You walk into the hall. Inside, the sermon has started. The rows of dark brown wooden benches with a thick bible looking book tucked behind a craftily made shelf announces that you have entered a church. The moment you walk in, the pastor, dressed in a suit and standing on the elevated stage in front, points the crowd to turn to hymn 108. Everyone rises while you locate yourself strategically in the corner of the last row. The choir erupts in a christian like melody and you suspect if you have entered the wrong room. It was supposed to be middle eastern music.
The crowd was primarily white, middle class and retired, accentuating your belief that you had arrived in a church. But there is no cross in front, nor a statue of Jesus, just rows of blocks of wood pressed against the wall like a incomprehensible, abstract contemporary art. The music is soothing, peaceful and when it ends, everyone takes their seat. The pastor then narrates something and the crowd chant a phrase in unison. You start doubting if you had been tricked into joining a weird cult.
Then a woman pastor takes over. She is dressed in a formal green blazer and skirt with low cut blond hair. With her height, she has an undeniable stage presence and once she starts, she proves she has an the charisma and oratory ability to go along with it.
Though what really captures your attention is none of that, but that for the next hour, she lectures about Islam, about the controversy around the Hijab, of Malala Yousafzai and female equality in pre-Islam Saudi Arabia. But, not from the blatantly biased opinions that is permeated on American media. Instead she praises the teachings, extolling its virtues, how Islam in its roots and its teachings upheld the rights of men and women alike and how Persian and Western influences would corrupt these teachings and relegate women to inferior roles. She ends of by drawing a sharp distinction between religion, be it Islam, Christianity or any other, practised correctly and incorrectly. You sit there befuddled.
A white woman talking to a white crowd in a Church about the history of Islam?
And soon you find from the old lady next to you that it was not a Christian Church, but a Unitarian Universalist Church, whose logo had the symbols of all religions around it. The thick bible like book was predominantly full of songs, not teachings. She tells you how mixed religious families frequented the church because everyone was welcome there and how every month a different religion was talked about. Here one was free to pursue the beliefs one wanted.
And you thought the only place this existed was in John Lennon's songs.
The crowd was primarily white, middle class and retired, accentuating your belief that you had arrived in a church. But there is no cross in front, nor a statue of Jesus, just rows of blocks of wood pressed against the wall like a incomprehensible, abstract contemporary art. The music is soothing, peaceful and when it ends, everyone takes their seat. The pastor then narrates something and the crowd chant a phrase in unison. You start doubting if you had been tricked into joining a weird cult.
Then a woman pastor takes over. She is dressed in a formal green blazer and skirt with low cut blond hair. With her height, she has an undeniable stage presence and once she starts, she proves she has an the charisma and oratory ability to go along with it.
Though what really captures your attention is none of that, but that for the next hour, she lectures about Islam, about the controversy around the Hijab, of Malala Yousafzai and female equality in pre-Islam Saudi Arabia. But, not from the blatantly biased opinions that is permeated on American media. Instead she praises the teachings, extolling its virtues, how Islam in its roots and its teachings upheld the rights of men and women alike and how Persian and Western influences would corrupt these teachings and relegate women to inferior roles. She ends of by drawing a sharp distinction between religion, be it Islam, Christianity or any other, practised correctly and incorrectly. You sit there befuddled.
A white woman talking to a white crowd in a Church about the history of Islam?
And soon you find from the old lady next to you that it was not a Christian Church, but a Unitarian Universalist Church, whose logo had the symbols of all religions around it. The thick bible like book was predominantly full of songs, not teachings. She tells you how mixed religious families frequented the church because everyone was welcome there and how every month a different religion was talked about. Here one was free to pursue the beliefs one wanted.
And you thought the only place this existed was in John Lennon's songs.
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