Below is a guest blog by Conrad Hudson, President of the KU Society of Open-Minded Atheists and Agnostics, or SOMA, and founder of the student-run conference Reasonfest, as well as a burgeoning interfaith service alliance. In this post, Conrad reflects on his experience yesterday participating in a local interfaith event to commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11, and shares the reflection he offered. For more of his writing on NonProphet Status, click here.

Yesterday I was pleased and honored to offer a reflection on behalf of the non-religious in my community, in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Thanks to previous efforts, over the summer, to develop interfaith community service on my campus, I was connected to an organization called the Interfaith Dialogue Group.  IDG invited me to speak, along with 10 others, at an event that was both inspiring and somber. In attendance were the Chief of Police, the Mayor, the Vice -Chancellor, and survivors of both the attack on the towers and the pentagon.

Once we were connected, I was also invited to join them in their planning meetings for the event, where I was welcomed with open arms. My suggestions for making the event more friendly and inclusive to non-theists were readily accepted and implemented. I can’t thank the organizers enough for their hospitality and their enthusiasm to include and respect non-theists’ place in the society they envision.

It was also never far from my mind that 9/11 represents some of terrible consequences of justifying intolerance and violence by claiming the guidance and blessing of a supernatural deity. However, interfaith ceremonies, such as the one I participated in today, are not exercises in hypocrisy because they include religion. These events serve to fight the very tendencies which lead to religious violence–dogmatism, xenophobia, and extremism. They remind all those who observe them that our values are not so different, that within our belief systems there is much in common, and that even when vast chasms separate our worldviews we are bound together by our common humanity.

This is not universalism, this is pluralism. Pluralism is not created from apathy. Rather, there is an inherent call to action. Martin Luther King Jr. summed up that call when he said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” In the excerpt read at yesterday’s event, he says further: “One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”

Dr. King was speaking of non-violent protest, but yesterday those words also reminded us that no person has so firm a hold on truth, that they ought to use violence to convert another to their philosophy or religion. We must first strive for peace and interconnectedness. When threatened, people need not retreat in to isolation within their ideologies, within ever smaller sub-groups. All of us can say, instead, “We fight against your injustice as we fight against our own.” This I believe is one of the antidotes to extremism, something we all have a stake in reducing.

For today, my reflection was as follows and I must thank both the Council for Secular Humanism and the late, great, Carl Sagan for their inspiration:

The non-religious go by many labels: Atheist, agnostic, humanist, non-theist and nones. Varied as we are, we have no holy prayer, no single guiding text. We base our values on compassion for our fellow man, discovering them together, testing them by consequence. We are led to affirm:

• We believe in the power and necessity of altruism, integrity, honesty, and responsibility.

• We believe in an open and pluralistic society, and that democracy is the best guarantee of protecting human rights.

• We are committed to the application of reason and science to the solving of human problems.

• We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, tolerance in the place of fear, and love instead of hatred.

• We believe in the fullest realization of the best and noblest that we are capable of as human beings.

In 1782 a nation choose the motto “E Pluribus Unum,” Out of Many, One.  It could do so, because years earlier 13 colonies looked to a common hope.

I am here to honor those we lost a decade ago, when that nation was attacked.  I affirm that the noblest virtue we can have is a commitment to each other, an awareness of our membership in a larger group. Not in tribes and nations, ethnicities or races, nor philosophies and religions. Our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth.

We are strongest—not in reaction to an enemy, but when motivated by our deepest convictions, by our common humanity. With me today are a dozen different traditions, standing in for a hundred more. Together we too look to a common hope, for peace. “E Pluribus Unum.” Our beliefs are many, but in this hope, we are one.

Many people touched and inspired me with their comments. An event like this was a unique opportunity for people to express their own vision for a diverse society as well as process and express the complex array of emotions that accompanies something like 9/11. In closing I’d like to share a few interactions, which to me were particularly relevant, having just concluded an event where the non-religious were, for the first time, expressly included.

The first to seek me out after the program was a couple I recognized as being involved in other interfaith events around town. The husband told me the story of how they had started in one Christian denomination, moved to another, and then another. Along the way they became involved in interfaith dialog and events, but they also lost their own faith. They were so thankful to finally be again represented in an activity they continued to see value in, and I was so proud to be that for them.

Another audience member confided in me that while she and her family identified with one of the traditions which flanked me on stage, her values more closely matched mine. The Humanist reflection had meant more to her than her own tradition’s prayer, she confided.

Lastly, an active member of the Muslim religious community stopped me on the way out to marvel at how much of what I said, she could see as inspiring and agreeable. We ended up talking at length about my journey from faith to atheism. She was far too polite to be so blunt, but I could see her inquisitiveness was driven by a previous assumption that atheism was a necessarily empty, meaningless, and immoral life-stance. That assumption was challenged today and it led to a dialogue between us.

Whether it was representing a couple who’s disbelief left them unrepresented, providing an example for positive and fulfilling non-theistic identity to a young woman, or shining light on the values of Humanism for a devout Muslim, the opportunities given by this interfaith event were incredibly valuable. Most fulfilling was the sense that our words were anything but hollow. They came from a place of deep conviction. Though that conviction sprang from a place each person saw as different, they bound us together, made our community stronger, and moved us toward a better future.

Conrad Hudson is an accounting student at the University of Kansas where he serves as the President of the KU Society of Open-Minded Atheists and Agnostics (SOMA). While at KU he founded the student-run conference Reasonfest, as well as a burgeoning interfaith service alliance. His own experience with the effects of religious bigotry, as a shunned ex-member of the Christian denomination Jehovah’s Witnesses, motivates him to work tirelessly in providing community for secular youth, increasing understanding about the non-religious, developing tolerant and pragmatic relationships, peaceful and supportive communities, and combating dogmatism and ignorance through a wide variety of tactics. Beyond atheism he enjoys spreadsheets, philosophy, and working as a volunteer for youth camps, LGBTQ rights, gender equality, and domestic violence centers.