People say you’re not supposed to talk about religion in casual conversations. But let’s be real, we all do it. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all be cool about it for once? The New Mexico Interfaith Dialogue Speaker Series is doing exactly that with a program of events with the no-nonsense tagline: “This is What I Would Like People to Know About My Faith.”
Patty Allread, president of the organization’s board of directors, says that being a Scientologist on the board “tells you how diverse things have gotten.” She and her fellow board members have created a welcoming environment that fosters responsible and respectful religious discourse, and they’re knowledgeable about what they do. The directors agree on who they’re going to invite to speak at events, and they strive to keep diversity at the forefront of the group. She has a lot of fun doing it, too, because she gets to meet bunches of people who have a whole lot to say about their faith. According to Allread, it all started back in 1982 with a rabbi and a priest engaged in a Jewish-Catholic dialogue.
“They started having discussions and meetings and formal dialogs, and eventually that changed from Jewish-Catholic to Jewish-Christian,” Allread says. “At some point they decided to make it the Abrahamic religions: Christian, Jewish and Muslim. So that’s the basic history. But more recently, that became the New Mexico Interfaith Dialogue. And even though many of the speakers we have are from those three traditions, they’re not all from them, and in the last several years, the group has really expanded.”
The New Mexico Interfaith Dialogue will be hosting its next free, in-person event on Thursday Dec. 18 at the Raindrop Foundation (7901 Mountain Rd NE) with a speaker who knows a thing or two about religious diversity. Gordon Bronitsky’s lecture “I’m a Jew and Here is What I Want People to Know About My Faith” is sure to have its share of serious content. After all, we’re talking about religion, and we want to be respectful of what might be an extremely sacred discussion topic for many people, right? But Bronitsky isn’t about to cover several millennia of Jewish history without sneaking in a few moments of lighthearted conversation and even humor. He invites us to follow what he calls the 11th Commandment: “Thou shalt not be boring.”
The first part of this year’s speaker series started last month with former New Mexico representative Jason Harper discussing freedom of religion and the ways in which community members might influence elected officials. Other previous talks featured speakers such as Tyler Werne giving folks a crash course in Greek Orthodox doctrine at St. George Greek Orthodox Christian Church in Downtown Albuquerque. Future New Mexico Interfaith Dialogue speakers include Prabhat Singh on Jan. 15 at the Hindu Temple Society of New Mexico (8418 Zuni Rd. SE), John Abbott on Feb. 19 at the Seventh Day Adventist Church (2201 Estancia Dr. NW) Sam Salas Jr. of The Native American Church on March 19 at the Community of Christ Church (4701 Juan Tabo Blvd. NE) and Imam Dr. Mahmoud Eldenawi on April 16 at the Islamic Center of New Mexico (1100 Yale Blvd SE).
Allread says the biggest comment she gets is, “I never knew there was a group like this,” so she’s always looking for new and effective ways to get the word out. She encourages New Mexicans interested in learning more about diverse religious groups to add their name to the New Mexico Interfaith Dialogue mailing list and share upcoming events with their friends. Since they don’t charge admission for the current speaker series, donations are always appreciated.
Allread says that everyone involved in the latest speaker series understands that a dialog is not a debate, so they’re not necessarily comparing one religious belief to another one. Rather, the New Mexico Interfaith Dialogue Speaker Series provides experts from several religious traditions an opportunity to speak openly about their faith without feeling like they’re being judged on what they believe, or how and why they believe it.
“I personally feel religion in general is under attack in the world. There is religious persecution and discrimination everywhere, and we have attacks on various groups,” she says. “I look at that as an overall push to make religion less important in life. And if we can understand different viewpoints, even when we don’t agree with them, it just makes for a broader community of religious and spiritual people who can get a lot done.”
Allread says she finds that there are a whole lot more similarities than differences in various religious beliefs – even if their practices might be dissimilar – and The New Mexico Interfaith Dialogue Speakers Series has entertained some really different groups with a huge range of practices.
“We’ve had one with Wiccans that was so interesting. It was so good. We’ve had Quakers – and they don’t have the same kind of organization that a church does – and we’ve had Greek Orthodox [speakers] before.” she says. “Sometimes we cover a topic, sometimes we have a panel, sometimes, occasionally, there’s a book that we read and talk about. The speakers all have freedom to give their own take on the topic, so you never know what you’re going to get. And it’s always varied, it’s always diverse, we always have questions and it’s a great deal of fun.”
Gordon Bronitsky’s talk this weekend will focus on Judaism, and he says his approach to speaking about religion will not be evangelical. He also emphasizes to other speakers that the purpose of the dialogue series isn’t necessarily to convert attendees to a particular religion or belief.
“When you talk to somebody about your religion, do you find yourself thinking later, ‘God, I wish they knew more about this particular aspect,’ but they don’t know? This is their chance. And I’m really happy to do it,” Bronitsky says.
The New Mexico Interfaith Dialogue Speaker Series is co-produced by IndigeNOW, Bronitsky’s “production arm” organization that has worked with Indigenous people around the world in the performing arts and festival development on every continent except Antarctica since 1994. Bronitsky’s produced just about every type of global art collaboration imaginable – from an international Indigenous Theater Festival in London to a Navajo Yakuts cultural summit in Siberia – so he has the talent and the contact list to gather interesting and knowledgeable speakers for this year’s lecture project.
“A lot of my work has been overseas, but I did bring an Indigenous chef from Zimbabwe and an Indigenous chef from Guatemala here. I brought an Inuit throat singer from Nunavut (what I think of as way the hell North Canada) here. I brought a Mapuche Indian hip hop artist from Chile here, and I did a one-woman show in Moscow for Navajo designer Virginia Ballinger from Gallup,” he says.
Bronitsky is an archeologist and anthropologist who has spent a good deal of time studying and lecturing in spaces across the world – including a year as a Fulbright professor in Germany teaching Europeans about Indigenous culture. He says it changed his life.
“The simplest way to think of what I do is I tell people, ‘Choose the message.’ If the message is a traditional novel and a dance group, an Australian Aboriginal rock rock band or a Maori theater company from New Zealand, I’ve worked with all three. My job is not to tinker with the message and add feathers. My job is to turn up the volume. And I’ve been doing that since 1994 now,” Bronitsky says.
He says he’s been facilitating dialogs and programs between Jews and Native Americans,, Jews and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, Jews and Buddhists and other groups since the late ’80s. He created a panel discussion called “Being Non-Christian in Albuquerque” with panelists from the Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh communities, and he was nominated to join the board of the New Mexico Interfaith Dialogue last year. He hit the ground running.
“I proposed the speaker series, and they basically said, go for it,” he says. “It all comes originally from my experience as a Jew. I’ve had numerous discussions over the course of my life with people about many things, but when we talk about my religion, I’ve often found myself thinking afterward, ‘I wish they knew this particular thing about Judaism.’ And so I figured this speaker series is a way for all of us to get in the last word, because many of these [speakers] have had similar experiences.”
One of the other things Bronitsky likes about this series is that, with a few exceptions, people are speaking in their home faith building. It might just be the perfect environment for curious minds to start getting acquainted, find out what they have in common and plan to meet for smaller conversations before they embark on larger projects. He’s been told in the past that he’s got a knack for creating spaces in which conversations happen, and that means – in the terms of this dialogue – making sure that there’s publicity, that there’s a venue and maybe even some refreshments afterward. Nobody’s making any promises, but November’s lecture at St. George Greek Orthodox Christian Church had pizza and a pretty stacked snack table, and Bronitsky says the groups and venues they have slated for this year’s lecture series might even include potluck-style receptions. The stage is set, but what happens in these spaces is up to the speakers. Bronitsky and Allread both say the New Mexico Interfaith Dialogue gives their guests freedom to speak about what they feel are the most important things to know about their faith. And the organization gives free creative control to its speakers. That being said, Bronitsky has his work cut out for him because a broad lecture about Judaism has a lot of ground to cover. He’s careful to remind us that he doesn’t represent 4,000 years of Jewish history or the diverse Jewish population scattered on every continent in the world.
“I’m going to focus on two issues: how do we as Jews define ourselves? And the other is, I want to look at Jewish diversity,” Bronitsky says. “There are Jews who are strong Zionists, there are Jews who are anti-Zionist, there are Jews who are very observant, there are Jews who don’t go to synagogue at all. There are Jews who speak Hebrew, there are Jews who don’t have a clue what Hebrew is, and there’s a lot more. And the point that I want to make is they are all Jews.”
To learn more about The New Mexico Interfaith Dialogue, go to nminterfaithdialogue.org/.
The New Mexico Interfaith Dialogue Lecture Series
“I’m a Jew and Here is What I Want People to Know About My Faith” with Gordon Bronitsky
Thursday Dec. 18
7 p.m.
Raindrop Foundation
7901 Mountain Rd. NE