A few of my personal highlights on the exhibition today: An elderly man, holding the hand of a small boy, no more than four or five years old, They took a few minutes to walk by the display, while the older man pointed out various things, speaking to the boy in their own language. A young couple walked quickly by the display, hand in hand. The guy pointed to the Jain banner, “Jains! I’m a Jain!” he said, pointing to himself (pointing to his heart, if I'm being specific). The girl pointed to the next banner: “And I’m Jewish!” she said. They turned to each other and both went, “Oh!” with smiles on their faces, as if this were the first time they had ever spoken about this to each other, smiled and kept walking. Then, in synchronised fashion, they sucked on their flavoured coffees and walked on. And, staying with Jains, a group of four teenagers came to the stall, one shy girl in the front, the other three arranged behind her. She told me that she's a Jain, but had never been able to explain her faith to her friends. Did we have a Jain leaflet? We were happy to give them one each and they walked off slowly, reading them.
After inexplicably failing to get my hands on a copy of the Leicester Mercury yesterday, I make sure I get it first thing this morning. In today’s “First Person” column for National Inter Faith Week, Dr Siri Ram Chhabra “outlines the tenets of Hinduism. Dr Chhabra has been secretary of Geeta Bhawan, a Hindu temple-cum- community centre in Loughborough, for the last 30 years. The Mercury carries a disappointingly thin and silly article about National Inter Faith Week itself, which mentions only the football match at Judgemeadow College on Saturday. Something will have to be done about that before the end of the week.
The goals of National Inter Faith Week are: to strengthen good inter faith relations at all levels; to increase awareness of the different and distinct faith communities in the UK, in particular celebrating and building on the contribution which their members make to their neighbourhoods and to wider society; and to increase understanding between people of religious and non-religious belief. It’s useful to bear them in mind when reflecting on this exhibition and related activities, today and in other blog entries.
Much inter faith activity is undoubtedly “preaching to the choir” (what John Florance picked upon in his radio interview with us on Sunday morning). Conferences, seminars, workshops or retreats for clergy, professional religious people, people focused on religion to the exclusion of many other things in their lives, academics or earnest enquirers. This is necessary and there’s plenty of it going on during National Inter Faith Week of course. But your regular punter doesn’t get a look in there. This exhibition in Highcross is a rare opportunity for people in Leicester to find out who the major faith communities are in their city and to see them represented side by side.
Since we’re in such a busy place, we couldn’t put up a display that requires lots of reading, or would need explanation by the people fronting the stall. Of course we’re happy for visitors to take their time going round the banners and for them to stop and chat, but this exhibition also has to work quickly for those in a hurry. It wouldn’t be right to say that we’ve selected soundbites from each of the faiths (that would be trivialising it). But we have had to choose quotations that passers-by can “get” without too much effort. And they have to be positive, uplifting, inspirational, not preachy, or assert any one religion’s superiority over any others. They should offer some ancient, eternal or tried-and-tested truth that is relevant to our world today. Phew: I don’t believe in making things easy, clearly! We want people to be able to walk past, slow their pace a little in the middle of all this bustle, catch a glimpse of the names of the faiths, their symbols and the quotations and go, “Never heard of them before”, “Oh, I like that” or “That’s nice”; to read something and think “That’s alright by me”, “I never knew they believed that” or “That’s what I’ve always thought”. We’ve used core texts from each of the faiths as our sources, so that people of different denominations, sects or interpretations within the faiths can feel confident that something authoritative is being presented. This also avoids any problem of visitors to the exhibition asking, “Where did you get that quote? Who said that?” or protesting that what we’ve got doesn’t properly represent their religion.
The banners are stylistically keyed to the leaflets on each faith that we’ve had for about 18 months now. At first glance, the banners appear to be the front of the leaflets, expanded to be six feet tall. The banners are linked to the leaflets by colour, typography and design, so there’s a sense of continuity between them. Here are the quotations on each of the banners:
“Let your vision be world-embracing, rather than confined to your own self” (Bahá’í – from Bahá’u’lláh’s “Tablet of the World”)
“Hatreds never cease through hatred in this world, through love alone they cease. This is eternal law.” (Buddhist – from the Dhamapadda)The banners are arranged alphabetically by the name of the faith community. I do as much s possible alphabetically in this job. The alphabet is God’s gift for impartiality and even-handedness. Then no one can question why so-and-so is here instead of there. One visitor to the display was delighted to see the Jewish banner alongside the Muslim one. “However did you think of that? Was it deliberate? Are you trying to make a point here?” he asked me. “No mate, it’s alphabetical”, I replied. But then, sometimes things like that are just a wee gift from above.
“God is love. Those who live in love live in God and God lives in them.” (Christian – from the First Epistle of John)
“Where there is joy there is creation. Where there is no joy there is no creation. Know the nature of joy” (Hindu – from the Maitri Upanishad)
“Do not injure, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture or kill any living being” (Jain – from Jain scripture)
“Devote yourselves to justice; aid the oppressed. Uphold the rights of the orphan, defend the cause of the widow.” (Jewish – from the Book of Isaiah)
“We have created you from a male and a female and made you into different nations and tribes so that you may know each other.” (Muslim – from the Qur’án)
“A place in God’s court can only be attained if we do service to others in the world.” (Sikh – from the Guru Granth Sahib)
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