”No one owns God” - readying yourself for respectful interfaith encounters

Click here for an episode transcript.

This is the first of two episodes featuring excerpts from authors who speak on religious pluralism, interfaith relationships, and how diverse identities and cultures enrich religion. In this first episode, Avery focuses in on the extra complexities faced by Christians in approaching interfaith relationships respectfully, as members of a religion with a history and present tangled up in colonization and assimilation. 

The passages Avery shares in this episode come from Barbara Brown Taylor's 2018 book Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others and Kaitlin B. Curtice's 2020 book Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God. The next episode will feature authors from religions other than Christianity.

(0:00 - 5:35) Why trans persons of all (and no) faiths need to include religious identity in our solidarity and activism; why the focus on Christianity for this first ep
(5:36 - 10:35) Excerpts Barbara Brown Taylor's Holy Envy begin - "Could my faith be improved by the faiths of others?"
(10:36 - 16:41) How fear of hell and a need to be most right, most favored poisons Christians' ability to open themselves to learn from other faiths
(16:42 - 20:17) Moving Christianity from the center and putting God (or absolute truth) there - Christianity becomes one of many "planets" (religions and other ideologies) orbiting around that center
(20:18 - 24:25) Excerpts from Kaitlin B. Curtice's Native begin - the violence of Christian colonization and white assimilation against Curtice and her Potawatomi ancestors
(24:26 - 31:38) How Curtice's Potawatomi identity enriches her faith and helps her see the interconnectedness of all faiths and cultures
(31:39 - end) Reckoning with one's personal history of oppression that comes with being Christian and/or holding white ancestry