Sufis and Krishnas and Lubavitchers in the Hood

Sufi Temple at Telegraph and Oregon

When I walked past the Sufi Meditation Center now nearing completion one block East and one block South of our house the other day, I was reminded once again that I am living in a part of the country where America’s separation of church and state has born fruit in a marvelous way. We are constantly reminded by the white supremacist Christian right bullies now riding roughshod over America’s vulnerable democracy project just how much these awful people owe to multiculturalism. In their rush to assert dominance over other religious faiths, they fail to see just how pitifully they are crapping up their own nest.

I’ve been focused in recent weeks on the nefarious side of organized religion. It all started with the trial of Australia’s Cardinal George Pell, now sitting out his last years in the slammer for diddling with the altar boys of his cathedral in Melbourne some twenty-odd years ago. I’m not 100% convinced of his guilt. He maintains his innocence, but if you followed the trial and if you listen to the justification the judge gave for sentencing him to six years, you will probably join me in thinking the Australians have a pretty trustworthy justice system. His accuser comes across as quite credible. In any case, I have also been following  the coverage by folks like Paul Collins and Jason Berry (Render Unto Rome) and reconfirming for the nth time just how much rot the church has to contend with. I’m also halfway through a terribly informative book on the slow but sure decline of American evangelicalism by Robert P. Jones, entitled The End of White Christian America.

Until I became fully aware of how much harm the political evangelicals, Mormons and Catholics are doing to their own kind, I used to believe it was almost a duty to bash the life out of organized religion, smash it into the ground until there was nothing left, so furious was my realization of the harm they had done to gay people over the years. And, given their embrace of patriarchal authoritarianism, to women as well. To say nothing of the long haul people of color have struggled with to get to where they are today. Check out the history of the Mormons. I was already thirty-eight years old when the Good Lord in his wisdom decided to tell the Mormons that it would be OK to allow black people to join their church. And the history of the Southern Baptists, who pulled away from the Baptist Church to form their own church in order to maintain the institution of slavery. All is forgiven these days. Blacks are in, at least officially. But we have not forgotten.

I posted a blog entry the other day on my current fascination with a cowboy preacher, trying to make the point that I also haven’t forgotten the people of good will who I went to church with as a youngster. I know there are plenty of them around, and my heart aches for what they must be going through, having to listen to the fear-mongering twits whipping up support for the moral dumpster fire in the Oval Office with claims that we’re on the verge of outlawing “Merry Christmas” as part of a campaign to wipe out Christianity in America.

We’re not, of course. I just think it’s appropriate that we not lose sight of non-Christians in our public life and public announcements. But that’s the sad part. The wackos like Pat Robertson and Jim Bakker and this latest dumbdumb to hit the news, Dave Daubenmire  sure don’t help the evangelical cause. Daubenmire has an organization called Pass the Salt Live Ministries (I kid you not). He wears a cross on his Maga hat and informs his viewers that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have “poisoned” the royal blood line because she’s half black. Daubenmire was fired some years ago as coach of the local high school in London, Ohio because he insisted on leading his team in prayer and was sued by the ACLU. (OK, so maybe “civil liberties” means you’re supposed to worship the devil.) Not his fault that his son was arrested for messing with child pornography, of course. There are bad seeds everywhere. Like Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, Jr., both making their evangelical daddies look like Mr. Rogers of “Won’t you be my neighbor?” fame.

It’s all about polarization. We used to have American coastal culture vs. “flyover” America. Now it’s urban vs. rural more generally, the racial divide, the Confederacy that refuses to die, objectivity vs. “alternative truth.” The gerrymandering and the tragic holdover of the electoral college system put the guy with fewer votes in 2012 into office, and he discovered his “base” in a bunch of religionists willing to surrender all principles to get behind the guy who would reverse Roe v. Wade and same-sex marriage and put America back into the hands of white folk. And convince the 51% earning less than $30,000 a year that by cutting taxes on the rich he was keeping America safe from the socialists.

My friends and I are arguing these days over Bernie vs. Biden. Biden supporters insist Americans are too freaked out by socialist Bernie, and to nominate him will guarantee the democrats will lose in 2020. Bernie supporters insist with equal enthusiasm that the cruel inequities that divide Americans run so deep now that only a person who is willing to show the courage to break away from the business-as-usual middle-of-the roader Democrats like Hillary and Biden can bring out the disgruntled folk who have washed their hands of American politics altogether and sit home on election day. I just can’t read the tea leaves. I sure hope the democratic socialists are right - I’m throwing in with Bernie - but I am yet to have anything more than desperate hope we’re right about this.

Meanwhile, I feel privileged to live in a part of the country where diversity is ever-present. I mentioned the Sufi Center opening soon two blocks away. Two blocks north of that (and one block away) there used to be (they’ve recently moved to University Ave.) the home of the Chabad-Lubavitchers, an orthodox Jewish group that makes friends despite its Jewish exclusivity for its outreach to people in need. And half a block away - a one-minute walk - is the Hare Krishna Temple, more officially known as ISKON, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

Expand your spiritual practice

Not that it’s all peaches-and-cream. One of the Krishna folks ran afoul of my friend Jerry one day some years ago. They walk the neighborhood in their orange robes, and people have a nagging memory of the time they used to bang their tambourines at the airport and annoy the hell out of tired passengers. They don’t do that anymore, but this one time one of them picked a rose from Jerry’s front yard. “Hey,” said Jerry. “Hands off my roses.” “God put them there for everybody,” said the sweet thing, apparently unaware that if he picked one for himself that would end the enjoyment for the rest of us. “Like hell he did,” snapped Jerry. “I’m the one with the water can, not God! Buzz off!” Jerry had little use for the “Harvey Kushmans” as he called them.

But mostly we’re on friendly terms.

First Congregational Church of Berkeley

I don’t know anybody in the neighborhood who goes to church. There might be some, but unlike the rural part of America where I came from nobody here seems to be in the church-going lot. Unless it’s to that wonderful brick building just up the street - the First Congregational Church - that looks like it was lifted straight out of the New England of my youth and plopped down here to remind us this was once a church-going society. Today it’s the venue for a wonderful series of lectures and concerts, including, until the fire, the Berkeley Philharmonia Baroque, which we’ve been attending for years now. They suffered a terrible fire in 2016 and for some reason, probably insurance, have yet to rebuild. And look at me, ma, crying over the loss of a church!

If I believed in the power of prayer to make things happen that run counter to the laws of nature, I’d pray that the First Church of Berkeley is returned quickly to its former splendor. And that the good evangelical folk of America are freed from the white supremacists that now bend the president’s ear in Washington in their name.

They deserve so much better.

As do we all.

As do we all.

Photo credits: Sufi Temple at Telegraph and Oregon
Krishna Temple on Stuart between Telegraph and Ellsworth
First Congregational Church on Dana between Channing and Durant, fighting the 2016 fire