, Mysticism, Christianity, Christian Pluralism, and Humanism. Many who were original members of the Center for Interfaith projects remain members of our newly named nonprofit: the FM Interfaith Center.
Tell us about your education and experience.
I earned a PhD in philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin. I taught philosophy for 32 years at Minnesota State University Moorhead. The courses I taught included philosophy of religion and world religions. For most of my life as a professor I was a secular humanist. Something changed in me toward the end of my academic career while teaching world religions. I found myself falling in love with both Judaism and Buddhism. Upon retiring in 2004 I decided to convert to Reform Judaism and went through a year-long conversion process. I then became a member of Temple Beth El, a Reform synagogue in Fargo. A few years later I joined a newly established sangha: a Buddhist Insight Meditation group called the Prairie Sky Sangha. Thus, I became a member of two very different spiritual communities and have two religious practices. The term for this is dual-belonger. I am, at the very core of my being, interfaith. I should point out that I was raised a Methodist Christian and that I continue to value my Methodist heritage, a tradition that affirmed a mission of working for social justice. Still, I did not feel fully at home in this tradition, one that emphasized the need to believe in certain theological doctrines. I became a religious skeptic early in my life, always searching for a religious community that would fit my peculiar spiritual needs. I found this much later in life in two different religions whose focus is on ethical practice rather than correct belief. Unlike the tradition I was raised in, neither Judaism nor Buddhism, as I understand them, requires a profession of faith. They, as I see them, are all about a correct way of living: they are religions of orthopraxis rather orthodoxy. Still, I value religious diversity and respect those whose religious needs are different from mine. I am in fact fascinated by religious differences and the need for people to lovingly live with these differences.
What are the different events you have led or participated in? Is there any event that is close to your heart?
Since 2010 we have organized over 60 interfaith events. Close to my heart are events we organized to promote respect for Islam in the face of growing Islamophobia–events where we invited members of the community to meet their Muslim neighbors. I know from talking to non-Muslims who attended these gatherings that minds were change and prejudice was reduced. Other events include a panel on four views of Jesus: Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Baha’i; a dialogue between a Hindu and a Buddhist; a conversation between three individuals who identified as mystics; a panel of four young atheists explaining their worldview; a program on being queer during the pandemic, with LGBTQIA+ individuals representing four traditions: Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Humanism; an interfaith dialogue on the Pope’s encyclical on climate justice, with Catholic, Native American, Muslim, and Christian speakers. We have also organized interfaith dinners. And we have worked with Concordia College’s Forum on Faith and Life to bring young people together to assemble hygiene kits for people experiencing homelessness. A complete list of our events can be found on this website. Programs now in the planning stage include a panel on racism, with people of different faiths who have personally experienced racism articulating their vision of what a racially just society would look like. We are also planning a remembrance and healing program on the residential schools for Native American children (run by churches and the government from the late 19h century to the middle of the 20th century) whose aim was cultural genocide. Members of this panel will include a Native American member of the FM interfaith Center and faith leaders from denominations that ran these schools.
Do you believe in the power of interfaith? If yes, can you elaborate on how there’s room for all of us and what we believe in?
My view is that the best way to break down barriers between individuals in different faiths is to bring them together for respectful conversation or cooperative social action. Misunderstanding and conflict often are the result of not truly knowing people in other traditions. People belonging to different traditions discover, upon meeting and listening to each other, that they share much in common. Despite their differences, most human beings affirm a common set of values, including compassion, kindness, generosity, and justice. These common values provide a basis for working together to make the community a better place.
What’s your vision for Fargo-Moorhead and America?
With communities and the country more divided than ever—politically and religiously—there is an urgent need to find a way to bring individuals together who do not normally talk to each other, who may in fact demonize each other’s worldviews. The FM Interfaith Center may need to make a special effort to invite those who are religiously conservative—a demographic that typically is not interested in interfaith dialogue—to the table, maybe literally a table with food, in order to see if we can find common ground and truly see each other as human beings with similar hopes and dreams. My vision is a positive one of people of different faiths achieving mutual understanding, discovering common ground, learning to live more comfortably with differences, and working to achieve reciprocal respect that reduces religious prejudice. My hope is that the FM Interfaith Center can further the achievement of these things. It is a very ambitious goal, but one worth striving for.