Knicks Chant Rejects Christian Nationalism.

MD Ahnaf Hossain, a 23-year-old Knicks fan, provided the rallying chant for all New Yorkers this week.

My mayor’s Muslim.
My bagel’s Jewish.
The pope’s on our side.
Knicks in five!

The punch line is, of course, the last line: a cry for the Knicks to win the championship in five games. His original chant actually included a different third line, as he hoped for a four-game win.

But I want to highlight the first three lines of the chant. It's an observation about the religious diversity of New York.

A celebration of religious pluralism.

This zealous sports chant rejects Christian Nationalism as the dominant way to interpret America's religious history and present.

The words point to a different reality – religious diversity as a way of life, as a lived experience. And as a cause for pride and festivity. Solidarity and community across differences.

New York boasts the Knicks – and substantial religious difference!

Zohran Mamdani is the first Muslim mayor of New York City. He is one of about 400 million Twelver Shi'as (or Shi'ites) worldwide. Almost a million Jewish people live in the five boroughs of NYC. 3 million Catholics. The American Pope signed a Knicks jersey for Spike Lee to wear to games. This is the current religious landscape of the nation's largest city.

Check out this beautiful 2022 NY Times article about the city's religious diversity. Let me quote just one sentence:

"But the city is not just a home for many different world religions; it is also a place that empowers New Yorkers to express their faith — and share its treasures and ideals — in a multitude of ways."

All this diversity contradicts the hopes and dreams of Christian Nationalism, which hopes to minimize such diversity in order to present a narrower and more exclusive version of faith.

Meanwhile, Muslims, Jews, and Christians are celebrating their common passion for basketball. Knicks in five, indeed!

Summer Reading – Steinbeck's East of Eden

This summer, we are reading a classic piece of literature: John Steinbeck's masterpiece, East of Eden. The novel reflects on human nature and retells the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis. Consider this quote from the work:

“We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.” (413)

A Benediction (Or Miscellaneous Thoughts)

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