The activists safeguarding sacred sites across the globe

During an interview in September 2021, Anas Alabbadi, Deputy Director for KAICIID’s Programmes Department, was distracted by a news notification that flashed across his screen: German police had just prevented an attack on a synagogue in Hagen, a city just east of Düsseldorf, Germany.

Having witnessed the devastation of the synagogue attack in the eastern German city of Halle in 2019, Alabbadi was struck again by how events like these underscored the emphasis KAICIID places on supporting and encouraging projects that promote the protection of religious sites.

“We believe, in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that people everywhere must be allowed to practice their faith in peace,” he said, “that religious sites and all places of worship and contemplation should be safe havens, not sites of terror or bloodshed.”

Across the globe, attacks on houses of worship and sacred sites are on the rise.

For example, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops reported in July 2020 that there were 97 attacks on churches in the U.S. since May 2020 alone.

Elsewhere last April, the walls of a mosque in the French city of Rennes were defaced with Islamophobic graffiti. In August 2021, a Hindu temple was ransacked in the remote town of Bhong in the eastern Pakistani province of Punjab.

The list, as they say, could go on and on.

Noting that religious sites are of such significance that it makes them particularly endangered, Alabbadi said, “we want to make sure to protect religious sites so that they can continue to be facilitators of positive peace.”

Photo by Varun Pyasi via Unsplash.

Safeguarding Sacred Sites From Indonesia To Algeria

Given the global scope of the issue, KAICIID is actively providing support to projects to protect places of worship from Africa to Asia, Europe to the Middle East.

When the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) started the process of developing an action plan for reacting to the increase in attacks on religious sites after the bloodshed at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019, KAICIID provided immediate support. KAICIID’s background research included supplying quotes from religious texts for the preamble, information on UNESCO’s work on the preservation of religious sites, and recommendations on the prevention of attacks under UNESCO’s purview.

The result was the “Plan of Action to Safeguard Religious Sites.” According to its preamble, the plan “is a global call to rally around our most basic tenets of humanity and solidarity and to reaffirm the sanctity of all religious sites and the safety of all worshippers who visit houses of worship in a spirit of compassion and respect.”

For Alabbadi, the Plan of Action’s greatest strength lies in its systematic approach to the problem and focus on prevention and response.

“The emphasis is on education, countering hate speech – including on social media – and being prepared to provide care and support when an attack happens,” Alabbadi said.

“Translating such recommendations requires better collaboration between policymakers and religious actors,” he said, “religious actors have a lot to contribute in developing and implementing policies related to the protection of scared sites.”

To that end, over the last two years KAICIID supported projects in the Arab region bringing together peace education and the protection of sacred sites. These projects included the development of a mobile app in Algeria and youth trainings in Tunisia.

In Indonesia, KAICIID organised the 2019 “Jakarta Conference” with the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation (OIC), bringing together religious leaders and policymakers from across Southeast Asia to discuss challenges and opportunities for protecting holy sites. 

The result was the “Jakarta Statement: Together for Diversity — Dialogue in Action,” which included a collective pledge to recognise, preserve, and protect “sites of worship and spiritual heritage and allowing worshippers to use them in peace and harmony.”

Photo by Rohan Reddy via Unsplash.

Reaffirming The Sanctity Of Sacred Sites In Africa

In Africa, KAICIID partnered with the African Union to support 12 projects organised by members of its Interfaith Dialogue Forum (AU-IFDF) specifically focused on the protection of sacred sites.

Agustin Nunez, KAICIID’s Senior Programme Manager for the Africa Region, said the AU’s main theme for 2021 is the promotion of cultural heritage, including the protection of sacred sites.

The partnership, he said, is meant to bring both religious and community actors to the policymaking table “to raise awareness and advocate for the development of regional mechanisms in Africa” to do so.

Among the projects is one in Djibouti where KAICIID-supported religious leaders, elders, youth, CSOs, and NGOs are working together to build a platform to collaborate in preserving and restoring local religious assets. Chief among their priorities is the preservation of holy sites in the eastern African nation.

Not only do such projects contribute concretely to the protection of religious sites, but “promote a peaceful, secure Africa whose development is people-driven” said Nunez, “especially by its women and youth.”

Elsewhere, in the city of Jos, Nigeria, Rev. Zaka Ahuche Peter said his KAICIID Fellows training equipped him to do the same in his country.

That Fellows training includes, “educational modules on the symbolic importance of sacred sites and build Fellows’ capacity to communicate this and diffuse situations through education and creating space for dialogue,” said Alabbadi.

Peter said his relationship with another KAICIID Fellow of a different faith, Fatima Madaki, reveals the “human factor” beyond distrust, helping foster resilience and a mutual respect for the “Other.” He said these kinds of relationships are vital as “attacks on religious sites in Nigeria seem not to abate.

“The fact still remains that ignorance, fanaticism and lack of the fear of God are responsible for destruction of holy sites,” he said, “but in collaboration with religious leaders and training from KAICIID, we are able to send the correct teachings out.”

Farther to the south, in the Nigerian state of Kaduna, Mugu Zakka Bako received a KAICIID 2021-2022 micro grant to organise an interreligious dialogue between local government, civil society organisations, and community leaders to strengthen coherent narratives to respond to violent extremism.

An active and trained peacebuilder whose passion for non-violence as a solution to conflict was moulded out of personal violence against his family members, Bako said “we have been bewitched by a lot of conflicts over natural resources and for ethno-religious, political, and economic reasons.

The conflicts have included numerous attacks on religious sites. “This has happened recently with the burning of churches and mosques in Plateau and some parts of Kaduna state,” he said, “the incessant attacks create insecurity and insecurity is one of Nigeria’s biggest challenges.”

As part of his KAICIID-funded interreligious dialogue sessions, Bako takes participants to different visits to religious sites.

The reactions, said Bako, have been overwhelming. “The outcome has been to foster resilience in the communities where I have worked,” he said, “it has helped religious leaders develop coping capacity and become aware of the need for them to protect their religious sites.

“Today, they are working towards interreligious groupings where Christians protect worship sites of the Muslims, while the Muslims do the same for Christians,” he said.

These kinds of programmes, Alabbadi said, are particularly impactful. With an eye toward expanding programmes like them in the Arab region and Europe in years to come, Alabbadi said, “when imams, priests, and other religious leaders visit each other in hard times and in good times, it signals to the community that it’s okay for them to do the same.”

““This level of relationship is what we call positive peace, to visit and to know what’s behind those walls,””

— Anas Alabbadi

“It is easy to believe negative stories about what is happening behind these walls when you stand outside them,” said Alabbadi, “but once you step inside and see another’s sacred space with your own eyes, it’s a profound, life-changing, life-affirming experience.”

*This post originally appeared on KAICIID.org.

Come, let us wear face masks in worship: Lockdown measures eased, but Christians struggle with coronavirus restrictions

Franziska König always enjoys getting a note from her pastor. Even so, she never expected to get one like she did last week.

“The message started out normally, asking me how I am doing,” König said, “how I am fairing in these terrible times and so on.”

Then, her pastor told her that their small evangelical church in Berlin was going to reopen after being closed for weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That was good news.

“But it was weird when he said I would have to make ‘reservations’ for my family to have a spot on Sunday,” said König. “That’s certainly never happened before.”

König and her congregation are not alone in navigating a “new normal” for worship gatherings as lockdown limits ease across Germany.

While Germany’s federal government makes plans for tracing infection chains and reopening public facilities, churches across Germany are developing their own plans for how to restart worship with new regulations such as compulsory face masks, the prohibition of physical contact, and restrictions on congregational singing.

Questions about singing, more than anything else, have caused consternation among evangelicals in Germany. Perhaps this comes as no surprise. It was the German reformer Martin Luther, after all, who said that “next to the Word of God, music deserves the highest praise.”

However, Lothar Wieler, the head of Germany’s top health research organization—the Robert Koch Institute (RKI)—strongly advised against communal singing of any kind while there are still fears about the spread of the coronavirus. Wieler explained in the official biweekly COVID-19 press conference that “evidence shows that during singing, the virus drops appear to fly particularly far.”

Some even say that singing is a “super-spreader.”

100 Sermons and #MeToo

I was talking with someone at my church on Sunday and they confided in me that, “it’s been a rough week for women.” 

In one sense, they are totally right. The issues of sexual violence, assault, and the abuse of women were prominently back in the spotlight this week. Women were sharing their stories again. The pain was evident. So was the righteous anger. So was the resolve. To all the women who spoke up and out, I want you to know that I hear you. I believe you. I am inspired by you and humbled by you. 

Still, in another sense my friend’s statement was only half true. Instead of saying it’s been a rough week for women we could say it’s been a rough few months. Or a rough few years. A rough decade. Or several strung together. 

Some of the stories that women shared this week included assaults and incidents that occurred a long time ago. The event may be in the past, but the pain is still very potent. The environments that allowed for these things to happen still exist. Worse, they are still excused and defended.  

We have to do better. We have to listen. We have to lament.

We also have to repent, because as true as it is that it’s been a rough few decades for women we could also say it’s been a rough few centuries. A rough era. A rough epoch. 

Or, we could just humbly admit that it’s been rough to be a woman since time began. If there is one thing that the #MeToo movement has taught us is that women’s struggle against abuse, assault, and inequality is a tale as old as time. It is also a story that needs to change. 

That’s where the #ChurchToo movement comes in. It has shown us that things need to change when it comes to religious communities as well. 

That is why I am proud to be small, if humble, part of Sojourners’ “100 Sermons” project.  

They wrote of their project:

When #MeToo went viral in 2017, the movement paved the way for #ChurchToo and #SilenceIsNotSpiritual, hashtags that insisted that because Christians are not immune to perpetrating sexual and domestic violence, they must actively denounce it. Christians all across the spectrum spoke out online against abuse. But we wanted to know, would faith leaders be willing to elevate the conversation from Twitter to the pulpit?

They found those sermons and posted them online for readers to search and learn how to make religious communities safer for survivors. You can search the collection by location, scripture, or denomination.

One of my sermons is part of that database. The quote they pulled out is one I continue to stand by. I hope you can appreciate these words. Let them sink in. Let them hit you. Let them unsettle you. Let them move you to action. 

For people who have been abused, there is no quick fix. I wish I could say there was. However, as the promise from Isaiah makes clear, in Jesus there is hope and healing, liberation and justice. I can only pray that the reality of those promises are evident in your life in the days, weeks, and years to come.

Until then, religious leaders like me have work to do—to interrupt the injustices being perpetrated by our very own leaders on our very own people.

Through this process, and over the last week, I am learning that it is not enough to be an ally. It’s not enough to preach a sermon. Instead, it’s time to revolt against a system that has — for far too long — abused, ostracized, and ignored the very people who have often made that same system as great, just, or humane as it possibly could be: women. 

I continue to learn. I continue to grow. I continue to mature. I pray that you’ll join me by listening to, and learning from, more of the sermons on the “100 Sermons” site. 

Accidental Saints -- Nadia Bolz-Weber's Bold Vision of the Church and its People

Exhausted from a double-header of liturgy and preaching, Caleb came running up to hand me his Sunday-school artwork. It was a mosaic. Of sorts. He had attempted to craft a paper-maché and mixed media mosaic of the loaves and two fishes from the Tabgha chapel in the Sea of Galilee region in Israel. 

Let us, to say the least, admit that Caleb is no Da Vinci. Perhaps more of a Picasso, but no classical artist for sure. The elementary mosaic had glue in all the wrong places, empty spaces, and roughly cut pictures of random loaves and cartoon fish. 

Fine art it was not. But it was beautiful. 

Like the Christian church itself it was muddled, misshapen, and makeshift. Naturally, I loved it for what it was and cherished it for what it represented for me — the fluky, flailing, and often times frightful church I find myself a part of. 

In her latest book — Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People — Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber has written a story of her church, and the Church, that is raw, honest, and full of grace in all its visceral glory. If her last work, Pastrix, was her personal narrative told through life in community at House for All Sinners and Saints (HFASS) — the church she planted in Denver, CO — then Accidental Saints is the story of that community told through the personal lens of its “pastrix," Nadia Bolz-Weber. 

What Bolz-Weber reveals is challenging, gender-bending, and boundary breaking for those with stricter, or more conventional, conceptions of why the Church exists, what it is, and who is part of it. 

It is the story of saints who don’t quite fit the conformist molds and the account of their pastor who is broken, grace-filled, and transparent as she wrestles with God’s favor poured out on unlikely individuals and blessing coming through unorthodox benefactors. 

That’s because, for Bolz-Weber, ‘saints’ = people who have accidentally stumbled into redemption. She wrote that all of us can, and in many ways already are, saints. In what can be the closest thing to an evangelistic appeal from Bolz-Weber, she said, “God wants you, you in your imperfect, broken, shimmering, glory.”

Grace is the central theme of Bolz-Weber’s work; but it ain’t your grandmother’s grace. Claiming she is “not bound by legalism and shame” Bolz-Weber proclaims “the freedom of a Christian” that is found in a grace-filled community of brokenness, imperfection, and stumbling, bumbling, inefficient, healing. 

She talks about “the sting of grace.” 

“It’s powerful, but it’s offensive at the same time, because it’s not fair, and it doesn’t work into our notions of justice. It changes us, and it’s what we need, but it doesn’t mean it feels good,” she said. 

Reflecting on the book, Bolz-Weber added, “what I hope is that people would read this book and see [the glory of God in the midst of our crap] and realize how transformative it can be.” 

Of course, this grace cannot be experienced outside of community. And community is central to the story of Bolz-Weber and HFASS. She said, “the beautiful, radical grace that flows from the heart of God to God’s broken and blessed humanity” is impossible outside community. 

With that said, Bolz-Weber categorically does not offer up HFASS as a shining example for others to follow, nor does she want onlookers or spiritual tourists banging on her church’s door. Instead, she offers up the stories of her community of fractured selves as an example in radical, grace-filled, failure. She said, “I think we’re in a time in the life of the church where stories of failure are so much more important than stories of success.” 

Why? Because that’s where resurrection comes in. Sometimes it comes like a beautiful song, other times like a brick through a window. Bolz-Weber said plainly that sometimes, “God’s mercy is a blunt instrument…the kind that kills the thing that wronged it and resurrects something new in its place.” 

As far as the potential “unorthodoxy” of her views and the condemnation that comes from many corners of evangelicalism, and her own Lutheran tribe, she doesn’t seem too flustered. Instead, she marches boldly on in “Christian freedom” and doesn’t worry about the haters. Affirming that she is categorically not “a Christian apologist” Bolz-Weber is just doing her thing. All the while, she claims herself as a “pretty orthodox Lutheran theologian.” 

Even so, she said, “Belief is going to be influenced by all sorts of things that I have nothing to do with, so I don’t feel responsible for that. I’m responsible for what [people] hear…the Gospel.”

For that matter, she sees herself as just another “accidental saint” with flaws, inoperative parts, and regular failures. If people get pissed about her colored language or her unusual take on things, so be it. Let the naysayers call her a sinner, a heretic, a pastrix. “I think that God’s work in the world is and has always been done through sinners,” she said. 

She closed, “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Confession of a Millennial Church Curmudgeon

I confess, I’m a Millennial church curmudgeon.

Of course, the stereotypical image of a “church curmudgeon” is the bad tempered elderly man, arms crossed, complaining about how the music is too loud and the pews too soft.

And then there’s me. Donning a bow tie and skinny jeans, with dark-rimmed glasses and a pair of loafers, I strut into your church with one mission — to judge you and your ministry. I’ll nit pick your artwork, or lack thereof. I’ll chastise you for not having online giving and pontificate to my friends over brunch how your church is from the Stone Age because your website isn’t up-to-date. And, fair warning, if your slides are just one second off…sorry, but that’s tantamount to undoing the work of the cross.

*Read more at LCEF's Leader-to-Leader Blog

Don't leave your church

I’m serious. If you’re thinking about it, don’t leave your church.

I know, I know. You have your reasons. There’s a new pastor; they stopped playing your favorite song; the vote didn’t go your way in the last congregational meeting; you don’t like so-and-so and now they’re president of the executive board.

I get it. It sucks. Now, take a deep breath…get over yourself and don’t leave your church. 

Here's why...

*Read more of my guest post at LCEF's Leader-to-Leader Blog.