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Who CAIRS? Inter faith dialogue in Scotland

August 2006

By Andrew Sarle. This article first appeared in the August 2006 edition of Coracle, the magazine of the Iona Community.

Despite all the efforts of first Minister Jack McConnell to promote the multi-cultural nature of 21st century Scotland, inter faith issues are a very low priority in many of the denominations.

Members of the hierarchies of both the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland and the Scottish Episcopal Church are well to the fore in meetings of faith leaders, as is the Principal Clerk and recent Moderators of the Church of Scotland. And some of the smaller denominations are also open to engaging in dialogue with people of other faiths.

But at ground level examples of close dialogue between individual congregations and members of other faiths are hard to find. Indeed, I have heard reports of outright resistance to engagement in dialogue being expressed by Church members!

Comments including, "this is a Christian country, so folk coming here should be prepared to be Christians, and not expect us to dance to their tunes" are ill-informed reactions to statements from senior Churchmen like Cardinal Keith Patrick O'Brien's campaign to 'rechristianize' Scotland. The Cardinal, however, is concerned with secularisation rather than proselytising people of other faiths, with whom he has cordial relations.

Reactions like this are, perhaps, a response to the media hype about 'Muslim atrocities' or a more general reaction to immigration. Many people in Scotland are well aware of, and concerned to address, injustices wherever they occur in the world. The large number of people who turned out to 'Make Poverty History' and who are involved in local refugee and asylum seeker welcome projects are testament to that.

There are, however, a number of ongoing encounters that are worth highlighting as examples of good practice that could be transplanted into other areas with little or no adaptations required. In no particular order:

1 - Members of the Dunblane Meeting of the Society of Friends hosted a small group of women from the Baha'i faith, and both Quakers and Baha'is found the encounter interesting, stimulating and worthy of repetition. Indeed, as the Baha'is meet in a private house, it was agreed that a return visit, would be hosted by the Baha'i women, but at the Dunblane Meeting premises.

2 - Following an incident of racial graffiti being sprayed on the Edinburgh Nicholson Square Methodist Church, a group of volunteers from the nearly Mosque assisted in the clean-up operation. Relationships between the Methodists and their Islamic neighbours are excellent, and a group of young people drawn from both communities have been planning a working visit to Central Asia for this Summer, to which an invitation to members of the Synagogue was also extended. Such collaboration is an excellent way for faith communities to engage its younger members in working together. It demonstrates that the future is not all doom and gloom, as the media's portrayal of the influence of political groupings including the BNP might indicate.

3 - Also based at Nicholson Square is a multi-faith group of women, who meet monthly to share stories and fellowship across the faith divisions. The absence of menfolk and the temperance stance of the Methodists facilitates the participation of women from some of Edinburgh's faith communities in meaningful encounter with others.

The Churches' Agency for Inter faith Relations in Scotland (CAIRS) is the associated ecumenical group of ACTS (Action of Churches Together in Scotland) which exists to promote inter faith encounter among the Churches. As such, CAIRS occupies a different area to that of the Scottish Inter Faith Council. By organising study days and providing an E-journal to disseminate news of interest to those interested in inter faith issues, we seek to overcome some of the prejudices and ignorance that blights many of the Churches.

Writing in the April 2006 Focolare Magazine - "Living City", Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard outlines three approaches to interreligious dialogue:

Utilitarian-Pragmatic
We engage in dialogue out of a sense of losing out if we don't and of gaining through our involvement. Dialogue is seen as strategic rather than something that we do because we believe in the principles that are involved in it. There is likely to be little respect between the dialogue partners, they are just means to an end.

Obligatory
We engage in dialogue because our faith demands it. We do not value 'the other', we merely tolerate them because we are following the law of our faith tradition.

Love-driven
We engage in dialogue as one of the ways in which we express our concern for the world. We meet 'the other' because we matter deeply to each other. Rabbi Blanchard points out that this is hard to put into practice, but can be far more rewarding that the other two approaches. We treat our neighbours with respect rather than merely tolerating them.

Toleration of 'the other' implies disapproval of their 'otherness'. Love-driven dialogue allows for, and even celebrates, the diversity of the dialogue partners. Some of you may remember as children dreading the visit of certain relatives; you were expected to get on with them because they were your cousins, even though you had little in common with them apart than some shared genes! Contrast this with how you related to your childhood friends.

As members of different faith communities we have the potential to celebrate so much in common with each other. We approach the 'ultimate reality' in different ways, but we acknowledge that there is an ultimate reality. By celebrating what values and aspirations we have in common, rather than cataloguing our differences and arguing over them, we can learn so much about ourselves and about our shared humanity.

Following April's most successful CAIRS study day, entitled "An Encounter with Judaism", led by Rabbi Nancy Morris, a number of participants were keen to make sure that the dialogue did not end there.

One suggestion was to try to do something similar to a regular encounter that has happened for the past 27 years in California where a Presbyterian church has been invited to a Temple for a Shabbat service annually and some Jewish folk (actually quite a large number of them) come to the Church's regular Sunday service, and then through the following week there are times for evening discussions. The balance, where both congregations play host over the week, helps foster mutual appreciation of each other's traditions in a lovely reciprocal manner.

In the California exchange detailed above, the Minister and Rabbi swapped pulpits, but Rabbi Morris felt that Scotland might not be ready for that yet, do you agree? Community Member, Colin Douglas, who was present at the study day, has already offered to invite Nancy to preach in Livingston!