(9s):

Welcome to the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G Murphy. And I’m father Shannon, T l Kearns. We’re the co-founders of Queer Theology dot com and your hosts from Genesis, revelation. The Bible declares good news to LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how Tuning each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here. Hello. Hello. I’m excited to bring you another guest interview on the Queer Theology Podcast. Today we are talking to Reverend Mark E Fowler, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Tannenbaum, a secular non-sectarian nonprofit, providing thought leadership, innovative trainings and comprehensive solutions that foster respect for religious and non-religious beliefs and practices.

(52s):

Its mission is to promote justice and build respect for religious difference by transforming individuals and institutions to reduce prejudice, hatred, and violence. As CEO, Reverend Fowler is responsible for all of tenant bomb’s departments, the design and implementation of all tenant bomb trainings and the expansion of tenant bomb programs nationally and internationally. Reverend Fowler is a sought after keynote speaker and facilitator in all of tenant bomb’s core program areas, and has addressed organizations globally on issues of equality in race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. Recently, Reverend Fowler delivered the keynote at the 2020 Diversity Best Practices Emerge Conference was featured in a fireside chat with Robert Cook, CEO, and president of F IRA’s 2020 Diversity Summit, and continued in his role as navigator at the 2020 unveiling of out Next’s latest curriculum outta the closet and into the C-suite.

(1m 42s):

Reverend Fowler earned a BA in English and Education at Duke University and was trained as a mediation and conflict resolution specialist with the NYC Department of Education. Reverend Fowler is also a graduate of the One Spirit. Interfaith Seminary is an ordained Interfaith slash Interspiritual minister and is a Dean of second year students at the One Spirit Interfaith Seminary. We are so glad to have you here today, Reverend Fowler. Thank you so much for joining us. Well, Reverend Mark, thank you so much for being here with us today. It’s just a joy to get to talk to you and share your story and share your work, And I know our listeners are gonna be really jazzed to hear about it. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. So we’d like to start these interviews by asking if we were out at a queer dinner party or maybe like a church coffee hour, how would you introduce yourself to someone that you’re just getting to know?

(2m 30s):

Those is probably two different locations. Sure. Give us both of those answers then I wanna, I wanna hear the, the coffee hour and the cocktail party answer. Right. So at a, at a cocktail party or at a, a dinner or something like that. I’d probably say that I’m Mark, that I’m a native New Yorker, have been doing work in and around the community from a spiritual perspective for probably about 20, 25 years. And that includes being members of various different religious communities. I think if I were just kind of like hanging out at the church social, I’d probably talk about or say that, you know, I’m Mark Fowler, native New Yorker.

(3m 15s):

My journey started in the Presbyterian Church in Harlem and has kind of made its way through a number of spaces to now being a practicing interfaith Interspiritual minister. Yeah. And so can you talk about what interfaith means to you? I know lots of, it’s kind of a buzzwordy thing And I think lots of people, especially from Christian backgrounds, have good intentions when they head into interfaith work. But so what does that, what does that look like for you? Yeah, so personally, first I think I would say that I was not a person who was necessarily looking or searching for an Interspiritual path, and primarily because I grew up in a Christian environment, Presbyterian in Harlem, as I said.

(4m 5s):

And there is sometimes this, there are lots of assumptions and stereotypes about the difference between the black church experience as a theological precept and black people going to a church. And there’s kind of like this idea that, you know, there’s always, you know, tambourines and Hammond organs and you know, visitations of the Holy Ghost and all of that. And that was not my early experience. My experience in our Presbyterian church was one, things were a little bit more solemn, there were anthems, but it was a much more kind of relaxed, if you will, worship experience.

(4m 46s):

And for me, there weren’t other members of our family that practiced a faith different than the one that we all generally like went to. And so even in growing up in Harlem, like there was a Catholic church, which was predominantly InCorp, you know, had black congregants. There were places where other religious organizations gathered, but there wasn’t a lot of interaction between them except for if people happened to know each other in the buildings or the neighborhoods in which they lived. But there wasn’t a lot of visitation back and forth as I would grow older. Interfaith really did have to do with coming in contact with having some understanding of, and in some insta