Chairman Dr. Michael Boss, Executive Director Alison Van Dyck, President Karen Van de Vrande, Board of Directors, fellow awardees, distinguished guests who are gathered here for this Temple of Understandance 65th anniversary celebration. Good evening all. It is with a profound sense of humility that I join you all, albeit virtually, to accept this Juliet Hollister Award.
It is an honour for which I am truly grateful and for which I sincerely thank the Temple of Understanding. I must tell you that this is a moment of appreciation, yes gratitude even, but it is also one that causes me to pause and to reflect on the magnitude of the work we have done and on what still lies before us. I believe that this is a shared understanding and responsibility that connects us all, here and across the globe.
And so tonight, noting this, I begin with gratitude but also with admiration for my fellow honorees, Dr. Ephraim Isaac, Najah Bazzi, Johanna Freeman and Rainn Wilson. Your collective work and the impact it continues to have on people directly reflects the Juliet Hollister’s original vision when she founded the Temple of Understanding in 1960. Sixty-five years ago, Ms. Hollister acted on a simple yet profound realisation that the world was in peril unless we recognised and cultivated the gifts, wisdom and insights of our diverse religious traditions to drive positive social change.
I say to you all, you are achieving that with your actions. Congratulations. My friends, if you look across the world’s faiths and religions, you will find a shared moral code.
There’s a call for compassion, for fairness, for justice. And whether expressed through the teachings of the Bible, the Koran, the Tanakh or in Rastafarianism, Hinduism or Buddhism, or the numerous teachings and traditions of the world’s indigenous peoples, each reminds us that the measure of our humanity lies in how we treat one another and how we care for the earth itself. The language may differ, but the lesson is the same.
We are stewards, not owners of this world. And we are stewards equally of each other’s well-being. And so, to receive an award named in Juliet Hollister’s honour is deeply moving.
For it affirms not my own journey, but the journey that my country Barbados has sought to embody. Post-colonial Barbados has always been guided by the spirit of Ubuntu, the African philosophy that reminds us, I am because we are. It teaches us that our humanity is bound to each other, that we rise or fall together.
And that true strength comes from community, not isolation. My friends, that understanding is what guides our steps, particularly as a nation. And so, many other vulnerable small island developing states and countries in the global south face the ravages of the climate crisis and are truly guided by the same principle.
This is not a distant theoretical situation. It is a present moral failure being paid by those whodid the least to cause it. I refer, of course, to the climate crisis.
And just a few days ago, our sister nations of Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti were impacted seriously by Hurricane Melissa, the most powerful storm ever to strike Jamaica, and indeed has left Western Jamaica almost fully devastated. Within a few hours, it claimed dozens of lives across the countries, tore through communities, destroyed essential infrastructure, and displaced tens of thousands, indeed possibly hundreds of thousands, leaving behind a level of destruction that the United Nations has deemed unprecedented. As it affected Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Cuba in the span of a few days, we also saw damage and loss of life, in fact, in Haiti.
We continue to send our thoughts and our prayers and our support to all those affected and will match it in tangible ways given the scale of the devastation. My friends, this moral failure also manifests in other startling ways, no longer confined to the tropics. Consider the nation of Iceland, a nation once defined by its cool temperatures, recently experiencing record-breaking heat, and seeing now mosquitoes, the deadliest animal on earth, being found on their shores for the first time.
This climate crisis is literally rewriting the atlas and threatening every region on our planet. But our global financial rules, which can literally make or break a nation, remain rooted in a past that no longer exists. This is why Barbados launched the Bridgestone Initiative along with others.
While defined by some as an economic proposal, I suggest that it is really truly a moral blueprint for equity, equity in finance but leading to equity in development. It is a refusal to accept a system where the most vulnerable, those on the front line of this crisis, must choose between educating their children, healing their sick, building out their infrastructure after a catastrophic storm or natural disaster, all while managing their debt. The Bridgestone Initiative reframes international climate finance by setting a moral standard.
Those most vulnerable must have fair, affordable access to the financing required to build resilience and transition in their countries. It is an argument that global institutions must finally stop measuring a nation’s worth by its GDP alone, historic at that, and start measuring it by its vulnerability, underscored by the moral imperative that we have first and foremost to save every single citizen and to protect our planet. So as I close tonight, I note that your 65th anniversary celebration calls on us all, envisaging the future of the interfaith movement.
I submit to you that the success of this movement is inextricably linked to the future of our planet. Achieving the change that the world needs will take shared will, courageous moral leadership, and yes, collective action. And I believe that the moral energy that fueled Juliet Hollister’s vision, the pursuit of wisdom across traditions, must now be wholly directed towards global cooperation.
Those tenets of compassion, fairness, and justice, championed by organizations like yours, will be what makes the defining difference globally. Friends, I thank you for your time here tonight, and once again, I extend my deepest appreciation and thanks to the Temple of Understanding for recognizing this shared mission. May we all together continue to fight for what is right, and ensure the moral compass that we set today guides a secure and equitable future for all.
I thank you.