man, we'll be impressed with what we find. i've enjoyed being able to talk with you, ed. thanks a lot. >> it's been a pleasure. >> that was "after words," booktv's signature program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists, public policies, legislators and others familiar with their material. "after words" airs every weekend on booktv at 10 p.m. on saturday, 12 and 9 p.m. on sunday and 12 a.m. on monday. you can also watch "after words" online. click on after words in the series and topics list on the upper right side of the page. ..

who would shape them archways by my catholic faith, but also by my experiences as a son of an air force officer. i came of age in east five, germany, which was less than 100 miles from the early 1850s and 60s and i would define by a sense of the evidence of the soviet threat, understanding our place in the world of the american forces in germany, including the american independence. we were in effect -- i didn't

know to think of this symbolic language, we were in effect on the altar. we were the true player also that if the soviet moved into west germany, the first thing they would do is hit us, which would immediately require the united states of america's involvement in resisting the soviet move. we were the guarantee for europe that the soviet union could not move to the west without bringing down the wrath of american nuclear power. and i actually had, my high school chums and i, we used to joke about the sacrificial lambs and the trigger. we had a kind of dry, dark sense of humor about it. we were terrified. i didn't realize this until later really have nuclear threat defined as coming into our dolts would. and so, it was not -- again

later i understood what i was doing. it was not surprising therefore with a visit sense of the edge of the nuclear best. it wasn't so surprising that as a young man, my first impulse to become an air force officer like my father gave away fairly quickly to a second post about which was the life of religion because i thought religion was the opposite of four. .com was the opposite of the human temptation for massive violence. so enter the seminary and through the 1960s, like many of you having the privilege of growing up, not chloe breyer, by the way, had the privilege and the burden of wrecking with the ways in which religion wasn't the opposite of four. religion was implicated in it. in my experience, that it's due with reckoning the church's

history and relationship with the holocaust and also a very powerful way, reckoning with the complicity both of christian and catholic to two shins and subliminal christian assumptions in american aid, the implication of my religious identity with the war in vietnam, which was started by a catholic despotic inquisitions that regime in saigon. for by the time i was 13 to 1969, became a priest, religion and violence to find those brackets within which i was in my life and it's not a surprise that defined my full five years as a priest because i was conscripted into it or not because they chose a couple which is when i first mentioned mortmain and jim morton was the profits of the antiwar movement. by 1960, 1973 my priesthood with

the mess. i didn't really know where i was in day care be a coincidence that where i went with the feeling of being a mess was to jerusalem, not knowing what to expect. what i found was a mess. in the first thing i learned in jerusalem this guy does come to a sinner. he, and are being fixed, inner being finished, that god comes to us in our being a mess. and it was that sense of jerusalem as the defining way in which the human conception of god takes place, not the only place of course but certainly western civilization define income in the place in which i came into a sense of myself able to be at home in the mess of my life to a preset and why? it was somehow better than they

did have an experience as religious people have had going back to the centuries of the present oneness of god. the notion of the ground of our being that there is something essentially unquenchable in existence at all for not became palpable somehow effrontery son. i had the same emphasis here that i home in jerusalem was contour, a wonderful catholic institution that has been presided over the last decade by my old and dear friend, father frankl mcgeary and they want to know which michael mccarry for all that he has given me about jerusalem in particular. so i left the priesthood, but i embraced my religious identity as a cat lake in a new way with a new fullness, which is ironic. and it always was clear to me at some point i would return to jerusalem as a subject, as a

visitor, took her in and a student again and again. in this book a return to it as a subject. jerusalem two days in the eye of the storm. roughly with that. fear of revolution seeping north africa, the source of tremendous hope and expectation, also a source of concern, worry, understanding how badly things can go. religion and violence both. typically. the tectonic plates of not just the middle east, but in the way of the western world shifting right below our feet, at the center of it is israel, palestine. also at the center, a new temporary form of nuclear deterrent, not tilt standoff between the soviet union and the united states, but this was clearly defined but in some ways because of that more terrifying than never way in which nuclear weapons are on the margin of every power struggle and in a very particular way in the

middle east. so what about it? very quickly, the tremendous source of hope by looking through the lens of the history of jerusalem with problems of the human condition. let me very quickly give you a quick tour through many centuries of history to make the point on this ancient violence, sacrifice, the babylonian destruction, jerusalem invented a new vision of human interconnect goodness. we know that as monotheism. a better word for that is the oneness of god, that unquenchable vitality that i myself had a personal experience in jerusalem but which has defined the place for religious believers century and century out. from the ruins of the roman

destruction payment oriented memory or in exile to choose any permanent ideal for christians. jesus as a jew, nonviolent. a movement that then swept the mediterranean world which was itself the great mystery of who this man was. constantine rebounder as dangerous on, making it the source of unity for a widely dispersed empire, with a darkened consequence, theologizing the gas or the jewish people as a christian proof. in the seventh century, within five years -- within five years of mohammed that, islamic courses through to the gates of and to the city nonviolently. why is that? what was it about jerusalem but

to the first sweeping movement of muslim peoples, like a magnet drawing the diverse iron shavings of religious imagination from every direction to itself. in the middle ages, jerusalem is the center locating of a vision christian, what we call western civilization that takes hold in jerusalem. the temple a special symbol which then becomes a special symbol defined in europe, the knights templars. dan brown. we go up through the centuries with that kind of constant reference back to what jerusalem , so much so that when christopher columbus makes his move to the west, it isn't the abc's after. he is after a new more efficient and safer route to jerusalem. we secular americans don't emphasize his agenda of columbus is, but is chronicles are full

of it, his wish to bring europe to jerusalem. as the ottoman empire lost its way and opulence in the 18th, and 18th centuries, the noble sanctuary in the center of jerusalem remains the touchstone of the islamic conscience and distillate defining note of the islamic conscience. and 110 years after columbus when those parents settled in new england or came to new england, what was it that they said they were doing? they were found in a city on a hill, jerusalem and the settlement that they found it after that sermon when they got off the boat was sailing, not boston. another word for jerusalem. the centers of sailor moved on. what if they go? the christ border into it's not new hampshire and establish their own settlement.

salem, new hampshire, less than 50 miles from salem, massachusetts. ceylon, jerusalem, science, the most commonplace means of the united states of america. what is this? the american ideal of the city on a hill as a measure against which we still check the requirements of realism. columbus, went through, abraham lincoln, whose last words whispered to his wife at the theater were, i think i should like to see jerusalem. ronald reagan, his most resonant theme was the city on the hill and always the primordial memory of the holy city. next year kept jewish longing to live until the narrative of enforced de-aspera, question

enforce the aspera could be reversed in 1940. yes, jerusalem is the ground zero still of conflict, but this is a let pathways in which jerusalem has been the source of the resistance to violence. i know this history can be recounted negatively. yes, the home of bob what to think income and idea to see and hear through musty story. yes, the center of a monotheism that is self sanctifying. we're number one where god is better than your god, a district of monotheism. yes, jerusalem against the jew, which is the way christians begin to think of it. yes, crusader mayhem 1090 nines. yes, martyrdom. yes, fundamentalism in all three traditions. these have all found homes in jerusalem. rivalry from cain and abel to the israelis in palace indian.

and yes, jerusalem shaped in some powerful way in our time by auschwitz and also by heuer shema, the two brackets in which the ancient question of the relationship between violence and religion are asked now. then there's the mess of the human condition. and what do we do with it? jerusalem is the center of a double vision, and therefore he for you life and death. choose life. recalling the importance of this history of human choice is urgent because of human choices have shaped this history in the past, they can still shaping the future. so jerusalem is a city of self

surpassing. i checked abraham's knife here. religion was limited by ethics here. the oneness of god makes every individual who participate in the day. , which is the ground of the universal declaration of human rights. the effect that god of the bible, god of jerusalem perennially size of the vincent said of those who picked to my is the seed of democracy, that the temple is vacant, the holy of holiest of secant. this god will not be represented as a no one owns this god, and therefore no going to war in the name of god. god's elusiveness, the only thing we know about god is that god is unknowable. and in jerusalem, humans

realized that his knowledge. that principle is the key to human freedom. it's a real religion. so choose. i don't believe that we have come out this week through the millennia, hundreds of thousands of years of our development to bring about a road extinction in the end is what is before us now is a matter of choice, jerusalem is a set at the beginning is the eye of the storm, the eye of the storm this month. yes, israelis are right to be wary. palate demands are right to be impatient at promises on cat. the world is right to be alert to what is unfolding in the swirling mass. the jerusalem comedy i storm

remains the best reason for keeping an eye, not on fear put on hold. both sides of the human condition, the mess in the glory and we choose jerusalem. thank you. [applause] >> and now i'd like to thank you so much and invite a bfa or speakers and lisa miller, who will as the religion editor at "newsweek" and author of the book, have been, which is over here and available afterward will conduct the rest of this conversation. so thank you, lisa.

i'm going to stand up here for some quick introductions and then i'm going to sit down and i hope we can have a conversation. i'm hoping this will be not too formal, lively, casual and in the interest of the, i was sitting over there at 18 all of the bios so we could crash at the time. i've edited so much that i'm just going to go through one by one and introduced very quickly with the esteemed panelists are. at the very end of the table is imam feisal abdul rauf. to his left is the reverend turkana serene jones, who is the president of the faculty at the meteorological seminary. next to her is james carroll, the author of "jerusalem, jerusalem." to my right is rabbi burt visotzky, the professor of

midrash studies at the jewish theological cemetery -- seminary. and i'm going to open with a question about jerusalem. i first saw jerusalem when i was 21 years old. i was given a trip to jerusalem by mike green parents who had fled the not cease from europe and thought that israel was an important place in the world. i myself corrupt as the secular jew and had no religious identity except for the back of my grandparents. the holocaust and the life the life they've been told come you don't look jewish. you don't talk jewish. and i write in jerusalem and got on the bus and saw busloads of people who looked exactly like me. i thought, i'm really connected to the place. in my experience they think and

in james carroll spoke a tax also that the power of going to jerusalem and what it feels like and how shattering it can be and how profound it can be, even for people who don't have any sense of identity. so my question to the panel and i'm just going to ask you to go one by one to describe the first time he saw jerusalem and how does that vision live with you as an american, as a citizen of the world and as a person of faith. the other wonderful thing about this book is that it talks both jerusalem is the place, and actual physical, real place that exists in the world and time now and also as a series of hopes and dreams and conflicts and paradoxes that existed simultaneously. so, imam feisal, do it to start?

>> the oldest religion furs. i first went to jerusalem in 1878. my late father was a close friend of jim morton, was invited by the aspen institute to do a seminar, which had been conduct demerit per year on the year. as a delicate time in 1877 peace talks between what it just happened. so i used to does she would often invite you to substitute for him and others to commit years old, 31 years old, anxious. so i went to jerusalem for the first time and it felt like a pilgrimage, you know, we believe that the outer invitation can be

anything, but the real design intent behind anything that is happening.don't you actually go there. in my soul i felt it was an invitation. it was an important trip. it is a partial truth. they just come with my father to the poker jim in mecca in 1973. this is just five years after that and i felt the important part of my spiritual journey. we went to the various religious site, the church of the holy sepulcher and to walk the streets where you know jesus walked, to a street scene of the profits walk was sent in which the something to oneself, and deep, deep internal level. and to watch how the sub by could walk up to the temple to

pray in the mosque and visit and pray there is smoke. and for those of you who don't know significance of jerusalem to our faith of islam, we believe the profit on one night was taken by gabriel from the arch angels gabriel to jerusalem, where he prayed with all of the profits. from there he was raised on the night journey to various levels of heaven, where he sautéed noodles standing, versus angels standing on the next level in a position. the next joined in the ceded position. the very powerful visual which muslims pray and was the profits experience. it was on that night that he was

given the five-time daily prayer for his community and the choreography of the angels cooperated the daily prayers be performed. jerusalem was then the first direction of prayer. new songs. towards jerusalem and till a few years later when the replica was changed to mecca, which i've often believed was something like an act of mercy from god. i think the tension between muslims and the other religions would have been more intense with the competition about jerusalem. jerusalem has certainly been a very important rebuilding of the temple that is peacefully conquered jerusalem and most americans and most muslims are unaware that the jewish community, which has been prohibited from living in affected by developments in the 70, 80 were invited by jewish

families right after the conquest of jerusalem by his forces to take up residence in the city of david jerusalem. and when the jew and the muslims were affected in the first crusade from jerusalem when crusaders basically spluttered everybody wasn't until they came back and we conquered jerusalem that orthodox christians took a residence again to jerusalem. i share this because there is a lot of misconception and we have been in the last 30, 40 years have seen the increase of what i call an in positional dominance, but it might emphasize how much this particular interpretation we have seen sides in the face of those that the principle and teachings of islam and the vast

majority of our history in terms of how we interact and engage with the other faith traditions. so jerusalem has this power. it has the support tents and they think the symbolism of how more importantly the points that james spoke about, i think raise the question to eyes wandered people of god today and that is, what and how -- what lessons have we taken from the past and how come they build a new concept of jerusalem? these are the challenges i believe we have today. and to me, jerusalem is the place that was importuned. it will be the physical symbolism of the geographical point, the contact point if you vote between god and humankind and it is that symbolism, which is very important. it may be important for us in a

religious way, but god is greater than everything. and what we learn in their spiritual time as we have two always -- the search for god, for god's faith is an eternal one. you never arrive at it. and at every point you have to -- you have to give up the idolatry of a particular action you have or do you have to give up idolatry that even your prayers. you do not worship jerusalem. he chisinau worship everything. every icon and every idle that comes between us and the purity of the faith in god as a form of idolatry. in this journey as we take as

individuals and as a society is important for us to remember that these names we give ourselves today of christian, jew, or not people search definition that the founders of this faith traditions gave to their communities. moses was among the children of israel, israeli. the name subsite didn't come till later. christianity was not adopted by jesus christ or his followers. he was given by the romans. even the term muslims today is not the way of profit called themselves. god always calls for followers of the prophet believers. it wasn't till a century later that we caught ourselves muslims. the idolatry that we have towards these identities, which actually are relatively later

than the founders should teach us we need to go back to the oneness of our faith traditions because it's not about as they say she's saying, already. it's about god inc. without these profits as regional representatives in time and space at the one god and one message. so i look forward to this being called the interfaith text about the church center in the are supposed as worshipers of one god in different languages in different choreographies, but were celebrating diversity of the oneness of god. model that the american sense, but also the spiritual sense. thank you very much. god bless you thank you very much. god bless you thank you very much. god bless you. >> leaside, god bless you. >> leaside, thank you for the question. it's interesting how are traditions for the way we

respond but we see and i am not going to represent protestantism and give you a very flat answer is not even very imaginative talk about the ultimately displace religion that hovers above in the, all image and in doing so affords us of said eric insists he can't afford. i first saw jerusalem in 1983. i was in the middle of my seminary education that he'll notice on my way to india where he was going to spend some time looking at south india at the seminary. for some analogy by the world of counsel churches. those good friends with a rabbi at yell, rabbi laurie battenberg who employed me on the way to india that messed up and been spent time in jerusalem. so i followed her direct and she arranged the whole trip for me.

was met by one of her cousins at the airport and driven into jerusalem. the two things i remember about the first moment for those first three hours was i grew up in oklahoma tonight that my gosh, this looks like oklahoma, which in one way is a financier, but in another way that, in the senate in that it's in the desert and that it's a place where poor and outcast people live. i immediately felt homebuyer. and in a sense, it sacrificed my own understanding of the place from which i had come in the context of native american history in the history of displacement in this country. the circuit reaction was when i had not dissipated at all. the cousin that picked me up here are, we immediately hit it

off. she said we have all these things again. were going to go here and there cannot have an urgent matter to take care of. she says i'm turning 21 next week and am trying to decide if i should get married and i have a proposal on the table then there's this great fortuneteller i think we should go see. so here we wear, both of us very religious people and yet immediately in the context of jerusalem going to participate in a religious part is that it's not something we immediately claimed as their own. in a way, that represent a lot about how religion functions in the world today. it's a very unstable category. by the way, she did not marry him. [laughter] >> well, i think i've had the privilege of speaking a lot already and it does to defer to the rabbi. >> it not often rabbis could

defer to these days. i especially want to recognize what a privilege it is to be here with my colleagues, all of whom have worked with before and i love and what a privilege it is to be here with jim whose books i read avidly. fifo, a stills turn towards jerusalem when i pray that has been part of the jewish yearning in prague is for as long as there has been jerusalem. to answer your question more immediately, lisa, and apologies to chloe was getting beaten up for being young, i first stepped foot in jerusalem in 1867. i got there one month to the day after the sixth day. i was on a team tour of jerusalem. i think the thing that struck me the most about being in the holy city as a pilgrim was seeing the remnants that the jordanians had

left behind, the barbed wire, the wolves, vicky. jerusalem had been a divided city between 1848 and 1967. i think that the reigning sentiment among all who visit jerusalem with that should never be so again, that jerusalem should stay for united and that he is as in those heady days following the war, a place of access for a religion, that could come and go freely pure it hasn't exactly turned out that way we can do that jerusalem now and see it once again divided, this time the jewish hands. my vision of jerusalem is not that city where we have rejoiced this kid and noticed a preponderance of cats wandering the street.

jerusalem should be a shared secret space, just as all of us share sacred ancestors who we read about it think about in the back to, who we invoke in person memories, just as we all share one god, we should be able to share that one city. whether it's christian jerusalem wandering churches in the mount of olives or the villa delarosa, whether it is some truth, i have had the privilege to be on the herat of sharif and see the mosques and see the excavations they are. or whether it is jewish jerusalem. here i cannot stress enough that in hebrew we don't collect jerusalem. because the roush align. we can parse and a couple of

ways. one is financially that jerusalem has the oneness, a complete city of united city. the other way we pronounced jerusalem is your shalom, that it would use cities peace. >> thank you all for these wonderful risk of his. i've written a book about heaven and in this conversation, it strikes me how similar the hatchet is describing jerusalem are to the adjectives describing habit i was particularly struck with the rain called it home. obviously the city on the hill is jerusalem and getting our city back in time as jerusalem. i was wondering if the rabbi could talk a little bit about

the place of jerusalem and identity of the ds right to it because we are never in our home. our home is absent. that's part of who we are. >> i would like to talk about that. let me start from an odd angle sensors -- went day-to-day. let me start with that of their city of god, which was imitative rome. in the early fifth century for missing augustine of hippo react game to the fact of the great city of rome wrote his book, city of god. he imagine not rome a physical place, but the heavenly room. and some very conscious way, augustine was paralleling how jew think about jerusalem, that jerusalem even though it may not physically be ours mcgibbon century and god knows it has not been jewish for most centuries

was always an idea. it was always something with read about. indeed, even though jew controlled jerusalem today, we still pray about it and they still say the same old prayer, which is come and make us speedily rebuild jerusalem. now we choose amongst ourselves, just agree on what that might mean. for some it means building as fast as possible in east jerusalem. for some of it ending of any jerusalem shared among all people. it remains a touchstone for all of us to look to. he who dilated living in the jasper, a man that is so poignant he into words. he said my heart is in the east. and i have served as poignantly in 1973 when a repeatable student i had a professor who is

teaching us hebrew literature, but it happened to be the semester that the yom kippur war. he was physically in the classroom, but his purpose in the east. and i learned what it's like to be a subtype of the diaspora from that professor, that's however secure we are in america and we are very secure in america, there is this yearning for a homeland, where you can walk the streets, as you have the experience and everyone is like us and the language we share a common come even if you may not know hebrew although well and that the calendar, the rhythms of the day are the rhythms of the jewish day, even as we can here the muslim faith prayer or watch the streets. there is this location we were hearing cognos new york is one

of the great jewish cities and all of jewish history. but still we yearn for jerusalem. >> does anybody want to add anything? >> i would love to but a word, collaborating, but show how this is in part if not the jewish imagination but the west. then they quickly tell you the summer of 1916. the british are absolutely devastated by the loss is in the first day is battle of the sun between 55 and 60,000 british soldiers. published july 1st. the battle went on and so n-november. there were a million british casualties in that one battle. it was the most savage battle. that day was the most savage day in british military history. what was the response?

the polarity of great britain commissioned two distinguished composer, to set the music. it was to address the despair and fear of the british people. it was written in 1808 by blake. it's actually the press is to longer poem about milton. build freddie mac at this year and he can probably tell me the title. but this section of the home sets a week to know jerusalem. this shows that action, the set of verses because it's invoking of jerusalem as the perp is for burger sacrificed to enable the lord to wackier and england again and speaks to the power of this fantasy. it was made even more palpable a

year later the work continued to go devastatingly envoy george took one of his commanders in the western frentzen said to him, i want you to need a special expedition, the purpose of which is to bring a christmas present to the british people, jerusalem, which is how lord allenby was dispatched with an expeditionary force, landed in egypt, living at the lafond into palestine in taking jerusalem in time to present jerusalem as a present to the british people. when alan took with the avenged. that was the beginning of the british double game famous british imperial methods always did, plead to local peoples as a way of maintaining their power,

a double game that continues today. the point being, jerusalem to finding something essential to the british imagination. so it's why choose. as the second most privileges symbol in the tradition. the rest is an inch below, an inch away from mass violence. it is always mass violence that commemorate going back to roman distractions in the jewish city. the romans josephus ancient historians tell us, we don't know the exact number, but more than a million jew were killed by the romans between 70 and

135. going all the way back to the devastations of the babylonian. so mass violence in the imagination type to jerusalem is a humanness. >> i'm going to jump off if that's okay because there's great stuff about the connection between a yearning for jerusalem and identification with jerusalem and nationalist and it's happened here in this country and it's happened -- happening in israel right now. and i'm wondering, serena, if you have any thoughts from john winthrop was on the hill, talking about jerusalem and america. how is her identity as americans shaped by jerusalem for good and for go? >> again, i was struck and

listening to this response is how much in the protestant imagination and hence in that sort of sounding protestant story about what america is, as a religious sensibility that has no home, it hovers over history. in fact, begins to take jerusalem into a space that can be turned into any fantasy that served the political interest of the moment and just attached to jesus so that justifies it as well. i think that right now in the united states, in terms of the fantasies of jerusalem, yes, this notion of jerusalem as having, but we have to always remember when it's configured that way in the protestant imagination and particularly to the evangelical imagination, the flipside is held. and so, it becomes the occasion for telling the nationals torri

in which you can again and again find those who are and have been or will it be and those who are going to be and how. as a nationalist, it sets the whole game going. but we see in the series out there taking taking place with respect to islam, that same sensibility of being able to divide the world into the habit that is jerusalem and all that is on it. >> anybody want to add anything to that quiet >> i think the number of things mentioned are bullet points and see these bullet for the stats seem to form a picture. the idea of america is a new jerusalem, salem massachusetts, new hampshire the shining city on the hill. the idea of america as a structurally multicultural society in an idea that we are in our diversity one in what is

the one misplayed? heaven is the space where we have gotten approval of what we feel a sense of intimacy come a sense of disconnection with god. and how in my own case, my own journey to my own identity was born in kuwait with egyptian parents. when i was 18 months old my dad was sent to england. after a few months in egypt, he was sent to malaysia. i was always foreign. i came to that knowing who i was. i didn't know if i was english, malay, arab, egyptian and now american. and that propelled me on my own journey for my own journey and civil rights movement the difficult time.

it looks differently a couple of years. my ambitions of what he wanted to do shifted every couple of years, it even my emotions and i thought i would die if she disagrees. there smiled. i couldn't trust the permanence of my emotions. and yet they have this inner conviction that in spite of all these changes i was told the same person, which made me realize there is the cells within, the focus of my spirit moment by fours, might he go and willpower. and i felt most at home in new york. i will be wherever i was, but something about america in sunday but the hope i have here in new york you mentioned that in certain sense even the most

history because the american experiment has the character of what god wants us to be that we are a nation under god. the fact that we really are trying to go that the use of rights endowed by their creator with some right and providential god. we have actually a society that is taken the societal structures are at six off our respect his faith traditions and express them in a super, beyond parochial language to create a society of god, a godly society. they think having been brought up by you in an area of

secularism where religion was a crutch for the weak, et cetera, and to now it seems a resurgence of religion, i think again there was something here in my mind that i can express very eloquently. i'm grasping at it. there's something very important about the fact that if in fact jerusalem becomes and we succeed in making jerusalem a prosperous city up until all faiths and truly international city that we will have done an important step in the healing of humankind today and often in a sense divisions and injuries despite of our diversity. go through its own identity changes, israel today is very different than these the 1950 in

1960. it has been undergoing rapid changes in what it means to be an israeli. we see this had been with the revolutions in the arab world today. to me, the picture holding out the crust, protecting each other against the secret police and mubarak regime is the kind of pluralism and the kind of society. >> we should stop this conversation produced in and take questions from the audience. you out of cards. if you want to pass them to the center car break down your questions. volunteers will come around and take them.

one of the things that is striking about jim's book is that it story of jerusalem, the story of god has been interpreted for bill as a story of sacrifice of violence and war and territoriality and all kinds of terrible things. what jim does in this book a show you a very generous interpretation of all of those issues. and i commend it to you. is there anything you want to say about violence because violence is the theme that is the spine of your book i think. >> i would like to add is that it behooves us to be wary of the negative impact of this heavenly philosophizing about jerusalem across the world, across

civilization. the actual people who live in the real city talk about violence. the violence that threatens and defines tension between israelis and palestinians is bad enough without carrying the weight of our fevered imaginations about it. so the word of caution here is that we also need to back off and let the israelis and palace indians have their place and work out. tension with each other, without putting on, as christians have certainly done for most of 2000 years, putting on them defeat of the cosmos and defining the fate of jerusalem is the fate of the cosmos. well, i get what you mean, but it's also where real-life human beings live and are trying to make the lies and shop and have tvs and raise families and get

jobs and pray and find a way to live with each other in an incredibly difficult situation. so the rest of us come as much as i love the discussion, all of the speaking out of our traditions, claiming their relationship to this place also over to the people who actually live there, to me that to them. >> to real questions? >> okay, what is the message i jerusalem city and "jerusalem, jerusalem" the book and do with not searching for god faith?

>> well, atheist are one real chance of being saved from religion. so it's important for me to note that in the ancient roman world, jew and christians are both regarded as easy as because they failed to bow to the conventional gods. atheism has been a profound form of attention to the other what we might call the transcendent. so we shouldn't be too ready to see atheism as the polar opposite of faith. my own sense is that we live in a time when traditional structures of religious imagination have been turned upside down. i don't think it's going to told that teacher on hoffer writing as a christian was one of the first to call into question our traditional christian categories

and whether they are adequate anymore and that he did it from a prison awaiting his execution is also to the point. can we affirm our connection to jesus without religion is how i remember his question. religion is christianity. and there was a timing than 1860s and 70s when religious and detentions themselves took up a very direct way, the question of the limits of religious categories, the so-called death of god movement, which was trivialized in the media, no offense, lisa. turning you into the media. trivialized in the media. so my own feeling, atheism depends on what you mean. depends on which we may esm and what is the value being

affirmed? victor b. nihilism, but there can be a profound merely disseminate the sms vote. >> here is another question. do you see a contradiction and an ideal of the west existing in the east? may be imam feisal could start. >> the idealism -- >> jerusalem is a western ideal and yet it exists in the east. it's an eastern place. >> and wouldn't use the word west and east unless you define it further. if you need a west, a christian and jewish understanding of jerusalem versus a muslim understanding that is meant by west indies, i can understand the question. but certainly the importance of jerusalem is primarily for the abraham faith revolution. i doubt there's much significance to the religions of the orient.

but i'd like to comment on the issue of atheism. i remember being part of the delegation to iran and we met a very lovely ayatollah under house arrest and he said to us and i've never forgotten this, he said if someone does what he or she truly believes is a constant or conscience, they are muslim been submitted to god, even though they are apostates face. i'm not sure how much atheism is a rejection of the aspects of religious part is, which we all have problems with. i mean, i have had problems whenever to jerusalem or to, the thing you had when you refers to skype in your book. by the way, if they look at the period i had read every page can then they come in many chapters.

i want to recommend the book "jerusalem, jerusalem." but one of the scenes is we all seek god and i remember looking to experience god i think you may have been somewhat along the journey as well and there is a priest he says you're not going to find that in most cases. if i make you under this trapdoor. the notion of where do we find god, i think that his future needs everybody is looking for. those of us who remember the beatles song come i really like see alert, that describes dh kernel pool, the eternal instinct that every human being wants to see. once the cd creator, know the creator. and it's that journey. to the extent that jerusalem or any pilgrimage site is that it tends to open up the possibility we may see that they are. one of the things we have learned, that i have learned, as

expressed by r-romeo pitts says they went to the makkah and couldn't find him there. i went to jerusalem and could find in there. finally, i looked to my own heart and there i found god. i think the easiest is diagnostic who is searching for the ground about being, the absolute consciousness, absolute love that people speak about. that is my response to the atheistic response. ..

>> and not about a god. and so i think in the context of atheism there's no assurance that even atheists will not fall prey to the very dynamics that you describe as being so destructive. there's no protection from that even in the absence of god. it can still be reproduced. >> right. >> so -- >> well said. >> i have two questions here that are sort of, they're interfaith questions. and i'm going to ask them together. and they seem to be implicit at least in this question is a rejection of the phrase judeo-christian. we talk about, you know, is america a christian nation, is it a judeo-christian nation, what is our tradition. many people have called for the

adoption of the expression, the judeo-christian islamic tradition. is it possible to say that? are we all from the same tradition? so that's the first question. and then the second question which is connected is, um, can one develop a multifaith worship experience focusing on jerusalem as the city of peace? in other words, can we think of a ritual that we all do together that has jerusalem at its center and have it be meaningful? these seem to me to be versions of the same question, so i thought i would just throw it out there. >> i'll take a stab at the first part of the question which is, is it possible to say, what is it, a judeo-christian islam islamic tradition? >> yes. >> no, it's a mouthful. [laughter] we need to brand it better. i mean, i cannot help but

observe that this country has, um, gone in an arc of interreligious dialoguing. we used to just talk about the protestant ethic this country, and then we learned after world war ii to talk about it as judeo crow christian in -- judeo-christian in part because my teacher said, no, we were jews and protestant together, and one of the great things he did just across the street was to insist that catholics and protestants learn to speak with one another. so we became judeo-christian. and now we're on the cusp of this mouthful of, you know, judeo-christian islamic, abrahamic, if you will, which i suppose gives men the advantage here. otherwise we're going to have hagarsaric or something like

that. [laughter] but i alluded to earlier if we're generally monotheist, if we jews, christians and muslims share a notion that there is one god, then what divides us is only the ways in which we approach that god. we share allah as our god. we have our own tribal worship, if you will. so that comes to the second part of the question. can we find some uniform way to worship? i'm not sure of the value. i mean, yes, it's nice on thanksgiving. but i think that each of us does need our birth tradition as a means of recognizing god and as a means of connecting with our own ancestry. that said, as we worship we should learn to shape our prayers in a way ha they're not -- in a way that they're not often shaped to not exclude the other. >> i'd like to offer another thought about american religion,

and i think this question about judeo-christian islam, that addresses the issue at the surface level, and it's by far the less important level. the religious character of america took on new form in the 20th century shaped by the apocalyptic character of nuclear weapons. after 1945 when we recollected the structure -- erected the structure of nuclear te deterrence which was a demonic atheist, stalinist movement -- the soviet union -- to be resisted for sure. nevertheless, we tragically fell into a way of thinking about our relationship to being itself that was lifted right out of the book of the apocalypse, interpreted in its most fundamentalist way, dividing the way in a fashion between radical good and radical evil.

it's only that division that would enable us to have as a slogan -- and people remember this as a crackpot slogan, but it wasn't crackpot -- better dead than red. because the american military strategy presumed the destruction of civilization as preferable to any kind of mitigated, compromised, negotiated halfway solution with our soviet enemy. i group in a world that took for granted the coming nuclear war. and in those days it wasn't, god forbid, the loss of downtown manhattan. it was the, it was nuclear winter. it was giving the earth over to the insects. who would do fine, thank you. that was what we defined ourselves by. and that's profoundly religious. it's apocalyptic. it's saving the earth by

destroying it. and that is our religion to this day. we have yet to dismantle this system or this way of thinking which is the only reason that 800 billion to a trillion dollars can go uncriticized, unquestioned as our defense budget every year even in this era of savage budget cuts. it's the only reason we still have thousands and thousands of nuclear weapons. and when we get a president who's determined to shrink the arsenal, he finds it politically impossible to do it. that is our religion, not judeo-christian muslim. our religion is nuclear weapons. >> i was going to just expand that a little bit and say, also, given what you just described the monothree i didn't mean of judeo-christianity and islam are all equally prone to the excesses of that kind of

fallout, literally, that divides the world that way. in terms of how we describe the united states today religiously, it is such, i mean, it is so complex and diverse that i don't even know what it means to describe christianity anymore. and that there are times at which i feel closer to imam feisal than i would to some evangelical in my home state of oklahoma. [laughter] how that plays itself out in terms of the ritual, i more and more think that it's not as much in the carefully constructed conscious rituals that our future lies, but it's in the daily practices of our lives as we cohabitate. and as we bump up against each other and learn at that, at that base level what it means that we share in each other's world.

>> i'd like to comment on this too. i mean, james talks in his book about bad religion and good religion in your book. there's bad islam and good islam. there's bad christianity and good christianity. there's bad religious people and good religious people. from god's point of view, from my reading of our scriptures, there's only heaven and hell. there's only those who receive god's approval and god's disapproval. those who act well -- there are good americans, and there are bad americans. there is an american ethic which represents the highest of american values, and there is those that are fears that represent the worst of americans' fears. and fdr taught us you have nothing the fear but fear itself. i think fear is the thing that we need to eliminate from our vocabulary of action and replace it with love which is what jesus came to teach us about and represent. and i think the fact that he taught us about love and taught

us to love our neighbors, taught us to love even your enemies rather than fear them is the transformative action that represents the highest possible instinct of the most developed and perfected human being. and i think this is the ethic which represents the highest values of our faith traditions. i believe there is something which i write about in my book which can be described as a common ethic to jews, christians and muslims or to make it a bit more comelessed the abrahamic ethic. because these faith traditions introduce the idea not only of the oneness of god, but the oneness of humanity. before the time where there was an egypt or rome or in the far orient, people believed in different can class of society. people believed that the emperor in japan or the pharoah in egypt or caesar were semi-divine. they were classified into classes of human beings from the

bram mans to the untouchables, and each society had its own notion of that. i think what our faith religions taught is that god is one, we're all descendants of adam and eve, we should all love each other as brothers and sisters. and america has established that. and the american form of democracy, our form of democracy has actually changed the oriental societies. and i grew up as a young kid in malaysia remembering bramans who were touched by an unso much bl. but with the increase of democracy in india, in many china and japan we see buddhism and hinduism today maintaining its, its existential world view, but the notion of human beings as being separated into classes is being broken up by democracy today. and i think that is one of the contributions, if you will, of

the common ethic that we abrahamic religions have. i agree that it is god's intention, i mean, our scriptures speak that god sent to every community a prophet and message to teach people how to love god and worship god in their own language. so from my point of view it's god's intent to be worshiped in different languages. so, so if you want to choose, you know, to speak english, to speak french, to speak german, if you want to make love in french or english, i mean, this is your option. and we should celebrate that variety and perhaps even learn. i have learned a lot about my religion by leading other religions. i encourage my congregants to learn more was you understand your own -- because you understand your own religion better. just like learning another language makes you understand your own language better. so these are just some thoughts i want to throw out there for the time being. thank you. >> i think that's a good place

to stop. jim, do you want to say anything in conclusion? >> i would love to just say in conclusion a deep, heartfelt word of thanks to you all for coming here today, to giving us the honor of your attention. i want to thank you, lisa, for your great moderating and your comments and, burt, serena, imam, and chloe briar, wherever you are, thank you so much for your welcome. great job. and dean james parks morton, dean evans, god bless you. thank you. [applause] >> that was james carroll and others discussing the past and present of jerusalem. for more information visit james carroll.net. >> kate buford, who was jim thorpe? >> probably our greatest

multisport athlete ever of all time. and a native american. partially white but mostly native american. one of our earliest greatest athletes. that's one of the most important things about him, i think, is that he's at the dawn of american organized sports. and he sets a model. he sets a gold standard for athletic achievement that still stands today. >> when did he live? >> >> born in 1887 in oklahoma, died in 1953. so first half of the 20th century, more or less. >> host: did he play professional sports? >> guest: oh, gosh, yes. yes, yes. >> host: for who? >> guest: well, both nonprofessional, but also professional. he played for the new york giants who are now the san francisco giants, last year's world series winners. he played for the canton bulldogs which is why the professional football hall of fame is in canton, ohio. and the only statue that you see in the center of the hall is

thorpe. >> host: in his time was he as well known as a michael vick or a brett favre is today? >> guest: oh, more. much, much more because he was a multisport athlete. he did football, baseball, track and field, he won the gold medal for the decathlon and pentathalon in the olympics. he could do all that. that's one of the reasons he retains this status as the greatest multisport athlete. in his day and beyond, it's one of the main reasons i wrote the book, he loomed so large. i mean, people revered him and talked about him long after he stopped playing. >> host: what was the significance of his native american heritage? >> guest: huge. the playing of games as a young child, i go into that in the book, kind of a cross-training almost. i mean, he sort of ran free and played free on the oklahoma plains. and learned strength, concentration, stamina,

quickness, agility. and also this respect for physical effort, this respect for competition was instilled in him by his father and by the competitive games that the sac and fox tribes would engage in oklahoma. that was a huge influence, i'd say. >> host: who are his participants? >> guest: his parents were hiram thorpe who was half white. his father had been a white, hiram thorpe, from connecticut. and his mother was a potowatomie indian, another algonquin woodland tribe. jim was, actually, mostly potowatomie for those viewers who are knowledgeable about indian background. all of these are originally great lakes algonquin tribes who, of course, got removed and removed and removed in the euphemism of the time to, eventually, to oklahoma. >> host: how did he end up in pennsylvania? >> guest: pennsylvania, carlyle, pennsylvania. the carlyle indian industrial school was probably the most

famous and prominent of a series of indian boarding schools set up to radically assimilate american indians into white society. white reformers at the time, this would be the 1870s, 1880s, 1890s -- carlyle was closed in 1918 -- but they saw the american indian race as dying out, vanishing. and as sort of a combination of guilt and policy they decided the best way to save this supposedly dying race -- of course, it wasn't really -- was to turn them into whites. so they were, the children -- >> host: turn them into whites. >> guest: turn them into whites, to send them to these boarding schools which they could not go home for five years, they were forbidden to speak their native languages. their hair, in the case of the boys, was cut short. they were put into white uniforms and cement out toly -- sent out to live with white families in the summer, and it

was a radical exercise in assimilation which did incredible damage to at least two generations of native american students and, actually, parenthetically right now there's this very interesting movement going on that's sort of building with the internet, facilitated by the internet, by facebook pages of the descendants of these boarding school students trying to retrace the memory of their grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles and piece together what they call this hole torn in their culture where they were forbidden to indulge or to express their culture. anyway, jim went to the most famous of these schools. >> host: was he, he have to apply for it? was he chosen? how did he get there? >> guest: well, they were recruiting good athletes. the original superintendent felt that sports was a way for the american indian to show on a supposedly equal playing field of sports that they could excel and do as well as anyone else. like a metaphor for success, an active metaphor.

he was -- his father had despaired of being able to control jim at this point. i mean, he was, he was older, he was in his late teens, he was, he'd sort of -- he tried every other school in the area in oklahoma, and his father sent a pretty famous letter, actually, now to the superintendent of carlyle in pennsylvania saying, i can't do anything with him. will you, please, take him? and he already showed signs of athletic promise. not nearly what he would later show, but enough that he was then allowed to go to carlyle and was put on a train and went off in 1904. >> host: when did he get back to oklahoma, or did he? >> guest: he went pack and forth. he didn't go for -- he went back and forth. he would go back in the summers once he'd been there several years. pretty much until he goes professional with the new york giants. he will go back periodically. but not that much as he grows into an adult man, he's not back that often. >> host: what was his reaction

to carlyle industrial school? >> guest: well, quickly -- he loved sports right from the beginning. he really wanted to play football. he showed he could excel at track and field, so initially he was put on the track and field team in 1907, but he kept pestering warner who was the famous coach -- soon-to-be famous coach who started out at carlyle. and he pestered warner to be put on the football team. well, at this point he was 5-8 and about 135 pounds and warner kept putting him off and putting him off. finally, anyway, long story short he makes that football team. he doesn't really start to shine until 1908, and sports really become his thing. and if you were an athlete at carlyle, very interesting paradigm that we see now at all the major schools, you were a pampered person. you got a special training table, you didn't have to go to class as often as the others.

warner had an athletic machine at play which is very much a model, a template of what we take for granted now. >> host: what was the significance or tell us about the west point football game. >> guest: oh, yes. well, we fast forward to 1912. jim's last season with the carlyle industrial school. >> host: was he well known as a college athlete nationwide? >> guest: oh, yeah. by this point he is, yeah. by 1912 he is, 1911. he comes -- it's a long story, and you have to read the book, but he leaves carlyle in 1909, goes to play minor league baseball in north carolina wanting to break into the major leagues because baseball was the only organized sport then that you could really make a living at or make a career. he doesn't do that well in baseball, so he's persuaded to come back to carlyle in 1911. he's bigger, he's heavier, he's more -- he's in his 20s now, he hits the ground running, and the football seasons of 1911 and

1912 and the track and field seasons of 1912 which then precedes the olympics in the summer of 1912, he's a phenomenon. he's all over the newspaper. he's in all the headlines. so by the time that west point game is scheduled, he is sort of the talk of the nation. and, in fact, point -- sports illustrate would say 2008 that had there been a heisman trophy, for example, in many 1911 and 1912, jim probably would have won it boast years. so he's a phenomenon when he goes into that game. so warner has scheduled the carlyle indians with the west point cadets, and it's a highly symbolic game, obviously, for many, many reasons. obviously, west point is the army in that team and so many future world war ii generals -- >> host: such as? >> guest: eisenhower, for example. >> host: omar bradley? >> guest: right, who's watching from the sidelines, but he's a reserve player.

and carlyle wins that game, and it's a tough, tough game, and it's just a phenomenal game, and thorpe dominates. amazing. >> host: what did the carlyle coach tell his team before they played? >> guest: according to several accounts puff warner -- and this can be exaggerated, but no doubt warner said to the team as part of his pep talk before the game, you are playing against the descendants of the people who fought against your fathers. on the so-called indian wars in the west for land and go out and get 'em, and they did. >> host: did politics, did political figures glom on to jim thorpe, and did he get involved in politics at all? >> guest: later in the life he did. not at this point that we're talking about, not at all. not in the '20s. by the time he gets to hollywood in the 1930s, he plays this last official sort of game of any kind in 1928.

goes to hollywood as did so many sports stars because of the movies and the wonderful climate. he goes to hollywood, and he becomes almost in spite of himself a spokesperson for indian causes. because this huge diaspora of indians as well as sports stars gather out in hollywood. the advent of sound in film triggers the renaissance of the western as hokey and stereotype as it was, the western serial. one episode every week for 12 weeks, and the kids would go down on saturday afternoon. he played in over 70 movies, maybe double that. and because there's this big group of indian actors and stunt men and players in hollywood, he's the most famous of all of them. he becomes a spokesperson, and he begins to speak out for, on behalf of indian affairs. he also forms a casting company to pressure the studios to hire indians to play indians in these westerns. even though it's stereotypical,

it's a job, it's work. and he said you want someone who can really fall off a horse, shoot a bow and arrow while they're riding a horse, you know, not some italian or mexican, because the studios were none too fussy. as long as you looked vaguely ethnic, you were okay. jim thorpe said give the job to us, and he became quite a spokesman for them. >> host: did he die a wealthy man? >> guest: oh, no. no. he made good money when he went to work for the giants, when he played in the high minors in the 1920 thes. he made very good money. >> host: hollywood? >> guest: hollywood, he made a living. this was the depression, remember. but indians were not paid as much as white extras. he fought for that as well. by the end of his life, no, he's got virtually no money. and a very important thing to remember looking at the whole life and stepping back. jim thorpe, as i said, is at the advent, the beginning of american sports. he's pre-radio.

he's pre-sports agent. he's pre-hollywood newsreels. so none of these media amplifications of him exist. all there is is newspaper coverage. which makes him loom even larger because he's sort of, he becomes a folk hero whose exploits are handed down from father to son, as it were. and in this cadre of sports writers who had seen him play. but he doesn't get the money someone like jack dempsey, red grange just ten years later another pro-football player, babe ruth, made fabulous sums of money, and he never hit that level. >> host: who was mrs. thorpe? >> guest: there was three mrs. thorpes. there was one of his classmates at carlyle, iva miller, whom he married -- >> host: white woman? >> guest: white. she claimed to be -- in order to get into carlyle, you had to have what they called a blood

quantum, and they would measure it. this was a government-instituted thing. but because it was a school for indians, you were supposed to be american indian, and she fudged the records and got in but was not really indian at all. they divorced about 1924, '25, and he married frieda kirkpatrick who was much younger than he was. he had four children with the first wife. the first son died at about age 3 which was a horrible, horrible tragedy, and i think affected him for the rest of his life. three daughters survived. with the second wife he had four sons. two of those sons survive today. they were divorced, he and frieda, in 1939, and he marries in 1945 patsy thorpe who is the woman he is married to when he dies. and she was quite a difficult person. >> host: why? >> guest: she was fierce in her -- on the good side, she really felt he had gotten a bum deal, and he wasn't charging enough for speaking engagements,

that he had been taken advantage of, so she fought like a lioness, somebody said, so -- to get him a better deal. but she also spent a lot of it. she almost scotched the deal with warner brothers for making the biopic, the 1951 biopic starring burt lancaster, "jim thorpe: all-american," she hassled the studio so relentlessly they almost pulled the plug on it. when he died, she then tries to find the best burial place, in essence, shops the body around which is a bizarre, bizarre story. >> host: and you tell it. and is this where the town of jim thorpe, pennsylvania, comes from? >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: just very briefly. >> guest: yeah. there were two small towns facing each other across the lehigh river with a total population of about 5,000, and they were dying. they had no jobs. this is post-world war ii, and they needed to consolidate.

patsy hears about these plucky little towns trying to save themselves. she's already tried oklahoma, she's tried tulsa, the body keeps moving around, and she finally says to a newspaper publisher in pennsylvania why don't -- if you change your name to jim thorpe -- consolidate, get their municipal services together, consolidate, change your name to jim thorpe, you can have the body. so they sign the contract for the body, and it goes to jim thorpe, pennsylvania. >> host: is it still there? >> guest: it is still there. and the town has dutifully honored jim thorpe all these years. there's jim thorpe high school, and they honor him every year. they've done well by what they've promised to do, but the surviving children -- jack thorpe, sadly, the young e son just died a few weeks ago. that leaves two sons left. whether they carry on this battle, the lawsuit that was filed last spring, almost a y