The Faithful Fight Against Authoritarianism with Rev. Chloe Breyer

REV. PAUL BRANDEIS RAUSHENBUSH, HOST:

For 18 years, she's been leading the Interfaith Center of New York, the most religiously diverse and civically engaged network of grassroots and immigrant religious leaders across the five boroughs of New York City. Ordained in the Episcopal tradition, Rev. Dr. Chloe Breyer has also been a priest at St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Harlem since 2011.

As a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, she has participated in interfaith dialogues and humanitarian initiatives in countries such as Afghanistan and Iran. And Rev. Chloe served as a clergy advisor on transition teams for New York City's mayor and Manhattan District Attorney.

We've got so much to talk about - from the faith component of movements like No Kings to the growing relationships between the Interfaith Center of New York and Interfaith Alliance. I'm delighted to have Rev. Chloe Breyer joining us today on The State of Belief.

Welcome, Chloe!

REV. DR. CHLOE BREYER, GUEST:

Thank you so much. Thank you, Paul. This is really wonderful. I appreciate it.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Well, I'm so excited to talk to you because I've been a fan for so long, and we've been friends and now we're colleagues in the work. And I'm just so glad that we're going to be working so closely together. Let's start out by just acknowledging that for people hearing this, many of them will have gone to No Kings, as will have we. And I guess I'm just wondering if you can talk a little bit about, from your perspective, as a faith leader, as an organizer, what it means for faith to show up in public displays of peaceful, nonviolent protest in this moment. How does that feel for you as a religious leader?

CHLOE BREYER:

I feel like it is really at the core of both my faith tradition as a Christian, where I recognize Christ is king and that's the king in my life. And I think others would probably agree. But I think, also, from other faith traditions we have this real treasury of nonviolence teachings from Tolstoy to Gandhi to Abraham Joshua Heschel - the strands of our faiths that recognize we are actually more powerful together when we are standing nonviolently even against the most terrifying displays of violence that we've really seen.

So I just I hope that the kind of terrifying displays of militarized violence turned against our own people, as we saw in Chicago and in cities around the country, that we have the opportunity as communities of faith to acknowledge a higher power and a higher strength. Often people will look at the teachings of our faith traditions individually and say, well, those are good, but they don't stand up. How powerful are they really? And I think that as Americans and as leaders of different faith traditions, we have the tools, as it were, to be able to really have a kind of renaissance of nonviolence and the creative and powerful elements that are part of it that we saw in the Civil Rights Movement, we saw in India's independence movements. This moment is ripe for that.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I agree completely. I think that this is actually a really important moment, where this is something I'm preaching about all over the place, is that people really do need to show up. And I do think this is an opportunity, actually, for us to exercise our faith traditions. And, you know, something that I've heard at these Multifaith Mondays that we're doing in Columbus Circle in New York City, someone was saying that, just repeated refrain was like, peace is not just the goal, it's also the means and the way we get to the goal. And so just underscoring that.

And as someone who has been part of the planning for No Kings, I just pray that it has gone off, when people are hearing this, without any violence, because that was certainly the intention of all of us who were involved in the planning. And I do think it's at the core of a powerful… You know, the idea that the power that is inherited in this nonviolent resistance is really important. And we've seen that not only in this country, but in countries around the globe who have resisted authoritarian rule, the role of faith and the role of peaceful resistance has actually ultimately prevailed in many, many places. And so I think that we need to stand by that.

I want to talk a little bit about you and I want to talk about the Interfaith Center of New York. Why don't we start with you? You come from an interfaith background, so you are well-situated, personally, to doing the work ,professionally, that you are doing. Can you talk a little bit about your background and how you got inspired to do the work that you're doing?

CHLOE BREYER:

I grew up in an academic family. My mom was a psychologist when I was growing up. My dad was a law professor, and that was before he went on the Supreme Court. And that certainly changed a lot in all our lives.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

For those of you who may not be tracking Reverend Chloe Breyer, her father joined the court in 1995. And so Justice Breyer was an extremely important member of the court. And let's just take a moment with that because your life must have changed.

CHLOE BREYER:

Well, actually, in terms of my interfaith work, the impactful thing was that my mom, who was Anglican, grew up in the Church of England, and my dad, who is Jewish - we got a little bit of each tradition. I was baptized in the Church of England as a child. And I think they thought, somewhat open-mindedly, what was important was to have a faith tradition. And so to me, it was a kind of normal thing to have Easter at church and then celebrate Passover, because that happened, as well. And I, in my own life, feel that a pivotal time came for me, actually, more impactfully, when I had a kind of conversion experience in Texas, of all places, and really felt a calling to the ministry after that.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I know you've written about this, but can you say a little bit about what that experience was that inspired that strong response?

CHLOE BREYER:

Visiting my college roommate in the panhandle in Texas, the Texas Archaeological Society was having a dig. And so it was a lot of retirees. And I just got talking to a 92-year-old, a lovely gentleman, and his wife who was 87. And it turned out he he'd actually gone to Texas A&M and driven a whole lot of cattle over to what was then Peking and become a missionary and went to, gosh, Princeton Theological Seminary; and then went back to China where he walked between villages between the first and second World War and spoke all sorts of dialects and was an extraordinary kind of combination of scientific inquiry and curiosity with this deep faith. So it was the correspondence I had with him and his wife over many, many years before he died at age 100 that really kind of helped me with following a sense of calling.

And then, you know, having grown up in a very kind of politically aware family brought those two things together. And what has been so wonderful about the Interfaith Center is that it really is at the crux of democratic engagement and religious diversity. And we really hold strongly - as do you, and as does the Interfaith Alliance, and as the reason that we have become a partner and affiliate - is that the strength of our civil society is dependent upon the vibrancy of interfaith work. And those Putnam talks about those kind of nodules of civic, of voluntarism, being at the heart of our democracy. Well, churches, mosques and temples are included there and are very much anchors of that thing that we call civil society.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I love that story. And it does occur to me, this interesting sense of call, it's always so mysterious. And for me, it was just like, oh, my God, are you kidding? But anyway, I do appreciate the being raised in a strongly academic and also socially aware household. And being from an interfaith family where, you know, the Brandeis side of my family is the closest cousins I have. And so having this sense of I need everyone, you know what I mean? There was never any sense of Christian supremacy or any of that. We just didn't travel in those ideas, which is one of the reasons, probably, both of us resist so strongly this kind of White Christian Nationalism, which feels like such a threat to the democracy that we both hold dear.

I've been writing this biography of my grandmother, which I can't wait to share with you. When her father went on the court, all of a sudden she became a bold-faced name. I'm not sure that that happened with you quite the same way, but all of a sudden, where she was going to school, where she was going on vacation, became front-page news. And it was very strange, and I'm sure she never really followed it. In doing research, I was like, oh, that's so funny. Miss Brandeis is going to so and so. And did that feel strange to you to all of a sudden feel more under a microscope because of your father's position? O it really didn't happen in the same way?

CHLOE BREYER:

No, not so much. I mean, my dad is usually confused with David Souter. So there's the same kind of…

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

 That's a very modest idea, but okay.

CHLOE BREYER:

And I think he's been tremendously supportive of what all my sister and brother and I have been doing; and likewise, we think that both what he does in terms of his dedication to the law and to the principles behind the law, and also my mother in terms of her work with psychology, with healing, essentially, of people in need. It just seems to have gone along. I mean, there hasn't been celebrity.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I love that there's a normalcy around it. And tha,t I think, is also a little bit cultivated. And I really appreciate that you. You have been, for 18 years now, at the Interfaith Center of New York - and the Interfaith Center of New York, for people who don't know about it, is a very important institution in New York City and actually is like a flagship. It's located in New York, but it really represents a great approach to interfaith work that has national recognition.

Can you talk a little bit about the Interfaith Center of New York, how it was founded, why it was founded, and then let's get into some of the current work that you're doing.

CHLOE BREYER:

Sure. So we were founded in 1997 by the former dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which is an Episcopal cathedral here in New York, when he left the cathedral with the idea that we would continue to embrace or be a place of interfaith work way before it was sort of fashionable. He had been at the cathedral for about 25 years, and he invited Shinto priests to celebrate tea ceremonies on the altar, much to the perplexity of most of the Episcopalians in New York. And he had then celebrated Native American Thanksgiving, and really put the St. Francis Day blessing of the animals on the map.

So he had this incredible imagination and vision for what interfaith could be, which at that time and with him really revolved around the arts and worship. And so in our early days, we were kind of like a little bit of a mini-cathedral, but in a loft on 30th Street. Eventually, after 9/11, the focus became more towards a community organizing model, of who are the grassroots and immigrant faith leaders of New York City, because this is really what makes the city tick. And many of them are new New Yorkers, and faith leaders are so pivotal as people seek to come, as we've seen in the last two and a half years too, as well, adjust to life in the city or survive in the city alongside, shoulder to shoulder, with communities that have been here for a very long time.

So that is the way we kind of pivoted with a special focus on fighting Islamophobia after 9/11 and doing so with pressure and education with the NYPD, recognizing in those first ten years after the radicalization report would happen that was so devastating in terms of equating Islam with radicalization, how much reform was needed at the NYPD. And we saw that really begin to happen towards 2015, 2016, with a bunch of lawsuits about all sorts of things.

And then after that, we really worked more closely in education and developed a video that was shown to everybody at the police academy that kind of profiled five or four of the world religious traditions that the cops might misinterpret on the ground. It was kind of like a 101 Sikhism, 101 Orthodox Judaism, 101 Islam, and really featuring the vast ethnic and national diversities of these traditions in New York City. So that's how we've come along. We've come a long way and here we are.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I think right now, especially given what's happening around the country with immigrants being singled out and the lack of due process, I am curious how you are viewing this, seeing what's happening in Chicago, knowing that New York is almost certainly on the map soon. How do you understand the role of faith leaders in working with immigrants? There's working with the faith leaders from immigrant communities, but there's also the Episcopal Church; my tradition, which is American Baptist, which is an old Baptist tradition. We should also be aware of some of what is being mobilized against immigrant communities and figuring out what to do. I do think that this is going to be really important. And I know that across the country, we are seeing amazing faith leaders show up in voicing dissent against ICE and trying to walk alongside immigrants when they're going to their mandated meetings at court. I'm curious what your experience has been, because this is already happening in New York City.

CHLOE BREYER:

There's a lot of fear. There's also a lot of potential, because we had to create networks of religious and faith communities that were supporting migrants way back in 2022, when the good governor of Texas started sending an enormous number of people, as he did to other cities, but to New York in particular, of individuals who had nothing. Faith communities in cooperation, eventually, with city government; but to begin with, it was really just faith communities showing up, getting people food, getting them clothing, referring them to housing, if such a thing existed. But it was a complete rapid response, and to the degree that it was members of these networks that knew when the buses were coming, not the City of New York.

And so the City of New York was having to kind of try to understand what was going on and communicate, but also viewed, in some senses in the early days, these advocates as somewhat of a threat. And I think that that eventually changed over time. But that is only because of the networks that exist.

For example, the Interfaith Center has a coalition, now, of 100 or so faith communities in the triborough area that are either providing legal clinics, and they have done that from the beginning. And so those people that they were serving with food and connections with health care that showed up on a resource day are now the ones being abducted by ice. So there's a natural, kind of built in… People have shifted what they're doing more towards the accompaniment thing that's been going on.

Now, all that is to say it is a terrifying prospect of just looking around and seeing, and we know that what we will do will not be enough. That, however, is not the reason for not doing anything, as we know. And we have also been strengthened in these two years together, knowing what assets we bring and having connections from the newest person.

We've also had a chance to really build up these extraordinary networks, which span our office to mosques in the Bronx that have been the address for many people coming up from the southern border, starting in Sierra Leone or starting in Senegal and making that trip. So they are now on WhatsApp groups. And when something goes down, like the government did this last weekend, you have to pay $100 or your asylum petition is going to go out the window, and you have three days to do it, and we haven't even set the format up on the website… There's a lot of sharing in those networks.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

You know, at this point, immigrant communities, not only the fear, but being set up to fail. When you have court dates that are being set and then you show up to do the right thing, this is what just boggles the mind. And I think this is where all of us who are maybe lay people, the current state of immigration or how to understand it, but people doing the right thing, showing up to their court dates to which are mandated and which are the path that they're supposed to take, and they're getting abducted from there.

CHLOE BREYER:

We need everyone to be able to solve crimes. We need everybody to be not afraid to come as a witness to a trial. We need everybody to know that the courts are there for them.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah, it's terrible. Now you've been part of the, there has been some faith activity, because we have an ICE detention center in New York City. And I mention all of this not to make New York the center of this conversation. All cities are going through this. New York is not special. I think what I'm accessing here with Rev. Chloe is that we have an organization like the Interfaith Center of New York that is really active, but you and colleagues of yours have been aware of this ICE detention center, and trying to do something about the conditions there. Can you talk a little bit about any of the actions that you all have been taking?

CHLOE BREYER:

I can certainly do that. And I want to just also mention one more thing about these networks, which is, often, we think we as faith community members are serving immigrant new New Yorkers - but often, they are us. And that was clear a couple of weeks ago when a woman who was desperately trying to stop her husband being abducted in front of their two children was just forcibly pushed to the ground, gratuitously, by an ICE officer who had apparently done things like that before. And that person was the parishioner of one of the people in our network, St. Peter's Lutheran in the City Corps building. And they were desperate for psychological help for the kids who had witnessed that. So these are us, people. And and I think that's really important for all of our networks to remember.

When it comes to actions, there are two things that come to mind. The first, actually, didn't take place in in New York City. It took place in New Jersey, because actually the closest big detention center to New York is in New Jersey, in Newark. Delaney, a building that has no occupancy permit or none of the basic requirements that a building that houses human beings is supposed to have, and because it is in a alley that is so filled with chemical exhaust and across the street from what we think is a place where meat carcasses are disposed of. The smells there are just unbelievable.

We've been part of a presence outside run by Pax Christi Faith in New Jersey that is a daily presence with family members who are forced in the two or three hours that they have to visit loved ones to sit outside in the driveway in all times of the day in all sorts of weather.

What we were talking about at the very beginning of this had to do with the power of nonviolence. And I have an amazing, actually, illustration that comes from faith presence outside that detention center. We sat outside blocking both gates at one point, all these New Jersey faith leaders did, and for maybe six hours or five or six hours, no one knew what to do with us. Cars came from the inside of the facility as if they were going to… Masked ICE officers lurked in a very threatening way. They then went around the other side and did the same thing. It was amazing, because the only thing that they really know how to deal with is force.

So of course, as soon as someone got up and started behaving in a threatening way, somebody else who actually wasn't a faith leader, but that's all right, that was when we got a response. And likewise, when we walked, in another occasion, we walked from one part of the vigil across to another part of another gate, singing, a bunch of faith leaders and lovely old ladies with white hair from Pax Christi, we saw the ICE guard just pushing the gate closed, like really quickly, as quickly as he could. And that was just in response to a bunch of people walking and singing, might have been a handful of people.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

It's very interesting. It's different In its own way, it's very intimidating because they don't know what to do. And I think it's very effective, also, for public opinion, but also to recognize that we're here and we're watching and we're aware. And it's a witness as well as an effort to change things. So I think it's just so important.

CHLOE BREYER:

So the trick, I think, is combining - and that was true with a group of people who were also arrested that included faith leaders like myself and some others at 26 Federal Plaza, which is in Manhattan, it's downtown Manhattan, which says it's not a detention center, but actually has kept people, has been subject to a judge's ruling that they can't hold people there anymore because the conditions have been so abysmal. I mean, 200 people in no beds, nothing, no access to lawyers, no access to a phone call, up to 36 days in one case. In another case, no sanitary napkins provided. Just horrible, on the 10th floor. So that was where this civil disobedience took place.

And I think what's going to be hard and what is the real challenge for us is the strategy behind these. Because it's one thing to have a kind of isolated active nonviolent resistance, but where King and the Civil Rights Movement were so critical was that they had a strategy as to where and when they did those things. And there was always a concrete goal. And I feel like that's where we need to do a bit of learning, particularly when we're up against something as expansive as what we're facing right now.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I think that that's so important. Last week I was talking to Adam Friedman, who's our colleague, who was really talking about what it meant to do the different kinds of nonviolent protests, some of which involve noncooperation and potential arrests, but not all have to involve that. And I do think that the more that all of us feel like we know what it means to show up intelligently and with commitment and with strategy... I love the fact that you're mentioning that.

I would love to see, frankly, hundreds of thousands of people getting trained in this kind of nonviolence, this discipline, this spiritual discipline of nonviolence that I think will be a powerful force, because I do think that's what will be required to deal with what we're going to be confronted with.

Talk a little bit more about some of the other programs… The Interfaith Center has done so much for faith communities, but also, what does it mean for different faith communities to come together and to begin to weave a fabric of understanding? I think that that's another piece. We could do a lot just within our own faith tradition, but reaching across difference, especially right now when there's so much invested in keeping people separate, keeping people suspicious, keeping people afraid, what part of that work do you find most rewarding?

CHLOE BREYER:

Well, I can say that we have a kind of a bread and butter program. In fact, we're taking applications now for something called the Interfaith Civic Leadership Academy Fellowship, and that is for an emerging group of diverse faith leaders that includes ordained and lay leaders from every tradition - you can imagine, this being New York City - and about nine months together, meeting on a weekly basis, meeting with community organizing trainers, meeting with people from the city, meeting with advocates and others that are helping them to kind of get more literate in the work of advocating for your community in New York City. And not just your community, but for the city itself. Things that will benefit those beyond your community.

And that is what we think makes a powerful faith leader here in the city. And I think you would probably agree with that, too. Someone who's literate in the language of the pulpit, the primary language that you talk about on the Sabbath on Saturday or in church on Sunday and also can go out into the public square, be it at Columbus Circle, be it at City Hall, be it in the front of 26 Federal Plaza, and understand that your faith has the ability to translate itself into a diverse democracy. And that that is actually a really great discipline for all of us to know.

And then, you know, we're not all about being one, to be honest, because that's just not the approach. Sometimes we feel like the differences between our faith traditions are what is to be honored the most, because when we all think we're the same, that's when real problems happen.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I agree. I think that that's an exciting program. It's situational. So it's not pretending like you're in Idaho or that you're in Florida; you're in New York City. So what's required of you here, and who are the people to know here?

CHLOE BREYER:

My colleague Dr. Henry Goldschmidt, who runs our programs, used to say that the sign of a faith community that's come into its own in New York City is that it has an exemption from alternate side parking for its holidays or has a public school holiday for its holidays. So you began life with Christmas and maybe the Jewish holidays, and then gradually the one Eid and two Eids appeared on the scene. And now we have Holi.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

It's fantastic. And, you know, my kids are growing up in the public school system. I think it's fantastic because when I was growing up, no one ever said “Diwali” to me. Forget it. You know what I mean? But now my kids can say Diwali. They know it. Well, for one, their best friend is Hindu. But also because that's just a day that the school isn't happening, but they talk about why and what's happening that day. And I think it's all fantastic.

I just want to go back to you personally. You've shown up for these things. You've done all of this. You've gotten arrested, as you mentioned. What is a spiritual discipline that you exercise that is really something that you lean into? Not that everyone who's listening will do the same thing, but rather to recognize that we do need to understand what works for ourselves. And is there something that works for you that really helps you get through difficult moments, especially in the kind of times that we're in now?

CHLOE BREYER:

As we mentioned at the beginning, I'm a, Episcopal priest. So to me, the Book of Common Prayer is the source of nourishment. And in particular, there's a short form of morning prayer. And I use that. I try to do it on a daily basis. And because I live sort of near Central Park, I combine it with like a 15-minute walking meditation. And that is very, very, very helpful just in terms of, I guess, grounding, for lack of better word, but also reminding myself that I need God in my life on a daily basis. And that is really important.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I love that. And you know, the mandate to love God really is about maintaining that connection in these kinds of moments. That is beautiful. And the idea of combining it with a walk in nature is kind of all of those things.

We're in a really particular moment, back to No Kings and back to what we're seeing come out of the White House, frankly, and you don't have to comment on this, but I grew up revering the Court because Brandeis was so very omnipresent in my household and I thought, oh, the Court, that's where really great things will happen.

And Rep. Raskin schooled me on that. He's a constitutional law professor. He was like, the Court has never saved us before. So I won't ask you what you're thinking about the Court. But how do you understand this moment in terms of American history? It feels different, not unprecedented in kind of some of the attacks on marginalized communities and other things, but it feels different - I'm 61 - than anything I've experienced where I'm just not sure, actually, what the future might hold. How are you understanding this moment in U.S. history?

CHLOE BREYER:

Well, OK, the only thing that comes to mind, and it's totally different, but in terms of chaos and life just being different than you ever thought it would be, is the example of the Civil War. I do think that is part of our history. And the fact that we survived that as a nation - the odds are just so slim. And arguably, if it hadn't been for Lincoln, that one person, we wouldn't have survived it. We'd have either split, and we'd have had a slave-holding country, and another country that didn't have slaves. In fact, a lot of the abolitionists were fine with that: as long as it's not in our country.

But Lincoln's commitment to, on the one hand, what he was just despised for, not at the beginning of his thing, being more supposedly concerned about the Union, which he was, to the extent that he wasn't one of those calling for the immediate cessation of slavery at any cost. He did, in his person, hold both the Union and the end of slavery together. I don't know how that happened. And something like that has got to get us through this moment. And the odds are, it may not. But we've gone through extraordinary moments. And most importantly, out of that came the emphasis on equality, where it all fell apart or whatever. But even in the Gettysburg Address, this whole thing that hadn't been part of our Constitution's emphasis really came about. And God knows what will come about in this experiment of a multi-faith, super-diverse country trying to be a democracy. It's crazy, with all the horrible technology, and environmental disaster also looming…

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Well, I think that that's very realistic, but it's also a call, frankly, to moving forth with courage. And, you know, that's one of the words that feels most important today. I'm curious what courage means to you. How do you understand courage today?

CHLOE BREYER:

Well, I can just tell you in the week that led up to that thing at 26 Federal Plaza, a lot of us thought it was going to be federal agents that were going to do the arrest. And it was like a daily weight of… Weight as in heaviness. And when that didn't happen, it was like a huge weight lifted off. So I don't know if that's a certain kind of courage, but I think courage can be just the daily weightiness of doing something that you are kind of aware has some risk associated with it. There's also the courage to be honest, and that's sometimes more difficult in some ways, because you don't think it's courage, but the courage to say something that you know isn't going to be popular or that other people are going to judge you for, that's another kind of courage, I think.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah, both of which can weigh on us.

CHLOE BREYER:

Yeah. Paul, I just wanted to say that the work that the other affiliates that you have are doing around the country is so amazing. And it's really what came to mind when I was thinking of strategy. Because they're in places where they're, in some ways, much more at the cutting edge of things.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I think that that's really important. And I actually think that that's the genius behind the affiliate network, is that strategies are contextually based, but also we can learn from one another. And that's actually a big idea for many of the affiliates is that we see what's coming. In part, we see what's coming because it's happening in your state already. And then what we're also interested in is, what is a national strategy? Especially as we deal with the kind of threat of authoritarianism right now, and how do we name that clearly, and how do we organize religious communities to respond to it? So I appreciate that.

The Rev. Dr. Chloe Breyer is Executive Director of the Interfaith Center of New York. She's the author of a memoir titled The Close: A Young Woman's First Year at Seminary, and her writing appears in Slate, New York Daily News, and The International New York Times.

Chloe, I'm looking forward to doing so much work with you in the future. It's so exciting. And thank you for being with us today on The State of Belief.

CHLOE BREYER:

Thank you.

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