Good morning. It is such an honor to be with you this morning. I bring you greetings. I’m a native New Yorker. So for those from out of town, I welcome you to our city of New York, New York. It is the city that’s so nice they have named it twice. We are really thankful to Basil Ugorji and his family, members of the board, members of the body of ICERM, each conference participant who is here today and also those online, I greet you with joy.

I am so delighted, ignited and excited to be the first keynote speaker for the first conference as we explore the theme, The Advantages of Ethnic and Religious Identity in Conflict Mediation and Peacebuilding. It certainly is a topic dear to my heart, and I hope to yours. As Basil said, for the past four and a half years, I had the privilege, honor, and pleasure of serving President Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the United States. I want to thank him and Secretary Hillary Clinton for nominating me, appointing me, and for helping me get through two senate confirmation hearings. It was such a joy to be there in Washington, and to continue as a diplomat, speaking all over the world. There are many things that have happened for me. I had all 199 countries as part of my portfolio. Many ambassadors of what we know as Chiefs of Mission have a particular country, but I had the whole globe. So, it was quite an experience looking at foreign policy and national security from a faith-based perspective. It was really significant that President Obama had a faith-leader in this particular role, wherein sitting at the table, I sat across from many cultures that were faith-led. This really provided quite an insight, and also shifted the paradigm, I believe, in terms of diplomatic relations and diplomacy all over the globe. There were three of us who were faith leaders in the administration, we all moved on at the end of last year. Ambassador Miguel Diaz was the Ambassador to The Holy See, at The Vatican. Ambassador Michael Battle was the Ambassador for the African union, and I was the ambassador for International Religious Freedom. The presence of three clergy scholars at the diplomatic table was quite progressive.

As an African-American female faith leader, I have been on the front lines of churches and temples and synagogues, and on 9/11, I was on the front lines as a police chaplain here in New York City.  But now, having been to the senior level of government as a diplomat, I’ve experienced life and leadership from many different perspectives. I’ve sat with elders, the Pope, youth, NGO leaders, faith leaders, corporate leaders, government leaders, trying to get a handle on the very subject that we’re talking about today, which this conference is exploring.

When we identify ourselves, we can’t separate or negate ourselves from who we are, and each of us has deep cultural – ethnic roots. We have faith; we have religious natures in our being. Many states that I presented myself in front of were states in which ethnicity and religion were part of their culture.  And so, it was very important to be able to understand that there were many layers. I just got back from Abuja prior to leaving Nigeria, Basil’s home country. In speaking with different states, it was not just one thing that you went in to talk about, you had to look at the complexities of cultures and ethnicities and tribes that went back several hundred years.  Almost every religion and almost every state has some sort of welcoming, blessing, dedication, christenings, or services for the new life as it enters the world.  There are different life rituals for the various stages of development. There are things like bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs and rites of passage and confirmations. So, religion and ethnicity are integral to the human experience.

Ethno-religious leaders become important to the discussion because they don’t always have to be a part of the formal institution. In fact, many religious leaders, actors and interlocutors can really separate themselves from some of the bureaucracy that many of us have to deal with.  I can tell you as a pastor, going into the state department with the layers of bureaucracy; I had to shift my thinking. I had to shift my paradigm of thought because the pastor in an African-American church is really the Queen Bee, or the King Bee, so to speak. In the state department, you have to understand who the principals are, and I was the mouthpiece of the President of the United States and the Secretary of State, and there were many layers in between. So, in writing a speech, I would send it out and it would come back after 48 different eyes saw it.  It would be very different than what I originally sent, but that is the bureaucracy and structure that you have to work with. Religious leaders who are not in an institution can really be transformational because many times they are free of the chains of authority. But, on the other hand, sometimes people who are religious leaders are confined to their own little world, and they live in their religious bubble. They are in the small vision of their community, and when they see people who do not walk like, speak like, act like, think like themselves, sometimes there is conflict inherent just in their myopia. So it’s important to be able to look at the total picture, which is what we are looking at today. When religious actors have been exposed to different worldviews, they can really be part of the mix of mediation and peacebuilding.  I was privileged to sit at the table when Secretary Clinton created what was called The Strategic Dialogue with Civil Society. Many faith leaders, ethnic leaders, and NGO leaders were invited to the table with government. It was a chance for a conversation between us which provided the opportunity to say what we actually believed. I believe there are several keys to ethno-religious approaches to conflict resolution and peacebuilding.

As I said earlier, religious leaders and ethnic leaders have to be exposed to life in its fullest. They cannot stay in their own world and in their little confines, but need to be open to the broadness of what society has to offer. Here in New York City, we have 106 different languages and 108 different ethnicities. So, you have to be able to be exposed to the whole world.  I don’t think it was any accident that I was born in New York, the most diverse city in the world. In my apartment building where I lived in the Yankee stadium area, what they called the Morrisania area, there were 17 apartments and there were 14 different ethnicities on my floor. So we grew up really understanding each other’s cultures. We grew up as friends; it was not “you are Jewish and you are Caribbean American, and you are African,” rather we grew up as friends and neighbors. We began to come together and be able to see a world view. For their graduation presents, my children are going to the Philippines and to Hong Kong so they are citizens of the world. I think that religious ethnic leaders have to make sure they are citizens of the world and not just their world. When you are really myopic and you are not exposed, that is what leads to religious extremism because you think that everybody thinks like you and if they don’t, then they’re out of whack. When it is the opposite, if you are not thinking like the world, you are out of whack. So I think we have to look at the total picture. One of the prayers that I took with me on the road as I traveled on a flight almost every other week was from the Old Testament, which is the Jewish scriptures because Christians are really Judeo-Christians. It was from the Old Testament called “The Prayer of Jabez.” It is found in 1 Chronicles 4:10 and one version says, “Lord, increase my opportunities that I might touch more lives for you, not that I might get the glory, but that you might get more glory.” It was about increasing my opportunities, expanding my horizons, taking me places that I have not been, so that I might understand and comprehend those who may not be like me. I found it to be very helpful at the diplomatic table and in my life.

The second thing that needs to happen is that governments must make the effort to bring ethnic and religious leaders to the table. There was the Strategic Dialogue with Civil Society, but there were also public-private partnerships brought into the state department, because one thing I learned is you’ve got to have funds to fuel the vision. Unless we have the resources at hand, then we don’t get anywhere. Today, it was courageous for Basil to put this together but it takes funds to be in the area of the United Nations and put these conferences together. So the creation of public-private partnerships is important, and then secondly, having faith-leader roundtables.  Faith leaders are not limited to just clergy, but also those who are members of faith groups, whoever identifies as a faith group. It involves the three Abrahamic traditions, but also scientologists and Baha’is and other faiths that identify themselves as a faith. So we have to be able to listen and have conversations.

Basil, I really applaud you for the courage of bringing us together this morning, it’s courageous and it’s so important.

Let’s give him a hand.

(Applause)

And to your team, who helped put this together.

So I believe all religious and ethnic leaders can make sure they are exposed. And that government can’t just see their own perspective, nor can faith communities just see their perspective, but all of those leaders must come together. Many times, religious and ethnic leaders are really suspect of governments because they believe that they have accompanied the party line and so it must be important for anybody to sit at the table together.

The third thing that needs to happen is that religious and ethnic leaders must make an effort to interact with other ethnicities and religions that are not their own.  Right before 9/11, I was a pastor in lower Manhattan where I am going after this conference today.  I pastored the oldest Baptist church in New York City, it was called Mariners Temple. I was the first female pastor in the 200-year history of the American Baptist churches.  And so it instantly made me part of what they call “the big steeple churches,” so to speak. My church was huge, we grew quickly. It allowed me to interact with pastors like at Trinity Church on Wall Street and Marble Collegiate church. The late pastor of Marble Collegiate was Arthur Caliandro. And at the time, a lot of children were disappearing or getting killed in New York. He called the big steeple pastors together. We were a group of pastors and imams and rabbis. It involved the rabbis of Temple Emmanuel, and imams of mosques throughout New York City. And we came together and formed what was called the Partnership of Faith of New York City. So, when 9/11 happened we were already partners, and we didn’t have to try to understand different religions, we already were one.  It wasn’t just a matter of sitting around the table and having breakfast together, which is what we did monthly. But it was about being intentional about understanding each other’s cultures. We had social events together, we would exchange pulpits. A mosque might be in a temple or a mosque might be in a church, and vice-versa. We shared cedars at Passover time and all of the events so that we understood each other socially. We wouldn’t plan a banquet when it was Ramadan. We understood and respected and learned from each other. We respected the time when it was fasting time for a particular religion, or when it was holy days for the Jews, or when it was Christmas, or Easter, or any of the seasons that were important to us.  We began to really intersect. The partnership of faith of New York City continues to thrive and be alive and so as new pastors and new imams and new rabbis come into the city, they already have a welcoming interactive interfaith group.  It’s very important that we not only stay outside of our own world, but that we interact with others so that we might learn.

Let me tell you where my real heart is –it’s not just religious-ethnic work, but it also has to be religious-ethnic-gender inclusivity. Women have been absent from the decision making and diplomatic tables, but they are present in conflict resolution. A powerful experience for me was traveling to Liberia, West Africa and sitting with the women who have actually brought peace to Liberia. Two of them became Nobel Peace Prize winners. They brought peace to Liberia at a time when there was extreme war between the Muslims and the Christians, and men were killing each other. The women dressed in white and said they were not coming home and they were not doing anything until there is peace. They bonded together as Muslim and Christian women. They formed a human chain all the way up to Parliament, and they sat in the middle of the street. The women who met in the marketplace said we shop together so we’ve got to bring peace together. It was revolutionary to Liberia.

So women have to be part of the discussion for conflict resolution and peace-building. Women who are engaged in peace-building and conflict resolution draw support from religious and ethnic organizations worldwide. Women tend to deal with relationship building, and are able to reach across lines of tension very easily. It’s very important that we have women at the table, because despite their absence from the decision-making table, women of faith are already on the front lines of peace-building not just in Liberia but throughout the world. So we’ve got to move past words into action, and find a way for women to be included, to be listened to, to be empowered to work for peace in our community.  Even though they are disproportionately affected by conflict, women have been the emotional and spiritual backbone of communities in times of being attacked.  They have mobilized our communities for peace and mediated disputes and found ways to help the community step away from violence. When you look at it, women represent 50% of the population, so if you exclude women from these discussions, we are negating the needs of half of an entire population.

I would like to also commend to you another model. It’s called the Sustained Dialogue approach. I was fortunate just a few weeks ago to sit with the founder of that model, a man named Harold Saunders. They are based in Washington D.C.  This model has been used for ethno-religious conflict resolution on 45 college campuses. They bring leaders together to bring peace from high school to college to adults.  The things that happen with this particular methodology involve persuading enemies to talk to one another and giving them a chance to vent.  It gives them an opportunity to yell and scream if they need to because eventually they get tired of yelling and screaming, and they have to name the problem. People have to be able to name what they are angry about. Sometimes it is historical tension and it has been going on for years and years. At some point this has to end, they have to open up and begin to share not only what they are angry about, but what the possibilities might be if we get past this anger. They have to come to some consensus. So, The Sustained Dialogue approach by Harold Saunders is something I commend to you.

I’ve also established what is called the pro-voice movement for women. In my world, where I was Ambassador, it was a very conservative movement. You always had to identify whether you were pro-life or pro-choice. My thing is that it is still very limiting. Those were two limiting options, and they came from men usually. ProVoice is a movement in New York that is bringing primarily Black and Latino women together for the first time to the same table.

We’ve cohabitated, we’ve grown up together, but we’ve never been at the table together. Pro-voice means that every voice matters. Every woman has a voice in every arena of her life, not just our reproductive system, but we have a voice in everything that we do. In your packets, the first meeting is next Wednesday, October 8^th here in New York at the Harlem State office building. So those who are here, please feel welcome to join us. The honorable Gayle Brewer, who is the Manhattan borough president, will be in dialogue with us. We are talking about women winning, and not being in the back of the bus, or the back of the room. So both the ProVoice Movement and Sustained Dialogue look at the problems behind the problems, they are not necessarily just methodologies, but they are bodies of thought and practice. How do we move forward together? So we hope to amplify, unify, and multiply the voices of women through the ProVoice movement. It is online as well. We have a website, provoicemovement.com.

But they are relationship based. We are building relationships. Relationships are essential to dialogue and mediation, and ultimately peace. When peace wins, everyone wins.

So what we are looking at are the following questions: How do we collaborate? How do we communicate? How do we find consensus? How do we coalition-build? One of the things that I learned in government was that no one entity can do it alone any longer. First of all, you don’t have the energy, secondly, you don’t have the funds, and lastly, there is so much more strength when you do it together. You can go an extra mile or two together.  It requires not just relationship building, but also listening. I believe that if there is any skill that women have, it is listening, we are great listeners. These are world-view movements for the 21^st century. In New York we are going to concentrate on Blacks and Latinas coming together. In Washington, we are going to look at liberals and conservatives coming together. These groups are women being strategized for change. Change is inevitable when we listen to one another and have relationship-based/ communication-based listening.

I’d also like to commend some reading and some programs to you. The first book that I commend to you is called Three Testaments by Brian Arthur Brown. It’s a big thick book. It looks like what we used to call an encyclopedia. It has the Koran, it has the New Testament, it has the Old Testament. It is three testaments together examining the three major Abrahamic religions, and looking at places we can find some similarity and commonality. In your packet is a card for my new book called Becoming a Woman of Destiny. The paperback comes out tomorrow. It can become a best-seller if you go online and get it! It is based on the biblical Deborah from the Judeo-Christian scriptures in the book of Judges. She was a woman of destiny. She was multi-faceted, she was a judge, she was a prophetess, and she was a wife. It looks at how she managed her life to also bring peace to her community. The third reference I’d like to give you is called Religion, Conflict and Peace-building, and it is available through USAID. It talks about what this particular day examines today. I would certainly commend this to you. For those interested in women and religious peacebuilding; there is a book called Women in Religious Peacebuilding. It is done by the Berkely Center in conjunction with the United States Institute of Peace. And the last one is a High School program called Operation Understanding. It brings together Jewish and African-American high school students. They sit around the table together. They travel together. They went into the Deep South, they go into the Midwest, and they go into the North. They go overseas to understand each other’s cultures. The Jewish bread may be one thing and the Black bread may be cornbread, but how do we find the places that we can sit and learn together? And these High School students are revolutionizing what we are trying to do in terms of peacebuilding and conflict resolution. They spent some time in Israel. They will continue to spend some time in this nation. So I commend these programs to you.

I am convinced that we have to listen to what people on the ground are saying. What are people living in the actual situations saying? In my travels abroad, I actively sought to hear what people at the grassroots level are saying. It is one thing to have religious and ethnic leaders, but those who are at the grassroots level can begin to share positive initiatives they are taking.   Sometimes things work through a structure, but many times they work because they are organized on their own. So I’ve learned that we can’t come in with pre-conceived notions that are set in stone about what a group needs to achieve in the field of peace or conflict resolution. It’s a collaborative process that takes place over time. We can’t be in a hurry because the situation didn’t get to that severe level in a short-period of time. As I said, sometimes it’s layers and layers of complexities that have happened over years, and sometimes, hundreds of years. So we have to be ready to pull back the layers, like the layers of an onion. What we have to understand is that the long-term change does not happen immediately. Governments alone cannot do it. But those of us in this room, religious and ethnic leaders who are committed to the process can do it. I believe that we all win when peace wins.  I believe that we want to continue to do good work because good work receives good results in a matter of time. Wouldn’t it be great if the press would cover events like this, in terms of covering events where people are really trying to give peace a chance? There is a song that says “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.” I hope today that we have begun that process, and by your presence, and by your leadership, in bringing us all together. I believe that we have really put a notch on that belt in terms of getting closer to peace. It is my pleasure to have been with you, to share with you, I would be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much for this opportunity to be your first keynoter for your first conference.

Thank you very much.