Interwoven identities, interweaving compassion

Hello! I am posting a reflection paper I wrote for the class, "Andalusia," where the Professor asked us, in short, why is this important? WHy are we bothering to study Andalusia and religions in this way? so I hope you enjoy...

Why bother studying Andalusia? Why put forth all this energy and expense towards studying a specific time and place that supposedly is so far away from the current time and place in which we live (farther physically for some than for others, as this is a distance-learning course!)? My question in response is, “how can you not??” How can you not study the inter-relations between Islam, Judaism and Christianity when that is what is true?? The next question for me, then, is, “Why bother studying Christianity, Islam and Judaism as separate and distinct religions?” Why bother studying them without any analysis on contemporary culture and how religion and imperialism have worked together to lift up and push down certain bodies and peoples?
One of the things that struck me in learning about the formation of the early Christian Church was how much the Bishops and Councils tried to ignore Judaism. Actually, much of Christian identity was negative, in that the early Church leaders were defining Christianity by how it was not like Judaism. Judaism was a nuisance to the early Christians who wanted to show the inerrant and complete message of Christianity. The fact that Christianity came from Judaism, and that Jesus was a Jew, just got in the way.
I find this quest for purity related to how we teach religions. If we teach Judaism, Christianity and Islam as separate and distinct, then it is much easier to caste one (or two) as fallible and the other as perfect. What is at work in leaving out knowledge of the common grounds from which the three Abrahamic traditions were born?
Why bother studying Andalusia? Because my traditions depend on it. One of the questions I receive (and that I wrestle with myself) is how Unitarian Universalism can provide depth and meaning in worship if it tries to be everything for everyone. One of my realizations in the course is that all identities, if taken to their depths, come to a place of profound interrelation with all. This course and Unitarian Universalism isn’t about trying to be everything or even consider everything, but loving what you know so much that the many places from which you come is made visible and sacred. This is as true for my United Methodist identity as it is for my UU identity. UUism has as much potential to replicate systems of misunderstanding and purity as does United Methodism or Catholicism or Buddhism for that matter. Said another way, United Methodism has as much potential as UUism to use it’s own complex and interwoven history as a place to further compassion and multireligiosity in the world.
Why bother studying Andalusia? Because my God depends on it. During the Jewish High Holy Days, I was faced with the realization that I love Adonai and pray to Adonai as a non Jew. How does this work? Is this ok? I grew up in a liberal United Methodist Church that sings/ prays/ worships to a God that seemed identical to the loving and intimate Jewish God prayed to at Chochmat Halev. And yet, as a Christian, I have not felt the ways in which Jews are discriminated against institutionally and culturally. (As a person who holds Christian privilege, I often claim Christian even though I don’t actually believe Jesus was divine (any more than the rest of us are)). I have realized that if I want to pray to a God that is God to Muslims and Jews as well as Christians, and that embraces all peoples no matter their faith, then I must reflect this God in my life. Right now I am doing this by learning about the deep ways Judaism, Christianity and Islam have impacted and relate with one another, and by hopefully spreading religious tolerance by sharing this knowledge with my family and friends.
Why bother? Because I depend on it. I just participated in a ½ day workshop with Paul Kivel (a bay-area educator, activist and author) on Christian Hegemony. I was struck by the extent to which how I relate with God, others and myself is influenced by Christian/ imperialist mode of being and thinking. After connecting Christian hegemony with different “isms” like racism, heterosexism, anti-Semitism, capitalism, imperialism, anti-arab, environmental destruction, able-ism, Islamophobia, and sexism, we drew up some of the foundational values that come from a Christianity defined by imperialism. I was amazed at how infused many of these values are in my own personal identity. Even as I tried to “disarm” some values, I was using other harmful values in the process.
Some of these values are:
• Binary systems (something or someone is either good or bad; sinner or saved, God or the Devil. This confines all decisions to be about a moral judgment. It’s hard to hold complexity and hard not to take sides.
• Everything caste in a hierarchy
• Righteous Superiority
• One Truth (that excludes all other “small t” truths.
• Constant threat (everything is under siege from the “Other side”
• Individualism (the most important thing is one’s personal relationship with God. So, one’s personal integrity is most important, and when one has messed up or hurt someone, the most common response is defensiveness (turning the conversation to be about “me” and not about the impact or issue).
• Love (this one is hard for me, but it asks the hard question of how true is universal love? Who is allowed to “fall out” of the Caring Community? To whom does God’s love really include?)
• Missionaries (debunking the “good intentions” idea. The cross has always come with the sword. This has led to incredible increases in poverty and destruction the world over.)
• Dominion over nature
• Linear and binary relationship with time. )That we are progressing as a species. This very much related to feeling we are “on God’s side” or following some divine plan.)
• Apocalyptic
• Jesus as Savior (disempowering to communities if you can’t do it yourself but need some divine intervention to make things better).
• Suffering leads to Redemption (psychological war preparation- suffering as good)
• Don’t compromise (compromising is cooperating with evil. This normalizes struggle)
• Anti-Jewish
• Victimization as the “Chosen People” (again, “we” are always under siege)
• Judgment and Salvation (in the short term, how we (I) internalize judgment and judge others. I build up myself by judging others.)
• Duty to God is most important (and to all higher on the hierarchy)
• Obedience and Submission (one example was CA’s attempt to pass legislation to fund an education campaign about the harms of spanking, which failed.)
• Purity (of soul, thoughts, actions, etc.)
• Everything has cosmic consequences (every decision not just about here and now but has real ultimate consequences)
• Capitalism (the terms individualism actually was invented in the 17th C. with the creation of capitalism. It was used by Adam Smith in the phrase, “economic individualism.” This has led to an atomizing and severing of bonds between people.)

This list is incomplete and rather abbreviated. How this relates to this class and my life is realizing how much fear informs how I relate with myself and others. I think of how the Muslim rulers of Al Andalus didn’t “need” to punish non-Muslims because they didn’t feel threatened by them. Their identity wasn’t based on proving the “Other” as wrong, or even having an “Other” to begin with. When I relate with myself from a place of belief and love (here we are with the binaries again!), over fear, then my personal inadequacies and the inadequacies of my relations aren’t important, as our imperfections as well as our strengths are what connects us.