As part of my navel-gazing over the notion that “I don’t not believe in God” (at least not anymore), and the logical subsequent question of whether I do believe, I’ve been thinking about what sort of religion I could live with if Unitarian Universalism or Ethical Culture somehow ceased to be a good fit for me.

It would have to be a religion that’s familiar with the relative breakability of a single stick versus a bundle of sticks. You can try this for yourself and see what I mean: One stick by itself is easy to break, two are a little bit harder, and a whole bundle of sticks clumped together will make you put up a fight if you succeed at all.

To me, the holiest aspect of any religion has to be the sense of solidarity it creates, while still recognizing that the various components are unique. The religion that would fit me best would be one that not only allowed for freedom of inquiry among its members but also stood in solidarity with suffering people of other traditions or none at all.

The Interfaith Alliance (of which I am a paid-up member) and the women’s interfaith book group Daughters of Abraham are obviously not religious groups in their own right, but they do bring together voices from a variety of perspectives and create safe places for dialogue and (in the former case, at least) shared action for the common good.

I was temporarily very excited when I heard in a recent episode of the radio show State of Belief (hosted by Rev. Welton Gaddy of the Interfaith Alliance) about the Shoulder to Shoulder campaign to oppose Islamophobia here in the United States, and I still like what I see about this group even after realizing that my uncharacteristically optimistic view of their purpose was too broad. From their site:

Shoulder-to-Shoulder is an interfaith organization dedicated to ending anti-Muslim sentiment by strengthening the voice of freedom and peace. Founded in November 2010 by over 20 national religious groups, Shoulder-to-Shoulder works not only on a national level, but offers strategies and support to local and regional efforts to address anti-Muslim sentiment and seeks to spread the word abroad.

It’s an impressive goal, and they’ve rallied a wide array of groups to their cause from the three main Abrahamic religions and, through some interfaith member organizations such as the Interfaith Alliance, somewhat beyond.

What I’d like to see, though, is a solidarity movement that puts serious money into the mix.

In the course of researching a 2011 paper on Islamophobic depictions in comic books and graphic novels, I found myself distraught over the amount of money I’d shelled out on material that I found loathsome. So I resolved to give at least an equal amount of money to anti-Islamophobic efforts when I had the means to balance the scales.

And so in 2012, I joined the Council on American-Islamic Relations as a dues-paying member. I donated money to the embattled Islamic Society of Murfreesboro, Tenn., as it fought bigots who were opposing the construction of a new mosque and community center.

The spree of donations in 2012 that has I’m sure earned me an FBI file wasn’t my first experience giving to a religious or quasi-religious group whose beliefs I didn’t necessarily share; I was a freethinker in the Bible Belt for more than a decade! I’ve bought baked goods and such from church groups outside a store, I bought popcorn from the Boy Scouts when dating a den mother, and I’d even donated to the Park51 Community Center in New York just to spite Fox News back in 2010. But now I was doing it with intention and seeing a possibility for something larger.

Real religion, to me, lies not only in speaking up with another religion is victim of vandalism or slander – though that’s an important first step – but also in walking over with a paint bucket and offering to help cover up the hateful graffiti, in offering the use of classrooms while a group is displaced, in rallying for prosecution of anti-religious hate crimes, and in doing all of this even when it’s someone else’s religion, even if members of that religion might not show the same hospitality to members of your own in other places on the globe.

Jews, Christians, Muslims, Ethical Humanists, Unitarian Universalists, and Baha’is all claim the lineage of Abraham explicitly or implicitly. The Baha’i extend that lineage out to the rest of the world’s religions, saying that all prophets known or forgotten are representatives of the same creator, and science reinforces our shared ancestry. We’re all brothers and sisters, our religions tell us in their best moments, but we spend too much time living out the “squabbling in the back seat” aspect of our sibling relationship, too little on the “milk and cookies before bedtime” aspect, and we almost entirely ignore the “cut it out, or you’ll have to deal with both of us” aspect that seems to me to be the most important.

We need a well-funded, well-organized interfaith group that goes a step beyond Shoulder to Shoulder and the Interfaith Alliance. Such a group would provide seed money for interfaith discussion groups, yes, and it would engage in humanitarian work, no doubt, but it would also provide matching funds to help congregations install security cameras, plant seed money in the reward fund for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of those involved in violence or vandalism against religious groups, and donate to repair structures damaged in hate crimes with the understanding that all have helped contribute to the toxic environment from which such actions arise.

Such a group would move beyond sibling rivalry to true solidarity and go beyond saying “I’ll pray for you” to say “I’ll work for you.” Or, if the group managed to get my dream spokesman Muhammad Ali to be its public face, maybe even “I’ll fight for you”  — with the usual caveats about the importance of nonviolence, of course.

Public domain image of Muhammad Ali from U.S. Congress, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.