Broadcast from our new studios in the Hudson Yards.
Partial transcript (will be updated)
T Carnes 0:07
Hi journeyers, I’m Tony Carnes. And this is A journey through NYC religions Television.
I was walking past a mosque in Queens the other day, and it suddenly came to me. New York City is the missionary capital of the world. The mosque itself has a missionary training school, sending out what they call messengers to places around the world. Some of the messengers go down the streets of New York City, and one of their converts is a native-born American who has become head of their school.
There are more missionaries moving in and out of New York City for more religions than are found in any other place around the world. There are Buddhist missionaries from Singapore with their four spiritual laws. India’s Prime Minister recently came to the city to join a mass gathering for Yoga Day at the United Nations. And who hasn’t heard from the ubiquitous door knockers of the Jehovah’s Witnesses? And these people, the missionaries, are savvy about the city. They study it carefully, like scribes writing on a Torah scroll. So, I thought we should have one of these experts on the US to come and talk. Welcome to the program. Chris Clayman.
Chris Clayman 1:17
Thank you, Tony Carnes.
With Journey, I studied the ethnic groups of the metropolitan area, just so that we understood the status of people’s faiths and religions and languages they were using, and ended up writing a book called EthniCity, the nation’s tongues and faiths of Metropolitan areas.
T Carnes 3:39
It’s a very good book. And I should add, that it really started with A journey through NYC religions before it existed. We were so young. I was trying to figure out what were we doing. And we went down to the Lower East Side. And I asked you to write something up as we visited some places.
Chris Clayman
Probably , horrible,
T Carnes 3:39
it was not good, because I didn’t know what to ask for. I asked for some stupid things to be written up. And it didn’t work very well. And so I started thinking, well, we got to figure this out. This is not working, because I knew that you could write something good. So I knew it came from me!
And so we started, I started developing A journey through NYC religions, in 2009 or so. And you started developing some new organizations, you started writing a book, which is called EthniCity.
It’s a very good book to get. It’s about those groups that are sometimes smaller here in NYC, and often the groups that have a few Christians in them. It’s about groups here in the city. knows who they are, what their religions are, and what the main religious sites?
Chris Clayman 4:46
Why do they come here? Where do they live?
T Carnes 5:06
A fascinating book, with color photos. And your co-writer was somebody I had taught in college.
T Carnes 25:22
You know, one last question. And I think we got about 30 seconds or so. If you had to summarize New York up to somebody else, if you want to know the city, would you say read the book of John in the Bible, or watch all 11 seasons of The Walking Dead or something else?
Chris Clayman 26:57
I would say neither. I would say go and hear someone’s story. New Yorkers are so busy, you know, we’re so survival-orientated, and especially post-COVID, people are scared of each other. But if you will sit and actually ask someone’s story, you’ll find out all sorts of things, including their own spiritual journey. You will find out about the city by listening to people.
T Carnes 27:21
Thank you, Chris. This is Tony Carnes for A Journey through NYC religions Television. I hope that you’ve learned a little bit about New York, the mission capital of the world. Who guessed it?
