Bridget Moix's Remarks at a Meeting with President Pezeshkian of Iran

Remarks as prepared for delivery for Bridget Moix’s September 24, 2024 meeting with President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran in New York City.

Good morning, President Pezeshkian, colleagues, and friends. My name is Bridget Moix and I’ve been asked to speak as one of the Christian delegates to this important gathering. I’m very grateful for this opportunity to dialogue with you and all our interfaith colleagues here at this critical time for our countries and our world. I believe our conversation today and this continued engagement by your administration and faith leaders in the US is an important avenue of dialogue to help de-escalate tensions between the United States and Iran and return our countries to a renewed era of diplomacy and cooperation.

Before I share a few thoughts, I want to first offer our condolences for all the lives lost and impacted in Iran, across the Middle East, and indeed globally due to the ongoing and devastating violence underway in Gaza, Israel, Lebanon, Iran, and around the region.  Our hearts have been breaking every day for months as we witness a level of death and violence that is truly devastating.  As Christians we believe every life is sacred and are mourning every single life lost and every person harmed in this escalating crisis.

I serve as General Secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation. FCNL is the oldest and one of the largest registered faith-based lobbying groups in the United States. We work in Washington, DC, to move the policies of the US Congress and the White House toward greater peace, justice, and care for our earth. We also educate and encourage people of many faiths across the United States to engage in dialogue with their own legislators on issues of peace and justice.  

My predecessors and others in this room have been involved in dialogue with Iranian officials, including some of your predecessors, for decades and we are very grateful that you have chosen to continue this ongoing interfaith dialogue with us. Thank you.  I joined others to meet with President Raisi the past two years in similar dialogues here in New York, and we continue to extend our condolences for his unexpected death. We were also very appreciative of the meetings his wife extended with women faith leaders and hope these women’s dialogues might continue as well in some fashion.

As a person of faith, I am called to seek peace and imagine a world free from war and the threat of war, with equity and justice for all – a beloved community where every individual’s potential may be fulfilled and where our common, beautiful earth is restored and sustained for all life.

I’m here as a leader of the Quaker religious community, also called the Religious Society of Friends (or just Friends), and as one of the mix of diverse Christian delegates here at this gathering. For those who may not know Quakers, we are one of the historic Christian peace churches, known for a commitment to nonviolence and peacebuilding as a lived expression of our religious beliefs and Jesus Christ’s teachings.  

Quakers believe that God lives in and through every individual, endowing all people with equal, sacred human dignity – or the Light within -, and with the ability to access the Divine directly through our own individual spiritual seeking.  We also believe we have a responsibility to put our faith into action in the world, striving to serve as “the hands of God” to heal the wounds of our suffering world and bring about the Beloved Community that God envisions for us.   

Our Christian delegation here today includes a diverse group of denominations representing a broad range of Christian traditions and millions of people across our country and connected globally with Christians around the world. While we bring a range of beliefs and practices here, I believe we all share common Christian values of peace, justice, truth, mercy, and love for God and neighbor. This love extends to all people globally of all faiths and countries, including your own, and these are values shared across all major religions.

We also all believe in the importance and value of interfaith dialogue as a means of building friendship, peace, and understanding across diverse communities and among countries. This is especially important for the Abrahamic traditions and as a method for advancing peaceful relations in the Middle East and with the US. We welcome this dialogue knowing that we come from different contexts, cultures, and religious communities, and having experienced the benefits of interreligious dialogue among faith leaders, scholars, and government officials, including your predecessors. While Islam is the dominant religion in Iran and Christianity is dominant in the US, we know there is diversity of religious belief and practice in both our countries, and that diversity is an expression of the expansive nature of God’s love.

I want you to know that our Quaker community, our fellow Christian communities, and people of many diverse faiths here in the US are tirelessly advocating for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the war and the regional escalations that have come with it.  Our hearts have been breaking again and again at the ongoing loss of human life and suffering we are seeing across the region.  

Many of us here have worked for years to promote diplomacy between the United States and Iran, including a return to the JCPOA, which I hope we can discuss more together, and we know that the path toward a true peace in the Middle East cannot be pursued without a full ceasefire, an end to the mass violence against civilians that we have witnessed in Gaza and the release of the remaining hostages who were abducted by Hamas on October 7, 2024.  

My own organization and some others here actively advocate for an end to US military aid to Israel, and an arms embargo for the whole region, to help de-escalate and end the ongoing retaliatory violence we have been witnessing for far too long now.

We also believe that former President Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran was both reckless and ultimately unsuccessful, bringing our two countries alarmingly close to war and causing unnecessary suffering for Iranian civilians.  

As tensions and misinformation grow within our own elections process now in the US, we believe seeking open, honest, and truthful dialogue together is more important than ever.  And we believe faith leaders have an important role to play here in our country, and globally, in building peace, advancing justice, and addressing global threats like the climate crisis and nuclear proliferation.

We believe the US and Iran can and should work together to achieve a just and sustainable peace in the Middle East for all of its inhabitants, and we are committed to doing all we can to support renewed diplomacy and continued dialogue among faith leaders, between our governments, and with others in the region.

I’d like to close by again expressing our gratitude for the invitation to meet and dialogue with you today, and sharing our hope for continuing this discussion and pursuing concrete steps toward peace between our nations. Specifically, if we might make a request of you here today: We would welcome an invitation for an interfaith delegation to visit Iran once again in the near future so that we can deepen this dialogue and build trust together. Would you welcome such a visit?

We also stand ready to support any efforts that might be possible to de-escalate tensions in the Middle East, advance nuclear non-proliferation agreements, carry out trust-building measures through civil society and at the political level, and open up direct diplomatic channels between the US and Iran.   

We hope you will share with us today some of your plans and hopes for pursuing greater diplomacy and peace among nations, and particularly between the US and Iran, at this critical time, and how you think we might be able to help.

As Quakers say, we will continue holding all the people of Iran and the Middle East, as well as our own country, in the Light, as we pray and work fervently for an end to the current crisis and the opening of a more peaceful path forward together.