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Brad Seligmann works in Campus Ministry as Campus Minister for Interfaith Engagement. Brad shares perspective on how his connection with international and intercultural education and exchange is shaped by his experience with interreligious dialogue.

Can you share an intercultural experience or moment that inspired you?

The late Lutheran Bishop Krister Stendahl had this concept in interreligious relations called “Holy Envy.” He defined it as that value, practice or experience that you encounter in another religious tradition that you envy: something that you want in your own tradition; or something that inspires you to reflect back and find in your own tradition. 

So, an inspiring interreligious experience for me is whenever I am at a gurdwara, the place of worship for Sikhs, the langar is the most amazing thing to me. The idea that there is a religious community that as part of their regular practice welcomes everyone to the table, sitting on the floor, side-by-side as equals is so striking. Sikhs are not traditionally vegetarian, yet the meal is always vegetarian with the intent to be inclusive to all. It is this vision of radical equality that inspires me.

When I step back into my Christian framework, my own religious services are “gathering around a meal,” although highly ritualized. The langar is inspiring in terms of the radical equality and inclusiveness Sikhs practice. The philosophical parallels exist but are lived out in different ways. In my mind every church should have langar.

In your opinion, what are some benefits to international education/exchange?

There are things that you know in your head and then there are things you know when you experience them.  There is something about getting outside of the classroom. There isn’t one way of being human. Sometimes while we may know that intellectually, the idea of going abroad or interacting with people from different backgrounds and cultures can challenge this idea of one way or the right way of being human. Cultures and society have such a multiplicity of being.

As a staff member, how do you promote international education/exchange or expand intercultural experiences whether through campus, community or around the world?

Interreligious dialogue lends itself to international and intercultural perspective. A number of the programs that I do with students will end up having some element of intercultural relations. I regularly take students to different places of worship in Dayton. This past weekend we went to Saint Ignatius of Antioch Syriac Maronite Church. Technically it is a Catholic Church but it has roots in Lebanon and the liturgy is partly done in Arabic. This not only opens up conversation about the inter- or intra-religious experience, depending on who is going, but there is also this cultural piece that is inextricably linked that you have to talk about. This is a group of Lebanese Christians that immigrated to Dayton and founded their own community and they are worshipping in the way their ancestors did before coming here. This is just one example of how I encourage intercultural experiences with our students.

Where is place you have always wanted to explore, and why?

There is a lot of the world I haven’t been to like Southeast Asia or Africa. However, a place that has always interested me but I cannot go is Mecca, because only Muslims are allowed to visit. As someone who has studied Islam and Christian-Muslim relations, I would love to be able to visit such an important place of pilgrimage.

What is one aspect or memory of home that you still embrace today?

My mom cultivates this experience of hospitality more then she realizes.  She makes guests feel like they are home.  The joke is that “your glass will never be empty because she will always be there to fill it or your plate will never be clean because there is always another item.” That is a spirit I try to cultivate myself.

Where are some places you have traveled that have expanded your perspectives of yourself and the world?

A few years ago, I worked for an organization called the International Council of Christians and Jews and I was at a meeting in Vienna, Austria. Since we were in the capital we had lunch with a few officials from the Austrian government. I had this conversation which in hindsight seems obvious but at the time had a great impact on me. There was an official that was asking us about the notions of plurality and identity that Americans sometimes take for granted. This individual was asking, for example, “with first and second generation immigrants, what does it mean to be a Turkish Austrian?” It seemed to be challenging to wrap their minds around this concept, this duality. That complexity of identity is not something that I had really considered coming from an American context, because it is expected here. Conversations that we have about multiculturalism and diversity in the United States are so different then conversations happening in other parts of the world and that experience expanded my perspective.

Who is someone that has inspired you? Why?

Sister Dorothy Stang, SND, lived and died advocating for the poor and for the rainforest in Brazil. She spent years there working in solidarity with the indigenous communities fighting loggers and ranchers. Sadly, she was murdered by two ranchers in 2005, and her martyrdom made an impact on me while I was in college. She stands out to me as an inspiring activist for justice partly because she is from the same part of Ohio as I am, and made all these radical decisions about how she was going to live her life in solidarity with the oppressed.