Meaning Train: Essays on Religion and Politics

By Carrie Cunningham

Meaning Train is a collection of essays, based on books and interviews, that counter the divisive practice of subjugating others. It reveals a benign moral compass in which anyone who wants to improve the world can follow.

The inspiration for the book is the idea of a beloved community honed during the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Based on the example of Jesus Christ, the notion guided leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. in addition to John Lewis and Fannie Lou Hammer. Together, with love and care in their hearts, they ended the segregation laws of Jim Crow and black disenfranchisement.

The book brims with soul and empathy. It outlines the issues of our era with ideas of human dignity. The essays include the struggle for racial equality in America and South Africa; the agony of the Holocaust and the battle for peace among Israelis and Palestinians; the lives of Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ and Christian feminist theology; the morally right fight against Islamophobia and the need for pluralism in the Middle East; and the contributions of historian David McCullough and politician Bobby Kennedy.

The panoply of essays will captivate and stir the human soul.

“(Carrie Cunningham’s) writing steels the prophetic voice for social action, reminding us of the foundation we stand on, forged in fire by our forebears in the struggle.”

— James Waddell, Associate Professor of New Testament, Ecumenical Theological Seminary

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jun 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781480878822

Carrie Cunningham

Carrie Cunningham is a progressive Christian writer. She graduated from Harvard College where she studied American and African history, and additionally, she attended the University of the South and Wayne State University for degrees in the Episcopal faith and Near Eastern Studies respectively. She captained the national championship team for Harvard women’s squash. A prolific writer since the 1990s, she has written for the Grosse Pointe News, the Michigan Chronicle, the Episcopal Record, Examiner.com and Beloved Community. She lives in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan.

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Copyright © 2019 Carrie Cunningham.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Archway Publishing

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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All Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-7881-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-7882-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019906768

Archway Publishing rev. date:     06/18/2019

Contents

Introduction

Part 1       Race

Team of Rivals: How Lincoln Changed American Democracy

Desmond Tutu Book Celebrates God’s Love

The Splendor of African American Women’s Religion

University of Michigan Professor Opines on Ferguson

Toni Morrison and a Knowing So Deep

African American Economic Freedom and the Good American Soul

A Fighter for Love: John Lewis and an Urgent Map for the Future

An African American Aviator and the American Dream

Part 2       Judaism

All Are Human: Reaching for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Doron Levin

Elaine Rumman

Conclusion

The Resplendent Story of a Detroit Female Rabbi

Viktor Frankl and the Enduring Ideas of Love and Hope

A Good Look at Judaism and the Dignity of Nonviolence

Styron Finds Meaning for the World amid Auschwitz’s Evil Nadir

A Modern-Day Exodus: The Heroic Redemption of Ethiopian Jews

Part 3       Christianity

Gospel Train: The True Meaning of Christmas

Pope Francis and a Democratic Mercy

Unitarian Parishioner Nurtures Love and Diversity

Feminist Theology and the Importance of Women

Unraveling PTSD: The Challenges of Chaldean Refugees in Detroit

How Mary Magdalene Gave Birth to Christianity

Yearning for Relief: Seeing a Good Jesus for Christmas

Part 4       Islam

Islamophobia and the American Experiment

How Pluralism Might Solve Sectarian Violence in the Middle East

Choose Generosity, Not Exclusion: Thomas Jefferson and the Importance of Muslim Acceptance

Part 5       Ecumenism and America

Humane and Savage: A Novel Reflects Nineteenth-Century Pursuits

The Flavors of Faith Helps Religious Communities Grow

The Case for Miracles

Naming a Religion: The Spiritual Beliefs of Native Americans

A Thoughtful Gem: David McCullough on the American Spirit

The Increasing Care of Bobby Kennedy

Bibliography

Endnotes

You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you are as you are to them.

—Desmond Tutu

Never throw food away when you are near the poor, for you are an ambassador of God on earth.

—Bamgambiki Habyarimanna

For Lar Bear, MoMo and my fa

mily.

Introduction

Meaning Train is the result of a decades-long immersion in human rights. I have reached a point in my life where my principles are sacrosanct and my hopes are secure. I am a progressive Christian, and through my writing, I aim to illuminate how religion can be a force for good. I believe the politically and economically distressed can find equality and economic freedom through the nonviolent and loving tenets of most religions. For me, the answer to human struggle is Christianity. I yearn to build societies based on Jesus’s example. His insight to love everyone was revolutionary for the world.

The inspiration for Meaning Train is the notion of beloved community. Created and embraced by the 1960s civil rights leaders, the concept calls for solving human rights issues via nonviolence coupled with radical love and forgiveness. Based on the example of Jesus Christ, the notion guided leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. in addition to John Lewis and Fanny Lou Hammer. Together, with love and care in their hearts, they ended the segregation laws of Jim Crow and black disenfranchisement. They risked their lives so that people would know the necessity of equality and having a voice. Lewis thought it was like bringing the kingdom of God to earth, while Hammer said it was like a welcoming table where everyone is included in a splendid feast.

Without prayer, without faith in the Almighty, the Civil Rights Movement would have been a bird without wings, Lewis said.

My route toward becoming an advocate for love and nonviolence has been long and grueling, but also meaningful and rewarding. I grew up in an affluent home in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan. My interest in human rights was viscerally grounded in my father’s racism and antisemitism. His parents were from the South, and he was influenced by their loathsome views on racial and religious diversity. Still, he had some goodness within him, and he loved our family. I forgive him for his views.

Coming from humble origins, my mom was a saint who gave my siblings and me insatiable love. Her altruism reflected the spirit of beloved community. She dedicated her life to service and philanthropy, raising money for schools and hospitals. My mom taught me the necessity of grace by enduring hardship and caring about the world.

As a student at Harvard College in the 1990s, I valued the growth of my intellectual life. To be sure, it was at Harvard where my interest in human rights began and flourished. I majored in American history and minored in African history. The first class I took with my favorite professor, James Goodman, centered on 1920s and 1930s American history. It changed my life. I learned about how Franklin Roosevelt made some progress on race, and I was introduced to the Southern psychology of white hegemony. This enlightenment about race in America revealed the potential source of my father’s vitriol. Moreover, it nurtured my nascent voice on civil rights. My work on apartheid for African history classes was equally meaningful.

When my mom died of breast cancer in 2000, I became a Christian. I was previously an atheist and unaware of how faith can engender meaning and hope. Upset about my mom’s death and also dispirited and frightened about a violent world, I found solace in the majesty of Jesus. Later, at Wayne State University, I learned about other religions like Judaism and Islam as I worked toward another bachelor’s degree in Near Eastern Studies. This religious journey gave me a new sense of purpose to help the world via nonviolent and loving principles.

This collection of essays fuses the material I learned at Harvard with my religious education. From an examination of race and love for others in major religions to studies of American heroes like David McCullough and Bobby Kennedy, the book explores the wonder of human existence. Examples of my work in the book include essays about the guiding Christian ethos of John Lewis’s activism in addition to themes of inclusion in Judaism and Islam.

For instance, John Lewis held on to the concept of creating a beloved community even as he was beaten by white supremacists. His story is fantastically delineated in his book Across That Bridge. The son of a sharecropper, Lewis’s nonviolent mission to create racial equality was galvanized by listening to Martin Luther King. Lewis believed that humans were made in God’s image to be interconnected and love one another. Bigotry, he thought, maims the white racists us much as the black victims. In Lewis’s mind, the civil rights movement would triumph because humans are innately good.

Another essay on the 1991 exodus of Ethiopian Jews to Israel reflects ideals of acceptance. The story is told by Jew Asher Naim in his book Saving the Lost Tribe. The Ethiopian Jews were