Category Archives: Ecumenical & Interfaith

Peering Into the Heart of Darkness — And Its End

I had (& have) fond feelings for libraries, and at first glance, the one at Regis seemed a fine specimen: well-lighted, relatively new, with many long open shelves. Open shelves of books to me embodied freedom of thought and learning, and its liberating possibilities.

But something didn’t jibe with my sentimental notion. Behind the reference desk, my eye was caught by a large area enclosed by heavy mesh metal partitions, and with a locked gate. Inside were more books; I could see the shelves through the mesh. Were these antiquities? Precious manuscripts of historic value? They didn’t look like that.

No. My question to a cheerful librarian got a straightforward answer: this enclosure was for books on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum: the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books.

I stared at it in fascinated horror: of course I had heard of the Index. It was hundreds of years old. Where the Church was part of or protected by governments, it went hand in hand with censorship.

My first, adolescent thought was that it must include the books about sex. True enough, authors such as Gide and Balzac, thought to be peddlers of lasciviousness, were on it. But The Index was much more concerned about the mind than the loins, with stamping out heresy more than lust.

“Meetings” – Small Is Beautiful – But Is It Buddhist?

My “beat” was the offbeat, story ideas outside the paper’s weekly regimen of muckraking about politics and other public corruptions, all plentiful in the region.

Instead I wrote the stories readers wanted but no one else had thought of:
— a major profile of Rabbi Emil Bronner, creator of a famous brand of peppermint oil soap. It was sold in bottles wrapped with big blue labels covered by tiny white print detailing the “All-One-God-Faith” religion, which he had likewise invented. (The tiny print made perfect sense if you were stoned enough.) I also did one of the first major pieces about the home birth movement, which was growing fast in the area; pardon the pun.
And

I’m Sorry, Dr. King. I’m So Sorry.

I was going to review Ari Berman’s book, “Give Us The Ballot” for this Dr. King Day.

But I can’t. I can’t bear to. It’s too awful. I’m Sorry, Ari. I’m sorry, Dr. King.

But wait — I don’t mean “Give Us The Ballot” is an awful book. It’s up for some awards, and probably deserves them. And the part I read was well-written, and its clear ‘s researched the hell out of the subject.

But that’s the thing. I only read one chapter: the last. It’s called “After Shelby.” As a writer, I have no complaints with Berman’s work. In fact, it’s a fitting counterpart to my book, Selma 1965: The March that Changed The South. He even cites mine a couple times.

But I could just barely get through that one chapter, “After Shelby,” even though I’m in it (not named, but still). My book shows how the Voting Rights act of 1965 was made possible. Berman’s book tells how the Voting Rights Act was destroyed.

“Shelby” is the June 2013 Supreme Court decision that cut the heart out of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Berman shows in careful detail how this decision came about. (I didn’t read those parts, but I know they’re there.)

The last chapter is about good ole NC and the NAACP’s Rev. William Barber and the Moral Monday protests in 2013. I was one of nearly a thousand who got arrested in that classically nonviolent “uprising,” and weren’t those the Good Old Days??

Well, yeah, but not good enough, if you know what I mean.

Quakers Stand With Muslims in Carolina

Adam Beyah, a senior member of the Fayetteville mosque, sent out invitations to persons of various faiths to come and stand with Muslims there.

One invitation came to me. And I went; was proud to go. On the way there from my home in Durham, almost two hours away, I stopped at Quaker House, where I used to be Director, and helped make a stack of signs. This project turned the morning into “Flashback Friday”: dozens of times in my eleven-year tenure at Quaker House, we had made signs and posters for peace vigils and other public actions. Most of ours were printed on the office copier, on ivory paper with a black border. Plain, but (we hoped) punchy and pertinent.

This time, we weren’t organizing, just helping out. I cleared the text for the posters with Adam Beyah, to make sure they were sensitive to the group’s outlook. Then we headed out.

Outside the Fayetteville mosque, named for an African-born enslaved Muslim, an older sign above is underlined by our new sign below.
As always, we worried about the turnout: we had made about thirty signs: would enough people show up even to carry them?

We shouldn’t have worried.