Kevin's Story: Community-orientated interfaith film screening, dialogue and tour

Name: Kevin Stanton
Location: USA
Religion: Christian
Programme: Odyssey Fellows 2022

Kevin Stanton joined us at Rose Castle this summer 2022 as part of the Odyssey Fellow's programme bringing together US seminarians working to use the power of film to promote dialogue across difference. Read about the inspiring work Kevin has been up to since this summer! 

Kevin (left) pictured with other Odyssey Fellows this summer 2022 at Rose Castle.

In my studies at CTS over the past few years, I have been fortunate to have classmates who represented diverse faiths beyond my Western Christian tradition. I have welcomed the diverse perspectives my classmates have contributed, whether it was on Christological supersessionism, soteriology, or ontological ideologies concerning The Divine. It was out of the profundity of these conversations that I decided to apply for the Odyssey Impact Fellowship Program for the 2022-2023 academic year, which I was awarded in July 2022.

The program selects graduate students at theological schools to study and train in an interfaith setting to confront difficult civic issues in their respective communities. Fellows are required to select a documentary film from the Odyssey catalog, then show the film in order to convene courageous conversations that promote healing.

I selected the documentary Descended from the Promised Land: The Legacy of Black Wall Street, which deals with not only the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, but also the systemic and institutional policies that have eliminated thriving communities of color throughout history through vehicles such as zoning laws or the construction of federal/state highways. Along with the film I organized an additional walking tour of a historic neighborhood centered around the remnants of a major firearms factory located in the heart of a gentrified section of the city.

Film screening of 'Descended from the Promised Land: The Legacy of Black Wall Street'. 

The interreligious approach that I was required to undertake in facilitating these conversations required me to expand beyond my own ideologies about religious institutions, as this became a community-oriented event that involved Christians, Muslims, Atheists, Agnostics, etc. I was fortunate enough to have connections with the community center that hosted the event, so we advertised the event from a community-oriented perspective, as appealing to only Christian churches would have limited the level of involvement.

This strategy resulted in participation on the walking tour that was tremendous! People of all ages and backgrounds had so many questions, and they clapped and cheered when some of the elderly community members recounted their stories about migrating from the South. It was also beneficial to actually walk the historic community because we actually experienced interfaith interaction while on the tour. The remnant of what was once a thriving working-class community is now “sandwiched” between Yale University and a wealthier part of the city, so it is no surprise to see groups of joggers, cyclers, or skateboarders walking through the aforementioned community.

During our tour, we met an orthodox Jewish family walking from their synagogue, so participants got the opportunity to witness firsthand what Shabbat is and why it is significant within the Jewish faith. The overall significance of the tour was that it allowed for an intersectional interaction across ages, genders, sexual orientation, and religion. Participants met with and spoke with people who migrated to the city from the Jim Crow South, spoke with millennials about how they viewed the Great Migration in a contemporary context, and discussed the impacts of urban renewal on the major religious communities in the area.

Walking tour.

Even though I am still currently in the fellowship, as I reflect upon the interreligious nature of the work that I am currently involved in I would have to say that it has been not only life-altering, but faith-altering. My Faith has been strengthened and expanded in ways that I could not have conceived years ago, and it has been mainly through interactions with my Muslim and Jewish fellowship members.

During our retreat at Rose Castle in Cumbria, England we participated in an activity called “Scriptural Reasoning.” In this activity we were all given a set of three passages to correlate and discuss, with each passage coming from the Bible, Torah, and Quran. What made this especially powerful was that the passages were both in English and either Arabic or Hebrew, so the participants of various faiths read the passages in their original language. By doing this those of us who are Christians came to appreciate the cross-cultural aspect of interreligious interaction, as we learned that there is a melodic, poetic, and even rhythmic aspect of the scriptures. It was especially powerful to hear Biblical scriptures that some of us have become familiar with over the years read in Hebrew.

Scriptural Reasoning with the Odyssey Fellows 2022 at Rose Castle.

Another important interreligious interaction that I had at Rose Castle was with an Islamic seminary student who was from London. He posed a question to our group around a discussion we were having on forgiveness. He asked, “Is it possible to have true forgiveness without justice?” After several mixed responses, he and I had one of the most meaningful conversations during my time there about how some power structures have manipulated the Message of Christ to only focus on the afterlife as a source of justice, but we have had Christian leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. who taught that you can have both forgiveness and justice. He explained to me how this was defined in the Quran, and we quickly became friends.

Another new friend I made was a Jewish rabbi who taught me about the tremendous significance of knowing the Hebrew translations of words. We were discussing repentance, and he explained to me that there are two separate terms for repentance in Hebrew. Teshuvah miyarah, which means repentance out of fear of Divine Punishment, and teshuvah me’ahavah, which means repentance out of love for God and a desire to become attached to The Divine. We had such a profound discussion concerning not only how I never knew that there were two terms for repentance, but also how I grew up under a strict Pentecostal doctrine that practiced teshuvah miyarah exclusively and the impact that it causes within Christian circles today. I reflect on my experience in England often, and I am grateful and blessed to now have a true interreligious perspective.