A priest, a pastor, a rabbi solve the “crisis” of the shrinking religious population in a divided America: this is an “opportunity”

It’s like the old joke: a priest, a pastor and a rabbi go to the bar.

Except that the religious power trio didn’t go to a bar last Tuesday. It was Shin Center of Thought and Culture on New York’s famous Bleecker Street, although, contrary to what the name might suggest, there is nothing special here gloomy that Rev. AR Bernard, Rabbi Joseph Potasnyk, and Cardinal Timothy Dolan explored before an eager audience before the 2024 election.

Although there is faith in general decline — as fewer and fewer Americans claim to be of any one religion — Bernard, Potasnik and their guest of honor, Archbishop Dolan of New York, were invited to the Sheen Center stage for their live broadcast on WABC radio Sunday morning. talk and debate about the current state of religion and politics.

Two topics that most people actively try to avoid.

“Getting along is a lot easier than we think,” said Shina Center Executive Director MaryLou Pagano, opening the meeting of religious minds. “They really care about interfaith events. They care about being diverse but getting along. And there is no better time than now.”

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That’s exactly the kind of inclusion that the energetic trio embodied — not only with their invitation from Shin, of which they’re also a member — but also with the invitation they extended to people of all faiths.

Or perhaps more accurately, no creed at all.

“I think we have a crisis here,” Rabbi Postanik said, addressing the decline of religion in America, especially among younger generations. “But we have an opportunity. Many of these young people will not walk through the front door of the house of worship, but they will go to the food pantry. They will do anything to help others. And they will say, “I’m not religious, I’m spiritual.” And we try to tell them, “What you call spiritual, we call religious.”

“At the end of the day, it’s what you do, not what you say, because faith is measured by behavior.”

— Rabbi Joseph Potasnyk, who preaches with the motto “we do not impose, we offer.”

“When you feed the hungry, help the poor, and do something to rehabilitate others, it’s religious,” explained Potasnyk. “At the end of the day, it’s what you do, not what you say, because faith is measured by behavior.”

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The trio sat down with Fox News Digital ahead of their show to discuss the upcoming presidential election, which causes severe stress and anxiety for many if not most Americans.

“The message of Jesus transcends the political landscape of his time, and it transcends the political landscape of our time,” shared Rev. Bernard of the Christian Cultural Center. “The reality is that we live in this world and we are affected by policies, systems, structures and practices. And we must react. And we react through voting. And when we think about voting, we’re actually giving the power to someone to make decisions about the quality of our lives and the future of our country, so we have to take that very seriously and envision a nation that is consistent with our key principles of human dignity and the common good.”

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Rabbi Potasnik, who is the executive vice president of the New York Council of Rabbis, compared the current division in the country to the divergence of history between the book and its film adaptation.

“We are called people of the book. And I think the sad part of it is that today the movie is different from the book. He almost contradicts the book. In our houses of worship, we talk about respect. We talk about unity, togetherness, solidarity, cooperation, communication, all these things, but when you go outside the house of prayer, you see a completely different world.”

“We are polarized. We don’t just disagree with each other. We denigrate each other,” he continued. “I think our task is to have movie and book similar to each other. So we need to keep telling people that it’s okay to disagree. It’s okay to have a different point of view, but it’s not okay to take someone else’s point of view and completely devalue it, because we’re all God’s children. If we are children of God, we are expected to act in a certain way with dignity and decency. And I hope we will close the gap.”

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Cardinal Dolan, appointed 15 years ago by Pope Benedict XVI as the tenth and current Archbishop of New York, added to the rabbi’s analogy, pleading with the people: and politicians of different persuasions to treat each other with more respect.

“We need to be as passionate and excited about the issues as we can be, but always respect the people who are working on them.”

— Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York

“When the three of us studied ministry training, when we studied debate, when we studied rhetoric, when we studied logic, we realized that the weakest argument is when you attack the person,” Dolan told Fox News Digital. “Follow the principles. Follow the policy. Follow the challenges. Don’t lash out. Do not try to judge the motives or lash out at the person. We should be as passionate and excited about the issues as we can be, but always respect the people who hold them. And that’s what we don’t need, these ad hominem campaigns, and I’m talking about both sides.”

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“Wouldn’t you guys think that if we had a woman or a man candidate who said, ‘I’m going to run a positive campaign? I will not talk about another person. I’m going to talk about their politics and the issues, and I’m not going to talk about me, I’m going to talk about the issues, and I’m going to talk about what I hope to achieve— No to attack what they say they hope to achieve,” the archbishop declared. “Does that sound naive? I think maybe it is. But boy, I wish it was.’

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With the election just days away, the trio ended the evening’s conversation by reminding their audience, as well as ours, that having hope for a nation’s future begins with faith in one’s higher power—and that each person’s nature requires the other.

“You cannot be a person of faith without being a prisoner of hope,” Reverend Bernard urged.

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