This is the second of a two-part interview with Stephanie Saldaña. See the Today’s Catholic Archives, July 9, 2004 for part one.
By Carol Sowa
Today’s Catholic
TC: Are you fluent in Arabic?
SALDAÑA: I study Arabic; I’m getting there. I’ve been studying for two and a half years, so my spoken is OK. But it’s a very difficult language, so I’m definitely going to need to keep trucking along in order to reach the level of fluency. It’s a long road.
TC: And I hear you have a book of poetry you’ve written.
SALDAÑA: It’s not published but, yes, I write a lot of poetry and some of the poems have been published. Hopefully, I’ll do something with it at some point. Poetry was really the center of my life for a very long time and it’s still one of the most important aspects of my life. Especially in a time of war, I think poetry provides the opportunity to take something that seems like chaos and to try to meditate on it and make something beautiful out of it. So I think that, for me, it’s been very healing and always a kind of prayer. Poetry and prayer have been very similar to me in my life.
TC: What is the Pluralism Project you are involved with?
SALDAÑA:Well, that’s what I’m here in town working on right now. The Pluralism Project is a project at Harvard Divinity School that tries to map the changing religious landscape of America and to show how religious diversity in America is changing due to new immigration laws in the past 35 years or so, to make people aware that there are now Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and Sikhs and Jains and all these religions everywhere and that, actually, now America is the most religiously diverse country in the whole world.
I edit the news (for the Pluralism Project), which is a section on our Web site where we collect all the articles written all over America on religious pluralism, so I’m always reading those and editing those. I’m in San Antonio right now, writing a profile of San Antonio’s religious diversity for the Web site, so I’ve been traveling to Buddhist temples and to the Sikhs, while I’m here, and I’m going to the Islamic Center this afternoon and meeting with these religious leaders and worshipping with their communities and trying to see a side of San Antonio which is one that I didn’t know growing up. So it’s been very illuminating and beautiful for me.
This year is the American Academy of Religions Conference, on Nov. 20-23, which is the largest religion conference in America. This is where scholars from all over America will be coming to San Antonio to give papers and research on different aspects of religion. So with my research that I’m doing now, I’m hoping to make participants at the conference aware of the diversity of religions here in San Antonio. Hopefully, some of the religious leaders will be able to give some presentations at the conference and we’ll have a bus tour from the Pluralism Project so that participants can go and visit them. My research, which will be available on the Web site, will let people know before they come here just how diverse and rich and incredible San Antonio is.
I think people have the tendency, because we have such a rich Catholic heritage here, to see this as only a Catholic city. We’re trying to say, “Indeed, it’s an incredibly rich and beautiful Catholic city, but it’s actually much more than that now.” Tomorrow I’m going back to the cathedral to talk about how the Catholic community has been embracing other traditions in San Antonio, especially with the Thanksgiving Interfaith Mass, and how the Catholic community here has really been taking seriously its role as a welcomer to other traditions, which is very beautiful.
This is something that I find to be really important. For example, there have been over the past few months a rash of anti-Islamic incidents within San Antonio, and I think that people have a tendency to think, “Oh, conflicts between Muslims and Christians, this is something that happens far away. This is something that happens in the Middle East and this is someone else’s problem.” But I think the more we engage in this dialogue, the more people realize that actually they can get educated about their own communities and about the people in their own communities and that they can make a difference just by reaching out and engaging in dialogue at home — if enough people do that, then that’s how things are changed internationally.
TC: What do you see in your future? Where do you see yourself in the next 10 years?
SALDAÑA: Wow, that’s a tough question. I think I had always imagined that I would do a Ph.D. and go on to be a professor but, more and more, I’m thinking that my path may be something perhaps a little more difficult, which may be more fulfilling. I would definitely like to continue my work trying to build bridges between Muslims and Christians. For example, I’m speaking in Oklahoma later this summer at a mosque and at a church there on the role of Christians living within the context of Islam.
And often I get asked, when I go and speak and meet people from churches or prayer groups, if I could come teach a class on Islam. At the academic level, there are people teaching Islam, but I think Christians all over America are really eager to learn more and there aren’t very many people who are willing to go out into ordinary communities and talk to people and I would very much be interested in doing that. And I’d like to really resume my writing. I’m interested in working on a book on my own spiritual journey and how Islam helped bring me back to my Christianity. I’d also like to get back to my poetry. So, we’ll see. I’m sort of at this discerning moment, but there’s certainly much to be done right now.
TC: What have you observed so far, regarding Muslim-Christian relations in San Antonio?
SALDAÑA:I haven’t actually gotten to speak to the imam yet, but I can say, just from growing up Catholic here and from a city with a strong military background, I think that there’s still a real, large ignorance of Islam and it’s not a willful ignorance. I think people actually would like to learn more about Islam and people ask me questions all the time. I just think that there aren’t necessarily the resources available here. People have told me again and again, as I’ve gone to speak to different communities, that San Antonio is special because it’s always been bicultural. So, from the beginning, we’ve always been dealing with two cultures; there’s such an openness to people who are different. Because of this, people from other faiths, new immigrants, have felt very, very welcomed here.
I was speaking to a Sikh leader yesterday. All over America there have been hate crimes against Sikhs, but in San Antonio, he said, nothing has happened and, on the contrary, people have been reaching out to them. In fact, I learned that at Trinity (University) there’s a student group to educate other students on Sikhs, but only one of the 15 members is Sikh. The other 14 are non-Sikhs, who’ve taken it upon themselves to learn about Sikhs so that they can teach their fellow students.
So there seems to be in San Antonio, not just tolerance, but that we’ve always felt here that we’re a richer city because of our diversity, we’re very proud of this.
As a result, I think other religious communities feel very much embraced here. And that’s something we should take pride in, but not take for granted.
TC: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
SALDAÑA: The only thing I would like to add is that my hope for not just San Antonio, but for cities across America, is that we become more pro-active in our dialogue, especially in San Antonio, where there’s such a large Catholic community. Because we’re the majority here, I think that puts us in the position of responsibility to go out and reach out to other communities and welcome them. So I hope that people don’t just watch the news or read the newspaper and see the idea of religious dialogue as something that happens in other places, where there’s more diversity.
I think people don’t recognize how unbelievably diverse San Antonio is, so I would encourage people — especially people who have lived here their whole life — to actually go out and explore their city, visit the mosque, go meditate at the temple, go eat with the Sikhs. Challenge yourself to see a San Antonio that you didn’t know existed and then invite people to visit you. I think that this will make a richer and a more beautiful community and one that can serve as a model for the rest of the country.
(Stephanie’s work can be found at www.fas.harvard.edu/~pluralism/)