Eric Clay, Founder—Fostering Multifaith and Secular Communities

Born into rural poverty, the seventh of eight children, I lost my father when I was 7 years old and relied on men and women born in the late 1800s whose passions were community engagement and collaborative economics. A quota student and College Scholar at Cornell, I studied beginning of life and end of life issues (from sexuality to death) through anthropology, biology, and ethics. 

I chose seminary over medical school, law school, and graduate work in anthropology, continuing my education at Union Theological Seminary in an effort to learn the skills of deep community engagement and personal politics. While there, an historian recognized my background and similarities with Alexander Campbell, the early-mid 19th Century advocate of religious freedom and a multi-faith United States, free of slavery or coercive debt of any kind. 

For more than 50 years, even before I left the farm, my work has been rooted in Campbellite Christianity, promoting and building diverse, multi-faith/secular relationships across differences of religion, race, class and culture. As a clinically trained chaplain and the founder of Shared Journeys, I host learning groups addressing issues of daily life and work in diverse relationships. 

The work I need to do goes well beyond small groups and individual or couples coaching. I have come to accept the term secular, as historically defined, not privileging any way of life but open to all, to describe my work. 

We live in a time where our failures of imagination and unwillingness to be creative in relationships are used to justify our hate. In an effort to control those people we cannot accept, we engage in exaggerated claims about the fairness of the universal rule of law, the role of science in defining our options, or the need for allegiance to authoritarian leaders to pull us through our hard times.

We, as the eight billion people who occupy parts of this planet, have essentially two tasks. First, to find and commit to others with whom we share common values and a willingness to work together to thrive. And second, to create space among us for others whose values and lives and needs to thrive differ from our own. Inside and outside, our diverse ways of life may occupy the same land without destroying each other or the land. 

If you want to explore how we can grow the wealth we have in relationships and property, even across the boundaries of morally different lives, we can begin to address our collective failure of imagination and choose life in the face of death. (Email Eric.)