The Freedom to Find Faith
Nace Lanier has been supporting the Clapham Group for years in various roles. He has done some coaching, leadership training, community building and a bit of religious instruction. The principal, Mark Rodgers, likes to call him the Clapham “vicar” per Henry Venn, one of the founders of the original Clapham sect.
I am not a constitutional law scholar. I am not the son of a constitutional law scholar. But I do work in America where I enjoy the freedom of religion recognized by the First Amendment to the Constitution. My job is actually uniquely positioned to highlight freedom. I am the director of the chapels found in our nation’s Capital airports: Dulles International and Reagan National. I encourage travelers and workers to engage their freedom in an open space set aside for prayer, meditation, contemplation and peace. I hope you are able to set aside a little time in your next trip to enjoy a visit at either Dulles (between A and B terminals) or Reagan (across from B gates).
The chapel is for everyone of any religion or of none. It is a safe, quiet place where people can find refuge in their travels. We are here to support your freedom to seek God. We are not looking to highlight or to diminish any particular faith. You bring your faith and we provide a place to seek God.
For I am grateful for our right to seek God wherever and whenever we may desire to do so. I am grateful for a place that any person can go to peacefully seek and pray towards the God they know. I am so very grateful that we have a peaceful, common place at the intersection of our world, the airport, that brothers and sisters of every faith honor each other in seeking God, as they know, there. I believe God is not hiding. We are free to seek and I trust we will find more than we ever thought to find.
There is an inherent tension between freedom and faith. In fact, I believe that there is an inherent tension between freedom and anything. Where is the line between mine and someone else’s freedom? But freedom gives us the opportunity to navigate the tension and not treat it as a problem to solve.
I believe freedom is best lived in embracing this tension. In the United States we are free to explore the world with our passports and our minds with wherever our consciences take us. We can roam from sea to shining sea or journey the whole world over. We can question what is the best government to rule and who should be in charge. But, more importantly, we are free to question who has created these heavens and earth. What power and brilliance could do such a thing? Can you know it? Is “it” something or is “it” personal? Go or sit. Ponder and pray.
We not only have the freedom to travel the world. We have freedom to seek the God who created the world. I get to see these two truths intersect in my occupation every day.
I have people from all over the world from all different faiths find peace at our chapels. Where else in the world can you have a Catholic praying the rosary on one side of a room while a Muslim is laying prostrate to the East on the other side? Both of them, practicing their faith, peacefully in prayer while honoring their neighbors' right to do the same. It is a beautiful tension created by the practice of their shared freedom of religion.
Like the nation’s airport chapels, the Clapham Group also embraces the intersection of people and their lived faith experiences. It has given unique insights to clients in how and why religion makes a difference in their audience, clientele, or workforce. How do people of faith interact with a product or service or policy?
Clapham seeks to help others navigate the tension inherent in our freedoms honestly, creatively, and productively. When a person or a company or an organization or a nation looks to plot a course that can respectfully traverse religious tension rather than solve a “problem,” our freedom, and our future can take flight.