Inter Faith Network for the UK - national meeting

Last Monday I was one of four Baha’is (one of the Baha’is is the Development Officer of the Scottish Interfaith Council, another Baha’i was representing the Bolton Interfaith Council, and I was representing the UK National Spiritual Assembly) at the annual National Meeting of the Inter Faith Network for the UK. The theme was Challenge and Opportunity: Changing Patterns of Inter Faith Engagement in the UK. To quote the programme blurb:

?Faith? and ?inter faith? issues have come strongly to the forefront of the public agenda in recent years and the importance of people of different religious backgrounds living harmoniously has become more widely recognised; indeed, it is now at the heart of the community cohesion agenda alongside good race relations. These two strands will also be central to the ?good relations? work of the forthcoming Commission on Equality and Human Rights.

The number of organisations specialising in inter faith and multi faith working is increasing rapidly. Over 300 are now engaged in this work at national, regional and local level. There are also several hundred more individual inter faith projects being run by faith communities and other bodies such as local authorities and youth organisations. New streams of public funding are encouraging this work.

This year?s National Meeting is a chance to explore this rich and complex new terrain…

This is a very positive time to be engaged in inter faith work with many opportunities to deepen, and make more effective, relations between people of different faiths. Yet there are also challenges. The day provides a chance to consider, as faith and inter faith organisations, such practical questions as:

• How can we build on the good practice developed over the last two decades and ensure this is continued and extended?
• In what ways can inter faith work involving members of the UK?s different faith communities be further developed and deepened?
• How can faith groups and inter faith bodies best make use of short term project funding while keeping true to their long term aims and ensuring sensibly developed and sustainable programmes and staffing levels?
• How can we avoid being drawn by the availability of project funding into unhelpful competition between inter faith bodies? Are there possibilities for more cooperative working?
• Government?s interest in ensuring good relations is welcome and important but are there dangers in over ?governmentalisation? in the area of inter faith relations?
• More development workers and programme specialists are needed in the inter faith area. What sorts of training opportunities and programmes are needed for them and what recruitment and employment strategies can help attract qualified people and retain them?
• What is the distinctive contribution which inter faith organisations nationally that the UK has a vibrant and effective inter-faith scene.

There’s no doubt that the UK has a vibrant and effective inter-faith scene. Developments since the year 2000 have been astonishing. As preparations were being made for the Millennium the question was: ‘Should faith communities be involved?’ By the time of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee celebrations in 2002, the question was: ‘How should faith communities be involved?’

But, as some of the speakers at the meeting pointed out, there are cautions and challenges. One of those is the risk of ‘governmentalization’ of inter-faith relations. The increasing interest that government has in talking to and enabling inter-faith work to take place may undermine the freedom and independence of inter-faith NGOs. And the larger the purses of money the government offers to inter-faith and multi-faith work, the greater the risk of distorting this work to fit the government’s funding criteria.

Now, I hasten to add that none of us wishes to return to the days when the government had no interest at all in what the faiths had to offer to the country. We’re all glad of the government’s interest in us (for all that it gives us huge amounts of work that we cannot always cope with), but we all recognize that the faith communities and inter-faith bodies need time and space for their own business.

The Revd Canon Guy Wilkinson, Inter-Faith Adviser to the Church of England made some thought-provoking points in his presentation. He expressed caution about the language we use to talk about British society. It has become something of a commonplace to refer to the UK as a ‘multi-faith’ and ‘multi-cultural’ society. How far, Guy asked, does this reflect the lived experience of most people in Britain? At the national level, he said, Britain is not particularly ‘multi-anything’, nor is it at the level of the city or even of the neighbourhood. The problem with words like ‘multi’ is that they carry agendas - it may be an aspiration for Britain to be multi-faith and multi-cultural, but we have to move away from ‘host-guest’ relations between the white majority population and minority communities that are or were migrant in origin. We need to think more in terms of ‘co-citizenship’.

For Baha’is, concepts like ‘co-citizenship’ are closer to the reality of human oneness than are a ‘host-guest’ model. But the Writings of Baha’u'llah, ‘Abdu’l-Baha and Shoghi Effendi are so clear and emphatic that we humans are all one family that we wonder why people of every colour and creed make such heavy weather of living together.

Guy also spoke about religion in the public square- it has always been there, at least implicitly; now that religion has become a more explicit and salient presence in the public square some people, especially those who, like secularists, are hostile to any public role for religion, are becoming increasingly anxious - and the place of Christianity in the culture, constitution and government of Britain. Christianity has been central in shaping British society, thinking and mores. We must remember and acknowledge this.

After workshops on a number of important themes, Meg Munn MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary for State in the Department of Communities and Local Government addressed the conference. Amongst other things she reassured those present of the continuing commitment of the government to deepening its relations with the faith communities and inter-faith organizations at all levels.

I had been invited to be on the closing panel for the day and to offer some reflections on what I’d heard. I said that Baha’u'llah commanded the Baha’is to associate with the people of all religions in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship. That is the starting point for Baha’i involvement in inter-faith work. I questioned the use of ‘majority’ vs ‘minority’ thinking. In some settings all of us are part of majorities; in other settings all of us are part of minorities. It would be better, I suggested, to recognize all faiths, whether in the majority or the minority, as diverse expressions of humankind’s common spiritual resource and heritage. Our common task as human beings is to create new relationships and to nurture human flourishing.

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