My Faith Identity and Beliefs by Libby Treviño-Montes

When I was asked by my All Faiths United group to submit a post for the group’s blog, I was nervous because I have never been a great writer. I felt that others could do a better job. Yet interfaith is something very important to me and it’s something very important in today’s society so here I am.

BASIS FOR MY RELIGIOUS BELIEFS

I am an adopted child reared in a Catholic household. At 18, I met my biological mother, a devout Pentecostal Christian woman whom I have joined in a few church services. In college, I met and befriended some young Muslim men whom I still call friends. I learned a little about their beliefs.  Having met and interacted over time with many different cultures and religious beliefs, I’ve found my beliefs to be based on faith in a loving God and that everyone is equal in His eyes.

HATRED AND PERSECUTION IN HISTORY AND THE PRESENT

I always thought of hate associated with faith as a concept that was part of our past world history. Events such as the Crusades, Spanish Inquisition and Holocaust were examples of that history. The idea that religious fervor and hatred can cause mass genocide of peoples is so very wrong. The fact that some people believe the Holocaust did not occur baffles me.

Throughout time mass genocide, wars and other events that have shaped our world have been based on someone’s will, greed and/or religious beliefs. These events should be lessons for the United States, however, we still see so much hatred based on color, sexuality, or religious beliefs in America. It seems that every day we find horrific pictures and stories of this religious hatred in our media.

I have acquaintances who are Jewish, Muslim and of other Christian faith traditions. These relationships enrich my life through casual conversations about our experiences and beliefs. All these faith traditions have seen persecution and even death for their beliefs. Our founding fathers believed in religious freedom so strongly that they incorporated religious freedom into our fundamental rights. We in America are a melting pot of cultures and religions. Americans interact with people of different colors, cultures and faiths everyday unless they live in more isolated communities. I could never think of my Muslim or Jewish friends as perpetrators of hate nor do I want to think of them as victims of persecution. Faith, culture and traditions should be celebrated as the fabric of our society with threads that bind us together as Americans.

Instead, extremist radical actions are occurring frequently now, motivated by hate and intolerance. We see it in the shooting of worshipers at churches, synagogues and mosques in America and around the world. I ask myself, “What are parents teaching their children?” Crimes motivated by hate should have died out with previous generations or at least have become less frequent as the “Silent Generation” dies and the “Baby Boomers” mature. These generations saw hate first hand when Civil Rights were in the forefront of American news reports. They saw what hate could and can do.

CHANGE IN MEDIA AND PATRIOTISM

In 1987 the FCC abandoned the “Fairness Doctrine” under the Reagan administration. This doctrine had required news broadcasts to present both sides of the story but with the abandonment of this doctrine and the rise of Cable Programming and Social Media we now live in a world where the term “fake news” is heard repeatedly and is, in fact, a reality.  Journalistic ethics and ideals appear to be gone from many of our news broadcasts. Now we often have opinion pieces disguised as news that are designed to skew our thinking. Truth and justice have been pushed aside to make way for more sensational headlines.

Nationalism and extremist Christian beliefs go hand in hand. These beliefs suggest that  any challenge to the status quo is un-American. Patriotism should not be considered only as a Christian sentiment. Love of country is a very personal trait observed in people of various religious and non-religious beliefs. Patriotism is not part of religion. After all atheists can be and are patriotic too.

THE IMPORTANCE OF AND NEED FOR DIALOGUE AND RESPECT

Today we need to have dialogue with people of different faiths. Extremist views designed to indoctrinate people to only one religion need to be stopped. Respect for each other’s religious views need to be upheld. We need not fear religious differences but instead embrace them as the constitutional freedoms our forefathers endowed upon all Americans.

I am still a Catholic. I am also considered a bi-racial American with Liberal views. This blog was inspired by a recent experience in my life. I invited a Christian lady to attend an All Faiths United meeting and she declined saying, “I can not participate in such a group because of my strong Christian beliefs.” I explained that if she read the Bible, she would see that Jesus was a Jewish man who interacted with people of various cultures and beliefs in his lifetime. She did not reply. I was tempted but didn’t add that the Bible she probably reads was commissioned to be translated into English by King James who history shows was gay.

In closing I would like to quote an article titled 3 Reasons Interfaith Efforts Matter More Than Ever from the Huffington Post (4-23-2013). 

“In America, just about everyone is some sort of hyphenated hybrid of race, religion and ethnicity/nationality. Irish-Catholic-American, African-American-Pentecostal, Jewish-American-Secular Humanist, and so on. As Walt Whitman said ‘I am large. I contain multitudes.’ Interfaith programs are not a miracle solution. Their primary purpose is neither to root out potential terrorists nor solve every social problem. But they do matter.”