We clearly have questions about the ‘Nones’ among us. MSU Bias Busters have the answers!

March 18, 2024 by

Click the cover to visit the book’s Amazon page.

By JOE GRIMM
Head of the MSU Bias Busters project

Whew! Our team of Michigan State University School of Journalism students—known as the Bias Busters—produced our latest book just in time!

For weeks now, journalists and religious leaders have been running in every direction after the latest reports on the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans.

The same new Pew research data is being described in seemingly opposite ways. Headlines have included:

Fox: Religious ‘nones’ decline for first time since 2016, Pew study finds

NPR: Religious ‘Nones’ are now the largest single group in the U.S.

Nether headline is wrong.

While the proportion of religiously unaffiliated people in the U.S. population has declined slightly, other groups, notably Christians and Catholics, declined more. So, everybody wins— or loses.

Reactions within Christian religions to bringing people into churches varied as much as the headlines.

In The Baptist Paper in Alabama, Mark MacDonald wrote, “As believers, we need to decide if we try to reach this unchurched group, who are ‘characterized as morally directionless,’ or shake our heads and not even attempt the challenge. I would argue the question is not ‘if’ but ‘how.’ Remember, nones are not all the same, but they all need Jesus.”

MacDonald is executive director of the Center for Church Communication. He is also a speaker, consultant, author, church branding strategist for BeKnownforSomething.com. MacDonald proposes building bridges with community-helping ministries, sharing stories, leveraging social media, extending inclusive invitations and demonstrating relevance to daily life.

Michael Pakaluk, a social research and business professor at the Catholic University of America, took a harder line in an interview with the Catholic News Agency. He told CNA, “The fields are there and are ripe for the harvest. People recognize that atheism is its own form of religion. It’s harsh and unattractive. Agnosticism was never widespread and has always been limited mainly to educated classes.”

He said that if people identify as “nothing in particular”—“then in my view they are right back where the church started, among pagan nations, and that is great for us, for evangelization.” Pakaluk told CNA the rise of religious unaffiliation is due to “secularized education and the trauma and poor example of divorce.”

Despite his concerns, or maybe because of them, Pakaluk said now is a great time for evangelization. He said, “Catholic parents should think twice, or three times, before they send their children to any colleges except faithful, vibrant, Catholic colleges.”

Writing for Crisis magazine, historian and author W. Crocker III took a harder line. “Before we can reach the adult nones with the good, the beautiful, and the true, we need to shake them out of their willed imbecility. … Until that is achieved, arguments about truth will miss the mark. Christian humility, charity, and generosity will not move them. … You want to win the nones? Treat ’em rough.”

The evangelical Christianity Today ran this headline, “Why Evangelicals Aren’t Afraid of Being Outnumbered by Nones.” In the article Erik Thoennes, professor and department chair of biblical and theological studies at Biola University, said his Generation Z students are turned off by church marketing or bids to make it cool. They want authenticity.

He said he goes with traditional strengths such as the power of Christ. As the article concludes, he is quoted, “I don’t have to stay atop of the latest trends to make sure dechurching doesn’t happen at my church.” He is pastor of Grace Evangelical Free Church in La Mirada, California. He said. “It’s simple: Stay focused on Jesus.”

Got questions about our minority friends, neighbors and coworkers?

There are now more than 20 guides in the Bias Busters series. Which ones would you like? 

PBS network’s wonderful ‘Gospel’ series is a ‘multimedia experience with wall-to-wall music’

March 3, 2024 by

Click on this poster for the PBS series to visit the extensive website PBS has set up with supplemental materials.

By JOE GRIMM
Director of MSU’s Bias Busters

Hop aboard the PBS network’s four-part Gospel docuseries that sweeps through the origins, expansion and future of gospel music. (Click here to visit the extensive PBS website related to this series.)

Host Henry Louis Gates Jr., drives this expedition from The South through the Great Migration to Chicago, then to Detroit and eventually everywhere. Gospel music evolved and picked up steam as it grew out of safe hush harbors to small Black churches to “race music” to choirs, radio, recording contracts, television, mega churches, clubs and white and international audiences.

This project is a layered multimedia experience with wall-to-wall music. It is rare to find moments where there is not both narration or interviews and music. Video and photography as well as crawling lyrics illustrate the story and music. It commands attention.

Gates and a choir of sources—some of whom sing—tell how spirituals, blues and jazz became gospel music and how the art forms continued to change and meld. The project details the ongoing struggle between spiritual and secular performance and settings for gospel music. The dynamic tension between whether to praise or be paid, whether to play the churches or the juke joints, accelerated some careers and stalled others.

With rich archival footage and contemporary interviews, the series goes beyond the headliners—so many stars are featured—to show how the writers, ministers of music, producers, entrepreneurs and business people made gospel grow from churches to communities to the country to the anthem track for the Civil Rights movement. The series drives vertically through time and horizontally through what has become a global audience.

In framing the history, Gates says, “The Black Church has been the home of creative expression and experimentation for more than 300 years. From the beginning, this creativity was driven by the one instrument that Black people could count on when nothing else was available: The human voice.”

Gates is a professor and the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He has authored dozens of books and films.

Gates is always on a roll, and that is true today. His newest book, The Black Box: Writing the Race comes out March 19. His PBS Finding Your Roots show is in its 10th season. A profile in the current February-March AARP magazine says, “Some public intellectuals win their place in society through fierce debate, showing off the sharpness of their minds during verbal attacks. But Henry Louis Gates Jr. took a slightly different path. He did it by being charming.”

That charm—Gates’ knowledge and laughter—make the Gospel docuseries engaging.

Click on the cover to visit the book’s Amazon page.

When my Michigan State journalism class was working on our book, 100 Questions and Answers About the Black Church: The Social and Spiritual Movement of a People, we provided the students copies of  Gates’ The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song (2021) for them. His influence, of course, means that the MSU guide spends some time with gospel music.

How I wish this PBS series had been available to the student authors then! They would have loved this.

Even so, their guide can supplement PBS’ Gospel. The guide focuses on the Black Church more broadly, of course. Among the 100 questions we answer:

Why were Black Churches created?

What characterizes a Black church service?

How did the Black migration to the North affect the church?

How are Black Churches sanctuaries?

What is the minister of music’s role?

What is the Black social gospel?

What role did the Black Church have in the Civil Rights movement?
Why are movement, energy and emotion important to praise?

What is modern gospel?

How do sacred and secular music interact?

Our modest guide includes the briefest but diverse list of gospel artists, a timeline and video in which the Rev. Robert Jones demonstrates how the sacred “I Shall Overcame” became the Civil Rights anthem, “We Shall Overcome.”

The PBS series began streaming for free in February and that free version ends March 11 and 12. The DVD of the docuseries will ship from Amazon on March 19. It has lots of goodies including a Gospel Live! concert companion, trailers, behind-the scenes photos and a Spotify playlist of 162 songs.

 

 

Michigan State University Journalism School’s Bias Busters Explain One of America’s Largest ‘Religious’ Groups

February 11, 2024 by

The ‘Religiously Unaffiliated’ are far more diverse than the label ‘None’ suggests

Click the cover to visit the book’s Amazon page. Copies will arrive shortly after the March 5 publication date.

MARCH 2024 UPDATE: This new Bias Busters book now is shipping from Amazon!

By JOE GRIMM
Director of MSU Journalism’s Bias Busters project

So-called religious “nones” are clearly more than nothing.

The number of people in the United States who do not publicly identify with an organized religion is driving headlines again. Researchers and journalists sometimes reduce them to the one-word label “nones”—referring to their choice of the “none of the above” option in surveys about religious affiliation. But the truth is: The unaffiliated are a vast and diverse group.

First, the sheer size of this group of people who prefer not to label their spiritual-religious lives in traditional ways is fascinating to researchers, authors, journalists—and, of course, community and religious leaders nationwide.

We keep asking: Who are all these people?!

We wonder: How do these people see the deeper or more transcendent aspects of their lives, their communities and the cosmos without adopting our long-standing labels for religious membership?

And, what exactly do they believe?

One major milestone in American life that is easy to miss in many of the press reports about the unaffiliated is this: Rather than a shrinking of America’s religious diversity, this huge group of people who reject our most common religious labels seems to represent an expansion of America’s spiritual diversity.

In fact, we are realizing that those traditional survey check-lists of “religious affiliation” don’t tell us much about the religious-spiritual lives of a huge portion of our population. The old way of gathering and reporting this data doesn’t seem to be working very well.

That’s why our Michigan State University School of Journalism team of award-winning student journalists—who we call the Bias Busters—decided to step in and report on information that seems to be missing from the many headlines about “nones” in 2024. Especially if you are an educator, community leader, health-care provider, policy maker, media professional—or anyone else who needs to understand the makeup of our communities—you should pre-order a copy of Michigan State University’s latest Bias Busters book today.

What Do We Mean About Adding to America’s Religious Diversity?

The landmark January 2024 Pew Research report raises more questions than it answers about the hard-to-define spiritual-religious nature of these Americans.

Just a few excerpts from Pew’s report:

  • Most “nones” believe in God or another higher power.
  • But very few go to religious services regularly.
  • They are not uniformly anti-religious. … Most say religion causes a variety of problems in society—like intolerance or superstition. But many “nones” also say that religion helps give people meaning and purpose, and that it can encourage people to treat each other well.
  • They are far less likely than religiously affiliated Americans to say they believe in God “as described in the Bible,” but most do believe in God or some other higher power. Just 29% reject the notion that there is any higher power or spiritual force in the universe.
  • About half say spirituality is very important in their lives or say they think of themselves as spiritual.

And here’s one more fact to puzzle over: We know that many regular readers of our ReadTheSpirit online magazine are religiously unaffiliated—because we have heard from so many of you via emails, calls, zooms and in-person conversations over the past 17 years. In fact, we know that our publishing house serves people from at least a dozen traditional religious groups—from Christians, Jews and Muslims to Buddhists and Native Americans—but we also count “nones” among the major supporters of our publishing projects.

That’s true of the team behind ReadTheSpirit—and that’s true of the diverse student body behind our MSU Bias Busters project over the past decade. Some students proudly describe their religious affiliations; some students are—unaffiliated.

And, here’s why that’s so important: Over many years, we have figured out ways to work together for the common good.

Now, do you have more questions about how this undefined “group” plays a role in our incredibly diverse religious-spiritual landscape?

Well, just to make it easy: Here’s that link again to the new book’s Amazon page. Pre-order your copy today and it will arrive just after March 5.

This Isn’t the First Time the Unaffiliated Have Made Headlines

Today, we are experiencing an echo of earlier nationwide interest in this group. You can follow the waves by looking at the trend line in estimates of the group’s size.

In January, James Emery White explained, “When I wrote The Rise of the Nones: Understanding and Reaching the Religiously Unaffiliated in 2014, it was in many ways a warning of a coming cultural tsunami. I was having to make the case that there actually was a rise in this particular religious demographic—and that it was going to matter.”

White added: “Ten years later, the wave of the nones has clearly crashed upon our spiritual shores.”

White, a prolific author who has described himself as a sometimes none, is a former professor of theology and the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.

He wrote that book 10 years ago after Pew’s researchers noted an especially steep upward curve in the share of people who said they were religiously unaffiliated. A Pew team wrote in 2012, “In the last five years alone, the unaffiliated have increased from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults.”

This set off a cottage industry of writing, posting and publishing about the phenomenon.

The number continued rising. This make-shift “group” identified by pollsters hit 30%, eclipsing “evangelical Christians” and “Catholics”. People speculated answers and tracked down motives. Other research indicated that maybe the rising number just meant people were coming out of the closet about their non-affiliation.

A Diverse Group That’s Challenging to Chart

After a while, public discussion of this group quieted and, in recent years, many scholars who study religion at universities and research centers nationwide have focused more on the rising tide of politically conservative Christians, the rise of the so-called “Christian Nationalists.” ReadTheSpirit reported on that trend in October.

Then, Pew gathered new data on the unaffiliated—and one particular finding suddenly leapt into the national conversation in early 2024: Perhaps the total number of religiously unaffiliated folks is stabilizing—or even shrinking.

In January 2024, Pew reported, “28% of U.S. adults are religiously unaffiliated … That’s marginally lower than our surveys indicated in 2022 and 2021, and identical to what we found in 2020 and 2019 …”

Pew concluded that sentence by saying this “raises a question: After decades of sharp growth, has the rise of these religious ‘nones’ ended?”

Pew’s answer? “At the risk of sounding wishy-washy, we think it’s too early to tell.”

“Too early to tell” does not deter people from writing, speaking, preaching and strategizing about this enormous group of Americans once again. On The Late Show one evening, Stephen Colbert cracked a few jokes about how difficult it is to identify this group.

Even James Emery White isn’t quite sure what to make of this new data. This is how he concluded his January post about the nones: “They are not rising … they have risen.”

The Fact Is: Nones Are All Around Us

In fact, you may be a “none” yourself—although, one thing we have learned about these Americans is that the vast majority don’t like to be called “nones.” So, excuse us in occasionally dropping that word into this week’s ReadTheSpirit cover story, simply as a matter of clarity.

And, the fact is: It doesn’t really matter whether the trend line is going north or south. Whether 28% of the nation is religiously unaffiliated or the proportion is 30%—it is always a good time for people to understand each other better.

That is what this newest MSU Bias Busters guide is all about. In researching this guide, our students fanned out to ask unaffiliated people what they wish others knew about them. Some were deeply unhappy about being called “nones.” That label implies they are nothing, empty, zeroes. Many are deeply spiritual and moral. Many say they have a relationship with God—their problem is with churches or clerics.

Some believe in God. Some, included in this same group, say they do not believe in God at all. Some aren’t sure. Some are open to the idea but want proof.

And, missing from a lot of the reporting on this huge group is the fact that millions of these folks have found new labels they prefer, instead of the list survey researchers give them. What are some of those labels? The subtitle on this guide is “Nones, Agnostics, Atheists, Humanists, Freethinkers, Secularists and Skeptics.”

The 100 questions cover the wide range of Americans who wind up in the “unaffiliated” group. The answers might surprise you.

We already have listed some of the findings above. But here are a few more that are likely to surprise readers:

• Most nonreligious people believe in heaven.
• Unaffiliated people score higher on religious knowledge tests than most others.
• They have a strong belief in religious freedom because they want the right to be free from religion.
• Many pray and enjoy other spiritual practices.
• Pew reports that 87% of the religiously unaffiliated celebrate Christmas.

So, help us contribute to healthy communities

That’s our goal. “Good media builds healthy community” is the motto of the publishing house behind ReadTheSpirit and behind the entire Bias Busters series of books.

We can share that motto because it represents the best principles in American journalism.

The students who have contributed to the Bias Busters project know they are helping real people—family, friends and coworkers—to be more clearly understood in our diverse communities. And, with this particular minority group, we recognized that we’ve all got work to do. We found that religiously unaffiliated people report they are frequently judged, put down or misled by even well-intentioned people who want to save them. Sometimes the slights are accidental; sometimes not.

This new guide—like all of the guides we have published to date—shows how to engage with people in a respectful, mutually beneficial way to encourage healthy community life.

Just think about that for a moment: Healthy community.

Pew didn’t ask about that particular group—but I’ll bet nearly 100 percent of us would like to affiliate with that.

So, one last time: Preorder your own copy of this unique and timely new book right now.

Sikhs show the world their spiritual commitment to service through “langar” at the 2023 Parliament of the World’s Religions

September 3, 2023 by

Rice served in a langar service, courtesy of Dall-e AI.

By JOE GRIMM
MSU School of Journalism founder of Bias Busters book series

CHICAGO—Sikh people have a wonderful, welcoming tradition that embodies the Sikhi religious value of selfless service. It is called langar and is a combination free kitchen, community meal and act of service.When the Michigan State University Bias Busters class compiled 100 Questions and Answers About Sikh Americans, we did not get to experience a langar because of COVID-19 isolation.

Sikhs entertained langar guests with music and chants. Photo by Joe Grimm used with his permission.

I got my chance during the Parliament of the World’s Religions Aug. 14-18, 2023, in Chicago. Each day of the parliament, there was a mid-day langar. The parliament attracted people from scores of religions and countries. All were welcome to experience a langar meal.

From the class’ work on the Sikh guide, I knew to expect lacto-vegetarian fare. Sikhs may choose to eat meat, but the langar is meatless. This means that Sikhs’ traditional neighbors whose religions forbid or discourage meat may join the langar. Hindus, Jains and Buddhists, embrace vegetarianism in keeping with their belief in nonviolence. The tradition was started 550 years ago by Sikh’s first leader, Guru Nanak. The meal is served for free to all regardless of religion, caste or gender.

A langar is traditionally prepared and served at a Sikh place of worship, called a Gurdwara. This gives members a regular chance to serve. The parliament’s langar was held in a tent set up just outside the McCormick Place convention center.

As at a gurdwara, participants removed their shoes and were fitted with white head scarves. Servers wore white turbans, although Sikh turbans can be of any color or pattern.

Click the cover to visit the book’s Amazon page.

Guests could either sit on the covered ground or at a table. The meal included green salad, chapati (flatbread), dal (split peas or beans) and a refreshing cucumber dish. It was good, and servers kept plates full. There was also a sweet mango beverage.

One thing I was unprepared for was the large number of servers. Although Sikhi has about 30 million members worldwide, there are fewer than 1 million in the United States and they tend to live on the East and West coasts.

So, I asked my hosts where they live. The first man I asked said in a British accent he had come from the United Kingdom. The next person was also from the U.K. and said 105 had come on this mission the Midwest.

As I left the tent, I thanked one of the people for coming to Chicago to teach us.

A practitioner of selfless service, he said, “Thank you for letting us serve you.” Then he handed me a bottle of water.

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Care to Learn More?

Joe Grimm, the founder of the Michigan State University School of Journalism Bias Busters project, attended the 2023 Parliament and has provided us two stories and colorful photos as well.

FOCUSING ON UKRAINE is a story headlined: 2023 Parliament of the World’s Religions shows the peaceful potential of our diverse faith traditions.

FOR MORE ABOUT LANGAR, the Parliament staff posted an overview of this traditional service from the Sikh community.

Click on this image to visit the Amazon page for the Bias Busters series.

Joe Grimm is nationally known for his tireless commitment to diversity through journalism, both in the training and hiring of journalists and in the kinds of stories covered by newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and online publications. When asked to describe the Bias Busters project that Joe founded through the Michigan State University School of Journalism, he writes:

This series springs from the idea that good journalism should increase cross-cultural competence and understanding. Most of our guides are created by Michigan State University journalism students. We use journalistic interviews to surface the simple, everyday questions that people have about each other but might be afraid to ask. We use research and reporting to get the answers and then put them where people can find them, read them and learn about each other.

These cultural competence guides are meant to be conversation starters. We want people to use these guides to get some base-line understanding and to feel more comfortable asking more questions. We put a guide to resources in every guide we make, we arrange community conversations and we are working on a facilitation guide. While the guides can answer questions in private, they are meant to spark discussions.

2023 Parliament of the World’s Religions shows the peaceful potential of our diverse faith traditions

September 3, 2023 by

This 3-minute YouTube video is a quick visual tour of the 2023 Parliament.

Within the Parliament’s Peaceful Mission Is Spiritual Support for Embattled Ukraine

By JOE GRIMM
MSU School of Journalism founder of Bias Busters book series

CHICAGO—The first Parliament of the World’s Religions, held in Chicago in 1893, was billed as a national dialogue about faith. Now, the event is known as the birth of the worldwide interfaith movement. Its 2023 edition, held Aug. 14-18 in Chicago, sustains that vision in new ways.

Religious leaders flanked Christian Orthodox Archbishop Germanos of Chernivtsi, a city in southwestern Ukraine, to show the global spiritual support that has flowed through the interfaith parliament since its founding more than a century ago. Photos with these stories from the 2023 Parliament are by Joe Grimm and used with his permission.

One innovation this year: Before hundreds of people near the parliament’s conclusion, representatives from Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism rallied behind Ukraine.

Sharing the stage with Christian Orthodox Archbishop Germanos of Chernivtsi, a city in southwestern Ukraine, the religious leaders pledged solidarity and support.

Symbolically, this last-day event showed how the interfaith message has survived 130 years, as well as how it has changed and faces new challenges. In 1893, Sikhs were not included in the parliament. This year, Sikhs were at center stage, supporting Ukraine. Another group absent the first time out, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had a large presence in the parliament’s marketplace.

Weaving prepared statements, music, poetry and prayer, religious leaders and performers comprised blanket support for Ukraine. The war, however, is threatening to tear apart Germanos’ Eastern Orthodox Church. With major Orthodox capitals in Moscow and Kiev, the church has been weaponized by both sides in this conflict.

Russian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill has said, “Any war must have guns and ideas. In this war, the Kremlin has provided the guns, and I believe the Russian Orthodox Church is providing the ideas.” A Russian strike in July badly damaged Ukraine’s landmark Transfiguration Cathedral.

On the other side of the conflict, the Ukrainian government has ordered 1,000 Orthodox monks suspected of being loyal to Russia out of their state-owned monastery in the capital of Kiev. And, to further distance itself from Moscow, Ukraine recently changed its official date for Orthodox Christmas from the Russian date of Jan. 7 to the western date of Dec. 25.

In his brief, warm response to the parliament’s expressions of solidarity, the archbishop thanked world religions for the friendship that he said he hopes leads to unity. He also acknowledged the Ukrainian diaspora which has brought his country’s people to Chicago.

The Chicago Bandura Ensemble, built around Ukrainian instruments, gives musical testimony to the diaspora that meant the Ukrainian archbishop found familiar strains far from home.

Music for this special program was provided by the Chicago Bandura Ensemble.

The bandura is a Ukrainian instrument with as many as 65 strings. It is tuned like a piano and plays like a cross between a guitar and a harp.

On the day after Germanos acknowledged support, a Russian missile attack on the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv struck a central square, a university and a theater. At least seven were killed and almost 130 injured.

CNN reported that Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, said the strike occurred as people were leaving church with “baskets of blessed apples.” The day is a major holiday on the Orthodox calendar, as apples and honey were being consecrated for The Feast of the Transfiguration of Jesus.

A surprising ending for the Ukrainian event spoke to the interfaith nature of the parliament. A shofar ram’s horn was blown, recognizing that the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashana is coming soon.

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Care to Learn More?

Joe Grimm, the founder of the Michigan State University School of Journalism Bias Busters project, attended the 2023 Parliament and has provided us two stories and colorful photos as well. In addition to this story, he also sent us:

A REPORT HIGHLIGHTING one of the most important religious groups participating in the Parliament is this second story: Sikhs show the world their spiritual commitment to service at the 2023 Parliament of the World’s Religions.

Click on this image to visit the Amazon page for the Bias Busters series.

Joe Grimm is nationally known for his tireless commitment to diversity through journalism, both in the training and hiring of journalists and in the kinds of stories covered by newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and online publications. When asked to describe the Bias Busters project that Joe founded through the Michigan State University School of Journalism, he writes:

This series springs from the idea that good journalism should increase cross-cultural competence and understanding. Most of our guides are created by Michigan State University journalism students. We use journalistic interviews to surface the simple, everyday questions that people have about each other but might be afraid to ask. We use research and reporting to get the answers and then put them where people can find them, read them and learn about each other.

These cultural competence guides are meant to be conversation starters. We want people to use these guides to get some base-line understanding and to feel more comfortable asking more questions. We put a guide to resources in every guide we make, we arrange community conversations and we are working on a facilitation guide. While the guides can answer questions in private, they are meant to spark discussions.

Let’s help stop anti-Sikh treatment in the United States

August 15, 2022 by

By JOE GRIMM
MSU School of Journalism Professor of the Bias Busters program

Shortly after we published our new Bias Buster’s guide 100 Questions and Answers about Sikh Americans, suddenly Americans were reading about abusive treatment of Sikhs as some asylum seekers were forced to take off their turbans by border agents.

The Washington Post’s Nick Miroff reported on August 3, Border officials investigating claims Sikh turbans were confiscated. Miroff reported:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona sent a letter Monday to U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus saying the organization since June has documented almost 50 cases in which agents confiscated turbans, denouncing the seizures as “ongoing, serious religious-freedom violations.”U.S. Customs and Border Protection is investigating a new chapter in the complicated story that is immigration on the United States’ southern border.

This now has become an international news story as The Independent’s Josh Marcus followed up on January 6 and reported for his audience in the UK, and around the world: Border Patrol threw away ‘hundreds’ of Sikh migrants’ turbans and told them they could ‘starve’. Marcus reported:

The mistreatment of Sikh migrants at the US-Mexico border is reportedly much more widespread than previously thought. US Customs and Border Patrol agents in multiple sectors have allegedly thrown hundreds of sacred turbans belonging to Sikh border-crossers in the trash, and denied migrants religiously mandated vegetarian meals.

These incidents involve persecution of Sikhs, whose religion, Sikhi, originated in Punjab, India. These experiences of mistreatment at border centers involve both the turbans Sikh men wear and dietary restrictions in their tradition. The turbans signify their religious affiliation and keep their hair, which must be uncut, neat.

Tragically, now, questions are being asked that should have been asked and answered long ago. Who did these border agents think they were detaining? What did they know about Sikhs?

Questions are what we anticipated when a journalism class at Michigan State University created 100 Questions and Answers About Sikh Americans: The Beliefs Behind the Articles of Faith. This guide, published in July 2022, is one in a series of Bias Busters guides intended to increase cultural competence by answering basic questions.

First, a little background. Sikhi is the world’s fifth largest religion with about 25 million people worldwide. It is a newer religion than the larger ones: Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Sikhi, as it is officially known, or Sikhism, was founded in South Asian by a series of gurus.

This is how this Bias Busters guide begins to describe their beliefs:

“’Sikh’ means a disciple, student or learner. Sikhs pursue salvation through the message of God as revealed by the gurus, which promotes prayer and selfless service. Sikhs believe in one God who created the universe. All beings are equal and a part of this entity. Sikhism rejects discrimination based on gender, creed or social standing.”

So, it is cruelly ironic that when some Sikhs reach the United States, fleeing religious discrimination in India, they are greeted with more humiliation.

On Aug. 9, the Sikh Coalition, the faith’s largest American civil rights organization, wrote to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The letter said:

“Sikhs wear an external uniform to unify and bind themselves to the religion’s beliefs and to remind them of their commitment to Sikh teachings at all times. All Sikhs are required to wear external articles of faith, such as a steel bracelet (kara), uncut hair and beards (kesh), and a turban (dastaar) to cover their hair. These articles of faith distinguish a Sikh, have deep spiritual significance, and are mandated by Sikhs’ religious traditions and should not be forcibly removed or discarded.

“… The removal of the turban—which Sikhs view as an extension of their body—is highly personal and sensitive and is akin to a strip search. It is considered a great dishonor for anyone to violate another’s turban by removing it, and it is highly disrespectful to touch it with unwashed hands or by anyone who does not adhere to the tenets of the faith. Forcibly removing or targeting a Sikh’s turban or hair has symbolized denying that person the right to belong to the Sikh faith and is perceived by many as the most humiliating and hurtful physical and spiritual injury that can be inflicted upon a Sikh.”

People at the Sikh Coalition were allies on the 100 Questions and Answers About Sikh Americans guide, advising even before the class began. Then, they and others read it for accuracy. Once again in this border case, the more than 500,000 Sikh people in the United States are viewed through a lens of what is done to them rather than who they are and what they believe.

100 Questions and Answers About Sikh Americans frames Sikhs in their beliefs, ideals, history and practices, rather than in a defensive posture reacting to the most recent discrimination that has long been part of their reality.

To understand what is happening to Sikhs in Arizona and in the United States, we must first understand them. Please consider ordering your own copy of this new guidebook about Sikh Americans and, better yet, share this news and a guide with friends and colleagues.

 

Who wrote the famous song ‘We Shall Overcome’? Turns out, ‘we’ did.

August 15, 2022 by

How can our world move from ‘I’ to ‘We’?

By JOE GRIMM
MSU School of Journalism Professor of the Bias Busters program

This summer, our MSU Bias Busters team is launching some of the most widely celebrated books in its series of books to combat bigotry and build healthy communities. In August, for example, we all took part in a marvelous session at a conference of journalism educators in Detroit to launch 100 Questions and Answers about the Black Church.

The most inspiring and educational moments in that program was the Rev. Robert Jones talking about the origins of the famous protest song We Shall Overcome.

Please enjoy the video, above, share it with friends—and visit our Bias Busters channel on YouTube to enjoy more videos.

Want to go right to Amazon to learn more about this new book? Check out our Bias Busters page on Amazon that shows all 20 volumes in this series.