My name is Katrin Scholtz Barth. I am Kai’s wife and I have my own consulting firm in Washington DC on environmental consulting. I also teach six years at the University of Pennsylvania and for two years at Harvard University about ecological and sustainable institution design and watershed protection in particular green roots. I have um, first of all I have to start in thanking Ali and Jenna for this wonderful trip and the group in general for great company throughout those seven days with conversations that I would never had imagined.
As Kai kind of like hinted already we both were some much skeptical in the beginning because we believe very strongly that there is a; the separation between the church and the state is very important for various different reasons, and having to; what actually made us come to the trip was the curiosity to really to be exposed to the exactly what you advertised: The interfaith dialog and the intercultural exchange and to really have the opportunity to talk to the mill field of this regular people just like ourselves with the same aspirations that happen to have Muslim faith. I very much appreciate this, and also just within our group I very much appreciate that we had the diversity particularly Susan because she is one of the examples of Muslim in our group, and she is wearing the headscarf which from you personally has always been a hurdle or barrier to communicate. So thank you very much Susan for being on this trip and for patience and answering my questions. Thank you for the exposure to different families.
When it comes to religion I am, may be wanted to offer a few things from a very personal perspective. I come from a country that no longer exists. I was born and raised in East Germany with a very strong separation between church and state to the point where church course was forbidden as well. So I consider myself the true atheist or out of me the atheist, even that seems to be kind of a bad term in this way. I hope that education being a two way road with my humble presence in this group I can also offer some value to the group itself. When I came from East Germany to America with Kai together he used to introduce myself as this is my atheist communist wife, and we both thought it was very funny until we realized that it is not funny at all for Americans (laughs), so for us it was a learning experience to be a little more sensitive in that regard. During my first work in environmental consulting firm in Minneapolis, I had a lot of conversations about religion with some of my work colleagues and they asked me where I come from, so what do you believe? And I said I believe in my husband, and they said wow! I want to have one of those East German girls who think that I am God! (laughs) And so what I ensure when I say what say this I can live without religion but I can’t live without love. I can live without God but I can’t live without my husband, but in the end, for me that’s both the same.
