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| From left: Participants included Lloyd Williams,
Rev. Dr. James A. Kowalski, Voza Rivers, Lucille McEwen, Gamilah Shabazz, Paul Newman, Orbert Shetterly.
Seated: Marcia Sells, Barbara Horowitz and Rev. William Sloane Coffin
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South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up as a forum for restorative justice and to expose the crimes of the apartheid era. Apart from providing much-needed exposure of that system, it encouraged informed discussions and collective healing by assigning responsibility and bearing witness to history. Truth commissions have become a model adopted by countries like Rwanda, still recovering from the 1994 genocide. Since 2001, the gacaca court hearings have offered justice at the village level, allowing Rwandans to try those accused of participating in the mass killings.
Honesty and integrity were among the topics covered during the public dialogue on “Your Truth, My Truth, The Truth”, held at the Synod Hall of New York’s Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine on 22 June 2005. Community Works, in association with the Harlem Arts Alliance and the New York Metropolitan Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Non-Violence, sponsored the morning exchange with world-renown activist William Sloane Coffin. Venerated by friends and respected by critics, he has earned a reputation as an outspoken political and moral agitator, who demonstrates the audacity and conscientiousness to criticize the status quo. Born in 1924 in New York City, Rev. Coffin has been known for combining religious fervour with a belief in active political engagement.
An active octogenarian with slightly slurred speech owing to two strokes, Rev. Coffin is most often identified as a former Freedom Rider (freedom riders challenged racial segregation in the southern United States), Yale University’s outspoken chaplain and longtime senior minister at Riverside Church. He has been active in disarmament and anti-war efforts, most notably during the conflicts in Viet Nam and now in Iraq. In 1979, he headed SANE/FREEZE, a group that was renamed Peace Action in 1993. He recently published Credo (“I believe”), an award-winning manifesto that explores issues he felt deserved continued scrutiny and active public response.
The public dialogue was neither an unbiased nor a random gathering. It was an ecumenical group of individuals whose conversation was premised upon free exchange, religious and racial tolerance and mutual respect. Mediated by Rev. James A. Kowalski, welcoming remarks were shared by Rev. James A. Forbes, Jr. of the Riverside Church, Rabbi Rachel Cowan of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, and Imam Izak-EL M. Pasha of Masjid Malcolm Shabazz, who praised individuals for whom “life is a witness to their actions”. Rabbi Cowan stressed that we need to “restore ourselves and our world to integrity, wholeness and truth”. Rev. Forbes praised Rev. Coffin as “an image of concreteness”, unafraid to address controversial issues relating to race, gender, sexual orientation, justice and war, when many were reluctant to listen. Karrolyn Belkis of the Juvenile Reentry Network of the Harlem Community Justice Center described Rev. Coffin as a person who could still “walk the walk and talk the talk”, and who always prompted the faithful to “learn more while staying open to new information, new people and things that would allow them to live their godliness and spirituality every day”.
Rev. Coffin finally addressed the gathering, his tone conversational, his manner unassuming, speaking of themes that included the sin of pride (“self-righteousness is the bane of all human relations”), the usefulness of doubt (“doubts move us forward, not backward”), the importance of flexibility in leadership (“unity is not based on agreement but on mutual concern”) and the unpredictable nature of truth (“truth is a mystery … an indefinite certainty.”). He stressed the need for politically motivated spirituality, questioned if technology might not be a detriment to the human capacity for wonder, and attempted to reconcile science and religion as complementary rather than contradictory disciplines. His purpose in this interracial and interfaith gathering was to project an image of critical but benevolent leadership, centred upon a multiplicity of truths and a diversity of truth-tellers. |
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