Speaking the Languages of Faith

On holy envy, St. Francis and the Sultan, & the Pope (as usual) stirring the pot.

Dear friends,

I am writing to you from the train, which is currently winding alongside the California coast. The sky is gray and overcast, and because the windows on the train are open ever so slightly, I can smell the sharp and salty smell of the crashing waves. Now, I don’t want to completely romanticize the train, as there are many (many) days when I am little more than frustrated/annoyed/unamused at the various delays holding us up, but on some days, it seems completely perfect. And this is one of those days.

Throughout the past couple of weeks (perhaps due to the fact that a wonderful semester at my Franciscan, interfaith divinity school has now arrived at its conclusion), I’ve found myself lingering on words of Pope Francis from back in September. While on a three-day visit to Singapore, he spoke with a group of young people at an interreligious meeting.

Departing from his prepared remarks, he said:

Vatican transcript: September 13, 2024, 12:36:55

"One of the things that has impressed me most about the young people here is your capacity for interfaith dialogue. This is very important because if you start arguing, ‘My religion is more important than yours…,’ or ‘Mine is the true one, yours is not true….,” where does this lead? Somebody answer.

[A young person answers, ‘Destruction’.]

That is correct. Religions are seen as paths trying to reach God. I will use an analogy, they are like different languages that express the divine. But God is for everyone, and therefore, we are all God’s children.

‘But my God is more important than yours!’. Is this true? There is only one God, and religions are like languages that try to express ways to approach God. Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian. Understood? Yet, interfaith dialogue among young people takes courage. The age of youth is the age of courage, but you can misuse this courage to do things that will not help you. Instead, you should have courage to move forward and to dialogue.”¹

This analogy—religions as languages—has lingered in my mind. Languages have always fascinated me, even though learning them doesn’t, in the slightest, come naturally to me. Growing up, I fell in love with the various Tamil phrases used by a character in a book series that I adored, and spent hours poring over online translations to better understand this language that I’d never heard. Later, I studied Greek, Latin, and Hebrew in school, and while I’m far from fluent, certain words and phrases have lodged themselves in my soul, shaping the way I think and pray.

With that said, I was introduced to the idea of “holy envy” during my freshman year of college, when I read Barbara Brown Taylor’s Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others.² She, an Episcopal priest, spent two decades teaching world religions at a small college in rural Georgia. Her students were predominantly Christian, so Taylor was intentional about bringing her students to mosques, synagogues, and Buddhist and Hindu temples in an effort to show them how other religious groups worship, beyond what a textbook could offer. Taylor borrowed the term “holy envy” from Krister Stendahl, a Swedish theologian who coined the phrase at a 1985 press conference in Stockholm, where he was the bishop of the Church of Sweden. At the time, there was strong vocal opposition to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints opening a new temple, so Stendahl proposed his three rules of religious understanding:³

1) When trying to understand another religion, you should ask the adherents of that religion and not its enemies.

2) Don't compare your best to their worst.

3) Leave room for “holy envy.”

I love the way that “holy envy”—a paradox—turns envy, one of the seven deadly sins, into something virtuous, and even sacred. He reframes it as the ability to see beauty, truth, and goodness in another tradition, even if it’s not where you make a home.

This always reminds me of the icon St. Francis and the Sultan by Br. Robert Lentz. In 1219, during the Fifth Crusade, Francis met Sultan Malek al-Kamil in Egypt. Though they initially sought to convert one another, they quickly recognized a shared love of God. For nearly three weeks, they discussed prayer and the mystical life. When Francis left, al-Kamil gave him an ivory trumpet, which is kept in the crypt of the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi. This encounter offers an excellent model for interfaith dialogue today and is represented thoughtfully in this icon of Br. Lentz’s.

The flames depicted behind St. Francis and Sultan al-Kamil hold dual meaning: in Islamic art, flames often signify holiness, and here they also disarm the medieval legend of Francis challenging Sufis to prove their faith in fire. Instead, the flames in this icon symbolize divine love. The inscription, “Praise to God, Lord of the worlds!” is from the Qur’an, and underscores their shared reverence for the Creator.

St. Francis and the Sultan by Br. Robert Lentz, OFM

“Holy envy” isn’t about romanticizing other faiths or reducing them to vague ideas about love and unity in the name of creating some type of Ya-Ya Sisterhood. It requires real engagement with the particularities of another’s beliefs, even when those beliefs challenge and discomfort us. It also requires the ongoing recognition that we are engaging with real people who are just as “complex, clueless, and sometimes cranky as [we] are.”⁴ At the same time, as English Anglo-Catholic writer Evelyn Underhill warned in Concerning the Inner Life, religion that focuses solely on the action-oriented —on things like service, outreach, and social action—can cause us to erode, and even lose, our sense of awe. And awe, she says, is vital. Underhill writes:

“We are drifting toward a religion which… lays all the stress on service, and hardly any on awe: and that is a type of religion which does little for the soul in those awful moments when the pain and mystery of life are most deeply felt.”⁵

Underhill’s words are a reminder that awe is not a luxury, or an extraneous aspect of faith; it’s a necessity for the health of the soul. This awe is cultivated in worship, in prayer, and in contact with God’s creation— the church beyond the Church’s walls. Wendell Berry’s words in Jayber Crow come to mind here:

“As I have read the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one. He seems to have come to carry religion out of the temples into the fields and sheep pastures, onto the roadsides and the banks of the rivers, into the houses of sinners and publicans, into the town and the wilderness, toward the membership of all that is here. Well, you can read and see what you think.”⁶

Underhill seems to suggest that religion without awe offers little to our souls. I believe this to be true, and I would like to expand on her claim by suggesting that our “holy envy” should, first and foremost, originate from this same place of awe. Growing up evangelical, I was afraid that learning to love what lies outside my own faith would dilute it. But through the many cascading slopes of my life, I’ve come to see that truth, beauty, and goodness are not exclusive to one tradition. They belong to God, and therefore to everyone. When found in unfamiliar places, they don’t erode our faith; rather, they enrich it. As Marilynne Robinson wisely writes in Gilead, “I don't know exactly what covetous is, but in my experience, it is not so much desiring someone else's virtue or happiness as rejecting it, taking offense at the beauty of it.”⁷

You see, holy envy can also extend to the parts of ourselves that we've outgrown, allowing us to carry- or, at the very least, access- some of our former beliefs, practices, rituals, and traditions. When we are able to receive them, we are able to find lasting value in the places where we once traversed, even if we no longer make a home there.

I was born and raised evangelical and resonate deeply with something Meg Conley writes on her LDS upbringing, “I have [evangelical] molecules. They move with me wherever I am - even when I sit in other church pews. I couldn’t excise them anymore than I would the other molecules that make up my matter.”⁸ A personal relationship with Christ, deep knowledge of Scripture, spontaneous prayer, strong expressions of hospitality—these things are all “atoms bound together within my body and spirit”, even though I’m no longer evangelical and haven’t been for, at this point, many years.

At this point in my life, through the Catholic Church, I’ve been able to find structure and significance with another set of atoms now bound together within my body and spirit: the communion of saints, the transcendence of the Mass, the goodness of the sacraments, and the rich tradition of devotional practices that root me in a long-standing, communal history with the mystical body of Christ.

I don’t claim that Catholicism- the primary language that I have chosen to speak- is the one true church, mainly because I don’t really believe in claims like that anymore. I grew up deeply earnest, determined to fit every single piece of myself—tidy and messy, with questions, concerns, and doubts—into the framework of an absolute belief system of religious faith. But the values at the heart of said faith—love, justice, mercy, humility—are far from exclusive to it. They aren’t commodities to own or trade, and trying to capitalize on them is futile and absurd.

To practice holy envy, we must resist the urge to dismiss or feel threatened by the beauty in other traditions. Instead, we approach with the type of awe spoken of by Evelyn Underhill, recognizing that what is sacred elsewhere shouldn’t threaten or diminish the sacredness within our own faith.

So, how can we work to better cultivate holy envy in our everyday lives? Here are a few practices that have been especially meaningful to me.

1. Engage with diverse traditions.

   Visit a mosque, synagogue, cathedral, temple, etc. Talk with the people who worship there, listen to their stories, and ask them questions with interest and respect. Schedule a time to dialogue with a religious leader. This is de-centering, as Iris Murdoch articulates in her moral philosophy.⁹

2. Read widely.

   Explore a variety of texts from other traditions—scriptures, mythology, poetry, creation narratives, philosophy—and instead of scanning for points of disagreement, treat these texts with curiosity.

3. Reflect on our shared desires and fears.

   Across diverse faiths, core themes emerge—hope, fear, love, suffering, and the search for meaning. Reflect on how these universal experiences intersect across traditions and consider how others' beliefs offer valuable insights into shared human struggles. Embracing this perspective fosters empathy and deepens connections with people of all faiths.

4. Pray for understanding.

   Ask God to open your heart to see the divine image in the people, places, and practices that are new or unfamiliar to you. Pray not just for your own clarity, but for the wisdom to recognize the goodness that exists beyond the boundaries of your own tradition.

5. Proceed with humility.

   Holy envy doesn’t mean abandoning your own beliefs or traditions; it’s about acknowledging what you admire and wish could, in some way, be reflected in your own religious tradition or faith. Let your beliefs be deepened and enriched by others’ practices, rather than being defensive.

Holy envy is fundamentally a practice of encounter; it generously invites us to extend beyond the boundaries of our own lived experience, while also suggesting that it is the deep love for our own faith that can compel us to see what is sacred in the faiths of others. As Pope Francis said in his meeting with college students in Singapore, this requires us to move forward with courage.

Ultimately, holy envy invites us to hold both our own faith and the faiths of others with fundamental awe, knowing that in doing so, we can expand our love for God and neighbor in ways we never imagined.

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Alright, friends, I must be off to dinner, so that brings us to the end of this week’s missive. However, I’m planning a multi-week series on holy envy in the new year, where I’ll bring in perspectives from some of the fascinating people across different faith traditions whom I’m privileged to know, exploring how a variety of practices and beliefs can inspire us. Let me know if that’s something that you’d be interested in!

Wishing you a week of strong coffee and strong spirits.

Warmly,

Julia

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20240913123655/https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2024/september/documents/20240913-singapore-giovani.html

2. Barbara Brown Taylor, Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others (New York: HarperOne, 2019).

3. https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/an-interview-with-krister-stendahl/

4. https://uscatholic.org/articles/201908/learning-about-other-faiths-make-room-for-holy-envy-says-this-episcopal-priest/

5. Evelyn Underhill, Concerning the Inner Life (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 1999).

6. Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2001).

7. Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (New York: Picador USA, 2006).

8. My glory, I adore Meg Conley’s writing. You can read the post I referenced here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CS9pciUM2rh/?igsh=NjZiM2M3MzIxNA%3D%3D

9. When I was in college, I wrote my senior thesis on Iris Murdoch’s moral philosophy in a post-Christian world. She is widely appreciated as a novelist, but (at least in my view, and in the view of others in the Iris Murdoch Society Facebook group) deeply underappreciated as a philosopher. If you’re looking to dip your toes in, I encourage you to start with her The Sovereignty of Good. And to know more about Murdoch herself, I can’t speak highly enough about The Women Are Up to Something and Metaphysical Animals, which center around the lifelong friendship and contributions to moral philosophy of Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, and Philippa Foot.

Oh, and for a basic primer on Murdoch, I would point you to this fantastic article in the University of Notre Dame’s Church Life Journal: https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/iris-murdoch-as-a-source-for-moral-theology/.