This post originally appeared on faitheistbook.com.

My home state of Minnesota legalized same-sex marriage today. (And yes, my grandmother has already called to say that I “can move home now.”) While I celebrate this sign of social progress, there is still much work to be done. In this spirit, my new piece for HuffPost Religion and Interfaith Youth Core calls for interfaith advocates to include LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) voices in their efforts to promote pluralism. Check out an excerpt below, and click here to read it in full.

As an atheist and interfaith activist, much of my work focuses on advocating for the inclusion of nonreligious voices in interfaith dialogue. But a related—and, for me, equally urgent—push for inclusion can be found in efforts to welcome LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) people into interfaith spaces. I am passionate about LGBTQ acceptance, and I am passionate about interfaith cooperation. In my eyes, these passions are not in tension; they are intimately connected.

In Faitheist, I write about times that I experienced exclusion and demonization for being an atheist, and also times I was attacked for being queer. I included both to highlight the reality that fear of the “other” has frequently pushed me, and many others, to the margins of our society—this includes atheists and agnostics, but also LGBTQ people, Muslims, Sikhs, women, and many others. Interfaith work, which brings together people from diverse communities to better understand one another and build inter-community networks that advocate for the dignity of all people, must necessarily welcome all people.

Click here to continue reading.

This post originally appeared on faitheistbook.com.

Happy Mother’s Day! Today and always, I am so grateful for my mother’s wisdom and love—for all that she has taught me, and for the example she has set throughout my life. Below, two pieces I’ve written on her influence (the second is adapted from Faitheist).

Thought Catalog, “Tolerance Begins at Home”

My mom is almost never embarrassed to speak her mind. But she also makes an effort not to be mean, abrasive, or hurtful to others in doing so. She taught me to be strong, but she also showed me how to be kind. Surveying the innumerable and frequently volatile disagreements and conflicts over the veracity of religious claims in the world today, I think we could all stand to follow her lead a bit more often.

(Click here to read it in full.)

The Advocate, “Saved By Grace”

The next day, she took me to meet with a Christian minister who told me that God loves all people, queer and straight, and that I didn’t need to change. This moment changed my life forever, and set me on the course toward the work that I do now as an atheist-interfaith activist. My experiences of feeling isolated and misunderstood inform my conviction that it is imperative to work for a world where people of all sexual orientations, and all different faiths and beliefs, understand one another better — a society where all people can live openly and be who they are without fear.

But before we can reach out and try to build understanding and love across lines of religious difference, we must first love ourselves. I would never have known this unless my mother had saved me, loving me when I did not love myself. Her love was a gift, given at the moment I needed it most — and I intend to pass it on.

(Click here to read it in full.)

Today, at 1 PM Eastern Time, I’ll be on BBC Radio’s Program “World Have Your Say.” They contacted me in response to my recent Huffington Post column, and I’ll be joining a few other people to discuss recent attacks in Boston, the thwarted attack in Canada, the car bomb that went off outside the French embassy in Tripoli, and so on.

It’s through BBC World Service and you can listen to it here. My Irish friend tells me that it’s the largest international broadcaster so I’m kind of freaking out.

Not sure if it’ll be posted later online, so take a listen if you get a chance! Until then, I’ll be treating to prepare as best I can and feeling like this:

(But in all seriousness I’m very excited and flattered to be on.)

UPDATE: In case you missed it, listen to it here. My comments start around 9:30, and don’t really stretch much over the second half of the program. I might organize some of my thoughts in a post coming soon.

Vlad Chituc is a lab manager and research assistant in a social neuroscience lab at Duke University. As an undergraduate at Yale, he was the president of the campus branch of the Secular Student Alliance, where he tried to be smarter about religion and drink PBR, only occasionally at the same time. He cares about morality and thinks philosophy is important. He is also someone that you can follow on twitter.

This post originally appeared on faitheistbook.com.

The newly-released April 2013 issue of The Interfaith Observer is entitled “Welcoming Atheists & Humanists into the Interfaith Community,” and as a whole the issue is focused on engaging atheists in interfaith work.

It includes a piece by me, which is an updated version of my very first article the Huffington Post about atheists and interfaith work (published as I was beginning work on Faitheist). When I was approached about updating that piece for 2013, I agreed that it would be fitting to revisit it a few years later and add more recent examples, new data, and some additional thoughts. Check out an excerpt below, and click here to read the full thing:

As an interfaith activist, I’ve worked to bring an end to religious division. In recent years, this has increasingly meant speaking out against the rise in anti-Muslim rhetoric and violence sweeping America.

Advocating for religious believers has often put me at odds with my own community. As an atheist, I regularly encounter anti-religious rhetoric and activism. Speaking out against anti-pluralistic voices in my community hasn’t always been easy. Yet it is precisely because I am an atheist, and not in spite of it, that I am motivated to do interfaith work.

Why? For one, without religious tolerance and pluralism, I wouldn’t be free to call myself an atheist without fear of retribution. Not that long ago, I could not have been a public, vocal atheist at all. But due to relationships with religious allies and increased atheist visibility, the times are changing.

Still, this expanded freedom shouldn’t suggest that everything is coming up roses for American atheists. In 2010, Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, forbade the formation of a secular student group, claiming the group’s mission was in direct opposition with the school’s identity as an institution affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Concordia, which recognizes a Catholic student group, refused to reconsider their decision. As a graduate of Augsburg College, another Minnesota ELCA-affiliated school, I was alarmed by this news. But Concordia’s decision received little attention. Few came to the secular students’ defense. This was not the end to the Concordia story, though, as we shall see.

Click here to read the article in full.

The issue also includes a new review of Faitheist by Rev. Charles Gibbs, Executive Director of United Religions Initiative:

Chris Stedman’s Faitheist is a fine, compelling book written by a deeply faithful person, who by his own admission is more interested in building something than in tearing something down. His faithfulness is not to a set of religious beliefs but to a search to understand and honor his unique humanity and the unique humanity of others in ways that contribute positively to life on Earth.

In clear prose, with often disarming honesty, Stedman chronicles his sometimes turbulent and anguished journey toward a self-identity he can embrace, regardless of what the larger society reflects back. This journey includes a collision between his identity as a born-again Christian and his awakening sense of himself as gay man that led him to the brink of suicide. It includes his stint as an atheist doing graduate work at a Christian seminary, and an internship at the Interfaith Youth Core, one of the U.S.’s preeminent interfaith organizations.

Woven throughout his story is Stedman’s passion for constructive, life-affirming, boundary-crossing community, a compassion for those that mainstream society marginalizes, a high ethic of service, and a deep commitment to building a future “where the mutual goals of love and service remain at the forefront of people’s thoughts and actions…” (p.179) This stance in life would be praiseworthy in anyone. In a person whose identities – as a gay man and an atheist – make him the target of indescribable bigotry that all too often explodes in hatred, this stance is both unexpected and inspirational.

Stedman is a courageous pioneer who models the following words from the charter of the United Religions Initiative – We listen and speak with respect to deepen mutual understanding and trust. For Chris Stedman this principle is the platform from which to create engaged community that welcomes all in a spirit of appreciation and inquiry and seeks to engender a shared commitment to cooperative action to make our world a better place for all life, especially for the most vulnerable.

If you’re someone who is concerned about the increasingly polarized state of our world and the serious challenges that face our Earth community – poverty, environmental calamity, and the wanton disregard for life evident in the escalation of militarism and violence, to name a few – I urge you to read Chris Stedman’s book.

Beyond that, I urge you to follow his example and reach out to those you are inclined to view as the “other.” If you do, I guarantee you’ll discover there are no other people in this world, only a marvelously and confoundingly diverse humanity waiting to be discovered, respected and invited to travel together on a shared journey whose destination is our fullest humanity and the good of all.

Additionaly, the issue contains “an overdue welcome to the atheist community” from Rev. Paul Chaffee (founder and editor of The Interfaith Observer), contributions from emerging atheist thinkers and activists like Kile Jones (“‘Interview an Atheist at Church’ Takes Off“) and Vanessa Gomez Brake (“The Case for Atheist Chaplains“), Interfaith Youth Core founder Eboo Patel’s foreword to Faitheist, and much more. Click here to check out the full issue!

I was really upset this morning reading in the New Yorker what happened to the 20 year old Saudi student who was reported as a suspect. It’s depressing stuff so, partly inspired by that and our great guest post this morning, I decided to write about why it wouldn’t matter if the Saudi or any other Muslim was behind the attack. I end up writing about why I’m not a New Atheist, why I think Sam Harris and Pamela Geller both get Islam wrong, and why it’s a problem that we treat Islam so differently.

The New York Post has been receiving serious and justifiable criticism  for their reporting on the Boston Marathon. Citing police sources, the paper reported that 12 people had died in the attacks and that a “Saudi national” had been taken into custody. Of course, the death toll was thankfully a (still horrifying) quarter of that, and the police later disconfirmed that the “Saudi national” was a suspect — he was a student tackled by a concerned citizen and taken to the hospital. He was fully cooperative, denied all involvement, and isn’t a suspect. The New Yorker has released an important and harrowing story of the way this young man, barely out of his teens, was treated.

Just as conspiracy-nut Alex Jones was quick to blame the government and the Westboro Baptist Church was quick to blame the gays, many were quick to accept the New York Post‘s shoddy reporting and rumor-mongering — it was easy to believe the perpetrator was a Muslim.

What would have happened, though, if the perpetrator was this 20-year-old Saudi, who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time looking the wrong color and maybe calling out to the name of the wrong-sounding God? What if it was some other Muslim, instead? Why should that even matter?

It seems like the anti-Muslim voices on the far right, like Pamela Geller, and the atheist left, like Sam Harris, act as if moderates, like myself, simply aren’t aware that Muslim terrorism exists. They use extraordinary examples as an excuse to rub in our faces how violent and harmful a religion Islam is.

But what about the Gallup poll that shows that 93 percent of Muslims in the world aren’t radical, and that the radicals give political, not religious, justifications for their violence? What about the study out of Duke and UNC Chapel Hill showing that only 6 percent of terrorist attacks in the U.S. have been by Muslims? What about the studies by Robert Pape showing that nearly all suicide bombings have the secular goal of resisting Western occupation, rather than any religious aim? What about the secular and nationalist group, the Tamil Tigers, which pioneered the modern suicide attack, accounting for the majority in the latter end of the 20th century?

Read the rest of it at the Huffington Post.

Vlad Chituc is a lab manager and research assistant in a social neuroscience lab at Duke University. As an undergraduate at Yale, he was the president of the campus branch of the Secular Student Alliance, where he tried to be smarter about religion and drink PBR, only occasionally at the same time. He cares about morality and thinks philosophy is important. He is also someone that you can follow on twitter.