Journey between two worlds

I am delighted to be back in Chelmsford Cathedral almost exactly ten years since I left.  I was ordained here 30 years ago and have vivid memories of a sweltering June day in 1976 – one of the hottest since the war.  Two of the ordinands passed out in the heat and had to be revived with a watering can outside the Cathedral during the service!  I am sure the temperature here these days is altogether cooler and more rational! 

During my time as Archdeacon of West Ham in the early 1990’s I often made the journey from Manor Park in Newham to Chelmsford for meetings.  In those days – some 15 years ago - it often felt like a journey between two worlds.  The borough of Newham was then (and of course is even more so now) a place where communities from all over the world co-exist.  In the early days of the Church Urban Fund I drew up proposals for an interfaith project and found myself having to negotiate through all kinds of synodical and committee hurdles.  We were a very long way from a consensus in those days that interfaith encounter and dialogue was an appropriate priority for the Church.  And in my journey from Newham to Chelmsford I often felt I had to leave behind the world of interfaith encounter and enter a more traditional ecclesiastical environment in this part of Essex. 

Change in the last ten years

Things have changed dramatically in the last ten years.  Awareness of the world-wide significance of relations between faiths – especially the Abrahamic faiths – has deepened and intensified since 9/11.  In Leicester, too, the journey between the city and the country has often felt like a journey between two worlds, but there we are learning that these issues do not only affect the complexities of urban living but are right at the heart increasingly of our understanding of our faith whether in the city or the countryside.  Faith in all its diversity, in spite of all the secularist theories, is evidently a phenomenon we cannot ignore. 

It is perhaps the very resilience of the Abrahamic Faiths in secular Western societies which means that public discussion about values often takes place in the teeth of an antagonistic, ignorant or sceptical press.  Three weeks ago, in the wake of a debate in Parliament about euthanasia in which proposals to legalise assisted suicide had been

opposed by all the national faith leaders of the major world traditions, Polly Toynbee’s withering attack in The Guardian represented faith as irrational, insensitive and obsessional.  It’s a theme that has been running intensively since 9/11.  Professor Richard Dawkins wrote in The Guardian two days after 11th September 2001.  He satirically considered what kind of onboard guidance system was best for a missile.  He concluded that for intelligence and versatility what you need is “a human being who doesn’t mind being blown up”.  In order to develop such human beings Dawkins went on: “feed them a complete and self consistent mythology to make the big lie sound plausible when it comes.  As luck would have it we have just the thing to hand.  A ready-made system of mind control which has been honed over the centuries, handed down through generations.  Millions have been brought up on it.  It is called religion.  All we need is to round up a few of these faith heads and give them flying lessons.”

Not everybody puts it quite so dramatically.  The columnist Matthew Paris wrote a piece in The Times recently in which he made the point that the words “fundamentalism” or “extremism”, whether used of Christians or Muslims or Jews, merely leaves us with the feeling that these are the people who are thoroughgoing religionists.  The mild Christians and the more conciliatory Muslims are doing a sort of “religion-lite”.  The real thing, he implied, automatically involved intolerance and conflict.  More recently, the Daily Mail and The Express have taken the opportunity to sow seeds of fear in the minds of their readers as a result of the recent riots in French cities – represented by these newspapers as "Muslim inspired". 

Thankfully, events since 11th July have not borne out the expectations and the predictions of the aggressively secular commentators.  There is evidently an audience for rational and sensible discussion about how the great world faith traditions, and especially the Abrahamic faiths, mobilise their traditions in the service of cohesion and peacemaking.  It is in that assumption that this series of lectures has been arranged tonight.  What I want to do in the time available is to explore briefly the different place of Abraham in the three world faiths.  I shall want to sketch some of the key Biblical material that shapes a Christian approach to the other Abrahamic faiths and then to consider how this plays out in terms of the way different Christian communities have responded to the presence and challenge of other faiths.  This will inevitably take us into questions around "conversion, conquest and co-existence".  Finally, I want to describe some of the contemporary outworkings of this in the city of Leicester and especially in the last few months since the London bombing atrocities.  The emphasis of this will be practical rather than scholarly,  but it may have the benefit of lived experience at a local level.

Last May, during a tour of eastern Turkey, I visited Urfa on the edge of the great plain of Harran.  It is the place where, according to Muslim tradition, Abraham is believed to have been born.  The cave of Abraham is a little room with white walls carved in stone.  It leads to a larger underground cave with a pool of water believed to have healing powers.  Looming up behind the cave is a hill with the old Roman walls still standing tall.  Two giant Corinthian columns stand behind representing (according to local belief) the catapult from which King Nimrod of Babylon is said to have had Abraham thrown into a pit of burning logs, a punishment for the young man’s desecration of idols.  As Abraham landed, an angel came and turned the pit into a pool of water and the logs into fish.  The pools now seethe with carp.  This is a site much visited by Muslims, where account of the place of Abraham is so very different from that of Christianity. 

For Muslims, Abraham (originally a non Muslim) is connected to Islam, and the line of true religion comes from Abraham through the Prophets to Mohammed.  Abraham is therefore the model Muslim – the true and faithful believer; the one who turned away from all that is false, having surrendered himself to God. Mohammed accepts that Jews and Muslims are children of Abraham, but not exclusively so.  If Abraham was the true Muslim, then Islam is the oldest and most authentic religion, even before it was crowned by the revelation of the Koran.

For Jews, the God invoked in Israel is the God of Abraham, the discoverer of monotheism.  Abram takes a new name, Abraham, as a sign of his election, and the covenant, that through him was initiated God’s plan for Israel, and that that through him and Israel all the nations will be blessed.  He is given a promise of the land which is integral to the Abrahamic covenant.  God’s promises to His people do not fail. 

For Christians, Abraham is the type of faith which in the end is superseded and fulfilled by Jesus – “before Abraham was, I am”.   In Hebrews Chapter 11, Abraham does not reach the Promised Land but points forward to the Kingdom, and this is to be found in Jesus as the pioneer and perfector of our faith.  For the Jew Paul (Galatians 3: 26 – 29) all Christ’s offspring are now Abraham’s offspring – “heirs according to the promise”.  In Galatians 3 and 4 Jesus Christ has redeemed us, that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Galatians.  The promise to the children of Abraham is not cancelled but expanded, as we all become potentially children of Abraham as members of the Body of Christ.

There clearly isn’t space this evening to explore the impact of these three different traditions on each other.  Suffice to say that Christianity and Islam have of course regarded themselves as world religions in the intention of their founders and have grown through conversions, often extremely rapidly.  Judaism remains essentially an ethnic faith in which conversion is not impossible but difficult.  The Jewish mission is to reveal God and how we are to live – not to make people Jews. 

In three-faiths groups, Christians are involved with Muslims and Jews, as common people of the Book.  Local groups may vary in name.  The one in Leicester is called, at the suggestion of an Imam, The Leicester Family of Abraham Group.  Nationally, the Three Faiths Forum was founded in 1997.  This is a high profile organisation, based in London, but part of its aim is the establishment and development of local groups.  They also encourage the setting-up of groups within various professions, such as medicine or the law.

It has been my experience that, at the local level, holding these three faiths together is not easy – not at the relational level, but when it comes to dealing with issues.  The very similarity of the Jewish and Muslim faiths theologically and in terms of law and spirituality stands against the deep divisions over Israel/Palestine.  Within the three faiths themselves there is a diversity of opinion over this issue.  The Jewish community, for example, has groups such as Just Peace, which are strongly opposed to deepening Israeli government entrenchment and are working to bring peace with justice.  Our group nearly broke up because of divisions in this area, and it was only possible to proceed following Christian facilitation of reconciliation around misunderstandings, and a moratorium on discussion of the Middle East for some time.  The group was able to stabilise and move forward by concentrating on learning more about each other, our traditions and personal faith, and working to discover how best to contribute together to the good of the local communities.

Both Oxford and Liverpool have three-faiths groups which meet at the invitation of the bishops of those cities.  The Oxford group is the older of the two, having met since 1992, and is comprised of scholars who together work on publications.

Key to some of the reconciling of difference have been the discussions about the place of the Bible and of the Koran within each tradition.  The Bible, both Old and New Testaments, is written out of a wide variety of different contexts.  The Koran comes from one context: Arabia in the early 7th century AD.  It consists of revelations to one person, dating over a period of perhaps 20 years, from 610AD.  The Koran itself does not change, but much depends on the place and time to which it is being interpreted. 

The Bible consists of 66 books covering a millennium of time and a vast range of social and cultural backgrounds.  There is always an inter-religious context, whether the people of Israel find themselves in Egypt, in the wilderness, in Palestine or in Babylon.  They are surrounded by other Gods: the Gods of Egypt, Assyria, Canaan, Babylon, of Greece and of Rome.  There is the very crude idol worship of the Baalim, with its animal and even human sacrifice; there is also Emperor worship, mystery religions, high Greek philosophies.  The Bible contains no explicit reference to, or even hidden acknowledgement of the existence of, the Indian faiths of Hinduism or Buddhism.  Islam and Sikhism were, of course, later in origin.  By far the majority of the writers of the Bible’s 66 books were Jews.

Many different Bible texts could be addressed in argument about the relation between the Abrahamic Faiths.  The central Christian understanding of God is a God of love, forgiveness, generosity, freedom, faithfulness and justice. 

Texts which have especially shaped the Christian tradition’s positive approach to the other Abrahamic faiths might include Matthew 25:31 – the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats - when justification lies not in belief or in belonging, but in action on the part of those in need.  Matthew chapter 5 – the Sermon on the Mount, in which blessedness is attributed to those who have a particular orientation of the heart rather than any doctrinal allegiance.  There is the parable from Luke chapter 18, of the Pharisee who considers himself much better than others and is convinced that he is right with God.  The publican does not even enter the temple, but says the simple prayer “God be merciful to me, a sinner”.  It is he, the Jew of doubtful credentials, who goes away justified, saved.  And there is Luke chapter 10 – the answer to the question “who is my neighbour? How do I inherit eternal life?”  The answer is: by being like my neighbour of another faith.  In this parable a Samaritan, a despised outsider, does what the priest does not do.  It leaves us with a further question to consider: is the Samaritan just an example of how to enter eternal life, or can he himself enter eternal life?

Of course St John – “I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me” (14:6) is often quoted in aid of an exclusive approach to other faiths.  What is meant by the way here?  Not simply declaring faith in Jesus.  The text comes just after the story of Jesus’ washing of his disciples’ feet and his commandment that they likewise should wash one another’s feet.  This is the way of self sacrifice that few follow.  Indeed, taking up the cross and following him is almost too much for all the disciples, including Peter, despite the fact that at the end of chapter 13 he affirms that he is ready to give up his life.  The meaning is clear – the way is narrow and we have to leave others, whether Christian, Muslim or Jew, to God’s mercy. 

In a remarkable lecture on Christian theology and other faiths, given by Archbishop Rowan Williams two years ago, the Archbishop summarised Christian theology in these words: “Christian theology says that the world exists because of the utterly free decision of a holy power that is more like personal life than anything else; that we can truthfully speak of it as if it had mind and will.  It says that the purpose of this creation is that what is brought into being from nothing should come to share as fully as possible in the abundant and joyful life of the maker.  For intelligent beings, this involves exercising freedom – so that the possibility is there of frustrating one’s own nature by wrong and destructive choices.  The purpose of God to share the divine life is so strong, however, that God acts to limit the effects of this destructiveness and to introduce into creation the possibility of a closer relation with the Divine through the events of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, above all in his sacrificial death.  This new relation, realised by the Spirit of God released in Jesus’ rising from the grave, is available in the life of the community that gathers to open itself to God’s gift by recalling Jesus and listening to the God-directed texts which witness to this history".

Let me explore for a few moments how some of these key texts play out in terms of the way, as I see it, Christian communities respond to other faiths, and especially the other Abrahamic faiths. 

First, there is what we might call the ideology of isolation.  An isolated community tends to be one in which there is broad consensus about the way things are.  What is true is what everybody in the community knows to be true. Truth is a self-referent, self sustaining fact.   Those who contradict what everybody knows to be true are regarded as either ignorant, deluded or liars.  The isolated community is not able to take seriously the existence of other views of reality.  The theology of any such group is likely to be one which presents those who are members of the group as those who know the truth, and other communities as ignorantly waiting to hear the word of truth.  The text from St John Chapter 14 - “I am the way, the truth and the life” - is often used as scriptural justification for this ideology in Christian communities.  There are examples of this theology in the Anglican Communion, in the Church of England in this country and in my own diocese - indeed, intensifying in some areas where the Church feels itself to be under pressure, as discussed in Presence and Engagement. 

Second, there is what we might call the ideology of hostility.  When, for one reason or another, a community is no longer isolated, the impact of another construction of reality can be experienced as a threat.  Isolation can turn to hostility.  When this happens, the other community tends to be described not simply as confused, ignorant or lacking faith, but rather as demonic, the enemy of God, in Christian terminology the anti-Christ.  We have seen this vividly in Northern Ireland and we see it in relations between parts of the Christian church and Islamic fundamentalism in Africa, Indonesia and elsewhere.  There are even aspects of it in Hindu nationalist sects in the Asian subcontinent. 

Thirdly, there is the ideology of competition.  A competitive relationship between faith communities has two main characteristics.  In the first place, competing communities explicitly acknowledge that they have some similarities.  They are, so to speak, in the same business.  Secondly, competitive communities place considerable stresses on their differences. They stress that the ways in which we differ from other communities make us superior.  It might be acknowledged, sometimes grudgingly, that other communities are not totally outside the truth, but that on the other hand the full truth is to be found only in the beliefs and practices of our own communities.  This kind of competitiveness renders it unlikely that dialogue in any constructive sense is going to be pursued.  We can see these kinds of attitudes in the rioters in Northern cities two years ago and in more intense ways again in Africa and Asia.

The combination of hostility and competitiveness erupts regularly around the world and most recently in anti-Christian violence in Pakistan.

Take, for example, this report from The Tablet on effects of an

ideology of hostility and competition: 

Muslim world’s duty to Christians

Anti-Christian violence in Pakistan is not new, but the latest outbreak is particularly disturbing.  Provoked by a false and apparently malicious rumour that a Pakistani Catholic had burnt a copy of the Qur’an, a mob rampaged through the town of Sangla Hill, burning down the Catholic church and two Protestant churches as well as a convent and a church school.  According to Archbishop Lawrence Saldana of Lahore, this was no spontaneous outburst of anger.  It was orchestrated, and local mosque officials had been whipping up anti-Christian feeling in the community to such an extent that 450 local Christian families had fled the area before the attacks.

An allegation of blasphemy is easily made when a Muslim wishes to harm a Christian rival or competitor, who then faces prosecution and, eventually, the death penalty (or, as occasionally happens, assassination in custody).  All this is despite the fact that Catholicism provides no motive for desecrating the Qur’an in the first place.  It teaches its members to respect other faiths, particularly their holy books.  Nevertheless, Pakistan’s server blasphemy law is a sword of Damocles hanging over the head of every Pakistani Christian, and that is intolerable.

In many other parts of the Muslim world, relations with local Christian minorities have been deteriorating in recent years.  They are easily targeted and easily slandered by Islamic extremists, who reject those parts of Islamic teaching that require Muslims to protect religious minorities and recognise their rights.  Often the same groups who target Christian communities are engaged in a wider struggle against the more moderate Muslim authorities, whose authority they reject.

The extreme radicalisation of Islam is one of the greatest threats to world peace and national and international harmony, and demands a carefully gauged response from the West and from the leaders of Christian Churches.  They have some influence in Pakistan, not least at a time when President Musharraf needs the goodwill of the international community if he is to raise the sort of help his people desperately need in the aftermath of the Kashmir earthquake.  But they have even more influence in two key Muslim countries where Christian minorities have felt especially beleaguered, Turkey and Iraq.  The West should not shrink from applying appropriate pressure in the name of human rights, nor should Christian leaders fail to speak up for their co-religionists – as, in an ironic reversal of roles, Iraq’s President Talabani urged Pope Benedict XVI to do at an audience at the Vatican this week.  Such displays of solidarity are understood and accepted in the Muslim world.

In marked contrast to this, there are those who call for an ideology of partnership.  This is the one associated with Professor John Hick.  Broadly it is that all religions stand for the same basic principle: they assert the sovereignty of God over human life.  They worship God, they reveal God, they mediate God’s salvation to humanity.  They have in common the same message, the same goal.  They express their understanding of God in different ways but they are only different understandings of the same phenomenon.  On this view the differences are not of the essence of each religion.  They do not affect the validity of each religion as a mediator of the knowledge of God and of salvation.  The difficulty with this is that it can only be pursued if one is prepared to see one’s own tradition as a single expression of God’s revealing activity.  This position demands that representatives of differing faiths come to the view that their differences are not essential to their faith.  This runs very close to the Matthew Paris description of “religion-lite”.  In fact serious theological discussion between Christians, Muslims and Jews reveals profoundly essential differences which need not to be airbrushed out but addressed. 

That brings me to the fifth approach, the relationship which I would describe as the ideology of dialogue which comes closest to the Christian gospel.  It is around this view that a great deal of our practical work in Leicester and in East London and in many of the major cities of the UK is based.  Dialogue is not monologue (unlike this lecture).  A true relationship of dialogue has no other purpose than itself.  Dialogue is the end of dialogue.  To be in dialogue is not to be in control of an agenda.  It is not to be in pursuit of conversion or necessarily of changes of heart or mind.  In a sense it could be argued that the choice between monologue and dialogue is the choice between death and life.  If to be human is to live in community then to alienate ourselves from community in monologue is to cut ourselves off from our own humanity.  We enter dialogue not motivated by what we can get out of it but as Christians at the command of Jesus to love our neighbour.  This requires being in a relationship with our neighbour which is mutual, reciprocal and where each takes the deepest concerns of the other seriously, respectfully and in a spirit of love.

It seems to me that an ideology of dialogue has four dimensions to it:

a)   A Social Dimension. 

The New Testament demonstrates God’s love in Jesus, reaching out across the barriers created by religion.  To be a disciple of Jesus is to forge trusting and respectful relationships with people of other faiths.  It is for this reason that the diocese of Leicester has pioneered a faiths regeneration project in the city.  Through contacting and networking some 240 faith groups in the city, a faiths regeneration officer has begun to make significant contributions towards the city’s strategic partnership and the whole agenda of regeneration for the city.  The project engages 443 social projects including support for people with HIV/AIDS, assistance for asylum seekers and refugees, child care provisions and aid for the elderly.  Further, at the end of Ramadan and at the celebration of Eid, Christian and Muslim ministers met together jointly to break the fast and to raise money for charitable purposes in the Asian subcontinent.  The St Philip’s Centre, a converted church building in a middle class suburb of Leicester which is occupied predominantly by Muslims (and which is next door to a huge mosque which holds nearly 1,000 men at the Friday prayers), has been converted into the St Philip’s Centre for Christian Study and Engagement in a Multi Faith Society.  This is likely to become a national initiative providing a place where Christians can meet to learn about other faiths and to share that learning with police, health professionals, teachers, social community workers, local politicians and many, many others whose awareness and interest in these subjects is now being raised. 

b)   There is an ethical dimension to interfaith dialogue.  This overlaps with the social dimension, but it particularly becomes viable where as Christians we find we share many concerns and values with the Abrahamic faiths, in particular in our advocacy of peace, justice and a more humane society.  I’ve mentioned already the common stand on euthanasia and assisted suicide in the recent debate on the House of Lords Bill.  Similar commonality of interest has emerged in some of the responses to the Terrorism Bill currently before Parliament.  They have also emerged in relation to issues affecting the environment.  Eighteen months ago in Leicester we were able to bring together representatives of the Mosques and the Synagogues as well as the Churches and Hindus and Sikhs to spend a day sharing ways in which their traditions shape our responsibility for the preservation of the environment.  This is a major area where common values effect a common social agenda.

c)   Thirdly, there is a missionary dimension to dialogue.  Increasingly we find that others want Christians to speak to them of our faith.  And reciprocally they want to speak to us of theirs.  The widely experienced consequence of this kind of conversation is the deepening of mutual respect, the strengthening of confidence, and the development of a capacity to articulate one’s own faith.  This missionary dimension affects the present ‘Faith Schools’ agenda. 

d)   Fourthly, there is a spiritual dimension to interfaith dialogue.  As St Paul said to the Athenians (recorded in the book of Acts, chapter 17) all nations will “search for God and perhaps reach for Him and find Him – though indeed He is not far from each one of us.  For in Him we live and move and have our being; even as some of your poets have said: we too are His offspring”.  Christians today are coming to discern the presence and activity of God among people of different faiths through open and trustful meeting and sharing with them.  Interfaith encounter unquestionably renews, and enriches and transforms, our Christian discipleship. It helps us to become better Christians.

In these four dimensions the Christian churches have a key role to play and the Church of England in particular.  It is clear in Leicester that without the leadership role of the Church of England much of the development of interfaith work would suffer.  This point is endorsed by the Parekh report on the future of multi ethnic Britain published some five years ago. What it says is certainly borne out by my experience and I quote:

“For some commentators a review of the issues currently under debate, such as the place of Bishops in the House of Lords, daily prayers at Westminster and the Coronation Oath, would lead to the disestablishment of the Church of England.  Holders of this view welcome the fact that the Church of England speaks on and influences public affairs well beyond its own pulpits and has a sense of responsibility for all people locally as well as nationally.  It fosters civic responsibility in its own members and those who look to it for leadership; prepares shared rituals at times of collective emotion; helps to ensure that pastoral care and counselling are available in hospitals and prisons; and plays a part in finding ways of promoting respect for the religious world views of people who are not its own members.  These contributions to society should be shared by a wider range of faith communities, not abolished.”

In various ways these issues have played out in my practical experience in Leicester.  On 7th July I happened to be travelling early by train into London following a late night meeting in Leicester.  I arrived at St Pancras at five minutes to nine and found myself shut out of Kings Cross tube station just as the appalling events were unfolding below ground.  I walked the 50 minutes or so across London to the House of Lords, where I was scheduled to say prayers before the start of business.  As I did so, crowds were pouring out of tube stations all over London and it was clear that a major emergency was unfolding.  The security services were heroic, calm, reassuring and efficient.  As the Home Office Minister made a statement to the House of Lords it fell to me to respond, assuring the House that the churches would do all in our power to prevent conflict between faith communities and to avoid undermining the carefully constructed social cohesion in our cities. 

In the last four months that undertaking has broadly been honoured.  As I made my way back to the station on the afternoon of 7th July I heard from colleagues that the police headquarters had already convened a meeting of faith leaders for six o’clock that evening.  This was not a panic reaction, it was the response to an already well-established process put in place for just this kind of emergency.  The police were clear in their briefing of the faith leaders and shared a risk assessment of whether such attacks might happen in Leicester in the immediate aftermath.  The leadership of the police indicated their intention to listen to us and to support us.  Our interfaith advisor had already prepared a draft statement ready to be issued on behalf of all the faiths, and the police, wanting to support us, issued their own statement in parallel with ours next morning.  All the media outlets locally gave this major attention and space, all responding with immense maturity to the situation – Radio Leicester, the city’s daily newspaper the Leicester Mercury, the Asian network of the BBC based in the city, and MATV the national Asian TV station. 

Within 48 hours I was able to convene 35 of the faith leaders in my house for a meal together with the Chief Constable.  As we met, the news was breaking that the suspect terrorists came from Leeds and Dewsbury and had grown up in this country.  Anxiety levels were running high.  The meeting was memorable.  Muslims were invited in turn to express their feelings and they were unanimous in both their shock and condemnation.  Others spoke movingly from the Hindu, Sikh, Jewish and Buddhist communities as well as the Christians.  We were committed to ensuring that we would work together through our chaplaincies in universities and FE colleges, through our various connections in schools, in churches and mosques, to reach out to and communicate with a rising generation.  We were unanimously agreed to support the initiative of the Federation of Muslim Organisations to bring together 1,000 people in one of the city centre parks the following Saturday.  There I and others spoke to the crowd, supported by MPs and community leaders.  It was a powerful and emotional experience of solidarity. 

Within a few weeks the Government Home Office Minister, Hazel Blears, was in town, seeking to listen and to begin to understand how these events were playing into the various communities which share the civic culture of Leicester.  And during all of this the well-established dialogue groups between Muslims and Christians continued to meet.  There would be time of silent reflection.  There would be sometimes readings from the scriptures.  Sharing of food.  Talking through the feelings.

Meanwhile eight of the key Muslim leaders from the city were involved with the Home Office and Downing Street in the various dialogue groups with Government which were set up during the summer and the autumn to explore questions of Imam training, policing of the mosques, outreach to young people, the import of Imams from the subcontinent, and so on. 

Recently Andrew Wingate, our Interfaith Advisor, and Dr Ataula Siddiqui, the Deputy Director of the Markfield Islamic Foundation have been visiting Denmark to talk about the well established co-operation between Christians and Muslims, not only in Leicester but more widely in the UK.  In different cities - and speaking at different levels at eight meetings - there was a general response of intense interest in what had been achieved in the period after the 7th July and general admiration for what had happened in London and elsewhere.  The same response has been found in the European Churches’ Committee for Relations with Islam. Great Britain is being looked to, and some of our more developed cities in particular, as examples of good practice from which other parts of the world – especially perhaps Western Europe - can learn at a time of tension and uncertainty.

And as we begin to look forward we see that the Terrorism Bill, soon to come for its second reading in the House of Lords, is likely to play

significantly into these sensitive agendas.  The proposals for a 90 day detention period have, as we all know, been reduced to a lesser extension of 28 days on a Labour amendment.  There has also been an amendment to the offence of the encouragement of terrorism, which introduces a recklessness test to replace the existing negligence test.  In spite of these changes there are real dangers relating to the human rights and civil liberty implications of the Bill as it stands.  Crucially, many of the present ingredients are likely to have a significant impact on interfaith relations and on the broad national unity that is essential to the flow of intelligence and other vital aspects of cooperation with the authorities.  We do indeed live in uncertain times and the outcome of these pieces of legislation is likely to be of considerable influence on the delicate and vulnerable initiatives increasingly taking place in our towns and cities.

On the third anniversary of 9/11 Archbishop Rowan Williams wrote:

“When the Christian, the Muslim or the Jew sees his neighbour of another faith following the ways of this world instead of the peaceful way of God, he must remind his neighbour of the nature of the one God we look to.  Once we let go of justice, fairness and respect in our dealings with one another, we have dishonoured God as well as human beings.”  He goes on, “if we do act in the same way as our enemies, we imprison ourselves in their anger and evil; and we fail to show our belief in the living God who always requires of us justice and goodness.  Whenever a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew refuses to act in violent revenge, that person bears witness to the true God.”

Such unity in the call to goodness, justice and fairness is, of course, not limited to these three faiths.  Nor is it just about the horrors of what we see in countries far away from our own. 

Rowan Williams ended his reflections like this: “we pray that this willingness to stand alongside each other, as seen in Britain, will be shared in other nations.”

All of us would support that.  In my own diocese there is clearly discernable a movement of the Spirit.  The beginnings of an awareness that this issue is no longer a minority, esoteric question for those who happen to be unfortunate enough to live in multi racial urban areas.  It is the great question for the human race.  As Hans KËng so graphically wrote: “No peace between nations without peace between the religions.  No peace between the religions without understanding between the religions.  No understanding between the religions without dialogue.”  My thesis has been that the Christian gospel is not neutral on this issue.  It leads us inevitably to dialogue and dialogue, in practice, leads to deepening trust and an openness to collaboration.  The agenda is not conversion, not coexistence but collaboration through dialogue.  No one has argued this more persuasively than Jonathan Sacks with whom I end. 

"Crises happen when we attempt to meet the challenges of today with the concepts of yesterday.  That is why nothing less than a paradigm shift may be needed to prevent a global age becoming the scene of intermittent but destructive wars  ….  We must make ourselves open even, at times, be ready to hear of their pain, humiliation and resentment and discover that their image of us is anything but our image of ourselves.  We must learn the art of conversation, from which truth emerges not, as in Socratic dialogues, by the refutation of falsehood, but from the quite different process of letting our world be enlarged by the presence of others who think, act and interpret reality in ways radically different from our own.  We must attend to the particular, not just the universal.  For when universal civilizations clash, the world shakes, and lives are lost.  We will make peace only when we learn that God loves difference and so, at least must we.  God has created many cultures, civilizations and faiths, but only one world in which to live together – and it is getting smaller all the time".

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Q:           Bishop Tim, how can we adopt the ideology of dialogue without necessarily adopting the ideology of partnership?

A:            I think ‘the ideology of partnership’ suggests that somehow we can rather superficially eradicate differences or live without giving proper attention to them. It suggests that we can take a shortcut, but those who engage much more intensively in the area of inter-faith relations than I am able to do, continually remind me and others that there are no shortcuts.

Partnership can exist in the sense that Christians and Muslims, for example, can work together on serving the needs of asylum seekers in Leicester, in community and social regeneration programmes in the city, and in raising funds for the victims of the earthquake in Kashmir. In that sense, practical partnership is possible and takes place, in this country

and in other parts of the world.

But the ‘ideology of partnership’, in the technical sense in which I was trying to describe it, is an ideology that suggests that actually the differences between these faiths are not essential to the character of the faith, and that seems to me to be a shortcut, because the ways in which a Muslim and a Christian understands, for example, redemption and salvation and the way in which we are put right with God, these are profoundly different understandings. The way in which a Muslim understands the nature and the character of God and sees the Christian doctrine of the Trinity are profound differences. My quibble with the so-called ‘ideology of partnership’ as described by John Hick is that it doesn’t actually adequately confront these differences. They are profound and they need patient and intelligent and sensitive dialogue if we are to learn to understand each other’s positions more deeply and to live harmoniously with each other in spite of those differences.

Q:           In the light of what you say, how do you interpret Jesus’ command to go into all the world and make disciples?

A:            The great missionary command (Matthew 28:19) is one of those passages often quoted for, you might say, ‘imperialist’ analysis of the Christian faith; that, as it were, God’s purposes are not fulfilled until all human beings have become Christians. I believe as a Christian that in the Christian tradition and the Christian insight into the nature of God, a unique and remarkable truth has been revealed to humanity, and I believe it is my responsibility to do my best to live out that truth and to offer an explanation of it wherever I have the opportunity to do that. But I do not believe it is necessarily my responsibility in relation, let us say, in my own diocese, to those who’ve been brought up in the Muslim faith or the Hindu faith, or the Jewish faith, or the Sikh faith, that it’s my responsibility to do all in my power to dismantle those faiths which have sustained and shaped and given identity to those people, in order to put my understanding of reality of truth in their place. That seems to me to be a presumption that goes far beyond what our Lord meant when he invited people to share the truth and the wisdom of his life with others.

The whole issue about conversion is very complex, but we know that people who have been converted, for example, in the Asian sub-continent, from their long-established faiths and faith communities find themselves often extremely vulnerable, extremely lost, with all that has sustained and given them identity and meaning in their life taken away. We should not be prosecuting this kind of conversion activity without very carefully considering the effects on the converts, particularly in some parts of the world where they are vulnerable.

Q:           As the worldwide Anglican communion provides the opportunity for useful interface between Christianity and other world religions, is it worth preserving if the price of that preservation is deep pain and hurt over sexuality?

A:            There certainly is a sense in which some of these issues bear upon the Anglican Communion with such weight as to be likely to fracture the Anglican Communion. The whole issue of human sexuality, which is so diverting and distracting us at the moment, gathers momentum in those parts of the world where Christians feel themselves to be on the front line with Islam and where what I described as an ideology of either hostility or of competition is the predominant ideology; and the argument therefore is: unless the rest of the Anglican communion stands foursquare with us in a literal Biblical interpretation of Christian moral teaching on human sexuality, then the rest of the Anglican communion is not supporting us at that critical point of interface with Islam’. That is the nature of the argument adduced in the Lambeth Conference in 1998. Those of us who questioned whether a hard literalist Biblical understanding of human sexuality was appropriate for the Anglican communion were repeatedly accused of undermining the credibility of Christians in those parts of the world where Islam is either the dominant or seen as the competitive faith

Q:           Do faith communities have something in common through their sufferings?

A:            Some of the most profound conversations we’ve had in Leicester have been when Muslims have talked of the experience of the worldwide brotherhood of Muslims, feeling persecuted, marginalized and under attack by the overweening power of the West, and have spoken of their deep anguish about that and of the suffering of Muslim communities around the world. Where those conversations have then been responded to by Christians speaking about our understanding of the redemptive suffering of the Cross, it seems to me that that has been over and over again a point of profound contact between those two communities in my fairly brief experience.

Q:           Do you think Anglicans can become open to a reappraisal of the Christian relationship with Judaism, so that the language of supercession can transform itself to something closer to the dignity of difference?

A:            Yes, I would certainly say that. I think that the language of supercession is deeply problematic. I would imagine that the Jews looking at that form of Christianity which appears to be dominant in parts of Washington DC and parts of the Christian Right in the United States and elsewhere (that sees the present troubles in Israel as presaging the Second Coming and all those apocalyptic events described in the 13th chapter of St Mark’s Gospel) – these are deeply inhibiting factors in dialogue between Jews and Christians. I think a number of Christians are seeing quite a different way of approaching that dialogue that moves away from the language of supercession.

Q:           You talked positively about the establishment in Leicester of a Church of England academy and an Islamic voluntary-aided school. Would dialogue between Christianity and Islam not be better served by educating children together in a community school?

A:            That’s an enormous question, which would require us to think out

education policy. If we were starting from here and designing an education system from scratch, we might not design in the faith schools tradition that has been part of our education system in this country for a long time; but we do have that tradition, and I think, given that we have it, we have to make it work for us.

The evidence from the riots in Burnley and Oldham and other Northern cities two or three years ago, is that it was the faith schools which were the schools from which none of the rioters came. They tended to come from the state schools where they’d had very little opportunity to explore, understand or learn respect for other people’s faiths. I think that Robert Runcie when he was Archbishop of Canterbury always used the mantra ‘The purpose of a faith school is to nurture those of the faith, encourage those of other faiths, and challenge those with no faith.’ And certainly our Church of England schools in Leicester are all multi-faith schools. They are schools to which Muslims and Hindus very strongly want their children to attend and where the whole faith dimension to education and to citizenship is taken very seriously. So I’m glad that our application to sponsor a city academy was supported by the Muslims and it seemed absolutely right that, reciprocally, Muslims should have the opportunity to educate their children within the maintained sector, by becoming a voluntary-aided school. It means that boys and girls in the Muslim academy have to be educated on an equal footing, that the national curriculum has to be pursued and so on. We felt that that was much better for Muslim children than being educated in entirely separate, independent fee-paying schools that were not subject to any supervision by the authority or the national curriculum.

Q:           After Leicester, what would be your vision for a place like Dunmow?

A:            Well, if Dunmow is anything like the market towns of Leicestershire, the Dunmows of this world are within our lifetime no longer going to be the places which are monocultural and monofaith and traditional English communities, because as Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs and others become prosperous and effective citizens in cities, their habits extraordinarily closely replicate the habits of the indigenous community, and that means they move from Newham to Chelmsford and on to Dunmow, and in Leicester they move from Leicester to Oadby and on to Market Harborough. So they are in our midst wherever we are. Thank God for that! My vision for Dunmow would be that the people of Dunmow rejoice in [the situation], see the potential in that diversity, and start to think about what it means for their community and how their community might be enriched by it.