| Faith co-operation
and public life – ways ahead
David Rayner
Secretary to the Inner Cities Religious Council
In the programme this session is called, rather
optimistically, "Ways Forward". Rather than suggesting specific
models, I would like, in this relatively un-scripted session, to highlight
a few issues that I think will be relevant to how we might take the agenda
forward.
Having said that, there does seem to me potentially to
be one particular possible model or outcome of this conference already.
Howard Simmons used the phrase "a door ajar" and it is a
metaphor that I have also used in the past for the position that I think
we are in. However, every now and then there is the opportunity not just
to open the door but to push inside the room. After this morning’s
inspiring contribution from Blackburn with Darwen, I spoke to Howard
Simmons and asked him if he thought it might be not be a good idea if
there were some kind of good practice guidance that might be developed in
partnership with the Local Government Association. Of course, it turned
out that he had already thought about that and did not need me to prompt
him!
With such guidelines, the door might swing open more
easily. I think that everybody would agree that it feels very different
when you are pressing on a door that is ajar, when there is somebody
inside who opens it rather then puts their foot behind it and says
"Who do you think you are, wanting to come in?". It has often
felt like that, I think, for faith communities trying to get involved in
public life. How different it would be if on the other side of the door
there were somebody willing to open it, to welcome you into the room
saying "These are some of the guidelines under which we can now
operate together!" That would be a very different world.
So good practice guidelines may be one of the ways
forward. Back now, though, to the general issues and other ways forward.
It is very appropriate that it is ‘ways forward’ in the
programme, not "a way forward". Appropriate because one of the
impressions that I will take away with me today, as I do from all inter
faith events, is the immense diversity not only of the faiths themselves
but of the circumstances in which they find themselves. Everybody is in a
different place and so it is impossible to be prescriptive about specific
ways forward. There are likely to be many.
All these ways forward involve taking risks. People
will make the odd mistake but that does not matter. It is where we are at
the moment. In a comment earlier, someone said that we are at a watershed
and I would agree with that. The things that we do may be provisional and
experimental but they are of great importance.
Let me give a couple of examples that illustrate the
diversity of the places faith communities are at. As some of you may know,
in the new Greater London Authority Act there is a discretionary duty for
the Authority and for the Assembly and Mayor to consult various
constituencies in London. Among these are "religious groups".
That does seem to me a new development. To the best of my knowledge, it is
the first time that faith communities have been specifically named in
legislation and are therefore legally part of what might be called ‘civil
society’. This is one example of the diversity of our situation –
where faith communities are enshrined, as it were, in legislation for the
first time in civil society.
A few weeks ago, to give an example of very different
circumstances, I went to Birkenhead, where I had been invited to
contribute to a conference about faith and tourism. When I was first
invited to go, I confessed that my knowledge of tourism could be written
on the back of a postage stamp and I had no clear idea of what the link
might be between faith and tourism. So I offered to come and talk about
inter faith organisations and inter faith working. I said they would just
have to piece together themselves how relevant this was to tourism! I have
to say it was a remarkable conference in which I learnt an enormous
amount. It was good to hear different faith communities saying ‘we need
to get in touch with one another, we need to learn about one another, we
need to be able to support one another and promote one another in public’.
At that conference, the idea emerged that perhaps they needed to get
together, identify a few key regional faith buildings from the different
faith communities and promote these within a tourist policy for the whole
region. This is one more example of the wide spectrum of circumstances in
which faith communities find themselves responding to the agenda of public
life.
I frequently hear a general complaint that faith
communities do not have an uncontested place in public life. There are at
least three responses to faith communities it seems to me, reflecting
resistance to their involvement:
- Plain common or garden prejudice. That can be both more difficult or
more simple to deal with. Difficult because it feels impenetrable.
More simple because you do at least know what it is;
- Indifference;
- Legitimate concern. The prevailing culture that we live in is
secular and liberal. I need say no more than that the gate-keepers of
this culture have reasonable concerns about the involvement of faith
communities.
I would, of course, argue that faith communities belong
in public life; but, I think it is right that we should negotiate our
position in public life with one another and with, as it were, the
gate-keepers of public life.
Similarly, and I think Jane Slowey’s presentation
brought this out, there are issues about our relationship both to, and
within, the community and voluntary sector. I think our prevailing
culture, the public culture, sees us best placed there. We are not,
though, there uncontestedly. Sometimes the relationship is OK; it is easy
and faith communities are ‘in’ and are stake holders. At other times
they are still trying to find their way in. In some cases, again as I
think was mentioned earlier in the day, there are those from the faith
communities who simply do not want to be included in the community and
voluntary sector because the ideology of their faith, as they see it,
precludes them from taking part in public life.
These are important issues and we need to clarify them
among ourselves as faith communities and with the community and voluntary
sector more widely.
Another thing that has come across to me during today
has been that although we have spoken a lot about involvement in public
life and engagement with public life, there has been the subtext that it
is at least as important for faith communities to talk to one another
- to learn more about one another, and to continue building up
relationships of mutual trust. That is part of community relations and
therefore an important part of community development and a potential
contributor to regeneration. But it is also a good in and of itself
because of the mutual understanding, mutual trust and knowledge that we
build up.
Let me say a word about resources and capacity. During
the day we have concentrated very much on money, or lack of it. It is
undoubtedly true that at the level of community organisation, many faith
communities simply do not have the cash to deliver a project or to deliver
services. But money is not the only issue when thinking about resources
and capacity. I am continually aware of the far greater capacity that the
mainstream Christian Churches have - in terms of human resources,
training, experience and all the rest of it, by comparison with other
communities. One question that I think we will need to look at is how
those resources can be shared so that those communities that do not have
capacity, do not have the same resources and skills, can be developed. I
am not wanting to suggest that such resources are not there at all in
other communities, just that there are real questions of equality, there
are real imbalances. The post that I fill could serve as a model. I am
Secretary of the Inner City Religious Council, and in another incarnation
I was an Anglican priest in the inner city for 20 or so years. I am on
secondment to the Council, which is an inter faith instrument, and it
seems to me that in this way the Church of England loans my capacity out
to other faiths – it is a modest loan, I have to say, but I do my best.
Nevertheless it is a sign of the kind of thing I am talking about; namely,
that it is not just about money. There are other resources, other things
to do with capacity building I think we need to look at.
In the workshop that I helped with this afternoon, it
emerged that there really are not yet any very good stories about inter
faith co-operation in regeneration. There are not any bad stories either.
There simply are not any stories. You can point to individual faith
communities delivering projects and you can point to faith representatives
being partners on different kinds of public body. Yet, inter faith
co-operation in the way we have talked about here today as a key element
in a regeneration scheme is, to the best of my knowledge, non-existent. It
is quite important that we recognise that, because I think one of the
places we are now at is trying to develop this kind of inter faith
working, so that we do have some good stories and good models.
Initiatives like the Blackburn with Darwen Inter Faith Council are
obviously key elements in beginning to deliver those kind of projects.
It is also important that faith communities other than
the main Christian Churches are seen to be taking the lead in delivering
key projects. One which was launched only last week in the House of Lords
is led by the North London Muslim Housing Association. My point here is
simply that the lead partner is a Muslim organisation. It has secured a
grant from the Housing Corporation for a pilot project in two or three
areas around the country to look at the feasibility of inter faith
involvement in delivering social housing. We need more stories of this
nature in which not only Christian Churches take the lead in some
pioneering project.
Overall I would say that the context in which we are
working is one in which we are increasingly being encouraged to be part of
a developing civil society (to use a phrase I used earlier). I think this
was what Howard Simmons referred to as the modernising agenda. As part of
this we need to ask ourselves what kind of democracy we want to live in
and how the traditional balances of power are going to play out over the
next years and decades. How can we develop new forms of democracy that are
consistent with the way we live now? Faith communities clearly, as far as
I am concerned, have a role to play in that and in shaping this developing
civil society.
Finally, I would want to say that it is also important
as we are looking at this new agenda – and Angela Sarkis stressed this
wonderfully – to carry on doing the things that we usually do. We often
do them rather well and often invisibly, both within our individual faith
communities and by simply getting along with our neighbours of different
faiths. These activities are deeply part of the fabric of ordinary
day-to-day living. They form the networks of personal relationships and
support which are an essential part of belonging.
My last reflection would be to acknowledge how
important it will be for the gate keepers of public life to stop
shilly-shallying and open the door that is ajar to let us in. We will all
find ourselves in different rooms with different things to negotiate - but
the important thing is to be there and for there to be good guidelines
about what is expected of us as partners when we are there.
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