Rev. McKinley L. Sims, M.Div.

Just got back from a whirlwind week and a half in India attending the amazing wedding of two dear friends. So many memories and colors and spices and beautiful clothes and tour stops and 45 of my closest companions having the adventure of a lifetime. I need to process this and write a ton of posts about it, but I want to highlight a few things before I forget. The colors and scents are already fading, despite my best efforts to cement touching the Taj Mahal’s marble walls, feeling the wind on a rooftop in Delhi while fireworks lit the sky to celebrate the New Year, and tasting masala lemonade and watching a hawk ride thermals over Lake Pichola in Udaipur. My brain is foggy and my senses have been overloaded.

And I am incredibly grateful.

Not every boy from West Texas is lucky enough and privileged enough to walk the halls of ancient Hindu temples. I am still in awe that it happened, as the wedding was something we’ve talked about for years, but it was always something to be waited on in the future. Being with it in the present was almost completely overwhelming. Being present can be hard work.

In the midst of all that though, I couldn’t shut off my minister brain. I was constantly on the lookout for stories and moments and images that would be great sermon content. So here’s the first of those:

Fatehpur Sikri- a palace and fort outside of Agra with a view of the Taj Mahal in the distance. Beautiful red sandstone, classic Indian architecture, wide palisades and big arch ways to accommodate elephants. Elephants! Three separate palaces for the different seasons, gardens and fountains, lots of Indian tourists and a few Westerners strung about.

And in the middle of it, amongst all the history, a single detail that rocked my world.

The ruler there, Akbar, made Fatehpur Sikri the capital of the Muslim Mughal Empire in the late 16 Century. Like many Indian temples and palaces, the grounds had a mosque, a few royal rooms, a place to meet with the “common folk,” and a place to meet with the VIPs.

The place to meet the VIPs, the diwan-i-khas, was where my world and the world of the Emperor Akbar crashed together after three hundred and fifty years. In the middle of this meeting hall stands an octagonal pillar that supports the upstairs meeting room where Akbar used to meet with his advisors. As a Muslim ruler, Akbar ruled over people who practiced Hinduism, Jainism, and Islam. He dealt with Christians and Zoroastrians from Europe and Persia. He lived in an interfaith world during a time when Europeans were slaughtering each other over differences in their Christian faith.

Akbar had a decision to make: enforce his Islamic ideals on the Hindu et al population like the French were doing, for example….or try something else.

He tried something else.

The pillar in the diwani-i-khas has intricate artwork all of it. As an Islamic palace, it has the usual shapes and style of Middle Eastern architecture, flowers and such. But the pillar has noticeable striations that segment it into distinct areas. Some of the carvings look out of place to the rest of it…..because they are.

In 1582 the Mughal ruler unified religious freedom in his kingdom. He “created a new religion” by allowing expression of Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism. The pillar in the diwan-i-khas has Islamic patterns, Hindu lotus flowers, Jain swastikas, Christian crosses and cathedrals, and Zoroastrian/Persian geometric patterns.

The pillar that supports the meeting hall where the decisions are made is built out of all these different religious symbols. Interfaith cooperation as the bedrock for democracy and peace. It sounds very UU to me.

I did a double take when the tour guide mentioned the year. Both because I assumed India had a history of religious conflict between Islam and Hinduism that went back millennia…..but here was proof that this wasn’t true. 1582!!! That’s awesome!

And then I did a triple take…because UUism celebrates its white-European roots as the beginning of the movement with the Christian Reformation, starting in 1519 with Martin Luther and really coming to a head in 1602 with the Unitarian Racovian Catechism…probably first drafted in the late 1570s, but not finalized til 1602/1604.

That’s twenty years after Akbar essentially created a UU practice in Agra, India with his pillar. So why don’t we learn about that?

There’s a lot of talk in UUism about decentering the white-European heritage, and embracing a living tradition. Here was historical proof that we can and should do that, because the living tradition of Universalism and religious respect and tolerance didn’t start only in Europe, but was alive and well in the heart of the Indian subcontinent before if not contemporaneously with the white folks.

We have much to learn still. I have much to learn still, but I’m taking that pillar with me wherever I go as a proud piece of my religious heritage. Shout out to the living tradition. Shout out to the interconnected web of existence. Shout out to religious plurality.

Shout out to you, Emperor Akbar. Shout out to India. Shout out to the trip of a lifetime.