Kaufman Updates

Permanent link for Michigan Interfaith Convening: Critical Hope - Envisioning the Future of Interfaith on June 25, 2024

As a capstone, last week's final convening in our collaboration with the Fetzer Institute drew upon the collective wisdom gathered and the self-reflection encouraged during this series to identify emerging characteristics and best practices for interfaith initiatives. Through a lens of belonging, aware of both our past and present, our goal was to explore interfaith spaces that move people towards a pluralistic future.Specifically, we examined the concept of Critical Hope as we looked to the future of the interfaith movement.

The term ‘critical’ has numerous implications, all of which are relevant to our project. The first is the sense of importance - critical as vital or essential. Secondly, critical implies a sense of urgency or immediacy. Lastly, to be critical means to be discerning or analytical. In theoretical contexts, critical thinking implies an explicit exploration of power, oppression, privilege, and the status quo.

Hope looks to a collective vision of a better future. It is what guides and sustains us in the incremental journey on the arc of history that bends towards justice. Hope is more than passive optimism or the naive expectation that change will happen overnight. Hope is an active pursuit of a reality not yet realized. Hope is the essential starting point and ever-present companion to justice-seeking work as it grapples with politics, emotions, relationships, lived-realities, and identities.

Critical hope invites us to hold conflicting truths in a single space and time, to sit in tension with differences, and to sustain a complex and shared pluralistic vision of a better world. Such change must be rooted in and arise from collective reimagining. This form of hope is brave and challenging and necessary. To engage in interfaith work is to engage in critical hope.

Last week, we gathered with 35 individuals from 15 different organizations from across the state to engage with this important topic. Over the course of our time together, we examined and lived into “critical hope” as a lens for interfaith. We stretched ourselves to see what is so often unseen - the dominant narratives that can unconsciously color and shape the spaces we create; we questioned our tried-and-true interfaith methods; and we spent time ‘taste testing’ different Kaufman programs that center relationships and that highlight voices that are often underrepresented in traditional interfaith spaces. Throughout the process, we caught glimpses of the work we have yet to do, but all the while, we held on to the essential dimension of hope and pushed each other forward.

As Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want to Talk About Race, notes, “No matter what our intentions, everything we say and do in the pursuit of justice will one day be outdated, ineffective, and yes, probably wrong. This is the way progress works. What we do now is important and helpful so long as what we do is what is needed now.” With that in mind, while our June gathering was the capstone for this collaboration, we recognize that the evolution of the interfaith movement will be ongoing. We are eager to stay connected and grow the relationships formed with our partner organizations as we support and encourage each other in this critical work of hope.

We are so incredibly grateful for the enthusiasm, the vulnerability, and the support of the individuals and organizations who attended, and for Rev. Holly Makimaa, Roman Williams, Rishi Singh, and the entire Kaufman staff for stepping in to co-facilitate such an impactful gathering. Lastly, we are incredibly grateful for the gracious support and partnership of the Fetzer Institute in underwriting this collaborative project.

Participating Orgs: