Faith and Values in the Public Square

By: Hannah Hochkeppel

One of the classes taught here at the School of Theology and Ministry is called Ministry in a Multicultural Context.  Taught intensively over the course of two weekends during the spring quarter students read articles, watch videos, and have discussion on what it means to be aware of the multicultural context in which they will eventually be working and ministering.  This year the class was fortunate to be able to spend a Saturday immersing themselves in some multicultural experiences that can be found here in Seattle.

The first place the group visited was Chua Vietnam, a Vietnamese Buddhist Temple located in the International District of Seattle. At the temple the students were able to look around and speak with members of the community.  After spending time in the courtyard, students went upstairs to the main temple area to hear the ‘Dharma Talk’.  During the talk the nun spoke of the Precepts of Buddhism, and how meditation and wisdom are key aspects to this practice.  Students were also able to spend time asking questions of the Nun and eating lunch with the community at the temple.

Gate at the entrance to Chua Vietnam, the Vietnamese Buddhist Temple

After spending the morning at the temple students traveled to the Wing Luke Museum, which is also in the International District of Seattle.  Here students spent time listening to the stories of Yosh Nakagawa, Herb Tsuchiya, and Bob Santos (affectionately known as Uncle Bob, the unofficial mayor of the International District).

Uncle Bob and Professor Tito Cruz, addressing students at the Wing Luke Museum, before a tour of the International District.

Yosh and Herb were both children during the Japanese American Internment during World War II.  They shared their experiences of being sent to these camps and the experience of coming back to have nothing left.  Uncle Bob was also a child during these times, but was not sent to the camps since he is not Japanese-American.  He spoke of seeing his friends in school one day, and the next they were gone.  Uncle Bob also spoke about the history of the International District and how he and many others have worked to preserve the history and culture that exists there.

Gate into the International District

Here are thoughts from some of the students:

Visiting the Vietnamese Buddhist temple was a very warm and wonderful experience.  I was struck by their happiness, serenity, and generosity.  It seems that this stems from their mindfulness and detachment, which is something I would like to emulate in my own faith journey.  - Michaela

Incense, used for prayers and wishes at the Buddhist Temple

Our experience at the Buddhist Temple and our time with Uncle Bob, Yosh, and Herb was not only informative, but blessed. Education happens beyond the walls of the classroom and off campus as well. No guest lecturer, video, etc. could have given us the same information. Our hearts were touched as well as our minds and relationships were built–this is true education. STM and SU now new have brothers and sisters in the community.  –Chris

Prayer space in the courtyard of the Buddhist Temple

What a grace-filled gift we received last Saturday!  Learning of the Japanese internment from those who were interred in the “camps” is a lesson that will stay with me a long time.  I will never again go through the International District without saying a prayer of thanks for people like Uncle Bob; he and his neighbors saw a community need and summoned the courage and energy to make it a reality.  What an inspiration to us all. –Beth

Yosh Nakagawa, speaking to students at the Wing Luke Museum

Visiting the Buddhist Temple and spending time with Uncle Bob, Yosh, and Herb was extremely inspiring.  I enjoyed hearing the teachings at the Temple and was inspired particularly by one thing that was said.  “If you can’t find the time to help others, you can at least find the time not to hurt them.”  It struck me as something so simple and yet so profound.  We as human beings do not necessarily strive to hurt others in our daily lives, yet how many of us take the time to intentionally NOT hurt someone?  This thought stuck with me as we spent time speaking with Uncle Bob, Yosh, and Herb and touring the international district.  These men are truly inspiring and have all spent their lives intentionally working to protect their culture and history, and intentionally teaching others to stand up and tell their story.  This was a truly blessed day, an experience that will not soon be forgotten.  -Hannah

Professor Hy, from Seattle University, speaking to students before the Dharma Talk at the Buddhist Temple.  Professor Hy was the groups guide at the Buddhist temple and graciously translated from Vietnamese to English.

Hannah Hochkeppel is a first year MDiv student at the School of Theology and Ministry.  She comes with a background in mental health counseling, as well as many years of ministry experience.  Her goal is to work in parish ministry developing elementary curriculum for religious education.  She also hopes to design programs that are inclusive to people from all walks of life, especially children with special needs.

Painting By: Melissa Smith

Reflection By: Dr. Michael Trice

Swim with the Fishes!  A Student’s Appeal to Going Deep in Art

What is the greatness of the Christian commission today?  Whether baptizing, being vines, belonging to one body, or sharing in a spiritual household, our forebears’ sense of the greatness of Christianity’s mission in the world is going the way of the Roman empire.  “See ya Constantine . . . Imperial Christianity out.”  Today the traditional structures of the Christian faith are porous and slippery;  but then,  so are most socially arranged governing structures in the world today.  So, dear Church:  Don’t take the current dissolution of structural life personally.  Join the Swiss cheese parade of institutional exigency that marks our milieu.

But then, the Church is not just any kind of institution.  Christians have trod the earth over two millennia to spread the message of a loving God who desires to be in relationship with the world, in every nation, under each roof.  God wants to knock and walk in, which for Christians means we are to drop everything and walk out.  We are to venture into the world around and witness to that love that first called us.

Here’s the problem – progressive Modernist sociologically ascribed research, convinced the broad American consciousness that secularism would mark the end of Christianity, and indeed of religion itself, somewhere around 1983.  End-station the secular age . . . everybody off.  But the oft-called post-secular era sees a revival in spiritual consciousness, in creative public witness within the Christian faith, and in Christian cooperation from Evangelicals to the Orthodox that would make Augustine weep.  It is a jaw dropper for those who believed in the late 20^th century that religion was entering its finality.  All we had to do was sweep up and turn off the lights.  Not so fast.

Yesterday a student at STM finished an artistic illustration of the future of the Christian commission.  You’ll see it, alongside a video on YouTube.  Check it out:

Drawn from her experience in our Search for Meaning event at the university, Melissa Smith demonstrates how the future of the Church’s mission in the world will be a vibrant rebuttal of the 20^th century scholarship mentioned above.  Sure, we are post-Constantinian, but this means we are flexible, vibrant, and wiser.  In a pluralistic sea of diversity and brilliant, glorious life, the call of Christian witness in that sea cares about the depths, wants to swim and not be the big fish, and thrives on the surprise of God’s calling unhinged from the structural hindrances that were adiaphora to the core message of a loving God toward a hurting world.  In our School, where we swim, Melissa is demonstrating that resurrection hope is contextually based, some secularists misunderstood the deep yearnings of the human soul, and we have a shared mission today.   What is the greatness of that mission?  Church – Be as creative as the ocean is deep.

Melissa Smith (Mia) is a Disciple of Christ and a third year MDIV student at the School of Theology and Ministry at Seattle University. She attends the ALL PILGRIMS CHRISTIAN CHURCH on Capitol Hill in Seattle where she hopes to be ordained in June of 2014.

Dr. Michael Trice’s Biography can be found on our Assistant Dean’s Page.

By: Michael Trice, PhD

Members of the Christian Peace Circle, meeting on April 17, 2013, on the campus of Seattle University

The U.S. Senate voted down legislation last week that was needed to enforce accountability for gun ownership in this country.  The new stipulations were a “no-brainer,” as a graduate student noted to me.  Days before the vote, we witnessed the unprecedented occasion of a private citizen delivering the U.S. President’s Saturday morning address to the nation.  Francine Wheeler, whose son Ben was murdered on December 14^th 2012, in Newtown, CT, addressed the nation saying, “Help this be the moment when real change begins.  From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

Just last week two young men walked into the crowd of the Boston Marathon.  One of them put a bomb down at the feet of an eight-year old boy, and walked away.

This is not a time in our national consciousness to bemoan a rise in violence, nor is it – as a colleague did with me recently – the right moment to debate whether violence is really on the rise, or rather a trick of popular anxiety, like too much overexposure for too long.

As people of faith in this country we have a sacred responsibility to respond to violence from the heart of our scriptures, values and calling.  It is not just the right thing to do; it is the only thing to do.  This is the case for the millions upon millions on this planet who daily center themselves and turn their antenna toward the heavens.  ‘Help me learn how to love even those I hate.’ . . . or some such configuration.

In this past week, Christians from around the United States responded to violence by meeting as a Christian Peace Circle at Seattle University’s School of Theology and Ministry.  We met for two days – April 17-18^th.  Present in the room was every flavor of Christian identity in this country, from Christian Orthodox to Pentecostal, and Lutheran to Mennonite.  This meeting marked the beginning of a central conversation about the future of the Christian voice for peace in the U.S.

It seems impossible to believe that this group of advocates, theologians, scholars, laypeople and influencers from throughout the Christian family, had never in fact met in one room for this kind of conversation.  History is strange that way, even as today’s need creates new opportunities for serious deliberation and action.  I co-organized the conversation, over two years in the planning.  This was the beginning of a new effort across the communions to recommit ourselves to peace.  This last two weeks alone should be reason enough for Christians – and all people of faith – to have a voice in this country.  Where even our Senate refuses to listen to the 90% of U.S. citizens in the United States who desire some form of gun reform, we must all dredge deep for our voices for peace.  Below is the Message the Christian Peace Circle sent out to the world following their meeting in Seattle:

We — fifty church leaders, practitioners, scholars, activists and pastors from across the life of our nation and representing a broad range of Christian traditions — gathered for a Christian Peace Circle in Seattle on April 17-18, 2013.   We are encouraged by a shared commitment to Jesus’ way of peacemaking.  We heard again Jesus’ call to seek justice and love our enemies even as we are grieved and anguished by the violence, killing and war-making that permeates the very fabric of our nation. Our deepest sympathies are with the victims of the violence in Boston. We are also greatly disturbed that while we met the U.S. Senate failed to adopt the most common sense, popularly supported measures to reduce gun violence in this country. We wrestle with what it would mean for our churches to be prepared for the next terrorist attack, mass shooting, or war. Our response must involve both a “no” to violence and a “yes”to active peace-building.  We believe our congregations share a sacred role in being strategic centers that nurture a culture of peace.  We cultivated new bonds of friendship and partnership among us.  We pledge to create spaces where Christians mobilize to pray, train and act for peace together and with others of good will. 

Nathan Hosler, attendee at the Christian Peace Circle Conference, participating in one of many activities designed to promote thoughts about peaceful action as a wider Christian circle

Dr. Michael Trice’s bio may be found on the Assistant Dean’s Page.

By: Melissa Smith

The annual celebration of Yom HaShoah remembers the specific toll of the Holocaust on the Jewish community and its implications for humanity, worldwide. “Seattle University values and commits to accurately educating about the Holocaust, as well as past, present and future genocide, and is committed to ecumenical and interreligious relationships.” For this reason the University will be hosting Yom HaShoah Remembrance Week on April 8^th-12^th of this year. I am impressed that the School of Theology and Ministry and Seattle University host these types of events; recognizing the importance of exploring the past so as to understand our present and prevent these types of injustices from continuing to occur. Sadly, these injustices are still occurring on our planet and I continue to struggle with how to best serve our global community in eliminating these atrocities.

Many of you may not be aware, not long ago an atrocity of this very nature occurred on our SU campus. The education that we currently take for granted, as we complain about the amount of assigned readings or paper writing, was denied to many enrolled students at SU simply because of their ethnicity.

Last year I attended an event at Seattle University where the school was honoring the Japanese students attending the University in 1942. The education of these Japanese American citizens was interrupted when they were sent to internment camps in Idaho. Lilia Uri Satow Matsuda, now 87, had clear memories of her incarceration. She was gracious enough to educate those of us attending the ceremony and share some of her stories. Uri described the University in 1941-1942. She said that Seattle University, then called Seattle College, consisted of two buildings, a Chemistry Lab and a Liberal Arts building. During the spring of 1942 Uri had attempted to come to campus to take her spring quarter exams. Uri was not permitted to cross the street and step onto campus. Executive order #9066 was posted on telephone poles around the campus instructing the Japanese Americans to go home and gather what they could carry and wear. These citizens were transported to a place called Camp Harmony in Puyallup Washington. Once in Puyallup they were sent by train to Idaho for incarceration.

As Uri recalled the ride on the train, where shades were drawn to permit all from seeing where they were going, she relayed her mental state at the time. Uri, and many Japanese American citizens traveling with her, were not yet alarmed as they trusted in the American government. “I wanted to be a good citizen and do what my government told me to do. The newspapers had instructions telling us we had to leave Seattle and at that time we did not question.” As Uri described arriving at her destination she expressed shock at seeing soldiers pointing machine guns at her and the others as they disembarked the train. As clearly as if it were happening now, Uri described sand blowing in her mouth and eyes, sagebrush and rattlesnakes at her feet and being ushered into a stall that had previously contained horses; the smell of animal feces still lingering. That is what Uri and 120,000 Japanese Americans received for being good and loyal citizens. This is Uri’s American story, a very different story from that of her fellow classmates, who took their spring quarter exams while she traveled in a windowless train to an American concentration camp.

As these students of Seattle University were being honored and received their honorary Doctoral Degrees I was moved by what the current experience of receiving a degree from Seattle University meant to them. This moment was one of recognition, both for what they had unjustly endured and for being valued, heard and understood today. I was pleased that the University recognized the importance of permitting them to share their story as well as giving them a degree. I was reminded of Eric Law’s words in The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb, “The repeated experience of power enables powerless people eventually to claim their share of power with ease and comfort.”

“Incarceration taught me what it means to lose your freedom and history has taught me to take the time to see what is really happening.” This statement by Uri sums up the valuable lesson I am learning from attending these remembrance ceremonies. Examine history in its entirety. When reading history books ask questions like, “How would this story be told differently if told by a Native American, African American, Muslim American, Jewish American?”

As I enter into ministry I will carry these people and their stories with me. They will serve as reminders of the injustices of inequality but mostly they will serve as reminders of possibility. I no longer assume that the playing field in America is level. I no longer assume that the opportunities afforded me are afforded to all. However I do know that in God’s eyes we are all created equally and I believe that if my assumptive set can change so can others. I am fully committed to continuing to increase my knowledge and awareness level. I remain open to the possibility that each new generation will learn about their full history and then walk fully into a future of equality.

Melissa Smith (Mia) is a Disciple of Christ and a third year MDIV student at the School of Theology and Ministry at Seattle University. She attends the ALL PILGRIMS CHRISTIAN CHURCH on Capitol Hill in Seattle where she hopes to be ordained in June of 2014.

By: Rabbi Bruce Kadden

When we think of harmony, we naturally think of music.  Now, my Cantor makes fun of me when I try to talk about music, but I think that it is an appropriate metaphor to help us understand the topic of barriers to harmony.

We know that in music harmony occurs when each of us sings one’s own part and they blend together to form a beautiful chord.  Now, not all musical notes go together well.  Each of us can also sings notes that just don’t blend nicely with other notes.

In that case, the tendency might be for us to change the note we are singing, to try a half-step lower or a half-step higher, hoping to be in harmony.  While that might make for a pleasant sound, it is problematic, because it changes who we are and the note that we are meant to sing.  The challenge we face is to continue to sing our notes and to find those notes that, together with the notes of others, produce harmony.

In reflecting on the barriers to harmony, three challenges come to mind:

1. The priorities of each of our communities.

One of the greatest challenges we all face is the lack of resources; we do not have the time, money and energy to do everything that we know we should be doing and that we want to do.  We all have to make difficult choices.

Now, in a vacuum, it would be easy to make these choices.  If my passion was for interfaith relations, I would spend most of my time and energy on that topic.  If your passion was for social justice, then you spend most of your time and energy on that issue.  But the reality is that most of us have a passion for a number of things so we try to do it all.

Furthermore, most of us are part of communities which also have their priorities and passions, not mention the more mundane responsibilities which we need to deal with on a day to day business.

For about the last 25 years, there has been a debate in the Jewish community about our priorities and whether we should work to address the inward challenges to our community or the outward challenges to our community.  There are a number of reasons that the debate emerged when it did.  First, some community leaders saw significant numbers of Jews involved in the anti-War movement, the civil rights movement and the women’s movement but not in efforts to support their own community.  The debate was also a response to the emphasis on Outreach which the Reform movement embraced under the leadership of Rabbi Alexander Schindler in the 1970s.

But it also reflected a renewed interest –among many Jews– in such topics as Jewish mysticism and Musar literature, which focuses on personal moral conduct and growth.  At the same time there seemed to be reduced interest in social justice.

And although none of these issues directly addressed interfaith relations, the message was clear:  we need to get our own house in order, deal with the many challenges that we face as a community from intermarriage to assimilation, rather than spend so much effort in reaching out to others.

I have always felt that this conflict was a false dichotomy, that it was not an either/or.  We can deal with the important internal issues while maintaining our commitment to social justice and interfaith activities which are vital for our community to remain strong and vibrant in the 21st century.

2. Those within each of our communities who, for a variety of reasons, don’t believe that we should interact with those people who we can at times have strong disagreements with.

The second barrier to the harmony we seeks comes from those within each of our communities who question whether we should be interacting with others, with whom we have significant areas of disagreement.  In the Jewish community, this has been most clearly felt in the area of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, where the ability to speak openly and honestly has been stifled both internally in our community and in our interactions with those in other communities.  There are some who do not want to sit and listen to the other, those who are not interested in dialogue.

But this concern goes beyond the Middle East conflict.  For example, a number of actions of the Catholic Church have led some to question whether Jewish-Catholic dialogue should continue.  These included the Kurt Waldheim affair, the plan to establish a Carmelite convent on the grounds of Auschwitz, the effort to reach out to the Society of Pope Pius X which included Bishop Richard Williamson, a notorious Holocaust denier, efforts toward the beatification of Pope Pius XII, and the permission to use more traditional Good Friday liturgy.  These issues and other pronouncements have led some in the Jewish community to question whether the Catholic Church is retreating from its historic Nostra Aetate statement in the Second Vatican Council.

Each of these topics is certainly appropriate for debate and discussion; I would imagine that internally they have provoked interesting discussion.  But even taken together, they should not prevent active and meaningful dialogue.  We cannot allow these real and sometimes difficult conflicts to be used as excuses to retreat from opportunities to engage in meaningful dialogue and discussion.

3. The reluctance, at times, to confront the tough issues.

Even without such pressures we sometimes are reluctant to confront the tough issues with one another.  When I first arrived in Salinas, CA many years ago and wanted to develop an interfaith dialogue program with one of the local churches, I was told about a recent interfaith effort that had failed.

It seemed that the discussion had at some point turned to the Holocaust, including the role of the Christian church.  From the point of view of the Jewish community, they were just sharing well-established facts, but for the Christians, it was interpreted as an effort to lay a guilt trip on them for something they had nothing to do with and were just barely beginning to understand.

It is vital that we deal with the tough issues, but that we do so in ways that do not seek to offer guilt or blame, but instead promote real dialogue and understand.

Temple Beth El has been engaged with interfaith dialogue with St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and Bethany Presbyterian Church for a few years.  This year we are reading Amy-Jill Levine’s The Misunderstood Jew:  the Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, in anticipation of the author’s visit to our congregation this April.

In the book’s introduction, she writes, “If Jews come to the table with a sense of victimization and Christians come with a sense of guilt, nothing will be accomplished.”  In seeking to achieve harmony, we cannot avoid the difficult issues.  But at the same time, we must address them sensitively and constructively, in order to grow and understand.

To paraphrase a Chasidic story, if we truly want to love each other, we have to know what hurts the other.  Being able to discuss the tough issues, including to share what really hurts us, is important if we to achieve true harmony.

Bruce Kadden has served as rabbi of Temple Beth El in Tacoma, Washington since July, 2004.  He is Past President of the Pacific Association of Reform Rabbis.  He received an A.B. degree in Religious Studies from Stanford University and was ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1981.  He was awarded an honorary doctorate from HUC-JIR in 2006 for 25 years of service as a rabbi.  Rabbi Kadden is past president of the board of the Fair Housing Center of Washington.

By: Rabbi Anson Laytner

When most people think about Passover—Pesach in Hebrew—they probably bring to mind matza, the unleavened bread; the seder, the structured meal that includes the telling of the Passover story; and the Haggadah, the booklet that guides the celebrants through the rituals and the story during the seder meal.  (If you think Jesus celebrated a seder, we’ll need to do a little reconstructive history…)

Passover is the most widely observed Jewish holiday both because it is the archetypal myth for our people and our faith, and because its message of freedom has resonated so strongly down through the ages even to our own day, not only for Jews but for other peoples as well.  In the modern era, people have taken to making all kinds of Haggadot: simplified, feminized, Zionized, social action-ized, you name it.

I had thought to share my own ideas about Passover’s deeper meaning with all of you but instead, as I was putting together my own family’s Haggadah, I came across these words by the late Rabbi Prof. David Hartman, which capture my own concerns better than I could myself:

Thoughts on the meaning of Passover

These thoughts are severely adapted from an essay by Rabbi Prof. David Hartman (z”l), written in 2010. For more on Hartman click here, and to see his essays click here.

As much as I am happy to be part of the Jewish people preparing for the holiday of Passover, I confess that I am bored by the atmosphere and the questions. I hope that Passover would mean more than spring cleaning, that we would at least attempt to take the notions of oppression and freedom seriously and examine how they were reflected in our lived reality.

But what do we talk about instead? In place of a holiday about values, Passover has become a holiday about recipes and halakhic minutiae.

Does this truly reflect what Passover is about? A memory of miracles? An obsession with rituals? Whatever happened to the dramatic, overarching themes of freedom from oppression, self-governance, and spiritual rebirth?

What is the holiday of Passover about? We all know the story of the Ten Plagues, the Exodus, the Splitting of the Red Sea. But what do we make of our inherited narrative, which we recount every year around the seder table? How do we understand its theological implications? What kind of God is the God of Passover? And what are we talking about when we talk about freedom?

Passover is meant to celebrate and sustain our deep yearning for freedom, not necessarily to show that God can change the order of the universe. Passover is a holiday that inculcates the belief that humanity will overcome oppression, that freedom will reign throughout the world. The faith that tyranny will ultimately be vanquished is deeply embedded in the significance of Passover.

Redemption is not otherworldly salvation at the end of time. It’s not the World-to-Come or Resurrection of the Dead.  Redemption is an individual’s growth into a complete human being, a person who fulfills all of his or her aptitudes. Redemption is not an abstract philosophical or theological construct, but a fine-tuning of the human soul that helps us to love more and to be more sensitive. It creates a meaningful pattern of self-fulfillment.

It is the mission of these holy days to create conditions within human beings for their personal fulfillment. It is the purpose of the holidays to wake us up to our true capacities, to release the deeper ethical components of what it means to be a human being.

How do the rituals shape us ethically? How do the mitzvot propel us to become full human beings and reach our powers of ethical personality? In other words, how does Judaism impact us in the quest for human self-realization?  How does our heritage foster patterns of living with the potential to redeem us from selfishness, narcissism, cruelty, and open us to a world of holiness.

That is the reason it’s incumbent upon us to try to keep alive the ethical implications of the Haggadah. If we understand and internalize the true message of Passover, we can develop a whole new response to those without power, and take seriously the opportunity to love the stranger as yourself.

Rabbi Anson Laytner is program manager of Seattle University School of Theology & Ministry’s Interreligious Initiative.