Image via: https://allsaints-pas.org/members/mike-kinman/
On September 18, 2023, Reverend Mike Kinman joined the Sequoyah community during Morning Meeting for the high school’s ongoing Contemplative Practice series, in which leaders of different religions and schools of thought share with us their stories. I came to school that day with two curiosities: How can I be a better person? Can someone be both liberal and religious? These seemingly unrelated inquiries had been floating around in my head for a while, though I wasn’t aware of them until Reverend Kinman began to talk.
I have never had a reason to adopt religion into my life. I have Catholic and Jewish heritage, but wasn’t raised with either playing an especially large role and the schools I’ve attended had very few (openly) religious students. Everyone I choose to surround myself with cares intensely about social justice, diversity, and acceptance. To me, these ideals seem to contradict with the morals of the religious world: mega-churches preaching homophobia and racism, religious extremist groups suppressing women’s rights, and religious governments attempting genocide. I know that’s a generalization, of course, but it’s always been hard for me to imagine how a person who believes in science, truth, and kindness—like I do—could also follow religion.
So I was surprised when what Reverend Mike said to us felt very thought out, very logical, and very true.
I’d like this article to do two things: spotlight the ideas that made me feel so enlightened, and explore what happens when a logical, thoughtful person like Kinman decides to make faith the center of their life. I set up a virtual interview where I asked Kinman to recap some of the things he shared with us during our Morning Meeting practice.
Kinman is an Episcopal priest at All Saints Church in Pasadena. “Religion,” to him, means placing faith as the center of his life. He gently objected to my use of the word religion because of how it’s been weaponized and used by various religious groups as an excuse to exert control. Kinman noted that, unfortunately, “it’s become much more about dogma and a fixed set of beliefs, that you must believe these things and you must act this way.” He rejects the idea that there’s one correct system of belief.
Kinman grew up in a split-faith household, and both his parents were scientists. Because of this, he grew up with multiple perspectives, as well as a distrust for the type of person who claims they know things that are unknowable. “There’s not going to be an answer to every question,” he said. “I don’t exactly know what happens when we die. And frankly, I don’t trust people who say they do.
“I do think there are things that are unknowable, that just by the virtue of the fact that we’re created as limited beings. We only see certain wavelengths of light, we only hear certain types of sound, our brains can only comprehend certain things. And so I think it’s egotistical to think that the only things that exist are the things that can be proven to us.”
He found the Episcopal church through a mix of his father’s beliefs and his own childhood experience at schools and camps. He shares that the reason he’s able to be close friends with people of other faiths is because he imagines if he grew up in a different household, he would have chosen whatever path he found first. That is, as long as it had one key aspect—love.
For Kinman, the core part of religion (when it’s working) is love. He noted, “Really, all I’ve ever done in my life is follow the community that has really felt like it loves me and that translates into, how do you love the world? It’s all about love.” In his reading of religious texts, this is what Jesus was all about. “Jesus was a revolutionary,” he observed. “Jesus went into the tables at the temple and overturned the tables, he touched lepers, he broke any law that prevented him from loving and treating people justly. That’s not… the faith that you hear preached in most churches.” A world that follows this example is one which he envisions for the future.
The most powerful and practical part of what he shared with me was the idea that we can and should take our loving to its most extreme. We can actively love our enemies, or just people we’re in conflict with, even if we don’t like them. This doesn’t mean we condone their actions, but we recognize that not loving them will just do more harm. In Kinman’s words, “Jesus says love your enemies. And to me that doesn’t mean let your enemies do whatever the hell they want and hurt whoever they want, but it does mean, treat them with love because if you don’t, all you’re doing is wounding them, which is causing them trauma and then they’re gonna act out of trauma and they’re gonna wound more people and it’s an endless cycle.”
What drives people to do things that are unjust? According to Kinman, it’s two pervasive myths. One is the myth of scarcity, the idea that there isn’t enough to go around. This fuels greed, selfishness and fear, among other things. The other is the myth of difference. This fuels hate, and fear as well, which is so prevalent today in racism and LGBTQ+ discrimination. He believes that the hate and the fear fuel an absolutism (the belief in singular and absolute principles) in religion and creates people who feel like they need control. He believes this absolutism often comes from a feeling of “I’m scared because the world’s a scary place and the world is changing really, really fast and I need a sense of control to hold on to so that I feel safe in a pretty unsafe place.” Of this perspective, he remarked, “I don’t look down on that. People’s lives can be really, really scary.” But, he doesn’t think it’s acceptable to use that fear to hurt people. Kinman describes how “the heart of religion should be at least love, and a sense that you were created out of love. Love is the most powerful force in the universe.”
Kinman doesn’t believe in “good or bad people. I think we’re all created good,” he noted. “I think that we live in that goodness in varying degrees. I think we can do some really, really bad, horrendous things. But the key for everyone is, where’s the wound? Where’s the healing?” That’s what he is trying to foster in his community regarding what’s happening in the Middle East right now. “The reason we need a cease fire and all the hostages returned is because we need to return to a status quo,” Kinman reflected. “So then we can actually work on the wounds which are centuries deep. Time doesn’t heal all wounds. But love can.”
When I tell people about writing an article about Kinman and his visit, I’ve encountered a surprising amount of suspicion. Maybe my openness to what he has to say has something to do with my straight male whiteness, but I do also think there’s some bias against Christian religions in my community. It exists for a reason, and it’s probably the same bias that I share (and talked about at the beginning of this piece), but I would urge the reader to question it. If Reverend Kinman has any intention to use his faith for anything other than to make the world a better place, he fooled me. I’ll leave you with one last quote from him.
“We live in a world that says your value comes from how much you can produce and how much you own. None of which has anything to do with love. In fact, most of which has to do with exploitation of yourself and others,” Kinman said. “And so to live in an ethic of love is countercultural. We’re told that, you know, you’re not lovable if your body is this way, if you feel this way, if you do this thing, if you don’t have this, if you do have this. It’s just like, that’s all bullshit. You’re lovable, you’re wonderful. Every, every human being, every part of creation is created beautiful and powerful and good.”
