‘All Are Neighbors’ celebrates diversity and inclusion

What got billed nationally as a pro-gay event on Baylor University’s campus April 22 turned out to be a celebration of democracy for all people.

The “All Are Neighbors” rally held on the top floor of Cashion Academic Center on the Waco, Texas, campus, preceded a closed-door Turning Point USA event held in nearby Waco Hall. “All Are Neighbors” was planned to counter the MAGA messages of the TPUSA event, which was closed to anyone except students who had preregistered. The counter-event was open to anyone who registered, including media.

Keynoters for the alternative event drew the most advance publicity but were a small part of the program. Paul Raushenbush of Interfaith Alliance opened the 90-minute program, and Kelley Robinson of Human Rights Campaign closed it. Each spoke for less than 10 minutes.

The bulk of the program time was given to students from all walks of life who told their stories of inclusion and hopes for Baylor’s future.

More than 450 people attended the “All Are Neighbors” event, which required advance registration.

Raushenbush

Still, Raushenbush began the session with an acknowledgement that he’s a gay man married to a man and raising two children in a loving home.

“I come to you today as a Baptist minister with three decades of doing my best to follow in the way of Jesus,” he said.

“I also come to you as an American who still believes in the promise made in our founding that all of us have a right to liberty, life and the pursuit of happiness. My identities are not in conflict with one another but are divinely bestowed upon me and my life. My faith teaches me that each one of our lives in all our complexity and diversity are divinely and beautifully created.”

The way of Jesus is to love all who are neighbors, he said. “To quote Rabbi Joaquin Prince who spoke in 1963 at the March on Washington, ‘neighbor’ is not a geographic concept, it is a moral concept.”

Yet today, “politics and faith are weaponized and wielded like a bludgeon against opponents with vulnerable communities being scapegoated and dehumanized,” he said. “Now, that is the blasphemy we need to confront. Too many of our neighbors are subjected to daily fear and violence that is all too real. That is the sin that needs to stop.”

He called on those present to be “part of a next great awakening of the American people, a spiritual mobilization by diverse peoples rooted in love for our neighbor and our democracy. The hallmark of this spiritual awakening is joy. And I want to let you know how much joy and life I am getting from being in community with you today.”

Robinson

“This is a big deal,” Robinson said of the gathering. “We are here. We are on this campus. We are in this moment and we are together. And we all know this didn’t just happen by accident. This moment we’re sitting in exists because people spoke up, because students organized, because the community decided that if powerful ideas were going to have a platform that by God, the truth would have one, too. That’s why we are here.”

The idea that all are neighbors “is what democracy is all about,” she said. “Democracy isn’t something that happens on the first Tuesday in November. Democracy happens every day when we show up for one another. When we demand that each of us has humanity and dignity and civil rights.”

Robinson told Baylor students they are being noticed: “All over the country, people are talking about you. They are talking about your fight and your courage and your relentlessness and showing up for one another. This is profound. You are making change that so many other people only talk about or dream about.”

What Baylor students who organized the counter-event are fighting for, she said, is joy.

And despite the criticisms from the far right of progressive leaders like her, Robinson said, “my faith is foundational to my work and who I am.”

She explained: “This idea of a civic faith, of manifesting something together that we’ve never seen, felt or experienced before is critical right now. We have to have a faith that together we can bring forward a world we all deserve. We have to have a faith that all of us are made in God’s image and there’s no asterisks on the ‘all.’ We have to have a faith and unshakable faith, an unbreakable faith in the power of our people. That’s what I believe in, and that’s what brings me here today.”

Six words from Scripture have empowered movements across generations, she said: “The truth will set you free.”

Those words “powered women who spoke openly about their bodies and their health care when it was considered shameful. Those words power LGBTQ people every single time we come out and decide to say exactly who we are. The truth always has been the beginning of our freedom, but let me be real with you. There’s another part to this. Yes, the truth will set you free, but first it’s going to piss you off.

“We also have to reckon with the truth of what we are living through right now.”

“Sharing the truth of who we are, that’s one thing, but we also have to reckon with the truth of what we are living through right now. These are not ordinary times. There’s nothing ordinary about a president attacking the pope and imposing himself as AI Jesus. There’s nothing ordinary about so-called leaders playing battleship with democracy, treating our truths like pawns and our livelihoods like collateral damage. There’s nothing ordinary about politicians threatening our trans community just to gain political points. There’s nothing ordinary about books being banned, about history being erased, about voices being silenced. And there is absolutely nothing ordinary about ICE murdering United States citizens and giving the person in charge a platform on this campus.”

The latter was a reference to Trump administration Border Czar Tom Homan speaking at the TPUSA event.

“We are living through a moment when the consequences of broken politics are showing up in our daily lives, in our classrooms, in our courtrooms, in our neighborhoods, just everywhere,” she continued. “And I can tell you, I’ve seen it firsthand as I’ve traveled this country. Here recently I met a teacher who’s living with HIV, and he told me he had to choose paying for his next medication over paying for his next meal. I met a veteran who served this country for 17 years with honor, only to be denied the dignity of retiring in her uniform simply because she’s trans. I met a movement elder, an 80-year-old survivor of the Stonewall uprisings. She held my hands so tightly I could feel every bone shivering. And she told me, ‘The only thing keeping me alive is knowing I won’t have to live through much more of this.’ That’s the reality that we’re living in.”

In her travels across America, Robinson said, the thing that impresses her most is not fear but courage. “Look at No Kings where you had 10 million people around the world showing up for our democracy … . Look at Minneapolis where you saw neighbors showing up in our immigrant community in subzero degree weather. Look at this campus tonight where we have hundreds of people showing up for our democracy.”

Hayward

Minneapolis pastor Susie Hayward declared: “In learning and celebrating our differences, we can understand better of God who is bigger than any one race or culture or nation or religious tradition, a God who does not belong to any one of us, but to whom we all belong.”

She explained: “I came to be with you from my hometown of Minneapolis to testify about what I learned from my neighbors about the gospel these past five months. And let me be clear that I learned from not only my Christian and my Catholic neighbors, but from my Somali Muslim, my Hmong Buddhist, my Jewish and devoutly atheist and spiritual but not religious and Black and brown and Indigenous and queer neighbors. And what they taught me is what it means to live what Jesus taught is the greatest command of all, to love God and to love neighbor.”

“Neighborism” is “the kind of discipleship Jesus is calling us to. It sounds simple and nice. You can cross-stitch that on a pillow. But friends, let me tell you that when the stakes are high, when the beautiful, diverse neighborhood you live in is overrun by heavily armed masked agents, causing harm by separating families, detaining and disappearing neighbors in violation of their constitutional rights and their essential dignity, when they are teargassing school children and clergy, when your neighbors are hiding in their homes for months and others are being snatched from bus stops based solely on the color of their skin, loving your neighbors sounds simple, but it is not easy. It takes courage. It means stepping out of your comfort zone and being willing to show up in costly solidarity with the most vulnerable, with those who are being dehumanized and targeted by those with power.”

Garrett

Baylor English professor and BNG columnist Greg Garrett, who is named on TPUSA’s “Professor Watchlist,” said the TPUSA folks “don’t understand a Baylor education and they don’t comprehend my deep faith.”

“Even though some white American Christians claim to be persecuted or that Christianity is under siege, this is not reality,” Garrett said. “It is assumed victimhood, and it is an affront to the actual teachings of our faith.”

Last Thursday, his Southern Baptist mother begged him to stop speaking out about the Trump administration because she fears retaliation against him.

He can’t do that, he said because he is trying to live into the words of Joshua read at church last Sunday: “Choose you this day whom you will serve.”

“And I’m trying to answer as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Student comments

Students from the five sponsoring groups spoke throughout the program. They represented Christian, Muslim, Hindu and agnostic faith traditions.

• “If God is present in all of us and in every facet of the world, then loving your neighbor is not just an act of kindness, it’s an act of reverence. It’s a recognition of something sacred standing right in front of you.”
• “A future where we are all neighbors doesn’t mean we suddenly erase our differences. It means we learn how to look at those differences without losing sight of each other’s dignity, even when our own dignity is not being recognized.”
• “What if instead of asking what separates me from this person, we asked instead, ‘What does it mean that God’s presence is here too?’ That question changes how we speak. It changes how we listen. It changes whether we choose to walk past someone, whether I speed walk away from them or if I am willing to walk toward them because loving your neighbor isn’t just about the big dramatic acts. It’s about the small daily decisions to recognize worth, extend patience or even just to offer your presence.”
• “Every act of love is an act of loving God.”
• “Wherever we come from, we can all commit to this: Treat people right and respect one another. Because in the end, character is revealed in how we treat one another and Scripture is clear how this is actualized. Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”
• “I see a future were words like ‘diversity,’ ‘equity’ and ‘inclusion’ are feared less than words like ‘war,’ the removal of immigrants, and the loss of privileges. Our current world celebrates those with the loudest voices and misses the voices of communities that are afraid to speak out against systems in place that silence them.”
• “When we create a world where our neighbors are centered over politics, religious institutions, money, fear, media or social trends, the inclusion of people across all genders, religious backgrounds, different abilities, the LGBTQ community, all races and people from all backgrounds, life becomes a lot less scary and life becomes worth celebrating.”