Faith, Justice, and the Murky Waters of Hope

In a recent Carr-Ryan Conversation: Faith, Justice, and Human Rights, moderator Terrence L. Johnson, professor of African American Religious Studies at Harvard Divinity School, encouraged Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz, president and dean of Valley Beit Midrash, to wrestle with how religious conviction can coexist with political realism and pluralism in an age of fracture. The evening unfolded as a shared act of probing into faith’s limits, its political temptations, and its enduring capacity to humanize public life.

Faith as Protest: A Journey Toward Moral Complexity

Johnson opened by describing higher education as a place “to dive in murky waters, and not necessarily to find a way out.” That set the tone for an exchange that moved between biography and theology. He asked Yanklowitz what had first drawn him toward the rabbinate. Yanklowitz traced it to his interfaith upbringing with “one parent evangelical Christian and the other a Reform Jew,” and to his embrace of Judaism as a “religion of protest.”

“It’s not a religion of submission. It's primarily a subversive force of protest.”

He went on to outline a spiritual journey from his interfaith youth in Chicago through years exploring Reform Judaism, “black hat” Orthodoxy, and even a West Bank settlement, searching for a “sweet spot between particularism and universalism.”

Johnson found parallels in his own path from a conservative African American Baptist church to more activist congregations. Both men noted that early religious formation had demanded certainty, only for adulthood to demand nuance. For Yanklowitz, Orthodoxy’s “black-and-white” appeal eventually gave way to what he called “progressive Orthodoxy—an oxymoron,” one that insists on moral complexity while holding fast to tradition. “I’m trying to figure out a way to live in the complexity and the paradoxes and the messiness of the fullness of life, and yet also not lose those basic simple truths,” said Yanklowitz.

Dialogue Across Difference

When Johnson turned to the question of religion’s place in a polarized democracy, he wondered how to teach students who know only “constant chaos” and view consensus as weakness. Yanklowitz replied that hope depends on proximity:

“When we’re distant, just on social media, it’s very hard to hold on. The more proximate we get, the more hopeful I can be.”

He argued for a pluralism that resists both relativism and authoritarian unity, invoking the Tower of Babel story as a defense of “the dignity of difference.”

Johnson answered from a political historian’s lens. African American faith, he said, had long oscillated between realism and hope: “We wanted to believe in something that hadn’t materialized.” Students, he added, hunger for honesty about “the racial roots” of current crises and for courage to speak publicly about them.

God, Justice, and the Work of Humility

The dialogue then turned inward to the question of God in social change. “I cannot imagine a more robust philosophy of caring about human rights than the notion that there is godliness in every person,” Yanklowitz said. Yet he cautioned that “the scariest people I know are positive they’re on the side of good.” Faith, he argued, must cultivate humility, not certainty: “A racist is a rejecter of God. If you look at a skin color and don’t see God in that person, you’ve denied God.”

Johnson, invoking theologian Anthony B. Pinn, wondered aloud whether God-language still holds meaning for a people “constantly acting and hitting our heads against the wall.” For him, belief remains both necessary and challenging: “Politically, I know we have to act in the world. Yet we were definitely abandoned.” The two found common cause in that tension, seeing religion’s power less in dogma than in its capacity to bind wounded communities.

When audience members asked about the temptation to misuse religion in politics, Yanklowitz conceded the danger. “It’s easy in the sanctuary to hold ideals,” he said, “but once you become a practitioner, you have to sacrifice.” On immigration, he described his own activism grounded in Jewish scripture’s repeated command to “love the stranger,” while acknowledging the practical “messiness” of borders and property.

Learning to Hope Again

The evening closed on the question of pessimism. Johnson called Afro-pessimism a discipline of truth-telling, “a way to check our bad faith.” Yanklowitz agreed that utopias were illusions but urged faith in process: “Justice, justice you shall pursue—the first justice is the ends, the second is the means.” He concluded with a story about an asylum-seeking mother and her young child who had stayed in his home for Shabbat after their journey through the desert. Unable to communicate with her because of the language barrier, he watched as his own toddler began to play with hers, and their laughter filled the room.

“If we can learn to play together again in a society where we’re just yelling at each other, if we can learn to form these new groups across these lines and laugh together,” he said, “pessimism becomes impossible.”

In a season defined by division, the conversation offered no neat resolution, only what Johnson had promised at the start: a willingness to “sit in the murky water” together and keep faith that dialogue itself is a moral act.