“We have to move from the sidelines to solidarity with people who are being targeted,” said Melissa Rogers, professor at the Wake Forest University School of Divinity at a panel discussion at Purdue on Wednesday evening.
The discussion titled “Religion, Polarization, and the Public Space” is a part of Purdue’s “Democracy, Civility, and Freedom of Expression” series.
It featured six panelists and was hosted by Amy Goodman, the executive director of “Democracy Now!”
In the U.S. 77% of the adult population are religious, according to a study by the Pew Research Center. Of the 245 million adults in the U.S., 173 million are identified as Christians, and 56 million without a religious affiliation, according to the same study.
Despite being the majority, religious persecution still exists, in 2018 there were 1531 religious hate crimes according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“Some Americans are unable to practice their faith without fear for their physical safety,” said Rogers. “In the United States we don’t have religious freedom unless everyone can practice their faith without fear.”
Democracy is under siege and the only thing we have to combat it is how we communicate with one another, said Ron Reagan, contributor to MSNBC and son of former President Ronald Reagan.
Civility is a good starting point, but it isn’t enough, said Reagan. He offers that people instead adopt a I don’t know, and I might be wrong approach to polarized conversations.
“The call to civility can actually be used as a weapon against the oppressed,” said activist and reverend, Naomi Tutu.
“When I hear the word civility, I bristle a little bit as a minority,” said Reza Aslan, writer, commentator and religious scholar. “Often-times calls for civility are mostly calls for minorities to shut the hell up.”
Issues like this require extreme moral clarity, said Aslan. Civility and polarization represent vastly different ways of thinking, said Aslan.
Aslan said that racism isn’t about ignorance, and that there are very well-informed racists. No amount of learning or information can solve racism, said Aslan.
“Racism is more a matter of fear than it is of ignorance,” said Aslan.
“It’s a tragedy that some people who are in this country, which is founded on serving the people and their protection, have to be in fear of practicing something that is inherent to their culture,” said Annabella Falls, a junior in sustainable food and farming systems.
“Everyone in heaven is white,” said Tutu.
It is a corruption of my faith to think that people like me weren’t created in God’s image, said Tutu. She said the version of God she knows wouldn’t create the world and forget about the biggest continent, Africa.
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