Recommit…

April 18, 2026.Reading time 6 minutes.

Over the last three months I’ve made tremendous progress toward earning my PhD at the University of Virginia. My dissertation project has been approved, and I am now officially writing. My goal is to finish in May of 2027. Apparently, the number “7” is my thing…Princeton ’87, Pacific School of Religion ’17, UVA ‘27…kind of cool.

As I approach this threshold, I recognize that my work is needed in the world. While parish ministry gave me a great deal of practical on-the-ground experience and the opportunity to make one kind of contribution, the experience of immersing myself in the deep study of why people do what they do has been an even more natural fit. I’m now positioning myself to be able to publicly write, speak and teach in a way that contributes to the capacity for people everywhere to live better with one another. Specifically, my work responds to the weaponization of belief…belief based on religion or belief that is simply held as if it were religion…a.k.a. dogmatism. Belief conflated with government defeats the basis of a pluralistic society and we are already mired in that morass. Stark ideological entrenchment reinforced by technological echo chambers has proven to be the most toxic and potentially lethal invention of the 20^th century.

In order to stay focused, I’ve had to remain largely offline over the last few years and particularly since January. Today, my 61^st birthday, however, I’m recommitting to being part of the conversation. The balance between the day-to-day of academic life (researching and teaching) and the whiplash of modern politics is a lot to manage, but I’m feeling greater urgency as I get more fluent with this work and as more extreme positions of dogmatism emerge. I believe that it is essential for scholars like me to focus on practical applications for what we study and not just obsess over our personal grain of sand at our computers.

I want to point you toward three moments from this past week that have kept me thinking about what it means to commit to being a public scholar in this time:

Senator Tammy Duckworth on Iran War Powers Resolution

Representative Terri Sewell confronting RFK, Jr. on his racial (racist) comments

“Charlie Kirk Laws” promoting religion and free speech

Each one of these moments is a lot to take in. But a significant line of human logic connects them through what I named before: weaponization of belief. The literal weaponization of belief pulled us into the war with Iran; the willingness to weaponize an unfounded racialized belief about black children and families, makes RFK, Jr. a genuine threat in public service; and the weaponization of religious belief is attempting to turn the US Constitution into a legislative sword for Christianity.

My dissertation is about Rev. Ethelred Brown (1875 – 1956), Black Unitarian minister from Jamaica, and the sermons he delivered during the height of the Harlem Renaissance as part of the New Negro movement. But inside that grain of sand, I’m asking questions about how Brown understood himself at the intersection of Caribbean, Harlem, Black and Unitarian identity and how that understanding translated into his public words as a minister. I am asking about what Brown believed, why he believed it and how he expressed that belief in his sermons. While I am humbled by his ministry a century ago, my dissertation goes beyond revealing an important history.* For me, Ethelred Brown is primarily a foundational case study on whom I hope to base theories and practical tools that might be applied toward the challenges we face in the way belief is activated in the public discourse today.

This blog is a “note to self” to stay in this work. I will invite you to also consider how you might stay committed to being an engaged participant. It doesn’t need to have a big splash, but it does require conscious intention. That is how we disrupt the bots and memes and careless disposable rhetoric. All of our active and deliberate participation is required. Not just for the American experiment, but for the wider grand human experiment to realize its full promise and potential.

–ALD

*See the excellent historical work about Brown from Mark Morrison-Reed, and Juan Floyd-Thomas

‘Round Midnight

November 26, 2020.Reading time 7 minutes.

And so it begins…

The public and judicial enshrinement of the idea that “sincerely held belief” and “religious liberty” supersede public good, health and general wellbeing started last night when the Supreme Court, shortly before midnight, issued their opinion in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, New York v. Andrew M. Cuomo, Governor of New York.[1] From Amy Howe at Scotusblog.com, “The Supreme Court late Wednesday night granted requests from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and two Orthodox Jewish synagogues to block enforcement of a New York executive order restricting attendance at houses of worship.[2]”

As I look at the case as it was presented to the Supreme Court, I can see the writing on the wall for LGBTQ rights…this new conservative court is going to support exemptions in favor of religious institutions without regard for the broader harm that those religious institutions may cause. Their majority opinion can only be seen as a tip of the hat to conservative religious communities that see themselves as somehow being victims under attack. Never mind the nationwide assault these conservative organizations have waged on general LGBTQ rights, women’s autonomy, Transgender health and public accommodation and even survivors of sexual assault. Associate Justice Gorsuch’s concurring wink and nod opinion hints at this when he states:

Government is not free to disregard the First Amendment in times of crisis. At a minimum, that Amendment prohibits government officials from treating religious exercises worse than comparable secular activities, unless they are pursuing a compelling interest and using the least restrictive means available. See Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U. S. 520, 546 (1993). Yet recently,during the COVID pandemic, certain States seem to have ignored these long-settled principles.[3]

To be clear here, the Lukumi case that Justice Gorsuch references is one of the most quoted in cases seeking religious exemption to LGBTQ inclusion.

As a minister who currently wrestles every day with what it means to create, support, generate, fashion and design spiritual community without the benefit of physical presence, I understand the challenges faced by faith leaders. I grew up in traditions that were based on holy communion, I have a deep theological understanding of the sacraments in the Christian tradition and I have studied Jewish practices for the last decade as part of my education as a minister. But the argument as presented seems to be making the point that Governor Cuomo is somehow “anti-religion” in his position and favoring commercial business over spiritual wellbeing. Yet, they don’t mention the essential difference between how people gather to worship and how they gather in a restaurant.

Without getting into a lengthy analysis, the basic difference between the two is the way in which dining and worship manifest as intimate experiences. Communal worship is designed around the premise of bringing together people who aren’t normally in close proximity by creating a forced intimacy; by its very definition, communal worship is a super spreader event, meant to spread faith and shared experience. Sadly however, it is also a super spreader for Covid-19, the flu and any airborne illness. Dining on the other hand allows people to bring their isolated intimacies into the public setting and therefore can be managed in terms of maintaining isolations while providing unique intimacies. Diners are not sharing the same plate and glass.

But this is not the main problem with this decision. The Arch Diocese case is wrestling with the question of whether or not a government entity has any right at all to limit how and when people worship. The conservative court has ruled here that government cannot intervene in religious practice in any way under any circumstances even in a global pandemic. This is an incredibly dangerous premise because how then does one intervene when church organizations claim that conversion therapy is part of their religious practice? Or worse female genital mutilation and racial segregation?

Freedom of religion is important to maintain our Constitutional standards, but freedom from religion is equally important. What needs to happen here is that not only does church and state need to remain separate, but the question of religious belief as a personal framework needs to be separate from religious practice as a public facing act as well. If the method in which a religious practice is being carried out creates a public health threat for those who do not practice that religion, reason says that there must be limitations and considerations as to how it is exercised.

Moving into the next era of Supreme Court decisions will require all of us who are progressive faith leaders to remain vigilant and informed. This ruling was handed down around midnight before a national holiday. It literally snuck in. What is more, law is based largely on precedent. The precedent set by this decision is chilling. It is an onramp to solidifying the foundation for religious exemption to be the broad law of the land giving a pass to violent discrimination and bigotry. The conservative justices are poised to lead the way marching civil rights in the United States all the way back to 1789 one midnight decision at a time.

[1] Amy Howe, Justices lift New York’s COVID-related attendance limits on worship services, SCOTUSblog (Nov. 26, 2020, 2:18 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/11/justices-lift-new-yorks-covid-related-attendance-limits-on-worship-services/

[2] Ibid.

[3] Per Curiam, “2 ROMAN CATHOLIC DIOCESE OF BROOKLYN v. CUOMO,” 2020, 33.

spirituwellness

Tag: religion

‘Round Midnight