“It’s Changed Everything”: Interfaith Dialogue in the Wake of October 7, 2023

I sat down for tacos with a colleague in Culver City, California, one early summer’s eve. The conversation was light.   

That is, until it wasn’t.   

Involved with interreligious dialogue at the local, state, national, and intergovernmental level, my acquaintance was concerned about the impact of Hamas’ attack on Israel that killed nearly 1,200 individuals and the Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF) brutal reprisal against Gaza and its people in the months that followed had done irreparable harm to cause of peacemaking in the U.S.   

The intense, seemingly endless violence and the chilling prospect of a ceasefire without lasting peace, my acquaintance feels, is having a profound emotional, psychological, and practical impact on people who care about connecting across religious, cultural, and political differences.   

“It’s set us back at least 20 years,” they said. Communities that used to connect, colleagues that used to be in conversation, groups that used to meet, and initiatives that used to be shared have all been impacted. “It’s changed everything.”   

As Thomas Banchoff wrote for Commonweal, “the Israel-Hamas war illustrates the fragility of interfaith diplomacy” and dialogue.   

While many said numerous theological, social, and political gains had been made through interreligious engagement in the U.S. and abroad in recent years, the damaging impact of savage violence, polarizing discourse, divisive protests, and tiptoeing around political landmines is a stark reminder of interfaith dialogue’s delicacy and potential limitations.   

Since October 7 last year, the strain between the Jewish and Muslim communities — and beyond — has challenged the ability of interfaith spaces to function as facilitators for positive dialogue, let alone spaces for solidarity.   

While various initiatives can claim decades of leadership in interreligious dialogue and relationships built between leaders and laity from numerous traditions, many have struggled to gather communities during the conflict. 

In various private exchanges, leaders and community members express their frustrations with their community’s lack of speaking out but are unwilling to call out a lack of mutual accountability for what happened and continues to happen.   

This, say practitioners nationwide, has eroded and stifled opportunities for sustainable peace. 

Berlin Like Jazz

It’s Saturday night and you’re looking for jazz in Germany’s capital. You could catch an after-midnight jam session at A-Trane in Charlottenburg, get cozy in the stylish, intimate ambience of the Zig Zag Club in Friedenau, or catch a solo saxophonist serenading the crowd at Berlin’s oldest jazz club, Quasimodo.

And there’s one more option: You could wait until morning and go to church in the Wedding district. 

One part church plant, one part jazz project, Kiez Church (Neighborhood Church) in the multiethnic district of Wedding is led by Ali and Rich Maegraith, Australian missionaries who say they want to bring the gospel to the cosmopolitan city’s art scene.

Berlin is a magnet for musicians—a place to connect and prove your chops. The German capital is a hub for many different European music scenes, from electronic dance to Afropop, classical to klezmer, and attracts creative people from all over.

The Maegraiths, who moved to Berlin in 2015, say that’s their in. The music provides them with evangelical opportunities. Rich, a professional jazz musician, and Ali, a vocalist and songwriter, moved to the city to serve with the European Christian Mission agency.

“We’ve met many people through jam sessions, performances or just busking on the streets,” Ali told CT. When they first arrived, Rich said he would go to jam sessions every night, all over the city. “In Berlin, the jazz scene is already a community, where people will play and hang out together until the early hours of the morning,” he said, “they even call it ‘jazz church.’”

Berlin’s nightlife is more readily associated with techno and punk, but it also has a long, historical relationship with jazz. The improvisational, syncopated music first came to the German capital at the end of World War I, when it was warmly received by the post-war population of the Weimar Republic.

When the American-born French singer and dancer Josephine Baker visited Berlin in 1925, she found the city dazzling with a vibrant jazz scene. Her performances were received with warm adulation. And popular acts like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington took the city by storm at a time when it was the third largest metropolitan area in the world by population.

Nazis put an end to jazz when they took control, but the music came back with the American victory in World War II. Soldiers stationed in the city brought the music of Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Miles Davis with them. This time, jazz stuck.

Today, Berlin is one of the best places in Europe to hear a live jazz show. And one of the places you can do that is at Kiez Church Wedding.

Art, Immigration, and Faith

The amber appears to ooze across the floor like slow-flowing lava. Containing found objects and materials sourced from Salvadoran communities around Los Angeles, Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio’s artwork is expansive and expressive of the materiality of often-marginalized Central American migrants in Southern California.

His artistic craft, Aparicio said, speaks to the innovative, resourceful, and resilient voices of migrants throughout the city and beyond. Artists of many kinds hope works like Aparicio’s can tell new kinds of immigrant stories — ones often full of faith and spirituality, migration and baptism, encounters with Jesus and varying experiences with church life.

Amid the leaves, bones, broken dishware, condom wrappers, beer holders, and archival papers in Aparicio’s work is a single flier for a church — a “Casa del Dios” advertising their services with Jesus’ words in bold red across the top: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

The installation, on display at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, hints at how immigration and faith are represented in various artistic mediums.

While political conversations about immigrants and immigration policy tend toward broad, often dehumanizing stereotypes, artists such as Aparicio are using their art to help viewers reflect on the deep, and expansive, experience of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in the U.S.

Giselle Elgarresta Rios, the first Cuban-American woman to conduct at Carnegie Hall in New York, wrote that art — perhaps more than other media — can help us better “see the souls of immigrants.”

That Europe May Know

The goal is audacious. But as far as James Davis, founder of the Global Church Network, is concerned, Christians need deadlines. Otherwise, they will never do what they need to do to fulfill the Great Commission.

His group gathered in Zurich, Switzerland, last September with 400 ministry leaders from across Europe who committed to raising up and equipping more than 100,000 new pastors in the next decade. The network plans to establish 39 hubs in Europe, with a goal of 442 more in the years to come, for training church planters, evangelists, and pastors to proclaim the gospel.

“A vision becomes a goal when it has a deadline,” Davis said at the event.

“So many Christian leaders today doubt their beliefs and believe their doubts. It is time for us to doubt our doubts and believe our beliefs. We will claim, climb, and conquer our Mount Everest, the Great Commission.”

Davis has a number of very motivated partners in this project, including the Assemblies of God, the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), and the International Pentecostal Holiness Church. The network also counts The Wesleyan Church, the Church of the Nazarene, the Foursquare Church, the Church of God in Christ, and OMF International (formerly Overseas Missionary Fellowship) as members of a broader coalition working to complete the Great Commission in the near future. If it turns out their European goal is a bit beyond reach, they will still undoubtedly do a lot between now and their deadline.

And the Global Church Network is not alone. In Germany, the Bund Freikirchlicher Pfingstgemeinden (Association of Free Church Pentecostals) has announced plans to plant 500 new churches by 2033. The group, celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2024, told CT it is currently planting new congregations at a rate of about seven per year. Raising up new pastors is key to its growth strategy. 

And the Bund Evangelisch-Freikirchlicher Gemeinden in Deutschland (Association of Free Evangelical Churches in Germany) has planted 200 churches in the past decade. It has grown to about 500 congregations with 42,000 members. The Free Evangelicals also have plans to launch 70 new churches by 2030, at a rate of 15 per year, and then start another 200 by 2040. 

“Goal setting is a bit of a thing in Europe,” said Stefan Paas, the J. H. Bavinck Chair for Missiology and Intercultural Theology at the Free University of Amsterdam and the author of Church Planting in the Secular West.

He’s not convinced it’s a good thing for Christian missions, though. In fact, he doesn’t think ambition, verve, and goal setting actually work.

Paas’s research shows that supply-side approaches—the idea that if you plant it, they will come—seem promising and often demonstrate early success, but the results mostly evaporate. While it is widely believed that planting new churches causes growth, he said, that’s not what the evidence shows.

“Yes, newer churches tend to draw in more people and more converts, but they also lose more,” Paas told CT. “There’s a backdoor dynamic where people come into newer churches but then leave.”

He examined the Free Evangelicals’ membership statistics from 2003 to 2017 and found that church plants often correlated with quick growth but then slow decline. 

“It’s one thing to draw people, and another thing to keep them,” he said. 

Religion, Immigration and the 2024 Elections

Over the last six months, I’ve been covering religion and immigration for Sojourners Magazine.

I traveled to Tijuana, Mexico, Lampedusa, Italy, southern Arizona and downtown Los Angeles to hear from migrants making their way. I heard from Muslim aid workers on the front lines providing sanctuary and nuns serving the vulnerable asylum seekers living on the streets of Skid Row. I sat with mothers weeping over their children and praying for safe passage at a cemetery just meters from the bollard-steel border wall that rips through the Sonoran wilderness like a rust-colored wound. 

In my latest for ReligionLink and as part of my “What You Missed Without Religion Class” series at Patheos, I reflect on what you need to know about faith and immigration ahead of the 2024 elections.

At the border, a shelter for -- and by -- women

Anyone crossing the U.S.-Mexico border faces a journey fraught with violence and danger.

But for women and children, that journey is even more treacherous. Not only are many fleeing violence at home — including gender-based violence — they also experience higher rates of violence en route. Torture, mutilation, sexual violence, femicide,disappearances, and additional health complications are common occurrences for female migrants making their way north.

That danger is amplified for the thousands of girls living in makeshift camps and tent cities along the U.S.-Mexico border without protection or accompanying support. According to the Washington, D.C.-based Kids In Need of Defense, “[u]naccompanied children are especially vulnerable to sexual violence, human trafficking, and exploitation by cartels and other criminal groups.”

Over the last few years, a group of Muslim women has stepped in to meet their needs in unique ways. Albergue Assabil (“the Shelter of the Path”), the first Muslim shelter along the U.S.-Mexico border, has been in operation since June 2022 under the leadership of Sonia Tinoco García, founder and president of the Latina Muslim Foundation. According to staff, the shelter served nearly 3,000 migrants in its first two years of operation. Many of those migrants have been women, attracted to the shelter because of its separate men’s and women’s facilities and the fact that Albergue Assabil is a female-led shelter.

And it’s not only Muslim women finding sanctuary under the shade of the shelter’s blue dome; there have also been other female immigrants looking to García and her team for assistance as they make the perilous journey north.

German Pastor to Pay for Anti-LGBTQ Statements

Nearly five years after a German pastor sparked controversy with comments about homosexuality, the legal dispute appears to be over with a settlement of 5,000 euros (about $5,550 USD).

Olaf Latzel, pastor of a conservative congregation in the state-privileged Protestant Church, called homosexuality “degenerative” and “demonic.” He condemned what he called the “homolobby” and slammed “these criminals” at a Berlin LGBTQ pride celebration, “running around everywhere.” Latzel made the comments during a 2019 marriage seminar. Only about 30 couples attended, but the seminar was later shared on YouTube.

He was charged with incitement of hate against a people group and found guilty in 2020 in the Bremen District Court. Latzel was ordered to pay a fine of 90 euros per day for 90 days—the equivalent of nearly $9,000 USD.

Latzel appealed and won in regional court. The judge ruled that while offensive, the pastor’s comments were nonetheless protected by constitutional protections of freedom of religion and freedom of expression.

Prosecutors appealed that decision and in February 2023 the Higher Regional Court deemed the case “incomplete” and sent it back to Bremen.

Now, the Bremen Regional Court has suspended the proceedings, with one condition: the pastor must give 5,000 Euros to the nonprofit Rat & Tat-Zentrum für Queeres Leben (Advice and Action Center for Queer Life) in Bremen.

Latzel has six months to transfer the funds. With that, the case against him will be dropped completely.

Crime and perception: Religion, public safety and the 2024 elections

On the second day of the recent Republican National Convention the theme was “Make America Safe Again.”

Addressing those gathered in Milwaukee, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican and evangelical, warned against the threat the “radical left” posed to what he said were long-held American “principles of faith, family and freedom.”

Linking those principles to Americans’ safety, Johnson promised Republicans would remain “the law and order team.”

“We always have been — and we always will be — the advocates for the rule of law,” Johnson said.

But since the beginning of 2024, violent crime is down across the U.S. According to the FBI, there was a 15% overall decline in violent crime over the last several months and decreases in the rates of murder and rape (nearly 26%), robbery (18%), property crime (15%) and aggravated assault (12%).

Why then do more than half (54%) of U.S. voters — and nearly three-fourths (74%) of registered Republicans — consider crime a “major factor” in their considerations of who will be president?

Part of that, as CBS News’ Camilo Montoya-Galvez explains, is due to perceptions about the danger of incoming immigrants and increased numbers of encounters along the U.S.-Mexico border.

But as this edition of ReligionLink explores, religious adherence can also help explain the fear factor ahead of November’s elections and why Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump has much to gain from Americans’ anxiety around crime and public safety in 2024.

What faith and immigration leaders are saying about Kamala Harris' candidacy

The prospect of Kamala Harris becoming the Democratic nominee in August — and the possibility of a Harris presidency in 2025 — shook up the race for president last week.

And among faith leaders, it has reinvigorated hopes that her leadership could signal a commitment to both the rights and dignity of immigrants, as well as a secure, well-managed border.

Many fear a Donald Trump presidency and what it might mean for migrants already living in the U.S. or arriving at its borders. But President Joe Biden’s decidedly mixed record has also garnered condemnation from faith leaders who called his most recent executive orders — severely restricting most asylum claims at the border and expediting the removal of unauthorized migrants — as “cruel and racist.”

And though people of faith — and the wider U.S. population — want comprehensive immigration reform with increasing urgency, the practicalities of bipartisan legislation have remained elusive for multiple administrations, Republican and Democrat.

The end result is a status quo at the border that leaders like Dylan Corbett find unacceptable and hope Harris might be able to change.

“We need a new approach to managing migration at the border, one that works for our country, for border communities and the next generation of American immigrants looking to raise their families with dignity,” said the executive director of Hope Border Institute, an organization working to advance justice on the border in El Paso, Tx.

When asked what he expected from Harris on immigration in the months to come, Corbett emphasized that responsibility to reform the country’s immigration system lies with all sides. “Both parties need to undertake a serious examination of conscience on immigration policy, which has been needlessly politicized, to the detriment of all;” he said, “humane and safe immigration policies are possible and within reach.

“The only thing lacking is political leadership,” he said.

Image And Power, Satire And Sacrilege At The Paris Olympics

When I teach a religious studies class, I try to pull something from the headlines to use for discussion. You know, something religion-y to get students thinking about religion’s continuing ubiquity and importance in the world today.  

Had I been teaching a class at the end of July 2024, there would have been only one option for that thing: the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics.

Not the bells ringing at Notre Dame Cathedral and not Sequana, goddess of the river Seine, galloping in gleaming silver with the Olympic flag. Worthy topics, to be sure. But none was more worthy of discussion — if social media were the measure of things — than a living tableau of LGBTQ+ performers posing in what seemed to be (or…possibly not) a recreation of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.”

It created some conversation and controversy, to say the least. And rather than adjudicating the right- or wrongness of the artistic choice, the ins and outs of the potential offense, whether the portrayal was Ancient Greek or Renaissance Italian, or the dynamics of French secular culture, global Catholicism and U.S. evangelical culture (again, all worthy topics), I would have used the kerfuffle as a case study in the power of the image and the power of satire in the world of religion.

The power of image

With or without religion, images are powerful. They move us to anger, they move us love; they move us to buy, they move us to believe.

And in his eponymous book, religion scholar David Morgan discusses the power of the “sacred gaze” — a way of seeing that invests an object (an image, person, time or place) with spiritual significance. Across a variety of religious traditions, Morgan traces how images in different times and spaces convey beliefs and produce religious reactions in human societies – what he calls, “visual piety.”  

As human products, images and religious ideas have grown together, with some images having the power to determine personal practice and identifications, rituals and notions of sacred space. As “visual instruments fundamental to human life,” images have their own materiality and agency. Think of the ubiquitous statue of the Buddha sitting in backyard or the glittery gold calligraphy of “Allah” or “Muhammad” hanging over a family’s living room; the brightly colored images of Ganesha and Krishna or a copy of Eric Enstrom’s “Grace” hanging in kitchens and cookhouses across the U.S.

Each of these images serve as markers of a whole range of social concerns, devotional piety, creedal orthodoxy or gender norms.

So too with da Vinci’s “Last Supper.” As one of the most well-known religious images the world over, the painting is not a part of any Christian canon. It isn’t even an accurate representation of what the Last Supper, as recorded in the Christian Gospels, would have been. Jesus’ disciples were not Renaissance European white men, they were probably not pescatarians, nor were they seated on one side of the table (or seated at that kind of table at all). But as a myth we knew we were all making, and as the National Gallery’s Siobhán Jolley pointed out on X, the painting morphed from being a sign (a painting portraying an interpretation of biblical texts) to a signifier (a bearer of meaning so pronounced that it came to visualize Jesus’ last meal with his followers for many).   

And in our contemporary culture(s), such visual cues carry a particular kind of power. In a highly visual society, bombarded by the rapid consumption of images on screens of varying size and intensity, images can transcend one context and speak to many — as did the recreation of da Vinci’s “Last Supper” (or…maybe not) when it resonated both positively and negatively with so many.

As a visual quotation of a popular image, we translated its meaning and the image spoke with power to various communities and subcultures. It tore people up and took the internet by storm. It manifested opprobrium and offense, celebration and adulation, as it was read as a sacrilege of the highest offense or as a symbol of vibrant tolerance and pleasing subversiveness. Along the way, it created a whole range of responses, on what is and what is not offensive, what is and is not idolatry, what is and is not Christian privilege, what is and is not persecution; the list could go on and on.

For all that it was (or was not), the Opening Ceremony moment (and it was, after all, but a blip on the screen) illustrated once again the power of religious images, even in increasingly secular societies.

The power of satire

In addition, whatever the performance was meant to represent, it was almost certainly meant as a form of satire.

A genre with generations of history, religious satire’s power lies in its ability to direct the public gaze to the vice, follies and shortcomings of religious institutions, actors and authority writ large. Whether calling out hypocrisy or corruption, religious satire has been used for centuries to take religious elites or established traditions to task.

Examples of savage satire and nipping parody abound across religious history. From the Purim Torah and its humorous comments read, recited or performed during the Jewish holiday of Purim to "Paragraphs and Periods,”(Al-Fuṣūl wa Al-Ghāyāt) a parody of the Quran by Al-Ma‘arri or the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer or Robert Burns’ poem “Holy WIllie’s Prayer,” authors and authorities, playwrights and poets have wielded scalding pens to critique what they see as the hypocrisy, self-righteousness and ostentation of religious communities.

As such, satire has been powerful as a means of protest both from without and within religious traditions. For example, the 16th-century rebel German monk and Reformer Martin Luther used his caustic touch to call what he thought were abuses within the Catholic Church to task. Jeering and flaunting his way through theological controversies and the dogmatic discussions of his day, Luther was not one to skirt the issue or back away from using humor and satire to prove his point. In fact, he was well known for his use of scatological references, offending his followers and opponents with vulgar references to passing gas and feces.

Each of these examples shows how satire relies on a combination of absurdity, mimicry and humor to highlight the problems its creators see with religious actors’ or institutions’ behaviors, vices or social standing.

To that end, the opening ceremony’s display was religious satire par excellence, insofar as it pushed a particular social agenda and advocated for certain recognitions for a marginalized community through its exhibition. The living display not only created a stir but captured the public imagination, sparking discussion and debate about Christian privilege, European culture and the acceptance and affirmation of LGBTQ+ individuals in religious communities. In this way, religious satire can also help create community and a sense of belonging among those who are in on the joke and jive with the critique embodied in the satire.

The persistent power of religion

The debate around the tableau will (hopefully) die down in the days and weeks to come (and perhaps already has in a media cycle that serves up a fresh controversy every 24-hours). But if I were to point to just one lesson in my religious studies classroom, I would highlight how the scene — for all it was or wasn’t — proved once again the power of images and satire in the field of religion.

It is another case study in how, even at supposedly “secular” events in a decidedly “secular” country, religion — and the primary and secondary images and satire thereof — remains persistently present and ubiquitously potent. And that, dear students of religion, is something to keep in mind for the next controversy, which is sure to come sometime soon.

"Christ crucified on the streets of Los Angeles"

It’s an overcast Saturday morning on Gladys Avenue in Skid Row — a 54-block area in downtown Los Angeles, home to one of the country’s most stable populations of people experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity. 

Andrew Jiang, of Alhambra, a city in western Los Angeles county, is there with a group of around 15 other volunteers with the Friars and Sisters Poor of Jesus Christ to serve chicken, rice, and vegetables to some 150 people living on Skid Row. On other days, a team of friars, nuns, and volunteers will walk block to block, distributing up to 400 sandwiches to more than 200 people. 

Jiang, who has volunteered on Skid Row since 2018, said, “You get to know some of the people, develop a relationship. We try to do more than just hand out food, but talk and get to know their stories.” 

Sister Goretti and others serve migrant families on Skid Row (PHOTO: Courtesy Sisters Poor of Jesus Christ Los Angeles)

In recent months, Jiang said he has noticed, among the usual crowd queuing in line, an upswing in the number of new faces, many of them from Central and South America. “Immigrants,” Jiang said. “In the last five years, I hadn’t met a single one down here, but now we meet at least a few every week.” 

Skid Row is seen by many as the epicenter of the U.S.’s unhoused epidemic; it’s now home to an increasing number of migrant families from Colombia and Venezuela, being bused in by Republican governors in border states like Texas or making their way here to seek asylum. 

According to The Los Angeles Times, “there are more than 100 families living there now, with more than 200 children,” many of whom are recent migrants. While the majority stay at privately funded mission shelters that accept families, a smaller number of these families now reside “in an array of large tents, pup tents and tarp shelters” along Towne Avenue, near Fourth Street, in what the Times called a “last resort for families that have run out of options.” 

But Giovanni, a Skid Row resident originally from Mexico, said more families are running out of options. “Whole families from South America are coming here, with their kids and everything,” he said. “They say the numbers are low, but I’ve seen them increasing.”

And as more migrants end up on Skid Row, a Catholic order is stepping in to meet their needs.

This is their story.

Is Tampa the new Dearborn?

While the city’s Islamic infrastructure is dynamic, the community’s mix of progressive values and social conservatism makes it an outlier in a polarized ideological landscape.

Ashraf “Ash” Ayyash, owner and operator of The Fryer House foodtruck in Temple Terrace, Fla. (PHOTO: Ken Chitwood)

“You’ve got to try The Fryer House,” Aaysha Kapila told me via the Tampa Halal Food Facebook group. “It’s new on the scene, but it’s amazing.” The “scene” in question? Tampa’s market for halal food. And The Fryer House, a food truck that opened in December 2023, is one of the newest on it, offering a fusion of Arab, Asian and American Southern fried chicken — from hot chicken sandwiches to fiery golden tenders to chicken and waffles.

Blending Palestinian spices with Japanese styles and Latin American peppers, the food truck’s owner, Ashraf “Ash” Ayyash, says his brand of “halal hot chicken” has proved a hit. While his customers come from a cross-section of Tampa society, many are Arabs and South Asian Muslims looking for a spicy, sumptuous, halal option for lunch or dinner. During Ramadan, Ayyash said, he cooked thousands of pounds of chicken. At a series of major local events during the month of fasting — Ramadan Suhoor Nights — he averaged 300 pounds per night.

Sitting underneath Ayyash’s menu with its hot, very hot and “pepper x” levels of spiciness, a slim, 30-something Palestinian American named Zyad is snacking on some of Ayyash’s specially seasoned french fries. This, he says, is one of his favorite options in Temple Terrace, a city on the northeast side of Tampa Bay and epicenter of its robust halal food scene. “There’s a Yemeni place down the road, several shawarma options, an Arab grocery store, a Turkish grocery store, bakeries, clothing stores, restaurants, food trucks. The list goes on,” he told New Lines.

“Tampa,” Zyad said, “is like the new Dearborn,” referring to Dearborn, Michigan, the first Arab-majority city in the U.S. and home to the largest mosque in North America.

Though there are no official statistics, estimates of Tampa’s Muslim community range between 5,000 or 6,000 in the Temple Terrace-New Tampa area alone, to upward of 36,000 or as high as 100,000 in the greater Tampa Bay area, which includes St. Petersburg and Clearwater.

Community statistics show an estimated 500,000 Muslims in Florida and over 150 mosques and Islamic centers across the state, from the Keys in the south to Pensacola on the panhandle. And they cut the cross section of Muslim-American society: Almost one-third were born in the U.S., with the remaining 69% coming from places like Pakistan and India, Egypt and Palestine, Guyana and Puerto Rico. The Tampa Bay area is home to tens of thousands of Muslims from over 80 different countries.

Especially around Busch Boulevard and 56th Street, not far from the Busch Gardens amusement park and the main campus of the University of South Florida (USF), Tampa’s Islamic infrastructure is dense, a testament to its rarely recognized, but consistently growing, Muslim community. Not only are numerous mosques and several of the nation’s premier Islamic schools in and around Temple Terrace, but there are also law offices with signs in Arabic and Urdu, numerous halal restaurants, Middle Eastern barber shops, Ramadan decor hanging in shop windows and a large halal slaughterhouse named Musa’s.

Abdullah Jaber at CAIR’s offices in Temple Terrace, Fla. (PHOTO: Ken Chitwood)

“I would estimate around 70% of the businesses in the Temple Terrace area are Muslim-owned,” said Imam Abdullah Jaber, executive director of CAIR Florida, the Sunshine State’s chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil liberties organization whose offices are also in Temple Terrace. “There are Muslims heading the Chamber of Commerce, professors at local universities, dentists, physicians, you name it.”

They are also shaping local, state and national elections with the growing political power that comes with such a presence. But that influence is far from monolithic: The Muslim community’s shifting political crosscurrents and fault lines mean it doesn’t align neatly with either camp in the country’s increasingly polarized landscape. “I think you can be socially conservative and yet be an advocate for social and racial justice,” Jaber told New Lines.

“Maybe that’s impossible with America’s current politics, but I think Tampa is leading the way here. It’s a model for American Muslim life.”

Culture Wars 3.0

How we identify — according to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion or gender — is at the heart of hundreds of bills in legislatures across the country. And as U.S. voters across the political spectrum gear up for the 2024 presidential cycle, debates are intensifying about how to define the nation’s values around these issues.

Just weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it will hear arguments on the constitutionality of state bans on gender-affirming care for transgender minors.

The issue has emerged as a big one in the past few years. While transgender people have gained more visibility and acceptance in many respects, half of U.S. states have instituted laws banning certain health care services for transgender kids.

In recent years, voters have been particularly fired up about the lessons and books that should, and shouldn’t, be taught to children about their bodies or the nation’s past. But those culture wars have also come to corporate America and college sports.

These renewed culture wars have take over everything from local school board meetings to state legislatures and the U.S. Capitol.

In the following, I unpack how we got here and round up stories and sources for going deeper into the culture wars’ decadeslong history.

Their church basement used to host quinceañeras. Now it houses Mauritanian Muslims

“They call me Mom,” said Maria Elena Montalvo, pastor of Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bell, Calif., as she worked with Dioulde and Jallo, two asylum seekers from Mauritania, to mop the floors of the church basement where they have been staying since September 2023.

Dioulde and Jallo are two of 20 Mauritanians living in a space that used to be rented out for quinceañeras in the largely working-class area of southeast Los Angeles, where the population is 89.1 percent Latino. Now, in a space that families used to celebrate their daughters’ 15th birthdays under the sprinkling lights of a chandelier, there are rows of futon-style beds lined up against the walls, with folded Muslim prayer rugs, gallon-sized water bottles, and plastic sandals neatly stacked alongside. (Sojourners is withholding the full names of migrants in this story, at their request, due to the sensitivities of immigration status.)

Showing Dioulde how to work the mop bucket and telling Jallo to get the chicken out of the freezer so it can thaw for dinner that night, Montalvo cuts the figure of a mom giving her kids directions on their chores.

But her daughter, Jennifer Coria, 24, who works at the church, said with a wry smile, “She’s nicer to them than she is to us at home.”

For more than six years, Montalvo’s church has made space available to migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers arriving in Bell from countries in Central and South America and Mexico. But over the last nine months, Mauritanians like Dioulde and Jallo have come to call the 100-year-old church their home as well.

They arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border last summer…

How then shall we live, when the world is on fire?

Climate change is happening.

I am not a scientist. Nor do I pretend to be. But drawing on information taken from natural sources — like ice cores, rocks, and tree rings — recorded by satellites, and processed with the aid of the most advanced computer processors the world has ever known, NASA experts report “there is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate” and that “[h]uman activity is the principal cause.” 

From global temperature rise to melting ice sheets, glacial retreat to sea levels rising, the evidence of a warming planet abounds. While Earth’s climate has fluctuated throughout history, the current season of warming is happening at a rate not seen in 10 millennia — 10,000 years.

Many of the undergraduate students in courses introducing them to religious traditions — Islam, Christianity or otherwise — have no reservations about climate change and its disastrous effects on the environment and the most vulnerable in human society. In my classrooms, there is a palpable fear about the planet’s future. 

It is little wonder, then, that students often ask how religious actors interpret their sacred texts and confessions or how they, in turn, address climate change or engage with the environment. 

What they discover can often be disappointing — if not infuriating.

Faith & Politics: Your Religion Guide to the 2024 Elections

With just a few months to go until the U.S. holds elections on Nov. 5, 2024, reporters covering the intersections of religion and politics will face a common challenge: how to write about the varied politics of people of faith and cover the diverse roles religion(s) will play in this election.

White evangelicals, and the conflation of their faith with political conservatism in general, tend to dominate religion-related election news, to the neglect of other religious communities — Christian and otherwise.

In this edition of ReligionLink, we take a different approach. Rather than focusing on any one tradition, we break down ideas, sources and resources for reporting on the top issues at stake in the 2024 election(s).

Looking at seven issues from the perspective of diverse faith traditions in the U.S. — and the particular intersection of identifications, institutions and ideals they represent — helps us better get a sense of how religion may, or may not, play a role in determining the shape and outcome of this year’s vote.

"Cruel and racist": Faith leaders decry Biden's border shutdown

At a White House event hosting border-town mayors on June 4, President Joe Biden announced an executive order that would temporarily shut down the U.S.’s southern border to asylum requests when average daily migrant crossings at legal ports of entry exceed 2,500. The border would then reopen if the average falls below 1,500.

Many faith leaders expressed deep disappointment at the announcement. While they agree something needs to be done about increased numbers at the border, they told Sojourners that Biden’s unilateral actions are the wrong approach. They also expect the executive order to be struck down in the courts.

Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge — formerly Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service — said in an email to Sojourners, “We are deeply concerned about the legality of this executive order and the moral implications of turning away asylum-seeking families desperate for protection.

“This is a troubling departure from an approach that balances the carrot and stick in favor of hardline restrictions,” added Vignarajah. “Our fear is that such restrictions would ultimately deny protection to persecuted individuals and families based on increasingly arbitrary factors, and not on the actual merits of their claim.”

Torn: Why Latino Evangelicals Don't Always Support Immigration Reform

Miguel Cárdenas came to the U.S. as a child in 1980. His parents brought him from the western Mexican state of Jalisco across the Rio Grande without documentation.

They went on to work for farms across Texas with the hope of giving their son a better life. Then, on Nov. 6, 1986, when Cárdenas was in fifth grade, President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act into law, allowing around 3 million immigrants who entered the U.S. without papers before 1982 — including the Cárdenas family — the ability to apply for legal status.

“It’s the classic American dream,” Miguel, now 48, said. “I am eternally grateful to my parents and Reagan for making my life what it is today.”

That life is filled with family barbecues and hunting trips with his wife and three kids; building his insurance business in Houston; and volunteering his time with his local church, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Republican party in the greater Houston area. He enthusiastically supported former President Donald Trump’s campaigns in 2016 and 2020.

“Sometimes, people are surprised to meet a Mexican migrant who is pro-Trump,” Cárdenas said. “But then I remind them that of all people, we are pro-family, pro-security, pro-business.”

As Cárdenas makes clear, Latinos do not always support candidates with progressive immigration policies — including policies that expand legal pathways to citizenship, enforce fewer penalties for those who immigrate without documentation, or end sanctions that devastate economies and fuel immigration. Experts and members of the community say Latinos of faith, with or without an immigration background, can feel torn between theologies that emphasize respect for the rule of law, a cultural emphasis on the family, allegiances to denominations that encourage support for conservative candidates, and their own personal trajectories, like that of Cárdenas, that can lead them one way or the other.

Faith and Immigration in U.S. Swing States

How are faith communities responding to the immigration crisis in the states that are likely to decide the 2024 presidential election?

According to numerous sources, immigration has become the single most important issue for voters in the 2024 election. But while changing policies in Texas or California often catch the most headlines, what swing state voters are thinking, saying, and doing about immigration is likely to play a key role in the election's outcome.

In this series with Sojourners, I report from communities in different states — including migrants, experts, and people of faith — to explore how immigration is a key part of the electorate’s journey.

Texas Ministries Say "the work of God can never be illegal"

Faith-based migrant ministries in Texas are used to operating in tough circumstances, including finding the right resources, meeting migrant needs, and funding their day-to-day work. But recent legal challenges have left some Texas faith leaders uncertain about the future of their ministries.

At the forefront of these legal challenges is Senate Bill 4, a bill passed by Texas lawmakers in 2023 which would make it a state crime for migrants to cross the border into Texas at any unauthorized point and allow authorities to arrest people for doing so. Though it was expected to go into effect in early March 2024, the bill was delayed by legal challenges from the U.S. Justice Department, framed as an unconstitutional infringement on the federal government’s power to set and enforce immigration law. The Supreme Court briefly cleared the way for the law’s implementation on March 19 before it was blocked just hours later when the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an administrative stay. The court heard formal appeals on April 3 in New Orleans, but at the time of publication, the law remains blocked.

Many ministries feel that if SB4 is allowed to stand, the bill and ensuing legal actions will erode existing welcoming efforts across the state.

“SB4 will unequivocally create an environment of fear and distrust in local Texas communities, erode welcoming efforts, and legitimize racial profiling,” said Melissa Cedillo, a board member of Hope Border Institute, an organization working to advance justice and end poverty on the U.S./Mexico border.

Cedillo told Sojourners that families with members of different legal statuses, who already live in fear that one of their family members could be deported, may be more reticent to seek out care from migrant ministries.

“They may now feel they have to learn how to exist in the shadows, to live so that they are not noticed in the hope it might offer them some kind of protection, instead of shelters and hospitable ministries.

“The atmosphere these legal actions make may mean they will not even try to access these services or connect with ministries designed specifically for them,” she said.