“What do Sikhs believe, I wonder?”
I was walking down a long beige corridor, on my way to the next panel, but the question slowed me down. It was only the first day of the Parliament of World Religions, but after an hours-long check in and another long line on the way to community lunch I had already discovered the best part of the event was going to be the conversations I happened into. This seemed to be no different – two tall men in cowboy hats, ambling companionably down the hallway, asking a question I had been asking myself.
“You want to know what we believe?” came another voice, pulling all the attention of all three of us. A woman a little further down the hall smiled at us. “You are in the right place. This man taught most of the people here.”
I looked at the gentleman she was introducing – the shortest of us, older, looking distracted but game for a conversation – and promptly set aside wherever I was planning to go next. There was no way I was going to pass up such a moment of serendipity. I crossed over to the little group and settled in to listen.
The teacher had barely started to speak, laying out his beliefs in the importance of service, of doing good in this world, when one of the men in the cowboy hats interrupted him. “But what do you believe happens after you die?”
“It doesn’t matter,” the teacher said. “If you believe that God is good, he will take care of that.”
“I get that,” I agreed with a smile. “I also think that focusing on what we do here is more important.”
The cowboy hat turned his attention to me. “Well, I believe that there’s only two options for us when we die – life everlasting in the love of our savior or torture outside of his grace. If that’s true, I want to know about it.”
I blinked at him, disbelieving, and then at the teacher, who had been pulled into conversation with his companion. Are you trying to convert me at an interfaith conference? Really? “Interesting. What’s your faith tradition?”
“I’m an Evangelical Christian,” he said and paused. When my poker face didn’t break, he smiled, and said conspiratorially. “My friends always ask me how I can stand to come to these events, but I’ve been to every single one since they started in the ‘90s. I keep telling them, it’s so easy to get people talking, here! You just have to ask a question.”
I glanced over at the teacher, who was looking increasingly guarded in his own conversation, and nodded politely to the cowboy hat. “Well, I hope you enjoy it,” I said, and fled down the hall.
Later, when I was telling my friend, they hissed in surprise. “At an interfaith event,” they said, echoing my own thoughts. “Where on earth did he get the nerve?”
I sighed, and shrugged. “That’s the thing. He did it out of love.”
Felt beige cowboy hat on a white background [Ealdgyth, Wikimedia Commons, CC 3.0]
If I could make one generalization about the Parliament this year, it’s that people, whatever their faith tradition, essentially want to help each other.
That was why I was there, after all. I believe that when a friend asks for help, you help them – so when The Troth, an organization I cared about, said they were going, I offered my support. Knowing nothing about the event, and almost as little about the history of interfaith work, I took my days off and rolled into the exhibit hall. I brought a history of working conventions and a scribbled list of events I’d like to attend, and I went where they would take me. From the first moment, it was clear that many of us were here for essentially the same reason. Again and again, in panels and events and the structure of the event itself, I heard the same question: “How can I help?”
It was not always the case. There were, as always, a loud minority of bad actors. But again and again I saw people reach across faiths and languages to offer support, to shield each other from hate, to strategize about ways to address huge, systemic issues that we cannot tackle alone.
The biggest differences arose in how we wanted to help, and what we thought was most important to do. Some of us set those priorities firmly in the here and now. There were panels on big issues like nuclear disarmament and climate change, but also people working on immediate concerns, like providing faith rooms that offered rest and a place to recharge, and the Langar Lunch, a community service provided by the Sikhs that fed every attendee at no charge. These acts of service spanned across every faith, and news about them rippled out into conversations about how else we could help, what other tangible things we could do.
But there were also those present who set their priorities in the afterlife and the eternal well being of their fellow attendees. As the week went on, I realized that this was also something that spanned across the religions present. We were all, in some way, seeking the capital-T Truth – and if we thought we had found it, it made sense to want to share that with others.
I could respect that, but it made me deeply uncomfortable. I hadn’t been sure of the Truth since I was a child, and, for me, that amorphous uncertainty was the point. Having someone, however well-intentioned, try to save me, or convince me – or even to convince themself that I was already saved – felt like the opposite of helping.
Dastar of Guru Gobind Singh at Burj Mai Desan Collection [Historiansimar, Wikimedia Commons, CC 4.0]
Like many modern Pagans, I grew up Christian. And, like many modern Pagans, it wasn’t a healthy religion for me. What I remember most was the freezing, dreadful fear that came with it – fear of hell, fear of sin, fear that those I loved might be saved and leave me behind, fear that I might be the only one of them saved. For me it was the spiritual equivalent of being backed into a corner. Like many scared, trapped things, it made me desperate.
I am sure there are many examples of what that meant, but the one that still haunts me happened in sophomore year of high school. I don’t remember the name of the girl I fought with. She was a transfer student and didn’t stay long in our rural Kansas town. It must have been hard, with her plaid too-short skirts and her Doc Martens marking her as someone very other, but the thing that started the fight was her bracelet of pentacles. Looking back, my memory produces a fifteen-year-old who has recently seen The Craft. At the time, I saw all of my fears of damnation, made flesh.
“The Bible’s stupid,” she said, loud enough for the whole history class to hear. “It doesn’t even make sense. It’s got so many contradictions in it.”
I hated confrontation – but she was going to suffer so much if I didn’t help her. “That’s because it was written by different people,” I said, from the other side of the room. “It’s not really all one book.”
It was the first time we’d spoken. “Isn’t it supposed to be God talking?” she asked, turning in her seat to see who I was.
I cannot imagine how embarrassing I would find the exchange that followed, now. It was mortifying then, shutting down the classroom for what seemed like forever as I volleyed my rough theology back at her, point after point against her beliefs, trying to show her that the book she was dismissing was her only chance of salvation.
At last the teacher shut down the argument. I sunk into my seat, shaking with adrenaline – and the teacher’s aide came over and smiled at me. “You did really good,” she said, quietly. I looked at the girl’s hunched shoulders, across the room, and tried to fight off a growing feeling that I had done something very wrong. Which didn’t make any sense. What else could I have done to save her?
A Mesolithic deer skull with bored holes, one of 33 from this site, on display in the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA 1953.61 B) [Ethan Doyle White, Wikimedia Commons, CC 4.0]
For years the memory of that conversation has chased me. I returned to it again and again at Parliament, as people from across traditions navigated their need to help and their respect for others’ beliefs. There was a line, somewhere, between help and harm, but I couldn’t quite tease it out into words. I remembered how hard it had been to feel as though it was my responsibility to help with the only thing that would ever really matter – but I had never seen an attempt at conversion help.
“Maybe it’s consent?” I muttered to myself, flipping through a pamphlet from one of the other stalls, as it made an impassioned case for a particular path into an afterlife I’d never heard of. “Maybe it’s agreeing only to give help where it’s wanted?” There was something to that, perhaps. No matter how good the intention, trying to impose your truth onto someone else seemed violent, more often than not.
There was something about power to it, too. When I had been part of a major religion, I had wielded a lot more power in the systems around me – I’d even been praised for fighting another kid, already an outcast, to a standstill. I hadn’t understood that, at the time. Now that I was on the other side, could I work with people who were wielding their power in ways that dismissed my beliefs and undermined my freedoms?
So many terrible things had been done in the name of love. I could honor the intentions. But unlike when I had been so sure of myself about Christianity, I didn’t have the words to explain why a focus on the afterlife did so much harm. I didn’t know how to work across that gap between faiths.
I paused to rub my temple, and caught sight of the stranger watching the booth. She fixed me with a smile. “Heathens, huh?” she asked, glancing over my shoulder at our banner. “What does that mean?”
“Well,” I said, pulling myself together enough to attempt an elevator pitch. “It means a lot of different things to different people. Heathenry is orthopraxic, but most of us are focused on the pre-Christian practices of Germanic-speaking peoples.”
She looked at me blankly. “Okay. But what do you believe?”
“I-”
My jaw snapped closed. I glanced at the friend who was at the booth with me. “I mean, we all believe different things. I worship the Norse gods, as well as others, and believe that spirits are people we can build relationships with.”
“Oh!” she said with a sudden smile of understanding. “That’s lovely. We all find the One in our own ways, don’t we? But that’s why we’re here – because the One is everything.”
I choked. I saw the gods as individuals, as real and distinct as my human friends. There were several deities I could think of who would take personal offense at being called The One to their face. Still, I recognized the move. She needed to be sure I was saved. “I mean, there are a lot of people who-”
“Can I have one of these?” she asked, taking a pamphlet. “Thanks!”
As she faded back into the crowd I sat down with a thump. After a moment, I turned to my table mate – a man I’d volunteered with, held ritual with, been friends with for years. “What do you believe? I don’t think I’ve ever asked.”
He shrugged. “Depends on the day,” he said, and went back to folding pamphlets.
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