Physical Violence or Honest Dialogue?

by Robert P. Sellers

The public square is a historic, generous space where healthy dialogue can occur. Disagreements, however, can always arise in these places. Because people come from diverse backgrounds or stages in life – representing distinct races or socio-economic classes and championing conflicting philosophies or loyalties, when they meet there – whether physically or virtually, they may naturally argue with one another. Nonetheless, providing a safe, non-threatening location to voice differences is precisely one of the reasons why societies should value these spaces.

In the New Testament book of Acts is a reference (17:16-34) to just such a place, identified as Mars Hill, a famous locale in Athens for philosophical debate and high-level decision-making. Also called the “Areopagus,” it was in that first-century public square where the Apostle Paul preached a sermon about the “Unknown God,” attempting to connect his faith perspective with a crowd of Athenian intellectuals.

Dialoguing in the public forum is an honored activity in a free and democratic society. I wrote about this contemporary American activity several months ago in an article titled “Dialoguing at the Square.”

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner

One famous, very visible location for airing philosophical differences is the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, sponsored by The White House Correspondents’ Association. The Association is a non-profit organization which numbers more than 900 member-journalists who report on the White House and represent some 250 news outlets, viewpoints, and media from all across America and the world. Each year, its televised dinner raises money for scholarships for young journalists and honors the recipients of the year’s journalistic awards.

On April 25, the dinner was beginning in the Washington Hilton ballroom, where it has been safely held for numerous years. This year’s banquet, however, will always be remembered because of an assassination attempt perpetrated against President Trump and high-ranking members of his Cabinet. The plan had been fashioned almost three weeks before the event, on April 6, when California resident Cole Tomas Allen searched the internet for information about the 2026 Correspondents’ dinner. He learned that President Trump was attending the function for the first time, and noted where the gala would be celebrated. Allen was able to book a room at the Washington Hilton, checking into the hotel on April 24, the day before the dinner. Inexplicably, he was also able to bring into his room a pump-action shotgun, semi-automatic pistol and three knives, without creating suspicion or having to pass any security checks, even though the president, vice-president and other high officials were scheduled to be in the hotel within 24 hours.

On Saturday evening, the would-be assassin raced past a metal detector at a police checkpoint and fired his 12-guage shotgun at least once. He never made it down to the hotel floor where the ballroom was located, but in the melee which ensued, Secret Service agents immediately and forcefully rushed the president, vice-president, and Cabinet secretaries out of the ballroom to safety. Revelers attending the gala quickly went to the floor or ducked under tables, remaining in a state of panic and confusion until it was revealed the threat had been contained.

Violence Instead of Dialogue

The irony of what happened is stark: at a dinner honoring journalism – highlighting the freedom of the press to report, publish and disseminate information about the government as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution – a violent attack occurred. More than 2,600 people had gathered precisely to celebrate the exchange of ideas through journalistic speaking and writing, while the exasperated gunman had concluded that words were no longer warranted or useful. But his alternative action was illegal and immoral. Physical violence cannot be condoned as the way to react to those with whom we disagree. Cole Tomas Allen was horribly wrong to believe killing his political enemies was the only remedy to his deep frustrations.

Perhaps Trump and his apologists will suggest that this quiet, seemingly nonviolent 31-year-old – who lived with his parents, studied at CalTech, tutored school children in the afternoons and attended the Pasadena United Reformed Church – suffered from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” This unofficial diagnosis is a psychological term coined by Charles Krauthammer, described as a "behavioral or psychological phenomenon characterized by intense emotional or cognitive reactions to Donald J. Trump … as observed in individuals or groups.” The manifesto police discovered in Allen’s hotel room certainly confirmed that he was overwhelmed with angst and anger concerning Trump’s behavior. Millions of Americans are also feeling intense distress about the nation’s current political leaders, so this young man’s state of mind is no mystery. But the solution he chose has shocked his parents, neighbors, and friends and is not the way disagreements should be handled.

Trump’s Own Violent Nature

Is there, however, another way to explain this third attempt to assassinate Donald Trump? Could it be argued, quoting the Old Testament prophet Hosea (8:7), that the president has sown the wind and is reaping the whirlwind? In his words and actions, Trump has certainly communicated that political violence is okay. Two journalists for The Atlantic have noted:

After the second attempt on his life, Donald Trump accused his political opponents of inspiring the attacks against him with their rhetoric. The reality, however, is that Trump himself has a long record – singular among American presidents of the modern era – of inciting and threatening violence against his fellow citizens, journalists, and anyone he deems his opposition.

Of the dozens of indisputable incidents when Trump has spoken or acted violently, only a few are needed to demonstrate that he has fostered political violence in the United States.

• During a campaign rally in Iowa in February 2016, he said: “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously, okay? Just knock the hell – I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise, I promise.”  

• In a Republican primary debate that same month, he intoned: “I would bring back waterboarding. And I’d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”  

• In October 2018, Trump referred to then-Representative Greg Gianforte, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for physically assaulting a reporter, “Any guy that can do a body slam, he is my guy!”  

• In June 2020, according to Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s memoir, Trump said about protesters outside the White House, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?”  

• On January 6, 2021, as rioters at the Capitol were chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” Trump tweeted: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution, giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. [The] USA demands the truth!”  

• In November 2022, at a rally in Ohio, Trump talked about reporters who won’t reveal the sources of their information which is damaging to the President. To great applause, he threatened: You tell the reporter, “‘Who is it?’ And the reporter will either tell you or not. And if the reporter doesn’t want to tell you, it’s bye-bye, the reporter goes to jail. And when the reporter learns that he’s going to be married in two days to a certain prisoner that’s extremely strong, tough and mean, he will say, ‘You know’ … I think I’m going to give you the information.’”  

• In March 2023, at the conservative PAC summit, he said: “I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution”  

• Concerning the opposition of General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Trump suggested on Truth Social in September 2023, “This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.”  

• Then in a Veterans Day speech that year, the president said: “We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections. … The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.” 

• In March 2024, leading up to the November presidential election, he predicted: “If I don’t get elected … it’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”  

• Meanwhile, at a rally in October 2024 in Pennsylvania, he proposed a violent crackdown by police on lawbreakers, saying: “If you had one really violent day … one rough hour – and I mean real rough – the word will get out, and it will end immediately” [Ibid.]. 

Then, in Minnesota, Trump-inspired ICE agents murdered two American citizens – Renée Good, a mother of three children, and Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse who worked with veterans. More recently – to the shock and horror of millions of people of conscience around the world – Trump threatened to annihilate every living being in Iran and wipe away that country’s centuries-old civilization if the Strait of Hormuz was not reopened. Understanding nothing about Iran’s culture or the powerful impulse to “save face,” Trump sabotaged any effort at negotiations by posting on Truth Social: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”

Even in the aftermath of this third attempted assassination, Trump verbally assaulted a respected news reporter. When Norah O’Donnell from CBS television’s “60 Minutes” interviewed him, she read what Allen had written in his manifesto: “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.” Asking his response, the president said: “I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would, because you’re horrible people. Horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody.”

Choosing the Better Way

Perhaps the events of April 25, 2026, can teach us something about handling our differences. To be sure, Cole Tomas Allen was never going to have a conversation with Donald Trump, and it would have been foolish for him to come to Washington hoping for such an opportunity. On the other hand, given the impossibility of talking with the president about his concerns, his only remaining recourse was not to buy weapons, transport them on a train from California to D.C., book a room at the Hilton Hotel, and attempt to storm the ballroom while firing his weapons at his enemies.

The totally insular status of the president – protected by armed agents sworn to sacrifice their own lives to protect his – necessitates a different way in a democracy for achieving political change. It is, instead, the right of each citizen to vote his or her conscience. While it may seem naïve and pollyannish for a single voter to consider his or her voice and vote a powerful deterrent – especially given the gerrymandering and voter suppression measures that are occurring now – it nonetheless remains the best way of bringing about change. In America, at least, it is true that the pen (or vote) is mightier than the sword.

Honest dialogue at the public square, which can lead to powerful persuasion and group solidarity around important ideas, is the way democracies were meant to function. Despite the incredibly poor role modeling to the contrary from the leader of the Free World, may it be so.

Fearless Leo: What a Pope Invites Us to Be

At a time when armed conflicts proliferate, and democracies strain under polarization and the coercion of autocrats, truth itself is contested and trust for moral authority stands at a crossroads. This week, we are seeing how religion is used as a balm—or a blade.

Around the world, sacred traditions are being invoked to justify violence, exclusion, and domination of our neighbors. Political opportunists wrap themselves in the mantel of religious language, while advancing policies that erode human dignity and render us suspicious of empathy, the moral adhesive of any healthy society. Meanwhile, billions of everyday religious adherents—across faiths—daily practice compassion, service, and humility, even when drowned out by louder, more divisive voices.

This tension has come into stark relief this week in exchanges between Donald Trump and Pope Leo XIV. One sees a world enshrined in avarice and ambition; the other invites us into a moral universe guided by the pursuit of peace as a global virtue.

Pope Leo says he is not afraid of Donald Trump, or presumably any autocrat clothed in the vain and ruinous garments of omnipotence.  The Pope is only one human being, but his service at the margins, his courage in truth-telling, and his indictment of the forces that would manipulate and destroy whole civilizations, is a compelling mandate to act.  Pope Leo’s words while strong and encouraging require more human beings who claim love and fearlessness, together.

When religion becomes a political blade, it loses its prophetic power, ceases to challenge injustice and instead sanctifies it. This is not new—but it is newly dangerous in an era of global instability and instant amplification.

This week we witness not only a choice between Trump's unbridled autocracy and Pope Leo's undaunted faith.  We witness ourselves, our choice to be remade now, in our time. We must concert our collective work toward justice or languish under moral death and the finality of a civilization in decline.

Religious traditions, in all their diversity, share common moral ground: the dignity of every human being, the call to care for the vulnerable, the imperative of truthfulness, and the pursuit of peace. These are not abstract ideals; they are actionable principles every day. They demand our courage; they require us to forge serious albeit imperfect bonds as close as those who founded and framed us for life on this planet undeniably suspended in all this black wonder and awe.

When political authority berates moral authority—such as the recent public attack of a US President on the Vicar of Christ—meanness should never be given a pass.

This world need not be anemic of integrity, purpose, and reverence.  Our story must exude these and more.  We require leaders who engage religion with humility, and religious voices that speak truth to power without fear or favor.

In this moment of global uncertainty, the world does not need more righteous rhetoric. It needs more of Pope Leo's moral clarity. It needs more of you as well.

Signatories

Rev. Dr. Michael Reid Trice, PhD., Executive Director and Spehar-Halligan Professor, Center for Ecumenical and Interreligious Engagement, Seattle University

Rabbi Daniel Weiner, Senior Rabbi, Temple de Hirsch Sinai

Rev. Shelley Bryan Wee, Bishop, Northwest Synod, ELCA

Rev. Spencer Barrett, Presiding Elder, African Methodist Episcopal Church

Most Rev. Paul D. Etienne, Archbishop, Archdiocese of Seattle

Very Rev. Gary F. Lazzeroni, Vicar General, Archdiocese of Seattle

Joe Cotton, Executive Director of the Office of the Vicar General, Archdiocese of Seattle

Rabbi Ruth A. Zlotnick, Senior Rabbi, Temple Beth Am

Imam Jamal Rahman, Muslim Sufi Interfaith Minister, Interfaith Community Sanctuary

Rev. Eric M. Massanari, Executive Conference Minister, Pacific Northwest Mennonite Conference

The Rt. Rev. Philip N. LaBelle, Bishop, Episcopal Diocese of Olympia

The Very Rev. Steven L. Thomason, Dean and Rector, Saint Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, Seattle

Mahrukh Motafram, Former Trustee and Board Member, Zoroastrian Society of Washington State

Rev. Dr. Kara Markell, Assistant Director, Center for Ecumenical and Interreligious Engagement, Seattle University

For the full list of signatories, view updating table below:

If you are a religious leader, organization, or person of ethical conviction you are invited to sign the public letter.

The Monarch of Snark

by Robert P. Sellers

It is not a stretch to describe Donald Trump as a blend of the personalities of Benito Mussolini and Don Rickles. Intrigued by the notion that Trump is a complicated amalgam of authoritarian and comedian, I searched the internet for descriptions of the two imposing personalities:

Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) was a charismatic, narcissistic, and volatile dictator who founded Italian Fascism. Originally a socialist journalist, he pivoted to extreme nationalism, presenting himself as a fierce, hyper-masculine “man of action.” He was highly vain, erratic, and driven by a need for power, blending violence with theatrical public performances to create a cult of personality.

Don Rickles (1926-2017) was a legendary comedian and actor, known for his insult comedy and quick wit. He was often referred to as the “Insult King” due to his ability to deliver sharp and often unfiltered remarks, which resonated with audiences. Rickles’ humor was characterized by its broad cultural stereotypes and ad-libbed responses, making him a unique figure in comedy.

Donald Trump – charismatic, narcissistic, volatile, highly vain, erratic, driven by a need for power, an extreme nationalist who presents himself as a fierce, hyper-masculine man of action, known for his insults and sharp, unfiltered remarks, characterized by broad cultural stereotypes and ad-libbed responses – he is, in my mind, the unique figure in politics: a “Mussorickles.”

Trump the Authoritarian

I believe Trump is an “authoritarian” who aspires to be an “autocrat.” The two terms are similar but have distinct meanings. According to one source:

Authoritarian refers to a system of government where a single leader holds absolute power and makes decisions without input from others, often limiting political freedoms. Autocrat, on the other hand, is a more extreme form of authoritarianism where the leader's authority is not subject to legal or institutional constraints, and there is no form of democratic input or opposition.

Attempting to found his own version of American fascism, the president already believes he holds absolute power. He regularly makes decisions without input from others, launching the war in Iran as a perfect example. Often those decisions limit political freedoms, such as his sending ICE agents to the nation’s busiest airports, demeaning the lengthy training TSA agents must receive before screening passengers and baggage, as well as threatening the safety of all people of color whom those agents choose to detain or arrest. Trump yearns to become king, an absolute autocrat who does not tolerate any form of democratic input or opposition. To that end, like Mussolini, he is driven by a need for power and presents himself as a hyper-masculine man of action – envied by lesser men for his sexual conquests, praised for surviving two assassination attempts, and held up as a remarkable specimen for his supposed “perfect health” and passing marks on cognitive tests. He underestimates his opponents and puts others and the United States in danger because of his inflated view of his own popularity --“a lot of people are saying, ‘maybe we’d like a dictator.’”

Trump the Comedian

I believe Trump considers himself an entertainer, a comedian who amuses his followers with his sharp tongue and mean remarks. While some humor is light, good-natured comedy enjoyed by everyone, Trump’s humor is dark, hurtful ridicule that gets laughs by targeting someone else. Don Rickles made his career being “The Merchant of Venom,” and no one was safe from his insults or mockery. Bob Newhart, however, praised Rickles as “one of the kindest, caring, and most sensitive human beings we have ever known.” Trump, former reality television host of The Apprentice, sees himself as a “personality,” a star (“When you’re a star … you can do anything” to women). Don had a schtick that amused his fans and so does Donald, but when he passes, no one will praise Trump as “one of the kindest, caring, and most sensitive human beings we have ever known.”

As Mussorickles, Trump’s record of insults hurled at America’s allies, already in the opening months of his second term in office, is an embarrassment to our country and to the office of President.

On October 20, 2025, Trump was scheduled to hold bilateral talks with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Prior to the Oval Office meeting, Trump exchanged barbs with Australian Ambassador to the U.S., Kevin Rudd. Before becoming ambassador, Rudd in 2020 had called Trump “the most destructive president in history.” But at that White House meeting, Rudd was not prepared to face a man who never seems to forget a personal slight. Trump had earlier called the Australian “nasty” and “not the brightest bulb in the shed,” so it was not surprising he greeted the ambassador with the degrading insult: “I don’t like you either, and I probably never will.”

At the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, on January 21, 2026, Trump was in rare Mussorickles form. Relations between the U. S. and Europe were strained over Trump’s desire to take over Greenland when he stood to speak. Looking at a roomful of political and economic leaders from many of America’s European allies, Trump claimed “Certain places in Europe are not even recognizable anymore,” and “Without the United States, you don’t have a country.”

Using Denmark’s defeat by Germany in WWII as the reason it was too weak to retain control of Greenland, Trump bragged: "Without us, right now, you'd all be speaking German and a little Japanese perhaps. After the war, we gave Greenland back to Denmark. How stupid were we to do that? But we did it. But we gave it back. But how ungrateful are they now?"

He mocked France’s President Emmanuel Macron for wearing sunglasses during his speech – necessary because of his eye condition – with a snarky comment, “What the hell happened?” He then related how he had tried to persuade Macron to raise prices on prescription drugs or suffer heavy tariffs, but he had said “No, no, Donald. I will not do it,” failing miserably to imitate the French leader’s accent.

Responding to the Canadian Prime Minister’s speech the day before, Trump said: “Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way. They should be grateful also, but they’re not. I watched your prime minister yesterday. He wasn’t so grateful. But … Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”

Taking aim at Switzerland, the Forum’s host country, Trump suggested: “"I know so many people from Switzerland. Incredible place, incredible brilliant place. But I then realized that they're only good because of us."

Trump then insulted the United Kingdom for the way they handle their own oil industry. Criticizing them, he said that the UK is "sitting on top of the North Sea, one of the greatest reserves anywhere in the world, but they don't use it, and that's one reason why their energy has reached catastrophically low levels, with equally high prices" [Ibid.].

Perhaps the most startling remark to a world leader Trump has made, however, took place on March 19, 2026, in a White House meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. When a Japanese journalist asked Trump why the U.S. had not alerted its allies, including Japan, that it was going to strike Iran on February 28, Trump tried to be clever: "Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor?," Trump said as the prime minister visibly reacted to the afront. “Why didn’t you tell me your plans?” – despite the fact that the Pearl Harbor attack happened 4½ years before Trump was born, or that the United States and Japan have become close allies following WWII.

An Analysis of Trump’s Insult Humor

Donald Trump thinks it is funny to insult people he doesn’t like. In addition to world leaders, especially America’s allies, he attacks movie stars, television personalities, news journalists, political opponents and victims of discrimination – prisoners of war, trans athletes, the disabled, sexual assault survivors. He even slurs religious leaders.

Nick Butler, professor at Stockholm University, in his book The Trouble with Jokes, says that certain kinds of humor in political discourse “thrive on transgression and outrage.” At the Public Square, “jokes obscure the line between silliness and sincerity. As a result, jokes lower our defenses against objectionable ideologies and fuel some of the most worrying political trends today.”

According to academics Matt Sienkiewicz and Nick Marx, there now exists a ‘right-wing comedy complex,’ which includes conservative radio shows, podcasts and internet memes. And in this comedy complex, alt-right trolls mix with elected politicians.

The more extreme the politics, the more humour is useful. Telling an offensive joke serves up prejudice and hatred with a side order of irony. Delivered with a nod and a wink, humour reassures us that it’s all just “a bit of fun” [Ibid.].

Professor Butler asks why offensive jokes are so appeaing as a form of political discourse. He suggests one answer can be found in the work of Sigmund Freud. In his 1905 book, The Joke and its Relation to the Unconscious, Freud argued that

jokes – especially offensive ones – reveal our inner urges. We are trained from an early age to be kind and polite to other people. Over time, we learn to restrain our selfish desires and feral instincts. But offensive jokes let us temporarily pause social prohibitions and flirt with our innermost fantasies.

Trump has extensive experience flirting with his innermost fantasies. Insulting humor is one of his signature rhetorical tools, “blending hyperbole, mockery, and memorable nicknames to diminish opponents, dominate media narratives, and entertain supporters. Trump focuses on physical appearance, intelligence, and perceived weakness, creating a ‘hypermasculine’ and confrontational public image.”

Perhaps Trump’s favorite put-down is the word “sick.” James Comey is “either very sick or very dumb.” Nancy Pelosi is a “sick woman.” Adam Schiff is “probably a very sick man.” Jimmy Kimmel is a “sick freak.” Kamala Harris is “sick.” Hallie Kristas, a licensed mental health counselor, explains that “When someone repeatedly uses the word ‘sick’ as an insult, it often reflects a worldview that labels others, reducing disagreement or dislike to a sense that the other person is defective or abnormal.”

Psychiatrist and counseling center owner Manahil Riaz agrees:

When someone jumps to the word “sick” without really explaining anything else, I think it often suggests that this person might tend to “other” people or things that they just [simply don’t] understand. Maybe they’re not comfortable with the ambiguity and the complexity of issues or people. So, if their worldview doesn’t fit what’s happening, then instead of trying to understand it, they create some sort of emotional distance by dismissing it or name calling it [Ibid.].

Conclusion

There can be little doubt that Trump is an authoritarian who aspires to become an autocrat – crafting a new fascist America, perhaps after the model of Mussolini. I believe there is equal evidence he considers himself a crafty comedian – a master of insult humor, maybe like Rickles. Trump gives new meaning to the familiar term “bully pulpit,” because his pulpit is the most prominent in the United States and he is America’s biggest bully.

He dreams of becoming America’s King, of being crowned someday – metaphorically if not literally. To my mind, however, there is only one royal title the man deserves.

Donald Trump is the Monarch of Snark.

by Rev. Dr. Kara Markell

The Commission on the Status of Women is a conversation 70 years in the making, which draws intentional and sustained attention to the lived reality of women and girls around the globe.

This year’s priority theme was Ensuring and strengthening access to justice for all women and girls, including by promoting inclusive and equitable legal systems, eliminating discriminatory laws, policies, and practices, and addressing structural barriers. The convening featured hundreds of compelling sessions, workshops, panels, and conversations hosted by international associations and non-profits from across the globe.

The CSW was established in 1946 by ECOSOC (Economic and Social Council) of the UN. It’s purpose was refined in 1996 with Being Declaration and Platform for Action, which provides a framework for documenting and sharping global standards on gender equality and empowerment. You can read more about the history of CSW here. The Commission focuses its work on the aspects of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which particularly impact the lives of women and girls.; especially the goals to eliminate poverty, secure quality education, attain gender equality and climate impacts.

Sadly, what we know to be true today is that the status of women and girls globally is not significantly improving. As we close in on the 2030 deadline for these SDGs, one things is obvious: any progress that has been made toward these goals is fragile and unequal.

It can feel defeating. But what I learned and experienced at CSW 70 was a fierce hope and a deep commitment to the ongoing efforts to improve the status of women.

First, to simply be in the room with women leaders from every discipline and over 100 countries was exhilarating and stimulating. The full centering of women’s voice - governmental representatives, lawmakers, non-profit leaders, inventors, GBV advocates, Tribal Elders, and more – was inspiring all on its own. And then to have the opportunity to learn more about the efforts underway to work for equal justice was energizing and healing. I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity and look forward to sharing the fruits of my engagement with our CEIE community.

I was honored to moderate a conversation, hosted by the Women’s Task Force of the Parliament of the World's Religions: Women, Ethics, and Climate Futures: Reflections on the Global Ethical Stocktake Dialogues. Based on the work of the Center for Earth Ethics and others, the Global Ethical Stocktake is a reflective tool, which brings together ethics, wisdom and religious practice into the conversation of COP30 and the environmental crisis. An interreligious panel responded to this question: What traditions, histories, or practices (cultural, spiritual) from your community teach us to live in greater harmony with nature? The conversation is ongoing, and you can convene a circle conversation of your own. Watch the recording here.

I was also delighted to partner with our colleagues at Joint Learning Initiative on Faith & Local Communities (CEIE Community Fellow 2026) and the Tzu Chi USA Foundation for a session focused on the practice of hope. Practicing Hope: Inner Capacities for Gender Justic in Times of Crisis featured small group conversation, storytelling, and an inspiring, original musical composition from Andromeda Turre. The session was rooted in the Inner Development Goals, which acknowledge hope as an ‘action’ skill, which needs to be practiced and embodied in community. In the session itself, we shared the challenges in our own lives and work that impact gender justice. The stories were as varied as you might imagine. But the threads of hope that provide encouragement and keep each person working for gender justice were similar – community, agency, diversity and courage.

The work of the ensuring gender justice for women and girls globally is ongoing. It takes all of us learning and working together, supporting one another and advocating for just policies and equal opportunity for women and girls. You don’t have to be a woman or girl to do that good work. While the 70th Session is over, I’m already looking forward to next year. I hope you’ll take the time to learn more about CSW and consider the way that you can take hope-filled action on an issue that is important to you and the women and girls in your life!

Gold Medals of Life Are Best

by Robert P. Sellers

Among the many outstanding athletes who rightfully deserved America’s excitement before the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, one young man was a media favorite – figure skater Ilia Malinin.

Ilia’s Sports Heritage

Ilia Malinin is an American competitive figure skater, born in Fairfax, Virginia, in December 2004. His parents are Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov, both former Olympic figure skaters. Baby Ilia was given the masculine inflection of his mother’s surname because his parents felt his father’s name would be too difficult to pronounce. Tatiana won numerous international tournaments and was a ten-time Uzbekistan national champion. Roman skated for Russia before switching to Uzbekistan and was a seven-time Uzbek national champion. Ilia’s maternal grandfather, Valery Malinin, was a skating competitor for the Soviet Union and is currently a professional figure skating coach in Russia. Clearly, Ilia comes from a very talented, supportive and sport-savvy family whose passion for figure skating encouraged him to begin training in 2010 at the age of six.

Ilia’s Competitive Experience

As a child, Ilia preferred playing soccer to practicing for hours in a cold arena, but his grandfather advised patience, assuring his parents, “He'll [gain] his triple jumps, [and then] you won't be able to drag him away. Once the boy committed to the sport, he worked very hard, and his dedication and effort began to be rewarded. He was the 2016 U.S. national juvenile champion at the age of twelve, the 2017 U.S. national intermediate champion at thirteen, and the 2019 U.S. national novice bronze medalist at fifteen. He performed his first quadruple jumps – the toe loop and Salchow – as a sixteen-year-old at the 2020 Skate America competition and soon thereafter acquired the nickname “Quad God.” He is the only skater to successfully execute a fully-rotated quadruple Axel in competition – 4 ½ turns in the air. At the senior level of skating, Ilia has become known for multiple quads planned and executed in his routines – sometimes as many as seven in a single event, and often including extremely difficult quad-quad combinations.

Coming into the 2026 Winter Olympics, Ilia held the world junior record for the men’s short program, free skate, and combined score, along with the senior record for the men’s free skate. He is a four-time U.S. national champion (2023-2026), three-time Grand Prix Final champion (2023-2025), four-time Challenger Series gold medalist (2023-2026), and two-time World champion (2024-2025).

Understandably then, the Quad God was expected to win the individual figure skating gold medal at the Milan Cortina Olympics. He was viewed, in fact, as the “inevitable winner” of the men’s individual gold medal, considered by many experts to be “unbeatable” because of his technical skill. The expectations of his sweeping the Olympic men’s figure skating competition were massive.

Ilia’s Olympic Unraveling

Ilia was not in first place after his short program in the team competition, but he was excellent in the free skate. He beat Shun Sato, a Japanese skater, whose 194.86 total points were bested by Malinin’s 200.03 points, enabling the U.S. to win the team gold medal by a margin of only one point. With the excitement growing and predictions of his coming victory multiplying, Ilia confirmed everyone’s assumptions with an outstanding individual short program. Chris Schleicher – a former competitive figure skater and writer for Slate Magazine, wrote:

After the performance that Malinin threw down in Tuesday’s short program, which staked him to a five-point lead over Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama, I can confidently tell you that he will be the men’s figure skating champion of the Milan Cortina Olympics.

As a figure skating expert, I feel it is my responsibility to tell you that Malinin is unbeatable. On the other hand, I feel a bit like I’m a shipbuilder calling the Titanic unsinkable. We make proclamations, and the gods laugh at us. Yes, yes, and I say this rolling my eyes, “anything is possible.” [But] I have no doubts that Malinin is on his way to becoming an Olympic legend. You won’t want to miss his free skate on Friday, which could be one of the greatest in the history of the sport.

But Ilia’s admirers in the packed arena did not know the young skater was wrestling with self-doubt and was struggling to ignore the pressure everyone had placed on his shoulders. ESPN later reported, “Malinin bailed out of his famed quad axel in the air for his second jump and then unraveled. For someone who had made it look so easy, so effortless, over the past three years, the weight of it all suddenly got to him” The crowd – including some Olympic greats like Simone Biles and Nathan Chen – were stunned. Ilia later related that as he held his opening pose, he was overwhelmed by nerves he could not control. "I just felt like all the ... traumatic moments of my life really just started flooding my head, and there were just so many negative thoughts that just flooded into there," Malinin said. "And I just did not handle it."

The Quad God’s downfall was extremely public, immediately internationally observed. According to ESPN:

Malinin, the two-time reigning world champion who had an unbeaten streak dating to 2023, landed his high-scoring opening quad flip jump but then struggled with the axel jump. There was a successful quad lutz, but he doubled what was a planned quad loop. Malinin soon fell on a quad lutz, preventing him from doing the second jump (a triple toe loop) of the combination.

In just four minutes, the routine, which was assumed to lead him to a gold medal and the top of the victory podium shockingly, put Malinin in 8th place.

Ilia’s Amazing Response

Despite being distraught, heartbroken and embarrassed, Ilia Malinin – barely 21 years old – responded with a maturity many people three or four times his age could not have managed, especially when every single facial expression, body language cue, or spoken or mouthed word was being televised and scrutinized.

As soon as it was evident that Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov had won the gold, Ilia came to him, hugged him, and spoke privately to the young competitor. For Shaidorov, – whom some observers described as awkward and shy when off the ice – receiving that almost instant congratulations from a skater he had never imagined defeating must surely have been life-changing.

Malinin then turned and began walking backstage, perhaps to be alone with his thoughts. But before Malinin could reach the solace of silence and privacy, he had to pass through a narrow passageway where journalists and camera operators were waiting. Jummy Olabanji, from News4 Washington, stopped him and asked, “Ilia, not the outcome that you wanted, but how are you feeling after that skate?” What must Malinin have been thinking at that point, when the pain was still so fresh? He was extremely composed, however, answering: “I don’t know, honestly. It’s a lot to handle. The pressure of the Olympics – it’s really something different. … Mentally, it was a weird feeling, just going into the program. I just had so many thoughts and memories flood right before I got into my starting pose, and I think maybe it overwhelmed me a little bit.”

Despite the constant media attention and repeated questions about Ilia’s disappointing performance, however, when the women’s individual figure skating competition commenced, he was in the crowd cheering for his teammates. The likelihood his appearance in the arena could bring further exposure did not stop him from supporting his friends.

Finally, Ilia was invited to participate in the exhibition gala at the end of all the figure skating competitions. I cannot imagine the concerns he must have had visualizing another fall or failed quad. But the routine he planned was perfectly executed. Even more remarkably, it was very personally revealing. Instead of a sequined costume, he wore a dark sweatshirt and distressed jeans. Skating to “Fear” by NF (Nathan Feuerstein), his choreography portrayed “a bold young man facing immense pressure, constant criticism, and high expectations, and eventually buckling under the weight of it all, falling to his knees and drawing into his hoodie to hide.” It was a raw statement on mental health and resilience and it gave his fellow athletes and the appreciative audience much to contemplate.

Ilia’s True Medal

USA sports columnist, Christine Brennan, in a Good Morning America interview with Michael Strahan, explained she had covered Ilia’s progress for the entire time he has been at the top of his sport. Asked about her reaction to Malinin’s social media post about “fighting invisible battles,” she said, “He is an introspective young man. He is polite and kind. He thinks about answers. We saw it right afterwards when he ran the gauntlet of what we call the mix cell, where he did interview after interview. When have we seen athletes throw their helmet and get angry, and he was so calm and so thoughtful and respectful. Just a class act [in] every way,”

Spectators in the arena and around the world saw this young man acting admirably. He influenced the life of a young, timid competitor from Kazakhstan by affirming and encouraging him. He was kind, respectful, calm and thoughtful to journalists insistent upon interviewing him, even in his moments of greatest distress. He was eager to support his fellow U.S. team members, fully aware that would expose him to further scrutiny. He became a remarkable role model for youngsters around the world who were carefully watching and wanting to imitate him.

To my mind, Ilia Malinin not only comes home with a team gold medal but also returns to George Mason University, to his friends and strangers alike, with a trophy much more valuable. Ilia has earned the respect and admiration of a grateful nation pleased to call him our own. After all, gold medals of life are the very best.

Lessons from Davos

by Robert P. Sellers

It is generally agreed that persons in leadership also function as either good or bad role models. The ways they carry out responsibilities, exercise power, demonstrate wise judgment, listen as well as speak, and serve constituents become teaching moments, especially for the young.

Traditionally, the President of the United States has been an indisputable role model, because of the prominence, visibility, inspiration and admiration of the office. So common is the understanding of the president as a moral example that when one searches the Internet for “the president as a role model,” central aspects of presidential influence immediately appear:

• Moral and Ethical Leader: Historically, the President was expected to be a "number one citizen" demonstrating decency, respect, and morality. A president's character is seen as fundamental, influencing [his] response to crises.

• Influence on Youth: As highly visible public figures, presidents significantly shape the attitudes, values, and ambitions of young people. Positive leadership can inspire, while misconduct can normalize negative behaviors like bullying.

• Symbol of National Unity: The President is expected to represent all Americans, bridging divides, and fostering a sense of community.

Jim Jones, former Attorney General of Idaho and a longtime justice on the state’s Supreme Court, expressed his opinion in a column for the Idaho State Journal. On February 14, 2020, he commented on the impact of a president’s behavior:

As we observe Presidents’ Day this year, it is well to consider the critical role our presidents play in shaping the attitudes and ambitions of America’s young people. Being the most conspicuous public figures of their time, presidents can have a tremendous influence on the future lives of contemporaneous youngsters. It can be for better or for worse.

Jones admitted that President Kennedy changed his life. Although not a Democrat, when he was in college studying to become a civil engineer, the president famously said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Jones was so challenged he switched majors to study political science and earned a commission in the army. After law school, he volunteered to serve in Vietnam as an artillery officer, then entered politics in his home state [Ibid.].

So, what do Americans – especially the young – learn from President Donald Trump’s behavior in Davos at the World Economic Forum? What kind of role model was he? Which lessons about engaging others in the Public Square did Trump teach us as he met with world leaders in Switzerland?

1. Don’t join others as if everyone is expectantly awaiting your participation.

Faisal Islam, economics editor for the BBC, called Trump the “would-be sheriff of the world” who arrived in the Alps amid “high security, high stakes and high tension,” eager to brandish new rules he assumed everyone would follow. As the BBC editor reports, “there was an astonishing scrum to try to get in, with many turned away, even heads of state. The security was unbelievable, not letting even some of the most famous attendees in or out of the hall.”

Crowds and cameras accompany any president in public, but one can assume many presidents grow tired of the constant hoorah. Trump is accustomed to great fanfare upon his arrival anywhere. What he may not recognize, however, is that the applause and flash photography celebrate the office he holds, and not necessarily himself.

Whenever we come to a venue as a teacher or speaker, let us not arrive assuming we are the most important person in the group. An arrogant demeanor can detract from, even cancel, what we say. As we engage others in the Public Square – whether at the office, social club, school, church or neighborhood cookout – we must realize our opinion may be one of several different perspectives in the room, each potentially valuable.

2. Don’t drone on incessantly as if you are the only one with something worth saying.

In a speech lasting more than an hour, Trump disappointed but didn’t surprise. The New Republic summarized:

President Trump delivered yet another rambling, long-winded speech Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, using the massive world stage to rail against windmills, complain for the umpteenth time about how the 2020 election was rigged, reaffirm his desire to seize Greenland from Denmark, and take credit for every good thing in the world. The room was dead silent virtually the entire time [Malcolm Ferguson, “Trump embarrasses all of America in slurred, disjointed Davos speech.”

There were nervous looks when Trump began talking about Greenland, which he repeatedly called Iceland. Some delegates chuckled at a few points in the speech – though it wasn’t clear if they were laughing with Trump or at him. As the speech predictably became a recitation of Trump’s laundry list of accomplishments, people began looking at their watches and some left the room. Finally, well beyond the allotted time for his speech, Trump offered an inane, unpresidential closing, “I’ll see you around” [Ibid.].

In our own Public Squares, we must not use more than our share of the available time, unless we are the invited guest speaker. Even in that case, we should not speak too long. Doing otherwise is disrespectful of other people’s time and schedules, and by doing so, we risk being judged for our arrogance rather than our ideas.

3. Don’t offend others with opposing views like you are playing a zero-sum game.

Trump insulted many of the people in the room and their countries, even though they were America’s allies. He claimed that if it weren’t for the United States, everyone in the hall “would be speaking German” – yet he was in the German-speaking region of Switzerland where almost everybody does speak German. He insulted Greenlanders by calling their home “a piece of ice”. He criticized the speech of Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney – which had received a standing ovation – and insisted that Canada needs the USA, but the US does not need Canada or anything from Canadians [Faisel Islam, BBC, Ibid.].

It is clear that Trump was playing a political game. Philosophers define game theory as, “the theory of the structure of, and the rational strategies for performing in, games or game-like human interactions.” Such games are divided into two types – constant sum games and variable sum games. In constant sum games, the payoff for each player, regardless of who wins, is constant. A “zero-sum game” is a special type of constant sum game in which two participants are opponents in competition or conflict, each trying to earn the same reward; only one can win while the other loses. There are no shared victories or compromises. That is how Donald Trump approaches negotiations or political games. If he wins Greenland, then Denmark must lose, so he diminishes and discounts his opponents to be victorious.

However, when we engage with others in the Public Square, we should listen, search for paths to common benefit, consider the possibility of compromising, and not demand our own priorities as the only way. Let us not resort to name-calling, shaming, or belittling those with opinions different from our own.

4. Don’t use threats to get your way even if that’s better than actually fighting.

The Nation – the oldest continuously-published weekly magazine in the United States and a leading progressive commentary on social justice, environmentalism, and civil rights – published “At Davos, the World watched the Rantings of a Despot.” Journalist Sasha Abramsky wrote:

One year into Trump 2.0, a predatory, imperialist, and increasingly deranged President Trump, has, with his demands that Denmark cede Greenland to the United States, precipitated the most serious rupture of the Western Alliance since the Suez crisis in 1956, when the United States squared off against the United Kingdom, France, and Israel over the future of the canal.

While it is true Trump said he wouldn’t use force to take the Danish territory, he did try to manipulate and control the situation. He reversed his earlier threats, which critics like Gavin Newsom call his acting TACO, or “Trump always chickens out.” He said Denmark was ungrateful because they did not give Greenland to the U.S. after WWII; but he also said that if he did decide to use force, there was nothing anyone could do to stop the U.S. military. As a lifelong bully, Trump acts like a Mafia boss. Like Don Corleone, he feels he is making an offer Denmark can’t refuse.

We ought never enter the Public Square ready to fight. Nor should we insinuate that we might fight if we don’t get our own way. When others disagree, the one who turns on his heel and leaves the discussion in a huff is no different than the child who takes his ball and shuts down the game because he is not automatically chosen as the team captain.

5. Don’t lie to support your arguments because others will learn to doubt whatever you say.

Trump’s speech at Davos, like his other public addresses, contained numerous contested claims and outright falsehoods. The BBC fact-checked the president’s speech. Among Trump’s many innuendos, misrepresentations and lies are these corrected assertions:

• The US did not “give Greenland back” after WWII because it was never our possession to return to Denmark. 

• The US is not paying for “virtually 100%” of Nato’s defense, but around 62%. 

• The US has not received “nothing back from Nato,” because after 9/11 it became the only Nato country to implement Article 5 – obligating every Nato country to aid any Nato country under attack – which required other Nato countries to send troops to aid America’s war against terror. 

• China does not have “zero wind farms,” but it generates more wind energy than any other country. 

• The UK does not “take 92% of North Sea oil revenue,” but only 78% of the profits from their own offshore project. 

• Trump has not “secured $18 trillion worth of investments for the US, because only a $1.4 trillion investment from the UAE over the next ten years is guaranteed.

Trump is a pathological liar, according to many observers, including psychiatrists and ethicists. Fred Wertheimer, American attorney and activist, wrote in Democracy21.org about “Donald Trump and his cult of liars.” He said: 

It’s no secret that … President Donald Trump is a habitual liar. His nonstop lies – about stolen elections, COVID-19, immigrants, and, most recently, the government’s response to hurricanes – have contributed to the enormous divisions in the country, incited violence, cost lives, and threatened our democracy.

According to The Washington Post, Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first presidential term. His second term is no different. His penchant for lying can be compared with an observation by our third president, Thomas Jefferson, who said in 1785: “There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible, and he who permits himself to tell a lie once finds it much easier to do a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him” [Ibid.].

When we enter the Public Square, we must not depend upon lies to make our case. Persons with other views may either immediately recognize our exaggerations, half-truths and blatant lies or will judge and disregard them later. We do others and ourselves serious harm when we do not tell the truth. Furthermore, as persons of faith – followers of any faith tradition – we need to be known as truth-tellers.

Conclusion

There is perhaps no public figure more often watched or heard than the US President. Viewed as the most powerful person in the world, Donald Trump has enormous influence. While he may not admit it, he is modeling bad behavior to a generation of children who in their young lives have never known an honest president.

All of us, however, often enter public spaces. We will likely never become the president of the United States, but we still have the opportunity to influence others by what we say and how we act. As we engage others in the Public Square, let us carefully choose someone to emulate who is respected as a positive role model.

Lessons from Minneapolis: The Grace of Advocacy and Protest

by Rev. Justin Almeida

This last week I participated in the call by MARCH (Multifaith Antiracism Change & Health) for clergy around the United States to gather in support of the “ICE Out of Minnesota: Day of Truth and Freedom.”

A day of advocacy and public protest organized by over 100 groups across the Twin Cities in response to the escalating cruelty and violence perpetrated by ICE and Border Patrol agents. On January 23rd more than 600 clergy from across the country converged on Minneapolis to provide witness and care. Rabbis, Imams, Priests, Buddhists, Unitarian Universalists and others braved, along with tens of thousands of our Minnesota siblings, dangerously freezing temperatures (wind chill as low as -30F) to work in solidarity telling the Trump Administration that terror will not be tolerated any longer. 

I am a Seattle-based Unitarian Universalist minister and board certified hospital chaplain. The theological basis for my answering this call was rooted in many spiritual traditions: the Buddhist desire for the relief of suffering. The Jewish prophetic words of Micah “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” The historical words of Unitarian minister Theodore Parker “the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice.” So many of our human religions have at their core a belief in doing unto others what I would have done to me. 

My role was to provide spiritual care and support for activists and protesters. Gathering in Westminster Presbyterian Church we clergy learned from the Minneapolis community about their experience. Immigrants and neighbors being abducted and flown away. Families torn apart. Indigenous Americans and US citizens being detained and murdered. The reality being that no one; man or woman, queer or straight, immigrant or citizen, was safe. And that these agencies work above and outside the law with impunity. Which is morally and spiritually repugnant. 

What I also experienced was an outpouring of charity, grace, and love of neighbor. The overarching theme was unity across diversity. Leaders, regardless of background and ideology and theology, were adamant that there was no purity test for solidarity. Only that we commit to one another. And that was realized in the sanctuary and in the streets. Minnesota became a shining beacon of what true ecumenical and interreligious cooperation looks like on the front lines of resistance to evil. The active call to dismiss dogma in light of a deeper spiritual truth that “we are all creations of God with inherent worth and dignity.” 

An action I participated in was support for the immigrant church of Dios Habla Hoy. This was on the same day when 100 of my clergy siblings were arrested for protesting the role Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport plays in assisting ICE in flying detainees out of Minnesota. Dios Habla Hoy had been transformed from a non-denominational evangelical church into a food and support hub for the community. Pastor Sergio Amezcua, an immigrant from Mazatlán Mexico (where my grandfather was born), had seen his congregants disappear one by one. People in his community became afraid to go to the grocery store. Terrified to go to work. The church even caring for an infant because their parents had been taken with only the child left behind. 

People began calling the church in search of food and resources because Dios Habla Hoy’s faith in action was to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and welcome the alien. In response, Amezcua reached out to other communities to meet the need. Soon hundreds and then thousands of pounds of food and resources began to arrive. The church organized drivers for delivery since people were afraid to leave their homes. They trained volunteers and drivers on how to spot and respond to armed enforcers. After weeks things began to slow down. And then Rene Good was murdered. 

Once again there was a surge in donations and volunteers surpassing what came before. When my group of 25 clergy arrived in the morning of January 23rd, before the march, people were already packing boxes. We met with the community; heard their voices and their pain; and joined them for hours in moving over 10,000 pounds of food from the church into the community. We sang songs of liberation while we worked. We experienced common-union as we learned where we were from. My co-worker in building cardboard boxes was a UCC minister from Chicago. The minister next to me sorting diapers was a Lutheran priest from Florida. The Rabbi filling the boxes with rice and beans was from Maine. All while more than 100 other volunteers from the Minneapolis community showed up to take our places; as young as 14 and from as far away as India. 

Later at the “ICE OUT” march from The Commons to the Target Center, a rainbow of stoles were scattered throughout the crowded streets. I’ve never experienced ice form on my eyelashes before, or feel my fingers and toes burn with cold. One after another people saw my yellow “Side With Love” stole and asked what church I was with. When I told them I was a UU hospital chaplain from Seattle, every single one broke into tears, thanking me for being there with them. One Minnesotan handing out hand-warmers was a fellow hospital chaplain. She gave me perhaps the strongest embrace I’ve ever felt while asking me to bring the story of Minneapolis back to Seattle. “Don’t forget that we are not alone!” 

Along the route, businesses opened their doors to provide warmth. Individuals in trucks handed out Gatorade and water. A Somali family had made hundreds of sambuusa, piping hot from their restaurant, yelling out “THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! WE ARE WITH YOU! YOU ARE WITH US!” One sign in front of me read: “In Minnesota, we love snow, and we hate ICE!” A fellow protestor told me that in Minnesota, the phrase “ice out” is common in the springtime when the ice over the lakes melts and breaks apart, which signals the hope for the transformation of Spring and warmer, better days ahead. 

I didn’t know this when I boarded my plane on the morning of January 24th, but Alex Pretti was murdered 8 minutes away from where I was staying and an hour after I left my room. When I landed in Seattle my phone blew up with the news of his death. Colleagues still on the ground immediately organizing in response. Minneapolis staying resilient and strong. I believe what I experienced in Minnesota was similar to what I experienced at Standing Rock in 2016 – our ancestors calling from creation to honor their lives by marching not against our siblings, but to remind them of our shared humanity. 

That afternoon in solidarity with my colleagues and the community I had left only hours before, I and another UU chaplain who had joined me in Minneapolis led a prayer vigil in the Colombia City neighborhood. And we prayed; we cried; we said their names: Rene Good. Alex Pretti. And committed to one another to show up for our neighbors and community. Just like Minneapolis has shown. 

Three lessons I bring back from the Land of a Thousand Lakes are these: 

1: We need every single person in this. Which means we have an obligation to make sure we are engaging in care for ourselves in a way that allows up to show up when we need to. This means sleeping, eating, meaningful relationships, activities of joy and meaning, stress reduction, therapy, however we need. In the Abrahamic scriptures, even God rests – and so does creation. 

2: Everybody has something to contribute. It doesn't have to be large. It does have to be intentional. As we're able, learn about what is going on. Connect with organizations and groups that need assistance and see what works. Don't reinvent the wheel. Don't overextend. Don’t let difference divide. Stay united! In Hindu philosophy, justice is deeply aligned with Dharma which includes social responsibilities of caring for our community. 

3: Finally, we are not alone. What we are going through is understood by so many around the nation. It's easy to feel isolated and alone when experiencing fear and overwhelm. The truth is, we all have our shared experience from our perspectives. We can use our moral anger, fear, outrage, compassion, hope, and determination in service to each other. We people of good will and moral conscience outnumber those of malicious and misguided intent. In pagan traditions, all life is interconnected with a deep belief that what we put out into the world will return to us in abundance. 

May we continue to grab ahold of the arc of history, lending our weight to holy gravity, and collectively bend it toward justice. For ourselves and for our future. 

Peace always, 

Rev. Justin Almeida 

O Horrid Night, the Guns are Fiercely Blazing

by Robert P. Sellers

During this happy season, as people of many religions have anticipated observing their special holy days and holiday traditions, it is horrific that for some people, joy and laughter, reverence and contemplation, nostalgia and hope were violently replaced by fear and crying.

Students, anticipating the Christmas holidays, had perhaps eased the tension of their final exams by attending concerts and chapel services commemorating the birth of Jesus; Jewish families and individuals, gathered to celebrate the miracle of Hanukkah, were enjoying a festive day on the beach with friends and fellow believers. They, along with good people of many other faiths who heard the terrible news, had their celebrations and holiday plans abruptly interrupted.

Some families, in truth, will never again associate this time of year with unbridled joy, for suddenly there will be “empty chairs at empty tables.” In the words of the poignant lyric from Les Misérables: “There’s a grief that can’t be spoken. There’s a pain goes on and on. Empty chairs at empty tables. Now my friends are dead and gone.”

This stark and ugly reality broke the silence in Providence, Rhode Island, on December 13, 2025. It was then that a lone gunman walked into the Barus & Holley School of Engineering building on the second day of fall exams and shot and killed 2 and injured 9 others gathered for a review session of topics for an economics final exam.

Ella Cook, known for her “brave, bold and kind heart,” was a sophomore, the vice president of the Brown University chapter of College Republicans and an active member of her church in Birmingham, Alabama. MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, described as “kind, funny, smart and a role model with big dreams,” was a freshman with dual citizenship in the United States and Uzbekistan who had a reputation for always being willing to help others in need [“Who were the students killed at Brown University. Cook was interested in French and Francophone history and culture while Umurzokov was hoping to become a neurosurgeon. Responding to the tragedy, Brown University president Christina Paxson said: "These were two young people whose amazing promise was extinguished too soon. Both were brilliant and beloved – as members of our campus community, but even more by their friends and families” [Leah Sarnoff and Meredith Deliso, “’Both were brilliant and beloved’: Brown University students identified as victims in campus shooting.”

On December 14 at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, a father and son opened automatic rifle fire onto a crowd of Jews attending a ceremony marking the beginning of Hanukkah. Fifteen people were killed – including a Holocaust survivor and a ten-year-old girl – while 42 others were wounded and rushed to local hospitals. Among the dead were Rabbi Eli Schlanger, a British clergyman who helped plan the event at the park, as well as Rabbi Yaakov Levitan, well-known for organizing special Jewish observances around Sydney. Both men were friendly, popular leaders. This act of antisemitism was the worst mass shooting in Australia since the 1996 Port Arthur carnage.

These two fatal gun attacks, carried out within just a few hours of one another on opposite sides of the globe, traumatized the joy of Christmas preparations and marred the wonder of a Hanukkah remembrance. More than that, these acts of terror forever altered the lives of their victims, loved ones and friends.

Set in this context, it is unimaginable that one of our beloved holiday classics, 1983’s A Christmas Story, tells of Ralphie Parker, a boy in 1940 who longs to find under the Christmas tree an “official Red Ryder, carbine action, 200-shot, range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock.” The successful comedy made BB guns a favorite gift for many Christmases to come and taught a generation of youngsters that guns are fun. The movie has been aired, marathon-style, on TNT since 1997 and on TBS since 2004. Remarkably, “in 2012, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.’”

But while a movie celebrating toy guns may seem incongruous in today’s gun-crazed nation, at least the story was fanciful and funny. Not so with another favorite “Christmas movie” – 1988’s Die Hard. The violent story concerns a terrorist takeover of a Los Angeles skyscraper on Christmas Eve, and the actions of police detective John McClane to eliminate the threat and kill all the terrorists, including the leader, Hans Gruber: “Yippee Ki Yay.” Beginning with friendship and laughter, but turning to shock and murder, the movie has many cringe-worthy moments – where walking on broken glass with bare feet is simply one of the least bothersome. This movie is neither fanciful nor funny, yet it too is a classic, and because the story line takes place at Christmastime, it is judged by many to be a holiday film. But it doesn’t involve a nonviolent resolution, but reinforces the notion that violent retribution is the best – and maybe the only – solution to threatening situations.

America has a long history with guns. But BB guns aside, we do not have a problem with Revolutionary War flintlock muskets, Colt single-action pistols or Winchester rifles of the Old West, or even Prohibition Era tommy guns. Our problem is now 9mm pistols with high-capacity magazines, like the one used at Brown University, or rapid-fire shotguns like those used at Bondi Beach, Australia. Americans’ current gun obsession is with semi-automatic rifles and pistols, the kinds used in the majority of America’s mass killings.

In November 2021, a 15-year-old boy in Oxford, Michigan, allegedly opened fire on his fellow students and killed four and wounded others. Within days, in early December, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., posted his family’s holiday message on social media, featuring a photograph of himself, his wife, and each of his five children, posing in front of the Christmas tree and each holding rifles. Not to be outdone, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., posted a similar photo of herself and her four young boys, each child grasping a long gun.

In the almost 30 years since the Port Arthur shooting, Australia was seen as a world leader in gun control, with its strict gun laws and few mass shootings. But the growth of gun sales has Australian lawmakers concerned. There are now 3.1 million registered guns owned by 27.4 million Australians. But compare that to the United States, where we have had 135 mass shootings since 1996, with some 500 million guns owned by 343 million Americans.

After the Bondi Beach shooting, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised to tighten the country’s already strict gun laws. And, after the Brown University shooting, President Trump didn’t tighten gun laws, but instead tightened immigration laws and suspended the green card lottery program. He also praised Brown University and not the murdered students.

He said: “I want to just pay my respects to the people, unfortunately two are no longer with us, Brown University, nine injured and two are looking down on us right now from Heaven. Brown University, great school, really one of the greatest schools anywhere in the world. Things can happen.”

As we move into the New Year, maybe around the public square we might be bold enough to initiate conversations about our gun fascination and mass shooting addiction. If we decided not to talk about who is dating whom in Hollywood or which Division 1 sports team is doing well, could we engage this difficult but critical topic which might help to heal our nation?

One of the most beautiful sacred songs of the Christmas season is “O Holy Night.” Originally titled Cantique de Noël, the lyrics are based on a French-language poem written in 1847 and translated into its English version by John Sullivan Dwight. The opening lines are “O Holy Night, the stars are brightly shining.”

Perhaps it is not inconceivable to rewrite those meaningful lyrics to produce a dirge: “O horrid night, the guns are fiercely blazing.”

Will it ever end? If not now, when?

Huston Smith on Public Virtues and Vices

by Robert P. Sellers

Huston Cummings Smith (1919-2016) was an American professor and author, in my opinion the greatest world religionist of the 20th century.

His book, The World’s Religions (originally titled The Religions of Man), was reprinted 65 times and had sold more than 3 million copies by 2017. It was my incredible honor to meet Smith at an international conference in Montreal in 2006, organized around the theme, “The World’s Religions after 9/11.” I wrote about the impact for me of meeting this remarkable leader in a 2017 article in The Interfaith Observer titled “Huston Smith and the Parliament of the World’s Religions: Heroic Interfaithing.”

Having grown up in China, the son of Methodist missionaries, Smith began to admire the world’s great religious traditions, although he remained a faithful Methodist Christian all his life. During his academic career, he held teaching posts at Washington University in St. Louis, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Syracuse University and, in retirement, the University of California at Berkeley. While his primary field of research, writing and teaching was the world’s belief systems, Smith was also a highly respected philosopher.

HUSTON SMITH AND BILL MOYERS

Bill Moyers was the eleventh White House Press Secretary from 1965-1967, during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. For more than five decades, he was a broadcast journalist who interviewed hundreds of prominent icons of politics, business, religions, philosophy, science, and culture. He received a Peabody Award, the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and an honorary doctorate from the American Film Institute. Perhaps his most watched interview, however, was his 1996 five-part PBS series with Huston Smith called “The Wisdom of Faith.” The episodes covered Hinduism and Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity and Judaism, Islam, and Smith’s personal philosophy of religions. The central theme which Smith stressed with Moyers was that universal truths can be found across the major faith traditions.

THE HUSTON SMITH READER 

Jeffery Paine, author and editor, worked with the esteemed philosopher of religions to produce The Huston Smith Reader (2012). In his introduction, Paine tells his readers about Smith as a teacher. He writes: 

The most important thing Huston discovered was that there are radically different ways of being. Different people have contrary emotional responses to the same social stimulus; they give the same phenomenon opposite interpretations and then mistake that interpretation for the objective world. Venturing beyond Judeo-Christianity, Huston was amazed: all people believe alike even less than they all physically look alike. Dissimilar predispositions had proliferated into divers paths to salvation. In Hinduism, for instance, there are four basic human temperaments, hence there are four kinds of yogis – [‘methods of training designed to lead to integration or union of the person’]. There are Karma yogis (e.g., Gandhi) who attain liberation through action, and there are bhakti yogis (e.g., Saint Francis or Mother Teresa) who have great feeling and love their way to salvation. Raja yogis (e.g., the Buddha) meditate their way there, while jnana yogis reach the ultimate goal through intellect or vision. Thus Huston identified himself as a jnana yogi, somebody who could use his intelligence, his teaching and writing, to help re-sacramentalize the world.

The book, as Smith organized and Paine edited it, is what the editor calls “a grand tour.” It is comprised of five “books” or sections of Smith’s essays, each leading logically into the next. Smith’s 23 essays and conclusion had all been published before, enabling Smith and Paine to collect the religionist’s most important thoughts for a new generation of readers. 

“THE SACRED DIMENSIONS OF EVERYDAY LIFE” 

Book 2, or section 2, designated “The Sacred Dimensions of Everyday Life,” includes an essay with this same title – one published in 1975, soon after Smith had concluded his 15 years as professor of philosophy at MIT. The essay is comprised of an interview between him and professor of educational philosophy, Jeffrey Kane. 

Midway through the interview, Kane asks Smith: “Would you say that there are certain universals that one would find through many of the world’s religions?” This is precisely the point at which Smith’s observations become important for those of us who gather at the Public Square. Smith, the jnana yogi, responds to Kane’s query in a way that potentially could help to “resacramentalize the world.” In part, he answers: “Yes. Two levels need to be distinguished here. The one which is the more explicit is what we should do, but beyond that is the question of the kind of person we should try to become.”

APPLYING THE WISDOM OF HUSTON SMITH 

As we gather at the Square, perhaps with persons radically different from ourselves, we need to remember that being is more important than doing. Who I am and who you are is more significant to our living together than what I do and what you do. How strange, indeed, that the first and perhaps primary question we ask a stranger is “What do you do for a living?” A better question would always be “Who are you trying to be or become in this life?” 

Continuing, Smith explained:

Now, on the first level, what we should do, there are four problem areas in human life that have to be dealt with. These are violence, wealth, the spoken word, and sex. In lower forms of life these problem areas are monitored quite adequately by instinct. [A human being], though, is an animal without instincts, so these problem areas can get out of hand. Moral precepts are devised to secure appropriate, life-sustaining behavior in the four areas, and they are remarkably uniform across cultures: don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t commit adultery. These are the basic guidelines concerning human behavior.

Each of these four problem areas can impinge upon our meetings with the Other at the public square. Sometimes, because of disagreement, one’s voice reveals rising anger, so violent words, even actions, can result. Socioeconomic differences between dialogue participants can create distance even before the first words are spoken. Untruths or half-truths about one’s own perspective, or the position advocated by one’s opponent, can hinder communication. Judgments about the gender or sexuality of the person with whom one speaks can destroy the possibility of agreement or compromise. These four basic challenges to productive life together – similarly identified in all the world’s major religions – can often be seen lurking about the Square.  

Smith turns to the other level of universal experience: 

As for the kind of person we should try to become, the virtues point the way. In the West, these are commonly identified as humility, charity, and veracity. Humility has nothing to do with low self-esteem; it is to recognize oneself as one and fully one but not more than one, just as charity is to look upon your neighbor as fully one (with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto) just as you are one. Veracity begins with not being deceitful, but it ends in the sublime objectivity that sees things exactly as they are, undistorted by our subjective preferences. These are the virtues in the West. Asia, interestingly, has the same three [virtues] but enters them by the back door, so to speak, by [emphasizing] the three poisons – traits that keep the virtues from flourishing in us. The three [poisons] are greed (the opposite of humility), hatred (the opposite of charity), and delusion (the opposite of veracity). To the extent that we expunge these three poisons, the virtues will flood our lives automatically. The convergence of East and West in these areas is remarkable.

Huston Smith was virtuous. Humility, charity and veracity marked the character of this gentle, wise man. Having read Smith and admired him for decades, I feel certain that his summary of how to become a better person can be trusted. I am convinced that pursuing or nurturing the traits of humility, charity and veracity in our lives will help us to respond appropriately to the troublesome temptations of violence, wealth, the spoken word and sex. If we can resist drinking the poisons of greed, hatred and delusion, then virtue can grow in our lives. 

Early in his life, he decided that what he was going to do with his life was to share his fascination with the beauty and wisdom of the world’s great religious systems with as many people as he could. Just as early in his life, he also decided that the beliefs of his missionary parents – which had begun to undergird his own vibrant faith – would shape the person he would become. Smith practiced these virtues which he identified for so many years that his enviable responses to life’s challenges became instinctual.  

CONCLUSION 

The ways that Smith treated others was exemplary. Although he had traveled the world, was personal friends with Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, the Dalai Lama and other leading philosophical and religious figures, was the author of acclaimed books, had taught at famous universities and had been given multiple awards and commendations, he was approachable, friendly and humble. 

He spent a lifetime engaging with others in the Public Square. Regardless of whether they were Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Native Americans, fellow Christians or persons who walked other religious paths, this professor approached them with genuine interest and respect. It didn’t matter if they were famous scientists, philosophers or academics from multiple other fields of study, or freshmen in his university classes, he listened carefully and responded honestly to all. He was consistently kind and soft-spoken, debating complex issues at one of the high-profile universities where he was a professor, discussing life with seniors in his retirement center or envisioning the future with his own great-grandchildren who sat next to him on the floor.  

When I grow up, I want to be just like Huston Smith. 

Dialoguing at the Square

by Robert P. Sellers

Debating opposing ideas in contemporary America is a growing industry. It has become much more than a school extracurricular activity or community service club program.

CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN DEBATES

Much debate today, not surprisingly, is political.

Charlie Kirk was an extremely popular “political activist, entrepreneur and media personality” among conservative young Americans prior to his tragic assassination in September 2025, and perhaps even more so afterwards. Kirk founded the student organization Turning Point USA in 2012 and was its executive director until his untimely death. TPUSA has strong connections with the MAGA movement and collects thousands of donations from conservative donors. In 2020 alone, Turning Point had more than $39 million in revenue. Kirk’s daily three-hour radio talk show, aimed at Generation Z, was “downloaded between 500,000 and 750,000 times each day in 2024” [Ibid.]. He was best known, however, for his visits to college campuses, where he would publicly debate students to persuade them to embrace conservative values, policies and candidates. That’s what he was doing at Utah Valley University when he was murdered.

Dean Withers is a liberal political commentator, content creator and live streamer on Tik Tok, X, Facebook and You Tube. The 21-year-old loves to surround himself with a circle of conservative opponents, present them with a series of political claims – for example, “Democrats are more patriotic than Republicans” – and invite them, one at a time, to join him at a table in the center of the circle for a brief, timed debate. Withers demonstrates a ready grasp of facts supporting his claims, which often makes it difficult for those opposing his views to counter his arguments. The New York Times suggests that he may be one of the Democrats’ “Tik Tok Bro Whisperers” who, like Kirk, desires to win the support of young, male followers. His most famous debate with 20 MAGA followers – recorded on Jubilee, a Los Angeles-based media company which specializes in facilitating debates about social issues – has had more than 10 million views. Withers also has millions of followers across his many platforms, with some 4.5 million on Tik Tok alone.

Besides politics, debates about religion and God are prevalent today as well, resurrecting a stream of sometimes combative confrontations that has ebbed and flowed throughout the centuries, but which has come to life again in contemporary society.

Alex O’Connor is a 26-year-old English public speaker, writer, social media figure and graduate of Oxford University who, as a self-identified atheist, loves to debate theists about philosophy and theology. On his video channel called the “CosmicSkeptic,” he has interviewed noted atheist authors Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. In a format similar to the one used by Dean Withers, O’Connor has faced 25 encircling Christians to argue the existence of God. One of his claims in his own Jubilee debate was “suffering makes God’s existence unlikely” – a reference to the classic theodicy question. A more famous British discussion of theodicy featured Stephen Fry – actor, comedian, humanist and atheist – and John Lennox – mathematician, bioethicist, lay theologian and retired Oxford professor who has earned doctorates in three academic fields. Less scholarly is the work of Allie Beth Stuckey, a wife and mother who hosts a podcast called “Relatable” where she analyzes news, culture and theology from a conservative Christian perspective. Again, using the same format at Withers and O’Connor, Stuckey sits surrounded by progressive Christians who debate her various claims, such as “The Bible says that marriage is only between one man and one woman.”

Religious debates between people of different faiths are also common. These can be academic discussions on university campuses or in public fora, exploring two or more approaches to common dilemmas, such as the wealth gap or climate change. Alternately, such disputes might be apologetic in nature, defending one’s personal religion and refuting the other’s. Or, the disagreements might be personal exchanges, occurring in less formal settings among friends or acquaintances.

One incident of formal interreligious discussion took place in 2012 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City – a panel moderated by Professor John Esposito of Georgetown University on the topic “People of the Book: Muslims, Jews and Christians.” Three distinguished teachers – a Christian from Oxford University, a Jew from the University of Southern California and a Muslim from Smith College – engaged the topic before an appreciative audience.

In all these various debates in the public square, dialogue was being attempted. The same can be said for any conversations, however pleasant or contentious, that occur at the locus of public opinion – across the conference stage, social media platform, dinner table or backyard fence.

WHAT IS DIALOGUE?

Since my career has been spent in both practical and academic arenas of religion rather than politics, my understanding of the meaning and best practices of dialogue is drawn from my more than five decades of Christian and interreligious relationships and interactions. I have been an ordained minister for 50+ years – engaging fellow Christians primarily in North America and Asia – but I have also been involved in the interreligious movement for at least a quarter century. I confess it has been my work alongside persons of other religious traditions which has most stirred my passions. I share these comments about dialogue because I have discovered them to lead to authentic friendships and cooperative partnerships.

In 1971, the World Council of Churches, based in Geneva, Switzerland, formed a sub-unit on Dialogue with People of Living Faiths and Ideologies, chaired by Indian theologian Stanley Samartha, and later by Sri Lankan minister Wesley Ariarajah. The sub-unit they led has contributed greatly to the beneficial practice of dialogue, both religious and otherwise [See Martin Forward, Inter-religious Dialogue: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2001), 11]. For the global ecumenical Church to recognize that we live in a multireligious world where it matters how people of various faiths relate to one another was a highly significant moment in modern Christian history.

Professor Martin Forward notes that “dialogue” is often contrasted with “monologue,” suggesting the best dialogicians listen to their conversation partners with respect and genuine interest, rather than simply or solely talking or airing their own viewpoints. He explains that the Greek prefix in the word is “dia” and not “di.” The word is not “di-logue.” “Di” is the Greek prefix meaning “two,” which is how one typically understands this process as the back and forth speaking of two or more persons about their individual perspectives. But “dia” is a preposition which means “through.” Thus, says Forward, “dia-logue” signifies worldviews being argued through to significant conclusions. It involves a much more consequential encounter., … [where] the conclusions [the participants endorse may] be modified or even changed in the context of listening to others” [Ibid., 12].

WHY IS DIALOGUE IMPORTANT?

James Heisig, the director of the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture in Japan, and an expert in the relations between two great missionary religions – Buddhism and Christianity, declares that the time for religious conquests of other faith traditions is past. According to his view, the spread of Buddhism along the Silk Road beginning in the first and second centuries, or the global expansion of the Christian world in the 18th and 19th centuries, for example, cannot be replicated today. He writes, in Dialogues at One Inch above the Ground:

Hopes of winning the whole world over to a single religious organization still linger from the past, but they ring shallow and out of key with the religious consciousness that has taken shape in the twentieth century and [has propelled] us into the next millennium. The interreligious dialogue that has come to flower over the past twenty years among world religions … has been instrumental in re-directing religious faith away from the dream of redrawing the religious geography of the world, and towards the dream of cultivating insights and virtues suited to coexistence in a religiously plural world [James W. Heisig, Dialogues at One Inch above the Ground (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2003), 107].

It was Hans Küng, Swiss Catholic priest and professor of ecumenical theology at Tübingan University in Germany, who in 1996 published Christianity: Essence, History and Future – one of the more than 70 books he wrote or edited during his career. That book contains the famous assertion of Küng’s which he frequently referenced until the end of his life: “No peace among the nations without peace among the religions. No peace among the religions without dialogue between the religions” [Hans Küng, Christianity: Essence, History and Future (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 1996)].

Dialogue can help people of different religions and ideologies begin to treat one another as neighbors and friends. Whether they are atheists, Baha’is, Buddhists, Christians, Confucians, Daoists, Hindus, Indigenous ritualists, Jains, Jews, Muslims, New Thought adherents, Pagans, Secular Humanists, Shinto followers, Sikhs, Spiritualists, Unitarians or Zoroastrians, followers of these diverse paths can learn to live together peacefully.

It is not a matter of developing toleration for others, however, where one simply allows another to occupy nearby space. Rather, peacemaking demands personal humility, careful preparation, patient deliberation and mutual respect.

Norman Rockwell was an iconic American painter and illustrator who celebrated American life in his art. Following President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address, Rockwell completed a series of four oil paintings in 1943 called the Four Freedoms. The one illustrating freedom of worship depicts the faces of eight individuals – men and women, racially different, perhaps representing diverse religions, each engaged in prayer – all facing in the same direction. In another painting, reflecting Rockwell’s concept of freedom of speech, a young man is standing to speak in what might be a small New England town hall meeting. On either side of this speaker, who wears an old jacket and work shirt, are seated two older men in coats and ties. Their facial expressions show that they are carefully listening to the younger, perhaps less formally-educated, neighbor. The paintings depict important principles of community best practices: joining, across differences, in the common task of doing sacred and unifying work, seriously engaging in both speaking and listening [Gustav Niebuhr, Beyond Tolerance: Searching for Interfaith Understanding in America (New York: Viking, 2008), 53-54].

PRINCIPLES OF DIALOGUE

In 1977, a World Council of Churches conference in Chiang Mai, Thailand, developed a document called “Dialogue in Community.” This document became the basis for the first set of guidelines, or principles, produced in 1979 by the World Council, titled Guidelines on Dialogue with People of Living Faiths and Ideologies. Translated into many languages, the statement contained four principles of dialogue:

1. “Dialogue should proceed in terms of people of other faiths, rather than of theoretical impersonal systems.” Engage your dialogue partner as a person, rather than addressing, merely intellectually, their religion, political agenda or philosophical position; keep the conversation on a person-to-person basis.

2. “Dialogue can be welcomed as a way of obedience to the commandment of the Decalogue: ‘You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.’” Tell the truth about your dialogue partner and the beliefs he or she espouses.

3. “Dialogue … is a fundamental part of Christian service within community.” Treat your dialogue partner with respect, as a neighbor to be known instead of an enemy to be defeated.

4. “The relationship of dialogue gives opportunity for authentic witness.” Confess your own faith without manipulating your fellow pilgrim or denigrating his or her tradition. [Kenneth Cracknell, In Good and Generous Faith: Christian Responses to Religious Pluralism (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2005), 100].

To these official principles for dialogue attributed to the World Council of Churches, I add the following suggestions drawn from my own experience over several decades of interreligious friendships and work:

5. Enter into dialogue when both you and your partner have decided you wish to converse about a particular topic. Honor your dialogue partner’s right to choose when to debate an idea or practice, instead of forcing the conversation upon him or her because you have something you want to say.

6. Listen respectfully to what your dialogue partner is saying. Remember that genuine conversation with your dialogue partner requires both honest speaking and careful listening, knowing that the times when your partner is speaking are not simply opportunities for you to be thinking about your next line of argument.

7. Go into the dialogue with open-mindedness, being willing to change your own mind if you are convinced of the truth of your partner’s position. Recognize that entering a dialogue with your mind already made up, convinced your partner can teach you nothing, dooms the dialogue to failure before it even begins.

8. Earn the right to share your views in dialogue because of the neighborly ways you have acted toward your partner before you ever sit down to converse. Recall the familiar maxim that people don’t care what you know until they know that you care.

CONCLUSION

In contemporary America – where political opponents have become enemies to hate, and persons of faith traditions different from our own may be seen as dangerous strangers to fear, it is important that in the public square we learn how to dialogue with others. Screaming, belittling, name-calling, lying, exaggerating, berating, interrupting, humiliating, or shutting down are not ways that facilitate neighborliness or build peace. Comparing the best of our own tribe with the worst of our partner’s community is dishonest and unfair.

Recognizing the nature and importance of dialogue is important in our current society, which is torn by partisan ideas about politics and religion. Embracing and practicing the principles of good dialogue will not only make us more proficient debaters, but also can help us become less contentious persons, more amiable conversationalists and – most important – better human beings. Dialoguing in the public square is almost a required activity in our society. When we choose to debate, I hope we will remember that dialogue is a freedom and privilege which democratic society both allows and promotes.

Seeking Vengeance is Weak

by Robert P. Sellers

At Charlie Kirk’s Memorial Service, his widow Erika Kirk – with great emotion – said: “I forgive [that young man who took Charlie’s life]. On the cross our Savior said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ That man, that young man, I forgive him. I forgive him because it was what Christ did.” The massive crowd rose to their feet, applauding Erika’s generous display of personal forgiveness. CNN reported:

It was called a memorial, but what unfolded in Arizona was unlike anything the United States had seen before. … [It was] a political rally, a spiritual revival, and a state funeral all rolled into one. … President Trump called [Charlie Kirk] an American martyr. … This was another instance where Trump ignited fire.

VENGEANCE INSTEAD OF FORGIVENESS

The president, who spoke soon after Erika, did not talk about forgiving his political enemies. “I am sorry, Erika,” he said before contradicting her. “[Charlie] did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them. That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. … I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them.”

Asked why the president’s message was so different from Erika’s, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt explained that the president was just being “authentically himself.” She concluded, “I think that’s why millions of Americans across the country love him and support him, including Erika Kirk.”

Leavitt’s response was perhaps more revealing than she intended when she told the journalist that Trump was being “authentically himself.” Indeed, being hateful and wishing harm on those who oppose him is exactly who the president has repeatedly proven himself to be. Maybe he has sought revenge against his enemies for so many years that the habit of retribution is now impossibly ingrained, rendering him incapable of showing forgiveness to another.

A PERSONAL CAMPAIGN OF RETRIBUTION

The most recent target to feel the threat of presidential retribution is James Comey, the former FBI director whom Trump has hated ever since the FBI launched an investigation of possible Russian ties to the 2016 campaign. After pressuring Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute Comey and his other political enemies, the president fired interim U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert for refusing to seek an indictment of Comey because of insufficient evidence. He then replaced Siebert with Lindsey Halligan, one of his former personal attorneys. Despite having no previous prosecutorial experience, she somehow succeeded in securing a grand jury indictment against Comey, charging him with lying to Congress and obstructing its work. The charges, if proven, could send the FBI director to prison for up to five years. Trump has claimed Comey’s indictment is about justice, not revenge, stating that he is one of “the sick, radical people” on the left and “they can’t get away with it.”

Journalist Rachel Leingang, writing for The Guardian, comments about Trump’s campaign of retaliation:

Comey is not the first person to be targeted by Trump, who promised on the campaign trail that he would retaliate against his political enemies and has spent his first year in office doing just that. …

A host of people, including a former president and other high-ranking officials, have seen their security clearances revoked, and some have had secret service security details withdrawn. He has gone after entire law firms and universities, issuing rightwing demands and extracting free legal work or policy changes on campuses.

He has also targeted specific people, claiming they have committed crimes and directing his administration to investigate them. Some have been called out by name in presidential memos.

Trump claims he has “a list” of political opponents against whom he wants revenge. Those “enemies” include Leticia James, the New York Attorney General; Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor; Gavin Newsom, Democratic governor of California; Gen. Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; John Bolton, former National Security Advisor under Trump; John Brennan, former CIA director under President Obama; Jack Smith, special counsel who investigated Trump for several federal crimes; Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader; and Sen. Adam Schiff, who led an impeachment proceeding against Trump and served on the January 6 Committee. Others in Trump’s crosshairs are former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama; Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent in the 2016 presidential election; late-night comedians like Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Seth Meyers; television networks and especially their news departments, as well as journalists like Jonathan Karl, ABC’s White House correspondent – whom Trump feels are not favorable to him.

MSNBC, one of those networks Trump would like to force off the airwaves, discusses the surprising similarity between James Comey and Jimmy Kimmel. Symone Sanders Townsend writes:

Other than their first names, Jimmy Kimmel and James Comey have little in common.

But the late-night talk show host and the former FBI director are both in the news [recently] because President Donald Trump decided they were his enemies and sought retribution.

In reality, both were just doing their jobs. Kimmel made jokes at the president’s expense, much like he did with the other three presidents since his show started. Comey refused the president’s requests in his first term to undermine the FBI’s traditional independence.

Neither man set out to be political, but Trump’s conduct has made them unlikely figureheads in a growing pro-democracy movement. Their stance isn’t about opposing the president as a person; it’s about resisting efforts that threaten free speech, the rule of law and the institutions that safeguard American democracy.

IS SEEKING REVENGE SIMPLY AMERICAN?

Merriam-Webster, recognized as “America’s most trusted dictionary,” defines “revenge” as a verb, meaning “to avenge (oneself or another) usually by retaliating in kind or degree” or “to inflict injury in return for” and as a noun, meaning “a desire for vengeance or retribution” or “an act or instance of retaliating in order to get even.” The president is driven by revenge, both as an action and an act, a verb and a noun. During his campaign, he gave full warning that revenge was on his mind and in his heart.

As one “democracy watchdog” has reported,

At a political conference in Maryland two years ago, Trump told hundreds of his supporters that he would be a tool of vengeance should they return him to the White House.

“I am your retribution,” Trump said, before repeating it again for emphasis.

Trump’s now returned to the White House, and he is fulfilling his promise. …

The use by Trump of the massive resources of federal law enforcement against his political opponents threatens fair elections and aims to intimidate public officials out of using their positions to hold Trump accountable. As such, it represents perhaps his most chilling move yet to undermine democracy.

Seeking revenge is an accepted theme in American culture, not only in times of national sorrow – for example, following 9/11 – but also in our cultural amusements. Two movies illustrate the popular acceptance of getting even, The Brave One (2007) and John Wick: Chapter 1 (2014).

The Brave One “stars Jodie Foster as Erica Bain, a New York City radio host whose fiancé is beaten to death by criminals. Terrified for her safety, she buys a pistol and undergoes a personality transformation, becoming a vigilante.” In John Wick: Chapter 1, “a legendary assassin (Keanu Reeves) retired from his violent career after marrying the love of his life. Her sudden death leaves John in deep mourning. When [a] sadistic mobster [and his men] steal John's prized car and kill the puppy which was a last gift from his wife, John unleashes the remorseless killing machine within and seeks vengeance.”

How is it, I wonder, that many Christians, while committed to Jesus as the Prince of Peace, have nonetheless helped to popularize these movies which are based upon themes of vengeance? Could it be that our national tendency to equate strength with revenge has programmed us to respond positively to such episodes of retaliation? More concerning, perhaps, when the example of retaliation is real and not simply fictional the damage to our common psyches is even greater, numbing our sensitivity to violence and pain.

RETALIATION AND THE PUBLIC SQUARE

Karoline Leavitt justified Donald Trump’s remarks at Charlie Kirk’s memorial by saying that “millions of Americans across the country love him and support him.” Looking at the stark divisions in our country and how political disagreements so often spiral into hate speech and even violence, one must ask how the president’s commitment to seeking revenge is harming us all.

During his presidential campaigns, Christian supporters of Trump would sometimes say that “we are not electing a pastor-in-chief.” Famously, in a 2016 interview with NPR, Robert Jeffress – the senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas – exclaimed: “I’ve said I want the meanest, toughest SOB I can find to protect America. And so that’s why Trump’s tone doesn’t bother me.”

Pastor Jeffress must be very satisfied.

For generations, statements of our presidents have been used to help shape the behavior of American school children, as well as adults. Though it is a fictional account of young George Washington cutting down his father’s cherry tree boy’s admission of guilt, claiming “I cannot tell a lie,” has been used to encourage youngsters to be honest. Teddy Roosevelt inspired moral action when he said, "It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed." During the devastation of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt promoted courage with the words: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." John F. Kennedy stirred hearts to dream of service when, in his Inaugural Address, he suggested, "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country." In a speech to school children, Barack Obama encouraged self-determination with the admonition: "Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up ... [for] here in America, you write your own destiny.”

It is difficult to put Trump’s assertion, “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them,” alongside these others, but his rhetoric motivates behaviors as well. This president’s words and actions have emboldened some people in the Public Square to be hateful too. His unbridled emotions have caused many of his admirers to become unrestrained also – for example, his encouragement for followers on January 6 to march on the Capitol.

Perhaps the words of another national leader can be instructive. He was not wealthy, yet his peasant’s loincloth and shawl, made of homespun cloth, and his simple spinning wheel galvanized the loyalties of the rural poor. He was not a warrior, but was a peacemaker – nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in five different years. He did not escape the assassin’s gun, dying – with hands folded – as he was preparing to lead a multi-faith prayer service. He was not the president of his country, but millions of mourners lined the streets as his funeral bier, adorned with saffron petals, passed by on the way to the cremation grounds. He was Mahatma Gandhi, the “Great Soul.”

Commenting on his own divided nation, where many from the overwhelming Hindu majority – including his own assassin – were angry that he advocated Hindu-Muslim unity, Gandhi said: “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

I think Gandhi was right. We have seen proof recently. Erika Kirk’s expression of forgiveness was much tougher than Donald Trump’s declaration of hatred and retribution. As we engage with others in the public square, may we remember that vengeance is weak and compassion and forgiveness are strong.

Is Trump the New Samson?

by Robert P. Sellers

Some of the supporters of President Donald Trump have found it religiously beneficial, if not politically shrewd, to compare him to various figures in the Bible.  

DRAWING PARALLELS FROM SACRED SCRIPTURES FOR POLITICAL GAIN 

Two of these personages from the Hebrew Bible – or Old Testament – are kings. That association is arguably fitting because Trump certainly appears to crave royal status. It is his apparent fascination with kingship and his monarchical behavior that spurred the recent “No Kings!” protests that drew millions of people throughout America to march against Trump. This organized movement plans an even larger national protest on October 18. No doubt, fears concerning the president’s interest in being declared “king for life” derive, in part, from Trump’s having been compared – with his approval – both to 6th-century BCE Persian King Cyrus and to 9th-century BCE Israelite King Jehu. 

Lance Wallnau, a conservative evangelical Christian preacher in Dallas, Texas, favors the Cyrus persona for the president, insisting that “Donald Trump has [God’s] anointing upon him.” Pressed to explain why he believes this is true, Wallnau points to the growing threats from China, Russia and Iran and concludes that “With Trump, I believe we have a Cyrus to navigate through the storm.” 

Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, a Messianic Jewish leader, spoke recently at a gathering of the National Faith Advisory Board. This coalition of Christian “faith-based organizations” has announced its mission to “protect religious freedom, promote a strong America, defend life at all stages, and honor family values.”

In his speech at NFAB’s 2024 meeting, Cahn compared Trump to Jehu. Looking to the wannabe royal, he intoned: “President Trump, you were born into the world to be a trumpet of God, a vessel of the Lord in the hands of God. … He called you according to the template of Jehu, the warrior king. He called Jehu to make his nation great again.”

But the biblical king with whom Trump is most often linked is King David – whom, if Trump were describing him as his alter ego, he might call David “The greatest king of all time, one like the world had never seen before.” Mira Fox, in the “Jewish independent progressive” blog, Forward, writes:

Evangelical support for Trump has been strong since he was [first] elected in 2016; despite the former president’s multiple divorces, adultery and profanity, many have stood behind him, justifying their support through comparisons to biblical figures – particularly King David.

In 2016, Jerry Falwell Jr. said that “God called King David a man after God’s own heart even though he was an adulterer and a murderer.”

David’s illicit love affair with Bathsheba and his scheming the murder of her husband Uriah angered God, so the Lord sent the prophet Nathan to confront the king with his actions (2 Samuel 12). Many bitter consequences eventually fell upon David because of his sins, until – recognizing how he had wronged God, the people and himself – the king genuinely repented. This same contrite spirit, however, is something that President Trump has never evidenced, even after having his moral failures and self-advancing decisions revealed so publicly. In fact, at a Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, in 2015, CNN newscaster Anderson Cooper asked Trump about his recent remarks concerning forgiveness. The then-presidential candidate responded, "Why do I have to repent or ask for forgiveness, if I am not making mistakes? I work hard, I'm an honorable person."

Presbyterian professor of biblical studies at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, says that comparing Trump to King David is intentional. Its appeal is to evangelical supporters, hoping they will gloss over the sins and crimes of Trump as they do the sins of David, thereby helping to accept that a very imperfect man has again been chosen by God to lead the nation.

Following this political script, on Fox News Ben Carson suggested: “Think about the Bible and King David. Most … people, probably if they were alive back in those days, would have said, ‘Oh, what a horrible guy.’ You know, the episode with Bathsheba and some of the other things that he did, and yet, he was a man after God’s own heart.”

A BIBLICAL FIGURE WHO BETTER FORESHADOWS TRUMP

There is another Old Testament leader, however, who in my opinion better prefigures Donald Trump: the Israelite “judge,” or warrior-deliverer, named Samson. The period of the judges covers the time between the taking of the land under Joshua and the establishment of the monarchy with Saul as the first king. There is a familiar cyclical pattern in the story of Israel during these years, when the covenant which God had made with Israel’s ancestors was not being honored, thus resulting in oppression from Israel’s neighbors, followed by the people’s repentance to God and renewed faithfulness to the covenant, leading to God’s allowing a judge to rise up and lead the Israelites to victory and freedom.

The story of Samson, according to James Crenshaw, Old Testament professor at Duke Divinity School, is a “tale of blood and passion.” It is recounted in the biblical book of Judges, chapters 13-16. Crenshaw explains that Samson’s “heroic deeds are greater than life, generously mixing truth with fiction” [Ibid.]. He summarizes the plotline of the feats of Samson:

He kills a young lion with his bare hands; slays thirty Philistines and takes their clothes to settle a wager; catches three hundred foxes, ties their tails together, sets them on fire, and releases them in the enemies’ grainfields; snaps a new rope with which he has been tied; snatches up a fresh jawbone of an ass, and kills 1,000 Philistines; rips up Gaza’s gates and door, carrying them on his shoulders for a great distance; and pushes down Dagon’s sacred precincts, killing more than 3,000 worshipers within its walls.

Much of this sounds like pure historiography, politically motivated and fancifully conceived to elicit loyalty to this leader by exaggerating his exploits. One thing in the story is nonetheless clear: Samson’s “private vendetta, attributed to the divine spirit and to a personal desire for revenge, invariably grew out of amorous adventures. These erotic relationships with foreign women … led to Samson’s capture, [blinding,] and death at his own hands.

Why do I believe this story foreshadows the things we publicly know about the character and actions of Donald Trump? Here are some possible connections, or suggestions of similarity, that occur to me.

• Like Samson, Trump uses violence to “win the public wager” and thus dominate others.

• Like Samson, Trump has fallen in love with “a foreign woman.”

• Like Samson, Trump’s “amorous adventures,” sometimes with prostitutes, have gotten him into trouble.

• Like Samson, Trump’s actions are often driven by his “private vendettas” and desire for revenge.

• Like Samson, Trump likes to use his own “foxes and fire” episodes, in spectacular fashion, to amaze and captivate the people.

• Like Samson, Trump with his policies and budget cuts destroys the “grainfields,” or the life-saving food and aid, of peoples around the world who are unlike himself.

• Like Samson, Trump contrives to knock down or belittle “Dagon’s sacred precincts,” or the religious institutions of non-evangelical Christians.

• Like Samson, Trump tells lies, even to those closest to him – his own “Delilahs” – in order to protect and maintain his power.

• Like Samson, Trump often “slays his enemies” with the jawbone of an ass.

• Like Samson, Trump has been “blinded” because of his egotism and self-grandeur.

CONSIDERING SUCH STORIES IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE

Conversations with our families, friends, neighbors, fellow workers, colleagues and associates are peppered with personal stories or vignettes from our own lives, but increasingly also with what we have heard or seen on social media. In this era of manipulative speech, “alternative facts,” fake news, anonymous falsehoods, and AI deception, it is important to be discerning.

We must not be persuaded by speech intended to win our loyalty or vote, without first evaluating what’s being said and the source of the message. I believe we should not uncritically accept someone’s opinion, no matter how creative or compelling. I especially resist the increasingly frequent comparisons of Donald Trump with biblical figures, most disturbing of all the blatant attempts to compare him to Jesus.

Like suggestions by some of the president’s sycophants that his picture be put on our currency, his facial image be added to Mount Rushmore, or his actions be recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize – the suggestions that his character and experiences mirror those of Jesus are blatant attempts to glorify and ingratiate Trump. People in the public square should be offended by the claim that Trump follows God’s heart, but much more so by the blasphemous insinuations that he is like Jesus – his impeachments similar to the trial of Jesus and his authority justified by his having been born so the government could be put upon his shoulders.

Whether or not one is a Christian or another kind of admirer of Jesus is irrelevant. This politically motivated use of a religious icon who is followed, honored, taught or worshiped by more than 2.5 billion people around the world should cause everyone to see not only the impropriety but the insensitivity and insincerity of the comparisons. Using religious confession as partisan speech is confusing and wrong on many levels.

I have offered Samson as a new biblical forerunner to Trump for two reasons. It is partially to show how easy it is to make these kinds of connections. Alternately, however, I have made this comparison because I believe Samson – in his tragic lifestyle, vengeful and violent acts, and ego-driven choices – does indeed remind me of this president.

The president, in my opinion, is not a new Christ-figure, but in his character and actions seems more like an Antichrist-figure. He is not “a man after God’s own heart.” He is much more clearly a man who follows his own heart.

Perhaps, then, the similarities I have drawn between Samson and Donald Trump will enrich your future conversations.

The Dignity of Difference

by Robert P. Sellers

Jonathan Sacks was Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth and a member of the British House of Lords. A moral philosopher, he taught at Yeshiva University, New York University and King’s College in London, along the way authoring more than 40 books. He received many awards during his lifetime – including 21 honorary doctorates, the Templeton Prize recognizing his “exceptional contributions to affirming life’s spiritual dimension” and the Grawemeyer Prize in Religion for The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations, with its reasoned thesis advocating intercultural appreciation and interreligious dialogue.

THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS

Rabbi Sacks was the first internationally-respected Jewish scholar to address the perspective of Harvard political science professor Samuel P. Huntington, whose 1993 book, The Clash of Civilizations: The Remaking of World Order, posits that “people’s cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post–Cold War world.”

In this new world the most pervasive, important, and dangerous conflicts will not be between social classes, rich and poor, or other economically defined groups, but between peoples belonging to different cultural entities. Tribal wars and ethnic conflicts will occur within civilizations. Violence between states and groups from different civilizations, however, carries with it the potential for escalation as other states and groups from these civilizations rally to the support of their “kin countries”  

Huntington’s summary argument sounds like a strategy for “America First” politics. He writes: “The survival of the West depends on Americans reaffirming their Western identity and Westerners accepting their civilization as unique not universal and uniting to renew and preserve it against challenges from non-Western societies.” The greatest threat to the future of the United States, he posits, is multiculturalism, promoted by influential academics and writers in the late 20th century who “have attacked the identification of the United States with Western civilization, denied the existence of a common American culture, and promoted racial, ethnic, and other subnational cultural identities and groupings.” Huntington notes that multiculturalism began to be endorsed in legislation following the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and “in the 1990s the Clinton administration made the encouragement of diversity one of its major goals.”

Opposing this tendency toward affirming multiculturalism were politicians and others who heeded the words of Theodore Roosevelt who had warned, “The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing as a nation at all would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.” Yet, Huntington says, in the 1990s that is exactly what multiculturalists did – namely, they promoted the diversity instead of the unity of the United States. Furthermore, they “substituted for the rights of individuals the rights of groups, defined largely in terms of race, ethnicity, sex, and sexual preference.”

If he were commenting today, Huntington might identify – as proof of his theory that group civil liberties are challenging, even nullifying, individual rights – recent political action organizations like Black Lives Matter, Asian Americans for Equality, the Me Too Movement or the Human Rights Campaign for the LGBTQ community. He would probably mention President Trump’s Executive Order of March 1, 2025, declaring English as the official language of the United States. Closely aligned with the “clash of civilizations” playbook is the directive of the White House, issued on that day:

From the founding of our Republic, English has been used as our national language.  Our Nation’s historic governing documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, have all been written in English.  It is therefore long past time that English is declared as the official language of the United States.  A nationally designated language is at the core of a unified and cohesive society, and the United States is strengthened by a citizenry that can freely exchange ideas in one shared language

The social scientist would also surely talk about Trump’s Executive Order of January 20, 2025, terminating diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in all branches of the federal government – a regulation which has now also become a requirement for private, as well as public, institutions. Interestingly, this EO accuses President Biden of forcing these “illegal and immoral discrimination programs” by virtue of his Executive Order 13985, titled “Advancing racial equity and support for underserved communities through the federal government.” In reaction, Trump’s EO 14151 declares: “That ends today.  Americans deserve a government committed to serving every person with equal dignity and respect, and to expending precious taxpayer resources only on making America great.”

It is ironic that the stated “Purpose and Policy” of this EO – “serving every person with equal dignity and respect” – is exactly the goal of DEI policies, which are “meant to address historical and systemic disparities based on race, gender, age, ability, and sexual orientation in the workplace.” But the absurdity of this EO, which forbids a policy of the previous administration that accomplishes exactly what this Order claims is its purpose, seems to have escaped the president and his Project 2025 ideologues.

Since its initial positive reception, The Clash of Civilizations has been criticized historically, empirically, ideologically and even logically by many academics. Huntington’s fellow political scientist Paul Musgrave has explained that “few specialists in international relations rely on it or even cite it approvingly.” Indian economist and philosopher Amartya Sen challenged Huntington by noting that "diversity is a feature of most cultures in the world [while] Western civilization is no exception.” Palestinian-born literary critic and professor at Columbia University, Edward Said, panned Huntington’s theory in a 2001 article he titled “The Clash of Ignorance,” where he wrote that the clash of civilizations thesis is an example of “the purest invidious racism, a sort of parody of Hitlerian science directed today against Arabs and Muslims." Furthermore, Noam Chomsky – noted Russian American linguist and public intellectual – criticized the concept as being simply what the United States needed as justification “for any atrocities that they wanted to carry out” after the Soviet Union was no longer a threat.

HOW TO AVOID THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS

But it is the response to Huntington and his theory by Jonathan Sacks which I wish to highlight. He begins his book on The Dignity of Difference with reference to an event at the United Nations on August 28, 2000, where more than 2,000 religious leaders gathered:

It was a dazzling sight. There were the saffron robes of the Tibetan monks, the grey vestments of Japanese Shinto priests, Sufis in their distinctive hats, Sikhs in their turbans, the black robes of the imams, the blue and red sacred clothes of the reindeer people of north Sweden, Native Americans with their eagle bonnets, African priests in purple, Anglicans with their clerical collars and, it seemed, every other conceivable shade and shape of dress. Being there was like walking into a living lexicon of the religious heritage of mankind. Never before had there been such a gathering at the UN. In the great conference chamber normally reserved for politicians debating the issues of the day, here were men and women who devoted their lives not to the noise of now but to the music of eternity, not to the shifting sands of the international arena but to the inner landscape of the human spirit.

The United Nations had designated 2001 as the International Year of Dialogue between Civilizations – without knowing, of course, that the actions of September 11 would crush the hopes of many that distinct civilizations and peoples could ever live peacefully together again. Speaking of the terrorist attack, Sacks wrote: “Nothing could have demonstrated more vividly the vulnerability of our hyperconnected world and the unresolved tensions it contains.”

Yet he was not naïve about the tinderbox realities of our world after 9-11. Rabbi Sacks admits in his 2015 book, Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence, that

what is best in us and what is worst both come from the same source: our tendency to form ourselves into groups, to think highly of our own and negatively of others. … But the very act of creating an “Us” simultaneously creates a “Them,” the people not like us. Even the most universalistic of religions, founded on principles of love and compassion, have been capable of seeing those outside the faith as Satan, the infidel, the antichrist, the children of darkness, the unredeemed. They have committed unspeakable acts of brutality in the name of God.

While it may seem illogical that religions and their followers can stem the flow of violence – especially because some of the worst acts of cruelty are carried out “in the name of God” – Sacks contends that the test of legitimacy of one’s faith is whether it allows for the dignity of difference.

Can I recognize God’s image in someone who is not in my image, whose language, faith, ideals, are different from mine? If I cannot, then I have made God in my image instead of allowing him to remake me in his. Can Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Confucians, Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants make space for one another in the Middle East, India, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, Kosovo and the dozens of other places in which different ethnic and religious groups exist in close proximity? Can we create a paradigm shift through which we come to recognize that we are enlarged, not diminished, by difference, just as we are enlarged, not diminished, by the 6,000 languages that exist today, each with its unique sensibilities, art forms and literary expressions? This is not the cosmopolitanism of those who belong nowhere, but the deep human understanding that passes between people who, knowing how important their attachments are to them, understand how deeply someone else’s different attachments matter to them also.

Recognizing the dignity of difference in those around us begins in the “Public Square.” It can happen in our neighborhoods, schools, universities, businesses, restaurants, places of worship, parks and other community venues. We may not have the political clout to stop President Trump’s attack on multiculturalism and DEI policies, but we can resist his cruel actions on a local and personal level by affirming those who are not like ourselves and by acknowledging their inherent value. Those who are different than ourselves should intrigue and fascinate us, stimulate our thinking and challenge our assumptions, enrich our conversations and make us better people.

Our appreciating the dignity of difference in those around us will not stop the clash of civilizations but if, by our words and actions, we can oppose the “us versus them” mentality in our society, if we can allow our various religious faith teachings to take root in our hearts and if we can celebrate the diversity that made our country great, then we will have done our part in changing the future. 

Header Photo: GoodFon

Empathy: A Weakness or a Strength?

by Robert P. Sellers

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person – whose net worth is $374 billion – recently said: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit.” The South African immigrant says this while working as the unelected leader of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which wants to reduce government spending by as much as $1 trillion. Thus far, the thousands of government workers fired and hundreds of millions of dollars stripped from agency budgets have severely damaged America’s programmatic expressions of empathy in this country and around the world.

ELON MUSK’S ATTACK ON GOVERNMENT EMPATHY

Startling cuts to the staffs and budgets of the Department of Education, the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration will have disastrous consequences for the lives of millions, ranging from the youngest children to the oldest seniors. But it is Musk’s “chainsaw” terrorization of two major agencies which are perhaps the most agonizing for the world’s poor and marginalized peoples.

Domestically, DOGE’s savagery of the Department of Health and Human Service (HHS)

would severely impact the poor and vulnerable, particularly those relying on federal programs like Medicaid, [access to vital reproductive health services (Title X)], food assistance [Meals on Wheels and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)], and housing assistance. These cuts…threaten critical services, jeopardize funding for essential programs, and could lead to increased homelessness and hunger.

Internationally, cuts to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have gutted the nation’s principal organization for administering foreign aid and coordinating development assistance. These DOGE decisions have caused a disruption in the agency’s ability to support worthy programs in other countries, which is one of the most effective means the United States has of establishing and maintaining its reputation as a world leader committed to global humanitarian assistance. With a severely reduced staff, the termination of these programs have endangered the lives of millions of people worldwide.

Musk defends his DOGE activity and counters accusations that the cuts are cruel by saying that he believes in being empathetic and that “you should care about other people,” but that empathy is “destroying society.” To illustrate this belief, CNN journalist Zachery Wolf explains, Musk points to California’s intention “to provide medical insurance even to undocumented people who qualify for its low-income Medi-Cal program.” That is “civilizational suicidal empathy,” the DOGE operative insists, and America must not let empathy be “weaponized” in the actions of either domestic or international agencies of our government.

Biographer Walter Isaacson followed Musk around his Tesla, Space X and Twitter worlds for two years, observing the man in action, interviewing him, his family, associates and adversaries to gain insight into what drives this “tough yet vulnerable man-child, prone to abrupt Jekyll-and-Hyde mood swings, with an exceedingly high tolerance for risk, a craving for drama, an epic sense of mission, and a maniacal intensity that was callous and at times destructive.”

A lack of empathy is a theme of Isaacson’s book, simply titled Elon Musk. The author told Christiane Amanpour in a 2023 interview that the billionaire “likes the notion of helping humanity. [However,] he has more empathy for humanity in general that he often does for the 20 people around him.”

Musk learned about “suicidal empathy” from his friendship with Saad Gad, “a Canadian marketing professor whose casual application of evolutionary psychology to culture war politics has brought him a sizable social media following.” Suicidal empathy is similar to white nationalism’s “great replacement theory.” This far-right conspiracy theory, promoted by French author Renaud Camus, suggests that with the complicity of “replacist” elites, white populations at large “are being demographically and culturally replaced by non-white peoples – especially from Muslim-majority countries – through mass migration, demographic growth and a drop in the birth rate of white Europeans.” It is not surprising, then, that Musk joins Trump in believing the United States, like other western societies, is bringing about its own destruction “by admitting immigrants from poorer, browner and more Muslim countries” [Wong, Ibid.].

EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN COMPLICITY IN REJECTING EMPATHY 

The idea that empathy is a bad thing has gained some following among certain evangelical Christians. These MAGA evangelicals have apparently decided that reshaping empathy as a “sin” or a “toxin” will excuse their support of Trump’s agenda. J. D. Vance is using the medieval Catholic concept of ordo amoris [‘order of love’] – which prioritizes love of God, then love of self and one’s family, over love for members of society – in order to argue that empathy toward those outside our own circles of affection is not as important as love for people who are close to us.

Julia Wong, writing for The Guardian, concludes: “The rightwing movement against empathy seeks to dismantle and discredit one of the essential tools for any society – our capacity to recognize and respond to suffering. We should see the campaign against empathy by Trump supporters for what it is: a flashing red light warning of fascist intent” [Ibid.].

On January 21, the day after Trump was inaugurated as president for a second term, he attended a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral. The Right Reverend Mariann Budde, preaching to the gathered crowd of dignitaries, spoke directly to the president, saying: “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.” Budde’s sermon ignited a raging fire of protests among Trump’s evangelical supporters.

“Do not commit the sin of empathy,” said Christian podcaster Ben Garrett, who posted a photo of the bishop in her religious attire, explaining “This snake is God’s enemy and yours too.” Allie Beth Stuckey, who hosts another Christian podcast, opined: “This is to be expected from a female Episcopalian priest: toxic empathy that is in complete opposition to God’s Word and in support of the most satanic, destructive ideas ever conjured up.” Pastor Joe Rigney pushed the idea even further in his article in the evangelical publication World: “Budde’s attempt to ‘speak truth to power’ is a reminder that feminism is a cancer that enables the politics of empathetic manipulation and victimhood that has plagued us in the era of wokeness. Bishop Budde’s exhortation was a clear example of the man-eating weed of Humanistic Mercy.”

Rigney has expanded these views on empathy in his book published in February 2025, The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and its Counterfeits. Almost immediately, he was invited by Southern Baptist influential leader and self-identified Christian exclusivist Albert Moher, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, to promote his book on Mohler’s podcast. Mohler pronounced his own opinion on empathy: “It has always seemed to me to be a synthetic word, an artificial word.” Paraphrasing Mohler, Wong reports that the Baptist leader sees empathy as “too closely tied to the ‘constant emoting’ of the modern age, a sign of how leftist thought has replaced the concrete with the abstract, and an outgrowth of Marxism and identity politics.”

POPE FRANCIS, A CHAMPION OF EMPATHY 

Argentine Jorge Mario Bergoglio – who was elected as Pope in 2013 and chose the name “Francis” to honor and remember Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of the poor – recently died. Of all the magnificent praise heaped upon this humble man who would have been embarrassed to hear such glorification of himself, one quality was repeatedly mentioned by those who spoke of the Pontiff in hushed and reverent tones. They celebrated him because he showed tremendous empathy toward the poor and marginalized people of the world.

Even in India, where one would suspect there is not a very large Catholic community, The Indian Express, a daily newspaper in Madras, wrote of the Pope’s passing with these generous words:

Pope Francis, who died this week aged 88 following a period of illness, never stopped speaking up for the disenfranchised and the disempowered, travelling around the world to urge peace, justice and reconciliation, even as his health began to fail. … A believer in dialogue and debate, Pope Francis advocated empathy over doctrinal rigidity, simplicity over pomp. “Who am I to judge?” he once said, when a journalist questioned him about queer relationships. His ready smile and [tenderhearted] charm helped bridge the distance between the Church and the global laity, even as within the institution he pushed hard against overcentralisation of power in Rome.

Father Mario Boies, a priest of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer who minister in more than 100 countries, shares an anecdote about Pope Francis:

“Once,” the Pope recounted, “I listened to a person for 10 minutes, without saying anything. And at the end, this person told me: ‘Thank you, Pope Francis, for your help and your good advice.” And the Pope had said nothing…. “This means,” continues Bergoglio, “that when a person feels truly welcomed, listened to, esteemed and loved unconditionally with love-charity, the person begins to regain self-confidence and to find solutions to his or her problems on his or her own.” This is the way of true empathic listening!

Boies contends that from this personal experience of the Pope, one can understand how much he valued empathy in his relationships with others. In his address to the bishops of Asia in 2014, he said: “Nor can there be authentic dialogue unless we are capable of opening our minds and hearts, in empathy and sincere receptivity to those with whom we speak. … Such empathy must be the fruit of our spiritual insight and personal experience which lead us to see others as brothers and sisters...”

EMPATHY AS A STRENGTH 

Elon Musk says that empathy is a weakness. MAGA evangelical Christians have called it a sin, a toxin, a manipulation and an artificial word and concept. Pope Francis has called it the fruit of our spiritual insight, the capacity for authentic dialogue and the action which leads to genuine encounter with others.

Musk has the most money in the world, but there will not be 250,000 mourners at his funeral someday. In America alone, an estimated 3.8 million viewers watched the funeral of Pope Francis on television or online. Those millions of admirers wished to say goodbye to an unassuming man whom they thought of as being great and noble – a spiritually “rich” man because he empathized with and gave himself to others. To repeat a familiar turn of phrase, Musk exhibits the love of power while Pope Francis practiced the power of love.

So, I must ask: is empathy a weakness or a strength?

Header Photo: Picryl

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Are American Values

by Robert P. Sellers

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) are in the news a lot these days. These concepts should not be mysteries to any of us in the Public Square, for all of them are American values.

HOW DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION ARE AMERICAN VALUES 

These ideas have a very long history in our country. It is not exaggeration to say that each of us is a beneficiary of these national beliefs.

Diversity

American society has been diverse since its inception. When Europeans began to settle here, there were hundreds of different Native American tribes already in this land, speaking at least 375 distinct languages, each with individual societal structures and customs. Historians estimate the population of these First Peoples somewhere between 8 million and 112 million. Since that pre-Columbian era, immigrants have come to these shores from all over the world, creating one of the most diverse nations on earth. Based on data from the American Community Survey, there currently are more than 350 world languages being spoken in the United States. Diana Eck, emeritus professor of comparative religions at Harvard University, writes in her book A New Religious America: How “Christian Country has become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation that the United States is also the most religiously diverse nation on the globe.

Now, after almost 250 years since our founding, America is a nation of remarkable cultural, linguistic and religious plurality. Whatever subculture is your heritage, language is your native tongue, and religion or philosophy your ideological home, you are a part of the American Experiment. You belong here!

Equity

Some words are visionary and culture-shaping. They have mythic importance, the power to shape collective dreams and mold societal vision. One such utterance illustrates this claim perfectly. The United States declared its independence based upon these 35 stirring words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” This sentence, which begins the Declaration of Independence, was penned by Thomas Jefferson and adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776.

But for a quarter of a millennium this acknowledgment of our divinely-conceived equality has challenged the ways we relate to one another, and to the stranger in our midst. We have not always adhered to this high standard, yet it remains our American ideal. The power of this fundament principle of our nation’s founding document means that nothing should make you less valuable than anyone else – not your race, ethnicity, language, religion, socio-economic status, job, sexuality or any other factor. We are all “equal” in America.

Inclusion

This country has traditionally welcomed immigrants onto our shores. Photographs and historical records have captured the excitement and joy of individuals or families arriving here, eager to begin a new life of opportunity, safety and promise. Except for descendants of those first Native American inhabitants of this land, every other person in the United States is the descendant of an immigrant from another country.

The Statue of Liberty was a “birthday” gift to the United States from France on July 4, 1884. On its pedestal is the poetic inscription written by Emma Lazarus – “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” These words have summarized the spirit of welcome that made coming to live in the United States the dream of millions of people around the world. Recently, however, Raphael Glucksmann, a French member of the European Parliament, suggested – perhaps a bit in jest but with scathing judgment also – that we should return the Statue of Liberty to France because some Americans “have chosen to switch to the side of the tyrants.” The statue stands as a reminder that tyranny must not win. She represents Libertas, a Roman goddess of liberty, who carries a torch in her right hand and a tablet in her left, bearing the date of the Declaration of Independence. “Broken shackles lie underneath the statue’s drapery, to symbolize the end of all types of servitude and oppression.”

Almost all of us who now gather in the public square owe our place in America to the freedom our ancestors experienced when they immigrated to this land. Welcoming the stranger is our country’s heritage, and the Statue of Liberty our national symbol. It is the reason we all can call this place home.

DONALD TRUMP’S OPPOSITION TO DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion – these are American traditions and values. When President Trump and his administration oppose DEI in the military, government departments and agencies, law firms, schools or universities and society at large, they are acting in a way which is tacitly un-American.

Executive Order 14151, titled ‘Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,’ is an executive order signed by Donald Trump, the 47th president of the United States, on January 20, 2025. Since that first day of this president’s second term, the executive order has been used to intimidate, weaken, refocus, or eliminate public and private agencies and institutions.

Trump says he believes in a meritocracy, where hiring and advancements are based solely on merit rather than upon providing equal opportunities for racial, religious, economic or sexual minorities. This claim seems fallacious, since his own appointments depend more on loyalty to himself rather than upon merit. Nonetheless, Trump has declared, “We will terminate every diversity, equity, and inclusion program across the entire federal government.” The executive order having already been disseminated broadly throughout the government, the president is now, however, taking his anti-DEI campaign into the private sector. These actions – defended by the administration as promoting fairness – are instead driven by racial, religious, economic and sexual discriminations.

The American Civil Liberties Union explains:

When Donald Trump’s administration left office in 2020, two-thirds of surveyed Americans agreed that Trump had increased racial tensions in the United States. The backdrop for that widespread sentiment was the Trump administration’s sustained assault on political, civic, and legal efforts to promote racial justice; Trump’s consistent use of inflammatory racist rhetoric; and his transparent pursuit of a white supremacist agenda rooted in racial grievance. …

Trump’s legacy on these issues is encapsulated by the “1776 Report,” published by the White House in the administration’s waning days. The report advanced a dystopian vision that demonized attempts at achieving racial equality. Designed to “restore patriotic education in schools,” the “1776 Report” compared progressivism to fascism … and sought to downplay the legacy of racism in U.S. history. Historians uniformly condemned the report, pointing out that it was littered with factual inaccuracies and partisanship, and lacking serious scholarship. …

Meanwhile, the administration alternated between openly vilifying and woefully neglecting communities of color. Trump used racialized, xenophobic dog whistles to attack Black, Middle Eastern, South Asian, Latine, and other immigrants of color, and to justify his exclusionary immigration policy. …

The 2024 Trump campaign has doubled down on this commitment to racial grievance. … 

More broadly, however, the anti-DEI backlash is part of a larger effort by right-wing foundations, think tanks, and political operatives to dismantle civil rights gains made in recent decades.

Here are a few examples of Donald Trump’s anti-DEI activities.

The Department of State

Trump has directed Secretary of State Marco Rubio not to base any “Foreign Service recruitment, hiring, promotion, or retention decisions on an individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” The Heritage Foundation, the ultra-conservative think tank responsible for coordinating and producing Project 2025, claims:

The entrenchment of the radical leftwing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda and its growing promulgation and enforcement bureaucracy at the State Department has been to the detriment of recruitment, efficiency, and morale. Instead of continuing its obsession with artificially engineered diversity and ever-growing staff and budgets, the State Department needs to eliminate its wasteful and discriminatory DEI bureaucracy; refocus existing resources on core values and priority goals; and depoliticize the hiring and promotion process to return to merit-based principles.

The Department of Defense

Pete Hegseth, Department of Defense Secretary, has rushed to comply with the DEI policy. Following his instruction, the Defense Intelligence Agency ordered that “all activities and events related to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Black History Month, Junteenth, LGBTQ Pride Month, Holocaust Remembrance Day and other ‘special observances’” be discontinued.

Chief of the Cheyenne tribe of Oklahoma, Harvey Pratt – a designer of the Native American Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. – discovered that the Defense Department had removed references to the Navajo Code Talkers, who transmitted messages between Allied troops in World War II using their native language. Other citations that disappeared included a web page featuring Army Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers, the first Black soldier to receive the coveted medal of honor, as well as a page honoring Ira Hamilton Hayes, a Pima tribal member who helped raise the American flag at Iwo Jima. Although these deletions were quickly restored after a public protest, the racist intention of Trump and Hegseth was indisputable. This nefarious objective is further proven by the removal of Defense Department articles concerning the Tuskegee Airmen as well as the erasure of a biography of civil rights leader Medgar Evers from the Arlington National Cemetery website.

These more famous individuals have not been the only targets of DOD website scrubbing. The Associated Press has reported that “some 26,000 images featuring people and events considered ‘DEI content’ were flagged for removal from the Department of Defense websites as part of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s promise that DEI would be ‘dead’ under his leadership.”

The Department of Education

Former professional wrestling promoter and billionaire Linda McMahon, as Education Secretary, is cooperating with Donald Trump to demolish the Department of Education, despite her having no relevant experience as a teacher or educational administrator. Trump has previously claimed that the Department was infiltrated by “radicals, zealots and Marxists.” Annie Ma, national education reporter for the Associated Press, explains:

The agency’s main role is financial. Annually, it distributes billions in federal money to colleges and schools and manages the federal student loan portfolio [including the Pell Grant]. Closing the department would mean redistributing each of those duties to another agency. The Education Department also plays an important regulatory role in services for students, ranging from those with disabilities to low-income and homeless kids.

Indeed, federal education money is central to Trump’s plans for colleges and schools. Trump has vowed to cut off federal money for schools and colleges that push “critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content” and to reward states and schools that end teacher tenure and enact universal school choice programs.

Formed in 1979 by Congress, encouraged by President Carter, the Department of Education also “enforces federal education laws pertaining to nondiscrimination and civil rights.”

Universities, both public and private, are now being given two weeks by the Department to eliminate DEI from their faculty, staff and student considerations or lose federal funding. Additionally, $600m in grant money to organizations that train teachers was eliminated, because the administration says they “promoted ‘divisive’ concepts like DEI, critical race theory and social justice activism.” Deadlines have been given to Ivy League universities such as Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton to bend the knee to Trump’s demands or else forfeit their federal grants. 

The Department of Justice

Attorney General Pam Bondi has continued Trump’s attack on America’s judicial system by censuring lawyers and firms that participated in “frivolous” legal cases against him. Trump’s anti-DEI pressure through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and his executive orders has sent some law firms into a state of paralysis and driven others to adopt a defensive mode. Aria Branch, from the Elias Law Group, said “You will see fewer numbers of black and brown lawyers, and lawyers from disadvantaged backgrounds, in this country” because of these “scare tactics,” adding “This could impact the profession for years to come.”

One powerful law firm, Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, has “caved,” agreeing to provide $40m worth of free legal assistance to further the president’s pet causes – and to get rid of its DEI policies – in order to avoid Trump’s retribution against them, which the partners felt could have cost them significant business. This firm’s quick submission has caused great consternation and shock to the legal community.

Women in the Work Force

Lauren Sugerman was the beneficiary of a 1965 executive order from President Lyndon Johnson which obligated public and private companies to try to recruit women of color. So, in 1980, she was accepted into a vocational program which led to her employment at a steel mill. She has been grateful for her opportunity, as a woman of color, to get that steady job – which she has kept for four decades. But now, she is mourning the probability that women, especially women of color, will have a more difficult time being hired. This new reality exists because Trump revoked Johnson’s executive order on his second day in office, desiring to end what he sees as “widespread and illegal use of ‘dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race-and sex-based preferences’ under the guise of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.”

The LGBTQ Community

While campaigning before the election, Donald Trump claimed DEI policies “discriminated against white people – men in particular.” He “demonized any recognition of gender diversity, attacking transgender people – notably transgender women in sports – and gender-affirming care for children.” Remember his ridiculous accusation that sex-change operations were being performed on children at schools during the day! Some of Trump’s executive orders have intentionally reversed DEI protections for the LGBTQ community that President Joe Biden had signed into law.

A SIMPLE RATIONALE FOR DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION 

Former Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, sat down with a group – advertised as “regular folks” – to explain why DEI was necessary. He said:

First of all, DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. … We start by thinking of ‘what’s the opposite of those things?’ The opposite of diversity is uniformity. The opposite of equity is inequity. And, the opposite of inclusion is exclusion.

And I don’t know a lot of people who think our lives would be better off if we had more uniformity, inequity and exclusion. …

But I think that the part of why people have questions about [DEI] that I respect is … they’re worried about fairness. So, to me, when you talk about some of these policies, the idea is to make sure that everyone gets a seat at the table. Especially if you know there have been systematic ways of keeping people from getting a seat at the table, over the years. Sometimes based on their race, on their religion, on their income, on their background, on their sexuality, any number of reasons. And, it’s about making sure, going forward, that everything is fair.

This explanation, because I am a “regular folk,” makes perfect sense to me. Since abiding by these concepts makes life better for all of us, I feel it is important to join the host of those who oppose the president’s anti-DEI efforts. Diversity, equity and inclusion are American values, and they are part of the reason why America is a country that has long been the desired destination of so many people around the world.

Header Photo: NAHB

The Contemporary Public Square

by Robert P. Sellers

While the term “public square” may be vaguely familiar to most of us, it is appropriate to provide an explanation of the history and varied uses of the space to which this concept refers. The public square is an open, public place in many cities or even villages where people gather, typically located where two or more streets meet. Synonyms such as town square, plaza, piazza, civic center, urban square, market square, or the heart of the city suggest the many ways this space has functioned around the world.

According to the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute for American Democracy, the public square dates back to ancient Greece and Rome, where it served as a place where “citizens could come together to discuss politics, exchange ideas, and engage in commerce.” In colonial America, these squares could be found “near essential buildings like town halls, courthouses or churches” and were “used for political rallies, town meetings, and military drills.” The Institute explains the value and meaning of community spaces:

Public squares are symbols of freedom and democracy, and people use them as places to voice their opinions and influence the political process. Leaders would and do often give speeches and debates in public squares to talk about important political issues. Public squares also provide a platform for public discourse and debate, allowing citizens to exchange ideas, listen to the views of others, and engage in respectful dialogue. This helps to promote an informed and engaged citizenry, which is essential for the functioning of a democratic society.

But public squares have not always been places where civil, respectful and peaceful exchanges have been made. In truth, public squares also have a bloody history.

Crucifixion as a public spectacle likely originated in Assyria and Babylonia, but was later adopted by the Persians in the 6th century BCE, then was passed down to the Greeks and the Romans, who perfected the agonizing form of capital punishment for anyone perceived to be a threat to the Empire – the most famous example being the crucifixion of Jesus on the municipal mount outside Jerusalem known as “the place of the skull.” The torture and execution method known as “death by a thousand cuts” was instigated by imperial China beginning in the 10th century, introduced to a Western audience in the Steve McQueen movie, The Sand Pebbles, in 1966.

Beheadings of the wives of kings, like Anne Boleyn, or the drawing and quartering of traitors, like the Scottish warrior William Wallace, were conducted at the Tower of London in 13th-century England. Death by the guillotine in France – somewhat more humane than manual beheadings or other cruel forms of execution – was first practiced in France in 1792 when Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier, a robber and murderer, was executed in front of the Place de l‘Hôtel de Ville in Paris. These methods of punitive death were carried out in public spaces as a warning to the populace. In the American colonies, law-breakers were often placed in wooden stocks for communal disgrace and abuse, and in the Wild West, cattle rustlers and bank robbers were often hanged in the town square, before mesmerized and rowdy crowds.

Oxford-trained philosopher, economist, and writer Jonathan Glancey describes the agora, or central meeting place at the heart of the Greek city-state, which was not only famous but sometimes infamous. He notes that all over the world, every public square since the Greek Empire has reflected elements of the ancient agora. Accordingly, public squares were “where tradespeople and philosophers, poets and politicians rubbed shoulders and where, too, the public complained and demonstrated and, at times, were met, dispersed and even slaughtered by forces of the regimes they tried to take to task.”

So, as Glancey suggests, the agora was not only a place of carousels and puppet shows, but sometimes of protests and even revolution. Violence has marked some of the public squares throughout history, which has created the term “agoraphobia,” or the fear of public places. This phobia has been exacerbated by the bloody confrontations at public squares.

Place de la Concorde, despite its name, was anything but peaceful during the 1968 student riots in Paris. Palace Square, St Petersburg, will be associated forever with the October Revolution that brought Lenin and the Bolsheviks to power in 1917. Moscow’s Red Square is a vast space [associated] with Lenin’s tomb and bombastic annual displays of Soviet, and now Russian, military hardware. The Plaza de la Revolución, Havana, is where, in his prime, Fidel Castro would address crowds a million strong in the years following the revolution that overthrew the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. …

On sultry summer or bleak winter days, Tiananmen Square is a decidedly challenging terrain. The might of the People’s Republic was challenged here in 1989 by a popular pro-democracy movement. On June 5 of that year, police and military opened fire, killing hundreds and possibly thousands of protestors. Tiananmen Square is named after Tiananmen Gate, or the Gate of Heavenly Peace. The most haunting image from that horrendous day was that of a lone man, dressed in white shirt and carrying a shopping bag in both hands, facing down and taunting a column of battle tanks rumbling along Chang’an Avenue at the north end of the square. No one admits to knowing who this brave man was or what happened to him: Tiananmen Square swallowed him up.

Recently, scenes of violence concentrated in public squares have been screened in our homes from Tripoli, Istanbul, Cairo and Kiev, and vast parades of political-military power brought to us from Beijing and Pyongyang [Ibid.].

More than a dozen years ago when I lived in London, teaching a class of students from my university, we visited Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park. A famous public space dedicated to open-air public speaking and discussion, the area near Marble Arch was busy that afternoon, as several Londoners were waiting for their turns to stand on a platform and address the small crowd of listeners who had gathered. But today, the public square as a place of political exchange or protest has been replaced by the internet. Social media has created virtual public spaces where people from all over the world can raise their voices to support their own ideas or, just as often, to attack the ideas of others.

The Huffington Post published a helpful blog from author and radio host Anne Hill that talks about the “ugly shadow” side of social media. She wrote: “Trolling is bullying, plain and simple. It can happen to anyone who gains a large following, especially in tech. And unfortunately, women are often singled out for the worst abuse.”

Social media platforms have become a worldwide phenomenon. But platforms that were praised for connecting people have instead often circulated misinformation and damaging lies, caused irreparable rifts between family members and friends, compounded isolation and heartache for teenagers and others targeted for being different – sometimes leading to their suicides – and created hatred and divisions within the body politic.

A recent article from the Free Speech Project at Georgetown University discusses the good and bad consequences of social media’s functioning as the new public square. On the good side of the ledger, there are positive stories online that celebrate persons for their accomplishments, or even simply for who they are. For example, in 2022 a 7-year-old boy became a viral sensation after a story was circulated explaining his love for corn.

Far more examples of the bad uses or outcomes of social media, however, were highlighted in this study. In December 2021, Rohinga Muslim refugees fleeing persecution in Myanmar sued Facebook for their failure to remove hate speech on their platform which they contended contributed to the genocide of the Rohinga people. In January 2023, Twitter, or X, censored a documentary criticizing the authoritarian regime of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India, while in December of that year Elon Musk agreed with a tweet accusing Jewish people of “hatred against whites.”

In February 2023, Beatriz Gonzalez and Jose Hernandez, the mother and stepfather of Nohemi Gonzalez, listened to arguments at the Supreme Court in the lawsuit they had lodged against Google for displaying and recommending ISIS videos, which they said contributed to her being killed in a Paris terrorist attack in 2015. In August 2021, a Colorado high school volleyball coach who had been “outed” on social media was forced by the school board to renounce his sexuality or resign his position.

In March 2022, a settlement was reached with a Michigan school superintendent who monitored parents’ social media and exposed what he found to their employers. In April of that year, a Nashville firefighter was suspended for tweeting that the majority of the city council members were white supremacists. In November 2023, a teenager was expelled from school after his mother posted pro-Palestinian comments online. And, in January 2025, Facebook and Instagram suspended their use of fact-checkers.

Why can social media distribute hateful, untrue and slanderous comments on their platforms? The reason is because in 1996, Congress passed the Communications Decency Act to encourage internet growth, protect minors from online pornography and remove legal barriers to the freedom of content. Contained within this legislation was the questionable Section 230.

What is Section 230, and what has it done to the virtual public square? The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation explains that “Section 230 includes two main provisions: one that protects online services and users from liability when they do not remove third-party content, and one that protects them from liability when they do remove content.” Thus, Section 230 makes it difficult legally to punish those who post hate speech, lies or innuendo online, and the shield it provides to social media trolls or phishing schemers is the source of much debate.

In February 2021 – following the Capitol riots in January – Democratic Senators Mark Warner, Mazie Hirono and Amy Klobuchar introduced the Safe Tech Act, which was intended to change Section 230 of the earlier Communications Decency Act and make Facebook and Google “more accountable for harmful content that leads to real-world violence.” Regrettably, the proposed legislation was never even brought up for a vote in Congress.

So, the anonymous, often brutal, posts on social media continue. We don’t meet in public spaces any longer to watch the executions of political enemies or criminals. Yet, it is not uncommon to have someone lynched or drawn and quartered on Facebook, X or some other media platform.

Anne Hill offers a couple of suggestions for helping to end our own hurtful experiences on social media. She says that, first, we must gain more education about how to avoid the ugly shadow of online trolling. There are excellent articles, she notes, that will give us the tools to follow the advice: “don’t feed the trolls.” Second, Hill recommends that we set a high bar for our own responses to others’ posts. Admittedly, it is tempting to answer with a smoking rant, but we must learn to answer others with equanimity. It is possible to be clear without being unkind.

Are the contemporary public squares, as located on social media platforms today, really “symbols of freedom and democracy,” as the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute declares? Are they still places that allow citizens “to exchange ideas, listen to the view of others, and engage in respectful dialogue,” as public squares were originally designed?

If not, what can we do to help reclaim a more constructive community-building public square in our country?

Header Photo: PxHere