Speakers

Reverend Firpo Carr, PhD, Protestant Minister, firpocarr6@gmail.com, University of Phoenix, 4025 S. Riverpoint Parkway, Phoenix, AZ 85040

Deconstructing the house that is American racism starts with recognizing its existence and the creaky underpinning upon which it stands. Infrastructural racism is analogous to the foundation of that house. Structural racism would be the house itself. Institutional racism would constitute the rooms. And systemic racism would be the heating and air conditioning. The free labor of enslaved Africans and their scions serves as the infrastructure of America’s house, which has a cross adorned on its front door. By definition, then, infrastructural racism is exclusively anti-Black. And the seminary, arguably the most reprehensible among other institutional rooms, is inescapably infused with systemic anti-Black racism. Evidence of this is manifested in Sunday morning segregated church services, as Martin Luther King noted. Church leaders who are graduates of seminary wittingly or unwittingly orchestrate the dichotomy. As students, they absorbed deeply rooted anti-Black bias from their seminary professors, if not prima facie in the curriculum, by de facto anti-Black policies and practices, or by unspoken biased behavior that resulted in reward and reinforcement. As has been well documented, the present author has endured over three decades of anti-Black racism perpetrated by Jewish and White scholars and seminary professors who colluded to strategically erase his history-making accomplishments. Such behavior contradicts Christ’s own, who was “not swayed by appearances” (Matt. 22:16, English Standard Version). Seminarians and other professed Christians who succumb to infrastructural racism risk being identified by Christ as a “hypocrite” (Matt. 6:2; Greek, hupokrités, ὑποκριτής), that is, one who was “an actor,” “a performer acting under a mask,” “a two-faced person” (Strong’s Concordance), or “a pretender” (Thayer’s Greek Lexicon). While distasteful racism of any flavor is a defect in our culturally diverse humanity, individuals of all faith traditions, particularly Christians and any person seminary affiliated, should work in concert to deconstruct infrastructural racism.

Native American Worldviews on False Dichotomies: The Supplicate Order and Invocation of the Sacred

Patricia M. Brown, PhD, President and Director, Wisdom Wave Church, wisdomwave@gmail.com, P.O. Box 32443, Santa Fe, NM 87594

The distinction between the human and the divine, between the manifest and the unmanifest, is a false dichotomy in the psychology of religion and spirituality. Native American spiritualities provide perspectives that resolve this dichotomy through a broad and unifying view: supplication. Approaches to supplication, such as faith and single-minded devotion to an ultimate value or deity, are proposed to constitute the human interface between the manifest and the unmanifest. A reciprocal, resonant interchange between the unmanifest and human summoning of the holy can bring the sacred to expression in cultural forms and personal experience. Addressing the boundaries between the human and the divine, this paper presents a cross-cultural model for spiritual supplication. This model utilizes the anthropological term ritual frame and provides an integrative worldview with which to examine the dynamics of sacred contact and invocation. This suggests that supplication is the universal and fundamental human orientation to invoke the reception of profound healings, as well as spiritual blessings, cross-cultural understandings and innumerable gifts of creativity. If practitioners cannot access a similar unifying model, we lose the ability to have a birds eye view in our work, thereby falling into one of the dichotomies and losing the ability to work with the others. Primarily Native American perspectives are presented, but examples are also given from Catholic and Atheist perspectives.

Jesuit and APA Civility Guidelines for Managing Increasing Divisiveness and Polarization

Thomas G. Plante, PhD, ABPP, Psychologist, tplante@scu.edu, Santa Clara University and Stanford University School of Medicine, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA, 95053

Tragically, divisiveness and polarization is not only typical in our society but is getting much worse. These troubling trends also find their way into the psychology field, the American Psychological Association, and even within Division 36, a division that focuses on the psychology of religion and spirituality. Divisiveness is a toxin that invades and trickles down into every nook and cranny of society. Faith traditions are susceptible to these trends and especially those who engage in proselytizing or messages that their traditions are correct and sanctified by the divine while others are not and even dangerous. Countless wars have been waged over these divisions between religious groups. Divisions are common not only between religious traditions but within them as well and typically are based on a conservative – liberal perspective. In this presentation, a three-point approach for better dealing with divisiveness will be offered. The model has its roots in the spiritual exercises and writings of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits. It will be presented in a secular manner that would appeal to diverse religious and non-religious groups. The three-step model includes: (1) accommodation to others, (2) humility, and (3) the expectation of goodness. Then, core civility principles and procedures adopted by the American Psychological Association as policy will be presented to provide a practical strategy that encourages not only civility but also respectful and compassionate dialogue among those who may be disagreeable with each other. Spiritual and religious principles found within many religious traditions (e.g., the Golden Rule) can be secularized appealing to diverse audiences. This strategy has worked well with mindfulness, yoga, and other techniques. This can be used with civility as well in efforts to turn the tide from divisiveness to unity and even to solidarity.

Discussion

Kevin A. Harris, PhD, LP, drkevinaharris@gmail.com, Algos Behavioral Health Services, Inc., 255 E. Sonterra Blvd., Suite 119, San Antonio, TX 78258

Caroline C. Kaufman, PhD, cckaufman@mclean.harvard.edu, carolinekaufman42@gmail.com, McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School, 115 Mill Street, Belmont, MA 02478

A priest, a minister, a church director, and a psychologist walk into a conference . . . and create interfaith dialogue. For the fourth year in a row, an Interfaith Dialogue is being held at the annual APA Convention, the largest psychology convention in the world, where clergy and faith leaders from various religions are invited to speak about how to create interfaith dialogue between and within different faiths. Interfaith Dialogues are conversations with clergy about the psychology of creating interfaith dialogue, harmony, and social justice about false dichotomies in the psychology of religion and spirituality. (See https://aitheros.wixsite.com/interfaith to learn more.) Our theme for APA 2022 is “Interfaith Dialogue 2022: False Dichotomies in the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality.” As a field, we have many false dichotomies creating unnecessary tension, such as Clinical Practice vs. Research, Science vs. Theology, Religious Freedom vs. LGBTQ, the Old Guard vs. the New Guard, Traditional Values vs. Social Justice. These dichotomies are sometimes imposed from the outside and sometimes we impose them on ourselves, but they shape our field in many ways and often serve to limit us by reducing our viewpoints to opposite extremes at odds with one another, instead of enriching our field by giving us multiple viewpoints and multiple perspectives. This year, we have a Catholic priest, a Protestant minister, a spiritual church president, and a Christian psychologist. The Catholic priest is presenting on a Catholic perspective on the importance of dialogue in countering an “us vs. them” perspective in religion. The Protestant minister is presenting on deconstructing infrastructural racism in U.S. seminaries. The spiritual church president is presenting on supplication as an alternative spiritual perspective to the false dichotomy between the human and the divine, drawing on a Native American perspective. The Christian psychologist is presenting on Jesuit and APA civility guidelines for managing increasing divisiveness and polarization. In a world of polarization and politics, extremism and hyperbole, we need civil dialogue.