The third Sunday in January has become designated as World Religion Day. Resorting to Google I find that this practice started in 1950 with the intention of highlighting the positive spiritual principles that underlie all religions and promoting religious harmony. In fact, as the practice began in the Baháʼí faith, the original idea was to promote the idea that all religions are harmonious and are in fact one, (a central tenet of the Baháʼí faith). This last statement would certainly produce some opposition from many people of faith globally, who see their faith as significantly different from others. In real terms, is not faith tragically often one of the main ways in which people define themselves culturally as different and separate from “others”. I suspect that most of those who will be attending events this Sunday in honour of World Religion Day will be nurturing a hope that at least part of this sense of separateness will be broken down.
In a lecture given at the Woolf Institute in Cambridge in May 2018, Rowan Williams spoke about the pressing imperative for co-operation in the face of the many problems of our contemporary world. No crisis is local, whether it is about migrants, pandemics, the economy of the environment. Our global problems affect all of us. Responding effectively will involve all of us. Responding effectively will mean that at some level there is a recognition of our common humanity and our common needs.
Sadly, the actual expressions of religious life have often fallen so far short of that. They have been, and often are, part of the problem. But there must also be a way that they are part of the answer. It can be argued that when religious communities are working well, they create an environment where it’s easier to be compassionate than to be mean, easier to be generous than to be hostile.
Rowan Williams suggests that interfaith dialogue is about finding out what the face of my neighbour looks like when it’s turned to God. I don’t think he would disagree that it’s also about finding out what the face of my neighbour looks like when it’s turned to “the other”.
Mother Sarah
Respond