Shon Hopkin and Jan Saeed

[00:06] JAN SAID: Hi, my name is Jan said and I'm 61 years old. Today's date is October 26, 2020, and I'm with Sean Hopkin, who is my OSS partner and partnering crime in IFYC's Courageous Pluralism project.

[00:24] SEAN HOPKIN: Good. So my name is Sean Hopkin, My age is 47, and today's date is October 26, 2020. I am with Jan Said, who is my OSS partner and I'm in Orem, Utah. So, Jan, I'll ask you. You were going to ask me, but let me ask you why you wanted to participate in this conversation today.

[00:54] JAN SAID: All right, you beat me to it. So honestly, as I introduced you as well, is this wonderful courageous pluralism project that we have been partnered in with 12 campuses across the nation, that Interfaith Youth Corps, IFYC has put us together, a liberal college campus partner, person, that is myself at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, which is a liberal arts college, the only liberal arts college in the state of Utah and with a conservative campus on this state. And surprise, surprise, BYU came up as a great partner with Westminster College. And so I am thrilled to be working on building relationships, building understanding and better communication across differences and within religious differences, specifically as the Director of Global Peace and Spirituality at Westminster College. This is really foundational to my job and as a member of the Baha'I faith, to my core identity as wanting to see the oneness of humanity to actually occur would be lovely in my lifetime.

[02:09] SEAN HOPKIN: Right.

[02:10] JAN SAID: How about you, Sean? Why are you involved? What do you want to do here?

[02:14] SEAN HOPKIN: So Jan and I met as part of this courageous pluralism project and sort of the lead into that IFYC Interfaith Youth Corps connected us as two campuses who are different in many respects. And so therefore there is some gap to bridge, some divide to bridge potentially. And then Jen and I think have found ourselves to be pretty like minded in our interests of interfaith understanding and peace and cooperation. But it's been fun to get to know you, Jan, from the beginning, your Baha'I faith that sort of undergirds, at least the way I understand it, undergirds your academic approaches and your efforts at interfaith understanding. And I would say that my faith as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, as a Latter Day Saint many people know as Mormons, undergirds my interest in all of us getting along and in interfaith understanding and cooperation. And I'm the chair of the, or was anyway, until recently the chair of the Religious Outreach Council at byu. So that brought us together, as you know, to. We were in dc, I think, when we kicked this off and started really getting to know each other. We'd had a few conversations before that, but this is just a wonderful opportunity to get to know each other better and talk about some of these things, model some of this to the best of our ability as two human beings that have our own world views. So I'm glad to do this with you.

[03:49] JAN SAID: Yeah. I think it's amazing how much has happened between when we started and now. When I think about being in Washington, D.C. it was in February of 2020, and now we're in October of the same year. And this speaking over a phone or online or a zoom call is now the norm, whereas that was probably the last conference, I don't know for you, but the last trip that I took, probably, of academic work was to this courageous pluralism. And so we've been working on our campuses, both of us, about how do we get people with great differences to speak and talk and learn to work together better? So, yeah, I hope that this conversation can be a model for others as well.

[04:38] SEAN HOPKIN: Well, and one of the things we found, of course, is that it's made a lot of things more difficult and feel less connected and other things, it's made them a lot easier, and, you know, we can connect more easily. So you've been doing, oh, I can't remember the official name of your conversations that you do, your interfaith understanding conversation. It's not just religious, but. And originally I was thinking, oh, I don't know what permissions I'll have to get if I'm going to organize a field trip up there. You organize a field trip down here, and then all of a sudden, nope, I'll just invite my students to join you over Zoom. And all of a sudden that was totally doable. We can bridge gaps, I mean, across the world. Of course, politically, that doesn't seem to be working out so well in our society at large, but hopefully on a small scale, we can help soften some of those problems.

[05:36] JAN SAID: Yeah. So I'll start with a little bit of raising the understanding of who we are is different is Sean Hopkins. Here's his bio for all of you that are listening. Sean Hopkins was born and raised in Texas before moving to Utah just before his senior year of high school. He was raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and today teaches in religious education at byu, where he primarily teaches Bible, often Isaiah and the Book of Mormon. He is deeply committed to interfaith understanding and helps to lead along with others, an academic Jewish Latter Day Saint dialogue effort that is in its sixth year. He's married to Jennifer and has four children and one grandchildren.

[06:23] SEAN HOPKIN: Let me read your bio, Jan. Does that sound good? Hold on a second. I had it, now I don't have it. So give me just one second. I'll add while I'm accessing it again that so my PhD work is in Hebrew studies. So therefore my Bible interests are Hebrew Bible, or as Christians would often call it, Old Testament. But that's sort of where my focus is in the Bible courses that I teach. Okay, let me read this. Jan Said is the Director of the Office for Global Peace and Spirituality at Westminster College. She's an educator and social activist. She served as the person of the Salt Lake Interfaith Roundtable and co chair of the Chaplains committee for the 2002 Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee and continued in that role for five years and is now serving as vice chair, continuing with that organization. She served on the board of the North American Interfaith Network as their secretary, the Utah State Martin Luther King Human Rights Commission, and co chair of the Salt Lake Institute for the Healing of Racism. She's been an educator of religious and spiritual topics within the Baha'I Faith community for the Utah Humanities Council, various universities, and at conferences such as 2004, 2015, 2018 Parliaments of World Religions in Barcelona, Spain, Salt Lake City, Utah and Toronto, Canada. Presented at the 2012 Global Conference of Chaplains in Higher Education at Yale University and many NASPA conferences. She holds a bachelor's degree in health education from the University of Utah and a master's degree in conflict resolution from Landau International University in Switzerland. She is married with three adult children and three grandchildren, and she was born in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and is married to a Persian Iranian husband for over 40 years now. So that is really a I mean, it sounds like to me your interests in interfaith understanding started very early. I mean, you've been focused and I love the social activism component there with the Martin Luther King wrong, because I'm not looking at your bio now, but the activism for what I would think of in current terms as Black Lives Matter.

[08:59] JAN SAID: Yeah, well, I think one of the things that has I've been raised since sixth grade or six years old in the Baha'I faith. My parents my mom was a daughter of Swedish immigrants up in Seattle area. My dad has kind of a Swedish European background, but up in the Northwest as well. They met at the uw, but my mom says that, you know, she found the Baha'I faith when I was probably 5 or 6 years old in Idaho Falls, Idaho and that she was a Bible reading Christian. Her mother, my grandmother, Swedish Hilda, would read the Bible to them her daily, but we did. They didn't really go to church very much. But when she heard about the Baha'I faith in Idaho Falls, Idaho of all places, it just resonated with her. And over 40 members of my extended family have become Baha'is over the years as well. And that foundational belief in the oneness of humanity, the unity of all religions, the unity of mankind, that sense of unity on our spiritual level, that religion is an unfolding, ever advancing educational system really for our, for humanity has definitely colored my life since a child on the streets in Idaho Falls, Idaho. I can remember my Mormon girlfriends and my Catholic girlfriends and my Protestant girlfriends and we, and most of the girls when we were little. I don't remember the guys getting involved so much, but we would talk religion and you know, seven years old and my dear Mormon friend would say, you know Dan, I think I didn't teach the Mormon faith the way it was, but we sure had some good conversations and we were very respectful of one another's differences. So you're right. I have had as the only Baha'I in my elementary school or junior high. Once I was in high school, there was one other Baha'I. But growing up as certainly a minority religion in Mormon country my whole life it's been a conversation of interfaith dialogue for sure. And I appreciate those conversations where we can really listen and hear one another.

[11:10] SEAN HOPKIN: So this shows why I think we see many things similarly. I grew up as a minority in Texas. Minority faith experience in Texas, although I would say the Latter Day Saint population at my high school was 500% greater than your or Baha'I population in your high school. So I think we have five spread out across the different grades of Latter Day Saints. At a time when the LDS church was not very popular in Texas amongst Baptist evangelical Christians. I remember as a nine year old going, and I don't know who did this, I don't mean to particular religious organization, but going to church and somebody had graffitied the outside walls and the sidewalk with black paint. Satan worshippers, they had painted it everywhere. And I remember as a little kid just feeling sort of strange on the inside, like, well what's wrong with us? That I hadn't noticed that somebody would be this upset with us and would paint Satan worshipers. And then it was sort of a funny moment because I looked more closely and they had. Whoever had done the spray painting, it spelled Satan S a T I N. So we were. It dawned on me we were satin worshipers. Oh, okay. So then I had images of us in there worshiping satin, and I thought, oh, these people just aren't very educated. So that's what's going on here. And then I felt better. And interestingly enough, that those kinds of conversations sometimes were more strident than others, more aggressive than I would have appreciated, but still helped me interact with others and their belief systems that were sincerely held and deeply held with my friends of other faiths there in Texas growing up. And I think you're expressing similar things to your Latter Day Saint friends and Catholic. I mean, each of us, each of those three, anyway, has their own Baha'I. As I understand it, Catholicism and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints make some relatively strong truth claims and have this eye towards unity, hopefully, and peace and universality, which is interesting. So I'm guessing some of those interactions with your Latter Day Saint friends were comfortable and positive and warm, and some of them were. You were a little more on the defensive. I don't know any memories that way, one way or the other.

[13:40] JAN SAID: Yeah, boy, when you mention devil worshipers or Satan worshipers, I have the exact same story when I was 6 or 7 years old. And it's you, you know, from one faith tradition to a different. I don't know who called into the phone line, but my mom was listening to a radio program where another one of the Baha'is was speaking about the Baha'I faith. And I was little and listening in, and I heard them say, somebody called the speaker to say, you guys are devil worshippers. You worship Satan. And after the call, my parents and other friends that were in the room listening on the radio were just, you know, this is. Wow. That was, you know, unusual. So I asked my mom, you know, do we believe? Do we worship the. Are we devil worshipers? Do we worship Satan? What? What? And mom said, you know, we don't even believe in the devil, let alone worship the devil. So anything that is not from God can be stated as. Or the ungodly or those things that were not, you know, supposed to do can be stated as such. But Baha'is don't even really believe in the devil as a. As a entity. So it's a person that just misunderstood or doesn't understand or doesn't know. So the same statement that you just said, out of no understanding or no interaction with People, they make statements about the other. And that othering is something that I'm really passionate about right now of trying to figure out how do we get over the othering that people seem to feel is so important to their own identity. And I think that is the next stage. And I feel like there are lots of people of many different faiths, that's the interfaith movement, that feel we need to quit othering and start seeing how do we include and even accept and admire some things in the different faiths. And what you said earlier too is so true, is that we are trying to build relationships and build understandings of where do we have similarities. And most people of faith can find that golden rule of love one another, treat them as our brother and sister or neighbor. It's there in every single one of the foundational teachings of different religions.

[15:51] SEAN HOPKIN: Well, and I think this is interesting. I want to sort of ask you a little bit. My sense is that one of the things that's really important that you and I are both trying to accomplish is build understanding of each other, of the other, so to speak, without othering, without feeling like we have to give up on truth claims or strongly held personal beliefs. And that's where the challenge is. Well, that's where one of the challenges is. I think what isn't sustainable is this thing where, well, you don't get to say anything of value and I don't get to say anything of value to you or to me because I don't want to offend anyone. But we just have to sort of keep it pretty basic and just agree on everything already. And I think the greater good, the greater goal is you get to be you and I get to be me and hold my beliefs very deeply and then find ways to recognize good and others understand where people are coming from their own perspective rather than mine. And that's part of the challenge. And then let me just articulate one other challenge before I stop talking for a moment. And that is, I think I remember you were telling your story and it jogged another memory. My friends telling me what I believed and me saying, no, that's not what I believe. Yes it is. I know that's what you need to learn what you believe better. And no, I understand pretty well what I believe and that's not true. And they just thought I was lying. And I think that holds true in a lot of situations today. We don't trust each other inherently. So if somebody's giving me a message that seems more positive than what I think I might become Suspicious that I'm not getting the whole story. And I mean, people do lie sometimes. So this is one of the challenges that hopefully can be softened by us getting to know each other better and trusting each other more, I hope.

[17:57] JAN SAID: Yeah, well. And I think some of the things that we call truth claims and what we're holding so dear as within our own faith tradition are not what moves our society forward. They are what hold us dear to our sense of community and our own identity in. Within that larger community. But things like kindness, the universal values of love, kindness, respect, respect, these are universal across cultures. What it means to be respectful might look a little differently. And you have to have some deep conversations that, oh, respect means you have to say goodbye to everyone in the room versus no, you say goodbye to the host and you're out. I mean, those are different, very different perspectives on what respect is. And I have lived that one because of the way my parents. Was it just Idaho? We just said goodbye to the host and we left the door where my husband's. A Persian culture of extreme. Everyone, not extreme, that was judgmental. So of going around every person in the room and saying goodbye to them, interrupting their conversations, as far as I'm concerned. Whereas from his perspective, it's no, this is being courteous to everyone. So even those universal values that we say are similar, they are, but we have a different way of interpreting some of them. And we need to have conversations to see what works for each of us in those situations.

[19:16] SEAN HOPKIN: Well, let me just give you an example from my own background that'll be very familiar, I would assume, to many who are listening to this. And that is missionary work or proselytizing. Evangelizing in the Latter Day Saint faith, I think comes across as very aggressive to others. You know, missionaries knocking on your door and then also build suspicion. Right. Am I getting the full story from these 19, 20 year olds or not? And so how. How can we trust each other? If you've got this group that is out trying to convert other people. And I would say that it's important for Latter Day Saints, one of the things that happens as we talk to each other is we can recognize sort of where those behaviors come from, why they manifest themselves in certain ways, what the motivations are or may not be. And then Latter Day Saints can say, oh, this is how this is seen and how this comes across to some or to many. Let me look inside myself and see if there's any of that that I need to improve in my own approaches to my fellow human beings. So that this is as positive as it can possibly be and that the negatives are softened. I think the interaction does both of those things. It gives us an opportunity to understand ourselves, but also gives us an opportunity to change ourselves. I think.

[20:47] JAN SAID: Yeah, I think one of the things when talking to some of the students at Westminster about this collaboration that we were going to be having, and some of my students also that are Mormon or as. See, that's my old school vocabulary. Sorry. It's the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. That these wonderful students, that they were so excited that we can tell the students at BYU how to do interfaith better because we are at the school where we are a minority and we've had lots of interactions with people of different faiths and how does it work best? And so like you said, that we've had some coexist cafes or some heart talks or some things that. About some of the social injustices that are going on right now and how do we promote conversation and build unity. But I think what we're still working on is how do these students talk to each other in a way that each generation gets better at instead of othering them? They're still human beings. We're all human beings. Nobody has horns or tails, which some of the storybooks used to say about probably all of us that were the other, is that instead, Biologically and scientifically, 99% genome project were the same. So if that aspect is true and if from the religious standpoint, we're all God's children, as both your and my religion believe is how do we treat each other and how do we interact when we disagree and how do we learn to agree to disagree? And I think that's where we came up with some of these courageous pluralism guidelines and culture guidelines that it just kind of frames. How do you start a conversation instead of attacking one another's beliefs? Is am I really here to listen to you and see how I might grow out of this relationship? Not that I'm leaving my truth claims, not that I'm leaving who I am, but I might have a possibility to grow here and grow together as a society.

[22:43] SEAN HOPKIN: Well, so along those lines, I'd be interested in. I don't know if you'd feel comfortable doing this, but what do you think your students would say? I mean, we'll have an opportunity for them to actually say it, but what would they. And I think you were sort of articulating some of it there, but what do you think they would say to Primarily Latter Day Saint students from A. And for those who are listening, BYU 97, 98% Latter Day Saints. So this is not just sort of. I mean it's not just a Latter Day Saint owned university, but it's also it's a through academic university. So it's got this underpinnings of religion that are quite strong and those who aren't. I teach a Book of Mormon class to those that aren't Latter Day Saints right now. And it is a shock to the system just how Latter Day SAINT the environment is 97 to 98%. And so what do you think your students might wish they could say to BYU students? Any thoughts there? Is that fair to.

[23:45] JAN SAID: Well, I can't. This is one of the things I've learned is don't speak for somebody else.

[23:51] SEAN HOPKIN: Maybe what would you say to some of my BYU students? Of course you're coming from a different perspective where you understand a little bit better the nuance and the great variety that exists even at byu. Right. But is there anything you might say that you'd want to communicate?

[24:08] JAN SAID: I think one of my Presbyterian friends, a minister that has been in interfaith with me, she works at the listening center and Kay Lindahl would always tell us is to listen more than you talk, you know, and to really listen, to understand rather than to as you. The reason this even came to my mind was you were talking about proselytizing and the missionary work. And I think that we have to take that hat. We have many identities. All of us do this hat of I want you to believe what I believe because it is my testimony and it is my heart core center to take that hat off to be that human being with another human being that has a different story that came from a different mom and dad, that came from a different part of this country, Texas of all places and listen to their story that I find, wow, they had to listen to be called Satan worshipers too. And in fact they weren't from my religion but somebody else was telling them the same story. And probably the story that also affected me a lot as an early days of being a mom was my son comes home and he says mom, do we have a bad religion? And I go no, no, sorry. I just feel all the emotion of when I was a child and hearing I was a Satan worshiper. Now I'm hearing my son say he's got a bad religion. As the story repeats itself another generation and I say no, they just don't understand. And so building that understanding of loving all humanity, get rid of the Labels for a second. Take off all the hats. Put on the basic one. I'm an eating, breathing, sleeping, loving human being. Can. Let's try to do that in front of others and with others. And if they're spewing things that are so not true, wait until they're ready to listen. And once we all learn to listen to one another more than talk, which I've just done a lot. Sorry about this long soapbox.

[26:05] SEAN HOPKIN: You said even up with me. That's all.

[26:07] JAN SAID: I don't know. Yeah. Get two professors professorial conversation here. No, but I think that we need to see each other as human beings first and then add those other dimensions.

[26:19] SEAN HOPKIN: You know, one of the things I think that affects me, sounds like it affects both of us, is hearing each other's stories where childhood is involved. And that. Boy, that's poignant. Right. You think of a little child, a young person, and here. And you're telling it from the perspective of a mother and wanting to shelter and care for that young child and give them a warm upbringing. And I would assume that your child interacted with somebody who thought they were doing some good there. But that's sacred ground we're walking on. And if we're influencing children and causing them to feel something is inherently wrong with me, I remember that moment that I expressed. I thought, oh, what's wrong with me? I hadn't seen. And then thank goodness they spelled it's satin. And I was like, oh, you know, maybe I should rethink this. That can be. Those are bad moments. And I think it helps highlight, you know, the innocence of children when they're part of our culture wars or our religious wars or whatever the case may be. There's work to be done so that a child is not made to feel that way. That's turned out well for any of us in our society, is my perspective, anyway.

[27:37] JAN SAID: Yeah. And I think the difference I see in people that do interfaith work like you and I and people who don't is getting over the hurt, is being able to get over the hurt and go forward. Because I so often will have conversations with folks, especially adults. I think the younger folks are just leaving religion, period, because they see it as a divisive force. The Pew research has said something like 40% still believe in some kind of religion, and 60% have left or do not or have not been raised in a religion. And Westminster College is much more that we have maybe 30%. 30, 40% that are religious, and 60 that are not religious at all. So when we compare Westminster with byu. We're talking very different conversations and climates. But Even of those 60, many of them have been raised in the faith that they decided no longer fit their truths or where they wanted to be. And many of them are just hurt. I hear the hurt and the anger in their voices when we have conversations. And I was trying to think what makes the difference? Because I was hurt, I have been hurt. And instead it took me to working together. And of course, my religious upbringing was absolutely centered on that inclusivity and that oneness of humanity and that any of these things that people say are more like barriers that they're. They're putting up themselves. And so that was a positive thing for me. But I think that these folks that don't get engaged are still dealing with so much hurt. So how do we help people move past hurt?

[29:15] SEAN HOPKIN: That's. That's a really good question. I think that's really true. And then I think, so you and I both find ourselves as people who are expressed wounds, but have found the value of religious faith and loyalty to be a higher value. So it has a healing value and component to it. But that then, you know, I think promotes or prompts the question, is it worth it to be religious if there are wounds that can be created by different religions? And I think that would be similar to saying, is it appropriate to be from different cities? Maybe, I don't know. I don't see it exactly the same, synonymous. But why stay if there are wounds that we perpetrate on each other? And I guess I'll answer my own question, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. I have found that there's healing value as well. And what you're articulating is very powerful to me that if your religious belief can help elevate your view of humanity and those around you, that has some staying power for me.

[30:35] JAN SAID: Yeah. Yeah. I think that healing the wounds, you know, there are so many different religions in the world, and I think that they're perceived as different religions, you know, and so this is one of the differences in my set of beliefs is that I believe they're out. They're all part of an ever unfolding spiritual belief path. And different people will take different parts of a path if you actually think of a physical path, and they'll walk it. And that part is what resonates with them. Some love tall redwood trees, other people like the ocean, some want the mountains. And there's certain strengths. All my work with interfaith has really led me to see some real Strengths in these different communities of faith around the world and how they've developed nations, they've developed cultures, and at this point, we're now on the global level that we see everyone from all over. It's no longer Buddhists are just in this part of the world or Christians in just that part of the world, or Muslims in this. They. We are everywhere. And that, that learning how to engage with people of all different cultures, all different religions is a big part of where we are. And now with Zoom, even more so, or Zoom or any of these other conversation platforms that we're all learning so much since this COVID 19 virus has caused us to be more online than ever before, we're learning how to connect with cultures and people from around the world. And in that learning how do we move society forward, I think is a big part of that love of our own faith is how can I love that faith but also work with people of all different backgrounds to advance society for all, not just for a limited few.

[32:33] SEAN HOPKIN: Well, so let me. I find that, by the way, Jan, beautiful. I find it, what you're expressing about your core undergirding Baha'I beliefs that guide your interfaith work, I find that beautiful, edifying. It helps me recognize I already knew this about you, but that you see me as someone that has value. Right. And that may have something to contribute. And let me articulate. So this is a place where our religious beliefs are. There's some similarities, but there's different too. So let me articulate, sort of why would a Latter Day Saint care about interfaith understanding? Because I think you're right. What I'm doing at BYU is I'm saying no, we can have this strong missionary element and we don't need to stop being us in that sense. But interfaith dialogue and understanding is something different where we're sharing a message, but there's this deep respect for the agency of others, that all are children of God and he's working with all to do their work. So let me, if I could just read this statement that I share often with Latter Day Saint students from Joseph Smith that resonates with me. And I try to say, okay, this is, yes, you've gone on missions, many of you, to share your faith. But don't forget, this is part of who we are as well. So. And I love this. If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No, I will lift them up and in their own way, too. If I cannot persuade them my way is better, I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning. For truth will cut its own way. And to me that's so we share what we believe, we don't have to be shy about it. But there's space for other people to choose and for us to respect those decisions and for us to understand and then value added as we interact with each other and understand each other as equals. And so I guess if I was just going to be very open in ways that some people wouldn't appreciate, I say to my wife sometimes, sort of, I wish everybody was a member of the church. I think there's so much positive value that's there taking care of those in need. There's, there's a program and a system to care for each other and to build each other. And also, I will acknowledge, leads to wounds at times, right as close knit communities sometimes do, but that there's so much value there and that I would love to see the whole world benefit from that. I served a mission as a 19 year old and I continue to share the gospel for those friends who are interested in learning more and even in my interfaith work. I'm not trying to convince someone to believe as I do, but if someone chose to, I do want them to recognize that a rational human being could believe as I do. Right. And then if they, if they're persuaded, then that would be a different thing. But you know, we could engage in that conversation at a different time. But at the same time, then there's another part of me that says I am so blessed by bumping into, in positive ways, sometimes in challenging ways, other people's viewpoints, and it enhances and it shifts and it's sort of, I don't know, my way of seeing the world is nuanced in beautiful ways, but not just this monochromatic view of the way God is, but it's this much more beautiful view and I wouldn't want to lose that. That'd be my concern. If everybody was Latter Day saying, would we lose that? And maybe we would. Anyway, I'm saying too much and it's a little too random. But just as I think about my own Latter Day Saint views of what.

[36:24] JAN SAID: You'Re expressing, oh, I love it, Sean. And you know, having grown up with missionaries and boyfriends going off on their missions when I was in high school and here getting letters from them and what you know is going on, and I totally resonate with my Mormon culture upbringing and in such a positive way. I went to the dances for mutual. I mean, as far as the only Baha'I, you definitely built a relation. And my mom always said that build a relationship with everyone. These are all God's children. So where you find good is where you should be. However, again, here's our point of diversion, or actually it's like an overlap. You said, I'd love everybody to be Mormon. Well, yeah, sure. I would love everyone to be Baha'I. Can see so much benefit to the whole world system and world governance if we were all respectful in the way of the Baha'I faith. That unity and diversity is a watchword of the Baha'I faith. And so you would maintain those cultural backgrounds and probably even some of that religious background that everyone does. My mom always said, yeah, I'm a Methodist Baha'I, or my. Look at my husband's family and their half of his family was Jewish before they became Baha'is and half of were Muslim. So I look at my children and they're Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Baha'is. And their identity is very strong in that, that they have those backgrounds. And I certainly feel like I'm a Mormon Baha'I just because of where I grew up and how I live my life. But one of the things that I've seen and one of the questions that StoryCorps was kind of talking to us about was, is there things you'd like people to understand about you and your beliefs and that they misunderstand? And I think one thing in the Baha'I faith that is misunderstood is we believe in unity so much that they think it would be uniformity, which is kind of what I heard you say. Oh, I don't want it to be uniform if everybody was Mormon. And in the Baha'I faith, we don't either, you know, and yet we believe in this absolute unity of all mankind. And. And I think that's a misunderstanding of the Baha'I faith for sure, and of our spiritual path as human beings is there's no way. I mean, I look at two people that grew up in the Baha'I faith, me and my husband, he and Tehran, Iran me here. We both came to the University of Utah to go to school. He moved here because his uncle lived in the States in Salt Lake. But we still have so many big differences of how we see things. And we're both Baha'is, both raised as Baha'is, and certainly core values are the same. But there's some other stuff that we kind of think pretty differently about even now after 40 years of marriage. And so I don't think those things go away, but how do we deal with each other and how do we respect one another? And I see, you know, here's my own limited view of it, but my Mormon friends are so systematic about things, so organized. If I ever on the interfaith roundtable want something to get done, I talk to my Mormon friends because I know they will get the systems in order, in place and go. And I look at us, you know, in even the Baha'I faith or in some other religions, and not. Not so much so, you know, that is a strength the Mormons definitely have in getting people to move together in unity. And I admire that greatly.

[39:44] SEAN HOPKIN: Well, and to that point, I think that highlights then something that we'd strongly agree on, and that is, can we not find ways to work together and really promote the common common good? And of course, sometimes we disagree about what that common good is, but when it becomes radicalized, that's a. That's a dangerous word, maybe a problematic word, but when it becomes such that as you started the conversation with, that we're othering and seeing them as less intelligent or less human or less rational, and that stuff just gets under my skin so fast. And it gets under my skin when I hear it in my own culture, and it always has. I remember as a young missionary, somebody was sharing sort of a negative portrayal of another faith, and they were sort of passing around the car as we were driving, and I was like, but this is what other people are sharing in their cars about us. Is this what we. Well, but we're right and they're wrong, and that just did not resonate with me. I'm like, no, no, no, no, that's not what we're doing here. You know, there were. We haven't talked politics at all. And that's probably fine. We don't need to certainly go there quickly, but. But I'll just reveal my hand, I guess politically, I'm one of those dreaded people that views myself as a moderate. You know, neither which, which I think, you know, there's those on the conservative and those on the liberal spectrum that be like, well, that means you don't believe anything. Really, though being a moderate can be really hard work because you're trying to understand where people come from. Doesn't mean you don't have opinions or viewpoints, but you're trying to hear others and why they feel the way they feel and not all of a sudden just automatically decide they disagree with me, therefore they are less than I am. They are not as intelligent as I am. And I just. See, it's like I said, the way you started it out, that is one of the great things we drift into as a society so quickly, so easily.

[41:53] JAN SAID: Yeah. It's so important to listen to others, to try to respect, to agree, to disagree, to not leave our beliefs at the door, but to know that someone's willing to listen. I had the bounty of serving the interfaith roundtable during the Olympics. And at the end of that, we decided to form the roundtable that continued on to this day. And 20 years later, it's going even stronger in Salt Lake than it ever did. But one of the members that was serving us administratively, she was saying, listening to all of these conversations you all have been having over these months as you prepared for this, again, a big crisis. It was 9 11, just before the Olympics, and the towers had come down in New York, and people were scared and bombings, threats were, you know, were everywhere. And so the roundtable felt like we were bringing this thing together, and we need to bring all of ourselves serving the world together, serving all these athletes and the people at the end of it. She said, and she was Mormon, and she said, you know, what I've really come to understand working together on this interfaith roundtable with everyone, is that those people of different faiths, those people that believe something way different than I do, those of you here, you love your faith as much as I love mine, that you love your faith as much as I love mine. And that was an understanding that she hadn't had and was a point of respect that we have to respect, that we will agree to disagree, and yet let's work on the things like bringing the whole world to Salt Lake City and have the athletes be safe and that they have a spiritual component to their time here. When we kept things at that global level, we were able to work together. And we've built bonds that have lasted and an institution that has lasted as well. And I think that those are the kind of things that ifyc, the courageous pluralism, you at byu, me at Westminster College are all really trying to see how and where do we intersect in a way that builds community rather than tears it down. Let all these old ways of being and doing disappear, and let's fill that space and that void with new institutions and new ways of being. And like you said, we didn't go into politics much or into social justice, which. What about racism and what's happened this summer? And how do we work better to make the changes that don't become dichotomous and way out here on the left or the right. But really, what do we do to build community with my brothers and sisters of all races? How are we making that happen? Sean Hopkin and Jan said, what are we doing? You know, that's. That's where I'm at and where I like to be with. With interfaith work, so that it's not.

[44:41] SEAN HOPKIN: Just a discussion about theological ideas. But, okay, what does that mean on the ground? And, and honestly, I think, you know, you talked about the statistics of people leaving religious affil, and I think it's because they see the deep need for change and they have this sense that their religious organizations, their churches, aren't the best vehicles to help them affect that change. And I think as someone who is deeply loyal to my own church and religious faith, I want to make sure that I can articulate ways in which we can be a vehicle for change and working with others. Not enhancing division, but reducing division to affect positive. I mean, seeing it not be not being shy of acknowledging problems where problems have been and continue to be being honest about it, and then being able to work across the aisle, so to speak, bridge divides and do change. Otherwise, I just. I don't know that people will stay unless they see that their religious beliefs enhance their ability to live in a global environment.

[45:54] JAN SAID: Yeah, I agree. I think that's. That's 100% true, that if you are not getting that feeling that I am here to help society and that my faith community is doing that too, I think that's one of the things I do admire within living in a very LDS culture and the service to the community that they are doing. And the interfaith roundtable even just had a speaker from the LDS Church talking about some of the things that are going on right now. And some of my best affiliations and times have been when I have collaborated, well, definitely with anyone interfaith, because, you know, when you're a Baha'I, there's. You gotta be affiliated with others or you're out there by yourself a lot of the time. So I have learned of that strength of working with people that are different. And I hope that at this crisis time that we're living in that we will see more and more of that happening and people listening to one another.

[46:52] SEAN HOPKIN: I. Not to embarrass you, Jan, but I'll just express appreciation. It's just enhanced by this conversation today. A woman of faith, of loyalty to her own faith, who is also. You said it. You've got wounds. And I've interacted with you a number of times. And what I get from you is warmth and appreciation for all the good that's there, not pretending that there aren't negatives. Right. And wounds, so to speak. But it's really joyous if we could all sort of be willing to see that in others, whether we're talking religiously or politically or whatever the case may be. And I'm really pleased we're working together and looking forward to continue this work with you, Westminster and byu. BYU and Westminster. And you and I. So thank you.

[47:45] JAN SAID: Yeah. Thank you, Tushan.