Religious Crossroads in the 14th Street Subway Station: A Journey Home

Throughout the course of this semester, I've gone about looking at everyday occurrences in the City under a new lens. Instead of viewing things as just casual encounters or interactions, I've begun to look into the meaning behind certain interactions in seeing how they intertwine with the works we’ve read for the course as well as how religion is present in everyday life, as subtly as it may present itself at times.

Over seven million individuals ride the subway everyday to get to and from work or wherever they may be going on a given day. Each day, numerous cultural exchanges are exhibited on the subway and it can easily be seen that the subway is perhaps one of the most diverse crossroads in New York City; no where else in NYC is there such a melting pot of cultural, religious, socioeconomic and political diversity in such close and confined quarters, all trying to arrive at the same destination.

Last week while taking the subway to 14th Street, I saw two examples of different religious perspectives before I even got to the turnstile to swipe my metrocard. First, after walking down the stairs into the entrance, there was a man hanging up different images across the walls of the platform. One in particular was the famous “coexist” poster, which was made up of different religious symbols. (I’ve included a sample of what it looked like to the left, however he preferred I didn’t take pictures of them so I obliged.)

 Upon talking to him briefly I learned that his other images were of other scientology art images, and he was an individual who practiced scientology. His purpose of being there was not to push his religious viewpoints on to others, but to expose in a broader context what scientology is in plain sense to the world around him. He further explained that he believe the subway was an important place to do this, because few other places in the city provide direct access to such a crossroads of individuals; giving him the largest network to interact with and discuss his religious experiences with individuals of different viewpoints.

As I walked away, I noticed an index card resting upon a ledge before the turnstile. Normally, I would’ve thought nothing of it but after my experience with this man, thought it might provide more input into a blog post for this class. However, to my own surprise, it was the second of three religious encounters I would have on my subway trip home.  When I approached it, I realized it was possibly one of the most well known biblical verses John 3:16 reading “For God so loved the word, that he gave his only begotten son, that so ever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

This verse is historically known to be one of the most plain sense summations of Gods relationship with humanity on humanities quest to salvation. The two experiences connected together (the scientologist combined with the biblical verse just steps  away) provided a powerful connection to the omnipresence of religions coexisting of and by each other in the same world. Here, two different views on religion and life were being merged into one cultural experience and aided in substantiating each other.

Moreover, this relates to Leila Ahmed’s own personal journey in The Border Passage in the sense that Ahmed struggles to define her own identity through the numerous historical presences that have placed themselves on her land; creating an amalgamation and agglomeration of numerous different cultural expressions and viewpoints that have shaped the historical outlook of Islam over its history.

Furthermore, Ahmed recognizes through her journey that the future cannot be opened without an understanding of the past, and such an understanding is imperative for not repeating the mistakes of the past and being able to progress forward. Which also relates to the scientologists “coexist” message, Leila continually searches for a way to craft her own identity while letting her history coexist within the identity she is curating for herself as she progresses along her journey.

Even more fitting, as I left the 59th Street subway station to return home to Fordham, I saw a couple being approached by a Jehovah’s Witness, further exemplifying the embeddedness of religion and the diversification of humanity and our interactions with each other and specifically individuals of different backgrounds of ourselves and how we can all “coexist” with one another. So I carried on my way home, coexisting with the world around me, only now more cognizant of how our interactions all play a role in affecting each other and the history of world as time goes on.