A Conversation With Kim Hillebrand (Rev. Ai Su)

Kim Hillebrand (Rev. Ai Su)

Kim Hillebrand (Rev. Ai Su) joined the Kaufman Interfaith Institute in October 2019 with more than twenty years of nonprofit work in development and program management, including experience building spiritually grounded communities within the workplace.  She has earned undergraduate degrees in biological sciences and cultural anthropology and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Social Innovation at GVSU.  She is an ordained Buddhist Dharma Teacher with formal training in both Zen and Dzogchen.  Her foundational practice is Metta, or loving-kindness, a practice that she has undertaken almost daily for more than twenty years.

Could you give a brief background of what the Kaufman Institute does, its mission, and its importance?


With the mission of promoting interfaith understanding and mutual respect, the Kaufman Interfaith Institute offers a broad range of programming (over 200 events/initiatives each year) that creates a more inclusive and equitable West Michigan Community for persons of diverse cultural and religious/secular/spiritual identities. The Kaufman Institute works in the community and on area college campuses to advance this mission and to establish models for similar communities to embrace and foster intercultural and interfaith understanding.  More about the Kaufman Interfaith Institute can be found at www.interfaithunderstanding.org. 


How about your own history with the Kaufman Institute?

I joined the Kaufman Interfaith Institute in October of 2019.  For the first several months after joining the Institute, I researched organizational history, assisted with planning and implementing events, and integrated myself into the organizational culture and workflow. 

With my environmental education and ten-plus years of environmental advocacy work experience, in April I jumped in with both feet to assist with the planning of the city-wide Earth Day 50 event and the Grand Dialogue in Science and Religion, an interfaith convening sponsored by the Kaufman Institute focusing on climate action through an interfaith lens.  Both of those events were postponed due to the pandemic.

Currently, I’m working on the beginning stages of a collaborative three-year project supported by the Fetzer Institute in Kalamazoo, which you’ll read about below.


And your own spiritual formation? What/who were your influencers? 

I have always been one to seek out and learn about things that were very different from my own experience.  So, at Western Michigan University, I chose to live in a year-round dorm that was favored by many international students.  My roommate was Japanese, and she introduced me to many other students from many other cultures and religions.  I enjoyed a wildly diverse college experience!

During that time, I worked at Western Michigan University’s bookstore, and one day I came across the book “Being Peace” by Thich Nhat Hanh.  I sat down on the floor of the bookstore, read this little book cover to cover, and then used my food money to purchase it.  From that moment on, a big piece of my life snapped into place.  I had found the religious tradition that resonated with me, and all I was missing was belonging to a community of practitioners.    

After college, I moved to Washington, DC with the hopes of breaking into entry-level non-profit environmental work.  While there, my cultural and religious curiosity was satiated by visiting embassies, taking part in cultural festivals, and visiting many places of worship.  The day that I walked into a Tibetan Buddhist temple, my life was forever changed.  The feeling I had experienced years before related to identifying the faith tradition that resonated with my very being was affirmed, and I had found a community of practitioners (Sangha). I felt at home.

After almost twenty years of Buddhist practice, and several years of intense training, I was ordained as a Buddhist Dharma Teacher at the Grand Rapids Buddhist Temple.  I appreciate opportunities to speak and write about the Buddhist tradition and relish opportunities to join friends from other traditions in interfaith panels and discussions.

The influencers who have all made a profound impact on my life are my first teacher, Lama Kalsang; Thich Nhat Hanh; Archbishop Desmond Tutu; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Rumi; Richard Rohr; His Holiness the Dalai Lama; and so many more.   


I understand that the Kaufman Institute is reaching out to Kalamazoo to do interfaith work there. Could you give us a sense of what's happening?

Absolutely!  The Kaufman Interfaith Institute is partnering with the Fetzer Institute, a non-profit based in Kalamazoo.  My role in this work is to develop a transferable model for community-driven interfaith understanding, respect, acceptance and honoring of all, based on the interfaith model that has been implemented in Grand Rapids by the Kaufman Interfaith Institute over the past decade.  The goals of this project are not only to eventually develop a useful model for other communities to consider as an interfaith resource, but also to offer the resources and connections of the Kaufman Interfaith Institute in service to the interfaith work already happening on the ground in Kalamazoo and, more broadly, in Southwest Michigan.  I look forward with humility and excitement to partnering with Kalamazooans and surrounding communities to support their interfaith efforts. 


In your experience, what are the ingredients necessary to make interfaith efforts work? 

In any recipe, the ingredients make the dish.  Interfaith work is no different.  The openness and inclusivity of the space in which interfaith gatherings happen directly correlates to the finished dish, or what emerges from the conversation.  The ingredients necessary to help foster interfaith work revolve mostly around creating the space for people to manifest in real-time their unique authenticity, to speak openly without judgment, and to be curious and learn about worldviews and ways of being that are very different from their own without any pressure to change or convert.    

So for the Kaufman Interfaith Institute, our most important role in interfaith work is to serve our community as a convener, working to build, cultivate, and nurture spaces in which interfaith understanding can flourish.   


Given the current divisiveness across America, and really, the world, would you want to speak to what you see as some of the causal factors, and how interfaith work is helping?

From my perspective, divisiveness is born of an inability or unwillingness to honor a lived experience that is different from one’s own…an unwillingness to truly see a person very different from oneself.  From the rejection of another based on political beliefs, LGBTQ views, religious or secular traditions, gender identities, race or ethnic identities, etc., a lack of compassion and empathy follows until it appears that no commonalities exist.  The perceived differences between “us and them” creates the illusion of separation which breeds fear, apathy, and ultimately, hatred. 

We see this every day in our political landscape, in the ways that we are divided on racial inequities that are finally at the forefront of our national consciousness, and even in our decisions about whether or not to wear a mask during a global pandemic. We witness divisiveness all around us.  We feel divided.  But divisiveness is only as strong as the will to think of oneself as better or righter than another. 

When we can release the heavy burden of our attachments, opinions, and prejudices that we carry with us every hour of every day, and we can reject those delusions of separation that are born of our dualistic thinking (me and you, us and them, good and bad, right and wrong), then truly seeing someone very different from ourselves is possible.  If we focus on our commonalities, we will no longer see “the other”.  We will realize that there is no other.  What remains is understanding, unity, and love.  

Interfaith work is a model for bridging across any religious, spiritual, or secular differences, to break through perceived differences and the dualistic thinking that is so pervasive in our society.  The ingredients that help bring understanding across religious differences are the same ingredients that can bring understanding across any perceived difference.

The bridge to understanding is always there.  We only have to take one step forward toward a person we perceive as “other” to begin to build peaceful, equitable communities in which everyone can thrive.

James Cone's SAID I WASN'T GONNA TELL NOBODY, A Review

James Cone/UTSNYC.edu

James Cone, a brilliant man who is considered to be the father of black theology, was born in Arkansas and, as a young child, attended Macedonia AME Church in Bearden.

Years later, just before the cusp of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, he had earned a Ph.D. and was teaching.

But as he himself pointed out, during those six years of postgraduate work, he had never read a single book by a black theologian.

So after a mentor encouraged him to write, he started to form what became the foundation for Black theology. Going home to Arkansas to begin working on his first book BLACK THEOLOGY AND BLACK POWER.

"I would walk around in the office of my brother's church, reading aloud what I had written, amazed at the clarity and power of the message and the beauty of the words coming out of me. I felt as though it wasn't me writing, but some spiritual force telling me what to write. I felt as if black folk in Bearden were talking to me, telling me to speak the truth... I even felt the spirits of my slave ancestors rising up inside me, whispering words of encouragement, telling me to be strong in black faith and not to be afraid as long as I knew I was writing God's truth."

He notes that "While Black Power is not the church, it is a profound experience of blackness that all black people are called to embrace. All this deconstruction and recovery prepared me for the task of construction: the making of a black theology defined by black suffering and struggle"

Cone explains that "Black theology's spirit did not come from Europe but from Africa, from American slavery and its auction blocks, from the spirituals and the blues. The Christocentric center of black theology was defined by the Black Christ who enabled black people to survive slavery, to overcome Jim Crow segregation, and to defeat the lynching tree."

As recent events in America and the Black Lives Matter movement have underscored, Cone makes crystal clear: "People cannot live without a sense of their own worth. It black liberation theology, I was expressing black self-worth, which was denied or ignored by white theology and its churches."

And Cone offers a spiritual dimension to the on-going struggle for justice. "The black church, despite its failures, gives black people a sense of worth. They know they are somebody because God loves them and Jesus died for them. No matter what white people do to them, they cannot take their worth away."

Garnered from an academic career that spanned over fifty years, Cone observes: "Whether theologians acknowledge it or not, all theologies begin with experience. Theologians from the Western theological tradition often regard their theology as universal, something that everyone must study. But no theology is universal... We are all particular human beings, finite creatures, and we create our understanding of God out of our experience. Hopefully, our own experience points to the universal, but it is never identical with it. For when we mistake our own talk about God with ultimate reality, we turn it into ideology."

Cone takes narrow-minded views of God to task. "How could white Christians, who also claim to believe that Jesus died on the cross to save them, turn around and put blacks on trees and kill them?... Part of the answer lay in the unfortunate fact, during the course of two thousands years of Christian history, that the cross as a symbol of salvation had been detached from the ongoing suffering and oppression of human beings, the crucified people of history."

"If we want to understand what the crucifixion means for Americans today, we must view it through the lens of mutilated black bodies whose lives are destroyed in the criminal justice system. Jesus continues to be lynched before our eyes. He is crucified wherever people are tormented. That is why I say Christ is black."

Of his own upbringing's influence on his theological outlook, Cone says "It was my parents' faith that gave them the inner resources to transcend the brutality and see the real beauty in the tragedy of their lives. It is a mystery, a profound and deep mystery, how many African-Americans, even after two and a half centuries of slavery and another century of lynching and Jim Crow segregation, still refuse to allow themselves to be infected with hatred."

"'Black Lives Matter' is a partial realization of my hope. It is also my hope that whites, too, will be redeemed from their blindness and open their eyes to the terror of their deeds so they will know that we are all of one blood, brothers and sisters, literally and symbolically, and that what they do to blacks, they do to themselves."

Cone devotes a chapter of SAID I WASN'T GONNA TELL NOBODY, discussing another of his books, THE CROSS AND THE LYNCHING TREE. Cone includes a prayer, that is powerful in its vision of the future. "Let us hope, through God's grace and our struggle together, that we will be able to overcome our prejudices and the hate that separates us, and thereby empower people of all races and faiths to become the one people God created us to be."

A Conversation with Mae Elise Cannon, Author of Beyond Hashtag Activism

Mae Elise Cannon/IV Press

Dr. Rev. Mae  Elise Cannon is an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC). Her ministry and professional background includes serving as the Senior Director of Advocacy and Outreach for World Vision-US, the executive pastor of Hillside Covenant Church (Walnut Creek, California), and consultant to the Middle East for child advocacy issues for Compassion International. 

She earned doctorates in History (Ph.D) and Spiritual Formation (D. Min). Her Ph.D focused on American History with the minor in Middle Eastern studies from the University of California – Davis. Cannon’s Doctorate of Ministry in Spiritual Formation is from Northern Theological Seminary. Cannon holds an M.Div. From North Park Theological Seminary, an M.B.A. from North Park University’s School of Business and Nonprofit Management, and an M.A. in bioethics from Trinity International University. Cannon completed her Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Chicago.


You have had a long career in advocacy work. Your book, BEYOND HASHTAG ACTIVISM: Comprehensive Justice in a Complicated Age, deals with effective advocacy. Could you give a definition of advocacy, and what that looks like?

Many people say advocacy is about speaking up for others. On the one hand, this is true; advocacy is about elevating the voices of those who are often marginalized and whose voices aren’t heard in mainstream or broader society. However, we must be attentive to the pitfalls of believing that we have the ability to ‘speak for those without a voice,’ as this presumes people are incompetent or unable to speak for themselves. We must be sensitive to protect other’s individual autonomy while also not being oppressive in our attempts to advocate on behalf of those who may be suffering as victims of injustice. (Beyond Hashtag Activism, p. 15)



In your, book, BEYOND HASHTAG ACTIVISM, you write: "The reality is that those who are the most buried and suffocated by oppression and injustice often don't have a choice about whether or not to engage. People of color don't have a choice about whether or not to engage in the realities of racism because they suffer from overt forms of oppression and microaggressions on a daily basis in white-dominant contexts... People living in poverty don't choose whether or not to care about economic realities because if they wrestle with the effects of poverty, they won't have food for their families. Women threatened with sexual violence don't have a choice about whether or not they should care about gender equality and justice...However, even in the midst of these gross injustices, oppressed communities are often the most profound places to find hope." How is it that hope is often found within oppressed communities?


I think sometimes those who experience the greatest pain, sorrow, suffering, and oppression know what true joy tastes like so much more than others who might be more privileged and less exposed to suffering. When a person has experienced deep and penetrating pain, somehow the moments when light breaks through the clouds seem so much more redemptive. One might argue the greater the suffering one experiences, the greater the opportunity for that person to experience joy. This type of joy was expressed in my conversation with Sidney Muisyo from Kenya. He talked about how the communities that are the most impoverished are often the ones full of the most unadulterated joy at the simple things in life like human connection and time with family and loved ones.


I'm intrigued by what you call prophetic advocacy, which you define as "includ[ing] both spiritual and practical methodologies of directly responding to injustices we witness in the world." Why is it important to include a spiritual dimension to advocacy work? And to what extent does the lack of prophetic advocacy damage the focus of white evangelicalism's advocacy efforts?

I write about this question a lot in my book Just Spirituality: How Faith Practices Fuel Social Action. One might ask - is there really a difference between secular and Christian advocacy? My response is YES! The spiritual dimension for those of us who choose to follow Jesus is where the fuel for our advocacy comes from. In a conversation recently with Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III we were talking about how to be sustained in the work of racial justice. He reminded me of the spiritual depth of heroes of the faith like Harriett Tubman, known as Momma Moses, who got her strength from her spiritual connection to God. With the atrocities she witnessed, her strength and fortitude were otherworldly and came from her connection to the divine through her spiritual beliefs and relationship with God.

Prophetic advocacy is painful and often penetrates the very heart of the lies that perpetuate injustice and privilege. In general, the advocacy efforts of white evangelicalism haven’t been willing to dismantle systemic issues of injustice like racism, sexism, and other sins. Rather white privilege and assumed supremacy have undergirded and upheld systems of injustice - making us (I am including myself intentionally in this confession) complicit in upholding racist systems.

You make the observation that: "Lament and repentance are necessary precursors to reconciliation. Too often, particularly within white communities, scriptures about being ministers of reconciliation (2 Cor 5) are used as an excuse to overlook individual and systemic racism. This does not mean that reconciliation should not be pursued. It just means that reconciliation must always be sought hand in hand with efforts towards justice." Especially given the recent Covid-19 situation, it seems like the world is in a position of lamenting, a lot. How do you think this unusual situation can actually help the advocacy process?


In many oppressed communities, one will hear the mantra “no reconciliation without justice.” Justice is about truth being told. Two parties or communities cannot be reconciled without truth. Thus justice and reconciliation must be both be pursued for either to truly come to fruition.

The realities of isolation and communities lamenting because of COVID19 definitely provide an opportunity for us to repent and “turn away” from our sinful past… however, we would be remiss to not acknowledge that COVID19 has and will continue to have a disproportionate effect on the most vulnerable. I wrote about that in this article published by the Christian Citizen and highlighted that the injustices and vulnerabilities that existed before COVID19 will only be further exacerbated as a result of this conflict.



In regards to the complex issue of immigration, you note that "the church has an opportunity to witness to the world about God's love, acceptance, kindness, hospitality and goodness through the way we welcome the refugee." And then you go on to tackle genocide. "Genocides around the world have long been instigated because of assumptions of racial or ethnic superiority... One of the only appropriate responses to these realities of brokenness, violence and evil within the church is to repent."  I'm curious if you see any connection between a seeming lack of compassion among the (white} evangelical American church and the assumption of superiority?

The Bible describes the situation when one lacks compassion and won’t turn from their evil ways as a “hardened heart.” Certainly, privilege and assumed superiority are ideologies that contributed to hardened hearts. We also see this in communities that have financial resources and wealth. When the rich are disconnected from the poor and do not have the opportunity to be in direct proximity to those who are suffering, they are able to ignore the suffering. This is part of why proximity is such a critical issue in terms of exposing all of us to communities who experience isolation.



I appreciate what you have to say about the thorny subject of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You quote from a speech that Vice-President Mike Pence gave to the Israeli Knesset, in which he said that the U.S. stood with Israel because 'we stand with Israel because "we believe in right over wrong; in good over evil, and in liberty over tyranny. " You go on to make the point that "What specifically is problematic with this language? It seems to indicate that the 'good' Jewish state of Israel (note that 80 percent of Israeli citizens are Jewish and 20 percent are Arab Palestinians) should triumph over 'evil.' The assumption is that the evil' forces are Arab Muslims who [according to the US view] seek only destruction... What is problematic is the complete avoidance of any legitimacy of the same rights [aspiration to return to their homeland] for Palestinian Arabs." You then site some powerful statistics as to the number of Palestinian refugees and the apartheid-like hold that Israel has maintained over the Palestinians.  What, in your opinion can the U.S. do to improve its deteriorating influence as a peacemaker?


Turn course. The current Administration’s foreign policy is detrimental to peace in the Middle East. This includes Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, but expands beyond to other parts of the Arab world as well. Even the former Secretary of Defense, General Mattis said if the realities of the Israeli occupation are not addressed the condition of the Palestinian territories will become apartheid. The Israeli Knesset is set to vote on the proposed annexation of parts of the West Bank in July. If annexation proceeds, which the current U.S. Administration supports, efforts toward a long term and just peace between Israelis and Palestinians will be obliterated. It is also important to acknowledge that preceding Administrations (both Democratic and Republican) have disproportionately favored the interests of the Israeli people, most of whom are Jews, over the aspirations of Palestinians. If we ever want justice, and a resolution to violent conflicts - the lives, human dignity, and aspirations of all people must be taken into account - without privileging one over the other. 



Is there anything else you'd like to mention?

Beyond Hashtag Activism was published the day after George Floyd’s death at the hands of the Minneapolis police. The book addresses police brutality, dismantling white supremacy and privilege, and calls us to stand in solidarity with #BlackLivesMatter and other movements that have been active for decades - if not centuries. I am so grateful for the many people who shared their stories and contributed to the book. And I am grateful to those who helped launch Beyond Hashtag Activism into the world at this pivotal moment. My hope and prayer is that the book will be a tool for the church as we seek and pursue beloved community. I hope people will read books by people of color first! But I also hope this book will be a resource for people who desire to dive deeply into research and theology about the many justice issues it addresses. I also would welcome people to listen to the accompanying #Activism podcast that interviews incredible Christian leaders like Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry of The Episcopal Church, Rev. Dominique Gilliard, Nicole Morgan, and several others. 


For more information on Mae Elise Cannon, please click here.