Everybody's Reading!

On the way back from my meeting at Leicestershire Cares, I'm buttonholed in New Walk by Damien Walter, who has previously tweeted me to ask how we to get "the interfaiths" (his word, not mine) involved in the Everybody's Reading Festival, which will be running throughout the city, 2-10 October this year. I agree it would be nice to add a faith-diverse flavour to this event, but how to go about it? It has to be something better than just asking the faith communities or their representatives to nominate their favourite books. When I worked full-time in adult education in Leicester, teaching basic literacy, one of the tasks set for students was to write a book review. Muslim students would invariably write about the Qur'an, Sikh students the Guru Granth Sahib, Hindu students, more often than not the Gita. And it's hard to engage critically with the Word of God, no matter how well developed those faculties might be in the individual. So, we should find some other way of entering into this event. Perhaps favourite biographies or favourite children's books. Whichever point of entry we choose, it could lead to a display in the public libraries and a higher profile for the Council of Faiths. More thought and conversation is required.

Leicestershire Cares (1)

A meeting this lunchtime with Chris Toon, Homelessness Project Coordinator at Leicesterhire Cares - a membership organisation of key employers in Leicester and Leicestershire, dedicated to corporate responsibility, by bringing businesses and the community together for the benefit of both. Until recently, Leicestershire Cares was part of a national movement of Cares partnerships, but it has recently established its independent identity.

Leicestershire Cares is organising an engagement event at Braunstone Leisure Centre in September, originally intended for homeless or vulnerably housed people, but which has now expanded to encompass asylum seekers and refugees. Sport will be the big draw, with free sessions a the leisure centre for those attending on the day. Chris is hoping to have representation of a number of groups addressing issues that affect those client groups: housing options, benefits, sexual health, Chamber of Commerce, police, health and well-being. I show him photos of the Council of Faiths exhibition on the blog and he asks if we can put the whole thing up at this event. He also asks if we can provide a speaker who will get up on stage for two or three minutes and if there's any chance we can organise a musical contribution.

Find out more about Leicestershire Cares:
http://www.leicestershirecares.co.uk/

host organisations meeting

At The Race Equality Centre (TREC) this afternoon, for a meeting of the Host Organisations for Leicester Partnership. These are the groups which liaise between the strategic partnership and the so-called "communities of interest", which identify around the protected characteristics: age (Age Concern for older people, Young People First for younger people), disability (Leicestershire Centre for Integrated Living), gender (LeicestHER Day Trust), race (The Race Equality Centre), religion or belief (Leicester Council of Faiths) and sexual orientation (Leicester Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Centre). We also have with us a representative from Voluntary Action Leicester, which is responsible for training and support of the Host Organisations, so that we can help train and support the reps.

We consider representation for the communities of interest on Leicester Partnership at different levels (its Board, its various thematic groups). We're interested in identifying potential reps for the future, refining their roles and on contributing to a handbook which would describe best practice for representing the interests of the Voluntary and Community Sector (no one I know is using that new term, "Civil Society Organisations" - yet).

SECULARISM PROTECTS PEOPLE OF ALL RELIGIONS

This letter appears in today's Leicester Mercury:

Secularism protects people of all religions

While, I understand some people's natural reticence about the Lord Major's [sic] decision not to say prayers before council meetings, people should look at the issue from the other foot.

Say you were a Christian minority councillor in an Islamic country. As a Christian, how would you feel if you were always obliged to listen to Islamic prayers before council meetings? Would this make you feel included?

Secularism protects people of all religions by encouraging a clear separation between Church and State. The word does not mean "atheism", as some people suggest. Incidentally, there is nothing to stop individuals from forming prayer groups before council meetings.

Richard Hopper, member Leicester Secular Society

Human Rights & Equalities Charnwood AGM

At Loughborough Town Hall this evening, in the Council Chamber, for the AGM of Human Rights & Equalities Charnwood. Here I run into some of those whom I see at various events and occasions around the region, whom I've come to consider dependable colleagues.

Speaker for the evening is Dave Thomas, Headteacher at Ashmount School, Loughborough, which serves students with special educational needs. He makes a special feature of the use of "Keep Safe" cards, which have helped young people with special learning needs in the local area (and in various parts throughout the country, where the scheme has been trialled) become more confident in social situations that they might otherwise have found tricky and which have previously resulted in police involvement. Nice to see something that works and makes a positive difference.

I was hoping to put up a banner for the Regional Equality and Diversity Partnership, but it wouldn't have been appropriate in this setting. It's not nice if it looks like you're crashing someone else's party. But of course I do get the chance to talk with several people about REDP, including Councillor Jill Vincent, Mayor of Charnwood. She was at the AGM of the Faiths Forum for the East Midlands in Loughborough University last week, but I didn't have the opportunity to speak with her then. Before leaving for the train back to Leicester, I get the chance to talk openly to all attending about the possibilities of joined up working between REDP and HR&EC, especially around the topic of Hate Crime.

Find out more about Equalities & Human Rights Charnwood:
http://humanrightsandequalitiescharnwood.aj-services.com/

Find out more about Ashmount School:
http://www.ashmount.leics.sch.uk/

CONVERSATION DEMANDS MUTUAL RESPECT

The Guardian's Comment is Free - belief website runs a weekly feature called The Question, posing one at the start of the week, then publishing commissioned responses on the Monday, Wednesday and Friday following (along with the facility for readers to post responses of their own). This week's question is, "Should Religions Compete?"

Here's today's response, from Rev Canon Dr Alan Race: Priest-in-Charge at St Philip's Church, Evington; Dean of Postgraduate Studies at St Philip's Centre for Engagement and Study in a Multi-Faith Society; and stalwart member of Leicester Council of Faiths.

Conversation demands mutual respect

Without trust we cannot talk about God, but to build trust we must avoid trying to convert or lecture people

Any great religion worth its salt exists to offer its believers a comprehensive view of life – a vision of transcendent reality combined with an accompanying pathway of transformation for the human condition. It is this comprehensibility which leads many to assume that the religions are inevitably locked into fierce competition with one another over the battle for souls. But how inevitable is "inevitable"? The successful development of the world-wide interfaith dialogue movement over the last fifty years suggests that we can expect something different from religious adherence in the future. It is a movement which is becoming embedded all over Britain.

Of course if we come across something which lifts our spirits to new heights we will want to communicate this to others, and this is natural. It is the witness which faiths bear to one another. But that is wholly different from insisting that the good, true and beautiful which has been glimpsed through my lens must become the basis too of your seeing and that any seeing of your own will necessarily be deficient. If evangelising means bottom-up telling the story and recounting the experience, then all well and good. But if it strays into the top-down accusation that "your" comprehensibility can never match "mine" then we will have overstepped what we can possibly know, as well as betray that sense of humaneness about religious commitment which we want others to see.

I minister in an Anglican Parish Church and Centre whose surrounding area is 85% people of faiths other than my own, mainly Muslim, but also Hindu and Sikh. When we meet for dialogue or work together on a practical project I do not seek to convert my neighbours. This is not out of cowardice but out of respect for the sake of building trust. Without trust there is no meaningful meeting between us and therefore also no discerning of "God" within either of us. Sometimes we agree and sometimes we disagree – on many matters, theological as well as social and political. We do not know enough about one another to make judgements about which is best and it is wise if we set them aside. As it is, we are likely, unconsciously, to compare the best of our own with the worst of the others, and yet what good can that do?

From a Christian point of view the permission for dialogue which the churches gave themselves fifty years ago has begun to bear fruit. The moral goodness, faithfulness, and intellectual keenness of my 'other religious' neighbours leads me to question any simple assumption that my way has got to be the way willy-nilly for everyone else too. What I understand of "God" seems to be at work among them and is plain to see. This brings a tension between dialogue and evangelism, which is the subject matter of the recent Anglican Report, Sharing the Gospel of Salvation.  The report, like all other church denominational reports on the subject, struggles to square the circle. Dialogue is yielding fruits – of shared spiritual questing, mutual learning, and common actions for local and national good – and these are reflected in the projects and case studies which the Report presents. Interestingly, it acknowledges that none of them are explicit about evangelising as their goal, and this is not counted against them. Meanwhile, the theological sections continue to affirm the traditional categories of Christian uniqueness which begins less and less to correspond to what is being learned through experience on the ground.

The only new thing in this report, from previous church accounts, is the recording of maturing encounters and dialogues which are taking on lives of their own and which act as a challenging feedback to the dogmatic tradition. It seems that theological theory has yet to catch up with changing Christian practice.

Global Education LeicesterShire Summer Showcase

Southfields Library (commonly known as "Pork Pie Library") is the venue for an event celebrating the work of Global Education LeicesterShire (GELS) and of the city and county schools it has supported. The aims of today's event are:

to celebrate the achievements of pupils, staff and partners involved in developing and delivering projects under the GELS banner;

to share content and learning from GELS funded projects with other members of the network; 

to highlight the quality and breadth of work undertaken by the network to key personnel within the two local authorities (Leicester and Leicestershire).

The event was officially opened by the Lord Mayor of Leicester. I arrive about 1300, hotfoot from the REDP delivery group meeting, just in time to see the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress leave - but also just in time to catch the children from various schools taking part in the Salsa Workshop run by Maggie Munoz. The library has a great little (and little-used) theatre which makes a superb venue for this sort of event. It's fondly remembered locally as a place where dances and concerts were held during WWII for local people and US and British servicemen from the nearby barracks. I'm not convinced it's been put to much use since then - but today it certainly is!

There's a really good turnout of teachers, pupils, students, supporters and fans of GELS. We enjoy presentations on the Food for Thought Project (by Whitehall Primary School, Leicester), on their Community Cohesion Project (by Castle Rock High School and Newbridge High School, Coalville), on an Archaeological Evidence and Identity Project (by Rushey Mead Secondary School) and on a South African Fair Trade Enterprise Project (by Brocks Hill Primary School, Oadby). There's also a chance to explore the GELS Resource Centre.

Leicester Council of Faiths has always actively supported Global Education LeicesterShire, which in turn has given us an appropriate platform for our work with teachers, pupils and teachers. I'm wholeheartedly committed to their cause and today, our current Chair, Councillor Manjula Sood, and our immediate past Chair, Minou Cortazzi, are here.

The future of GELS is uncertain, to put it mildly. Its current source of funding, from the Department for International Development (DfID) runs out at the end of August and nothing has been found to replace it - yet. Leicester Council of Faiths has been actively involved in the work of GELS since I came into my post. I would feel very disappointed if it were forced to wrap up its services. Global Education LeicesterShire is run by its Joint Co-Ordinators, Clare Carr and Claire Plumb (photo above). They are two dedicated, imaginative, resourceful people who have been of great assistance, support - of inspiration even - to me, personally and professionally. Thre's no one in or around the city better suited to doing this work. I'd like to think that they'll still be actively involved in the months and years to come (if that's alright with them, of course).

You can read the Lord Mayor of Leicester's blog entry for this event:
http://councillor.leicester.gov.uk/home/colin-hall/my-blog/

There's a fullsome report of this event on the website of Citizens' Eye Community News Agency - which contains a link back to this blog entry. Don't click on that link unless you want to risk triggering a recursive occlusion!
http://www.citizenseye.org/2010/06/30/global-education-leicester-shire-event/

REDP delivery group (3)

At Leicester Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Centre this morning, for the third weekly meeting of our delivery group for the Regional Equality and Diversity Partnership (REDP). There are six of us here today: Chino Cabon (The Race Equality Centre - TREC), Tonia Frew (Community Development Officer, LGBT Centre), Liz Harrison (Equality Officer, LCIL/REDP), Kelly Jusab (REDP) and Carolyn Pasco (Researcher, REDP) and me. Our attention today is mostly on the first meeting of REDP's Core Reference Group (to be held at Leicestershire Centre for Integrated Living on Wed 14 July) and on developing and refining our training offer based on the Equality Act 2010.

our exhibition @ Southfields Library

The Council of Faiths nine banners are up at Southfields Library. I've put them there in support of the Global Education LeicesterShire Summer Showcase, which is on there tomorrow (Tue 29) but hopefully, they can stay up a little longer than that. The space they're occupying seems tailor-made: eight doors, a banner standing in front of each one and the general banner near the front entrance of the library.

Religions should not compete for power

The Guardian's Comment is Free - belief website runs a weekly feature called The Question, posing one at the start of the week, then publishing commissioend responses on the Monday, Wednesday and Friday following (along with the facility for readers to post responses of their own). This week's question is, "Should Religions compete?" Here's today's response, from Maggi Dawn, a fellow and chaplain of Robinson College, Cambridge.

Religions should not compete for power

The call for peace at the heart of most religions contrasts with the way they behave as competing communities

The question: Should Religions Compete?

Throughout history religious factions have competed with each other, and their reasons are often dressed up as being for the good of the people, or for the honour of God. In truth, though, competition is usually about gaining or maintaining power for the purpose of the survival and growth of a community. Religions have therefore competed for land, for money, for sacred sites, for political power, and for the loyalty of their communities.

If you take their ideals and doctrines at face value, though, most of the world's religions call their followers to live in peace, to love God and love one another. So for one religion to compete against another, or for any religious adherent to use force or bullying tactics to persuade others into their particular kingdom, would seem anathema to what the religion itself stands for. Some form of the Golden Rule appears in a number of different religions, as does a call to hospitality for the stranger, so to indulge in any kind of pressure that dehumanises the other cannot be said to be the practice of true religion.

At heart the Christian gospel in its earliest form was the precise opposite of a bid for power: its central message was one of laying down power for the benefit of the other. Christ himself represented this ideal; St Paul wrote that Christ voluntarily laid down his right to equality with God in order to assume humanity, for the purpose of being the servant of the human race. Christ's acts of self-giving were the model for his followers, and the Golden Rule as it appears in Christianity is a call to Christians to lay down their own lives for one another, as Jesus had done for them. So although common sense suggests that a group that doesn't fight for its own survival may die out, when a religious group does begin to compete for power, it begins to compromise the heart of its own message.

Even in the twenty first century there's a surprising number of genuinely good people who, for the love of God, really do lay down their own interests to serve others (not, of course, that you have to be religious to be good, but for some it is a central motivation). Such ordinary saints rarely make the headlines, and when religion hits the news its usually because of its failures, not its virtues. By contrast, the kind of religious infighting that is visible in the public sphere seems to have little to do with true religion, and it often seems that the world would be a better place without it.

On balance, then, it seems to me that you can only follow a religion if you lay down the wish to compete for power. But that doesn't mean becoming a doormat, or giving up any discussion or disagreement on opinion, doctrine or ethics. Aiming to live in a self-giving way doesn't mean becoming passive and opinion-free, and to dismiss religious difference by saying that all religions are basically the same is to ignore the fact that they really are not the same at all. Their histories, their doctrines and scriptures, and their ways of reading and interpreting the world are profoundly different from each other. The most rewarding religious conversation occurs when people of different traditions listen with genuine respect to another's views, to learn what it means, standing in someone else's shoes, to be human.

I must say I'm disappointed that the three published responses to this question are two Christian and one Muslim, even if in one of these responses (Alan Race's, of course) inter faith issues are foregrounded). I also find it disappointing that there's little talk about cooperation instead of competition. I should put my money where my mouth is and chip in my own comment then!