Re-vitalising the faith institutions
Open Discussions in association with Gulf Cultural Club
Re-vitalising the faith institutions
* Bishop Paul Hendricks
Auxiliary Bishop at the Catholic Archdiocese of Southwark
** Dr Isa Jahangir
Principal, Islamic College, London
*** John Woodhouse
Westminster cathedral interfaith group
****His Eminence Archbishop Angaelos
First Coptic Orthodox Archbishop of London
Tuesday 17th December 2024
Many Christians will mark the birth of Jesus in their own ways and styles. This is an opportune moment to reflect on the life of Jesus Christ who is revered as one of the greatest influencers in the human history. The institutions linked to divine religions need strong public and government support in order to deliver a service to the public in line with their faith commitment. These institutions include places of worship and religious supplementary schools. What can be done to make them attractive to the public in an environments that may be hostile or at least unfriendly to religions?
Bishop Paul Hendricks What is trust? I suppose it’s a relationship
where you know you can depend on the other person (or institution).
Depend in what way?
Don’t necessarily know exactly what they’re going to in any given situation. (Even your husband or wife can sometimes surprise you!)
But you know you can depend on their good faith, their good intentions.
Also, probably, their general attitudes and competence.
Bearing this in mind, trust has to be built up over a period of time. As any relationship, it takes time to establish.
Also, it’s a two-way thing. Each person has to show that they are worthy of trust.
At the same time, trust needs a basic attitude of openness on both sides. It won’t work if one person remains always suspicious and demanding, so that the other person has to keep proving their sincerity again and again.
This is how trust begins, hopefully in easy times, but you only know how deep it is, when times become difficult and you need to rely on the other person.
That’s why it’s a long term thing. The trust needed in a time of crisis is only possible if the relationship has been built up over the previous years.
How does this apply to religions? More particularly to dialogue and relations between religions?
People sometimes ask what is the purpose of dialogue. They would say, ‘We’re doing OK on our own.’
But if trust isn’t built up in ordinary times, it won’t be there when we need it in difficult times.
Various relationships where trust is needed:
Most obviously trust is needed in relations between religions.
Most people only have knowledge of their own religion (if any). Few know much about other religions.
Also, there are often cultural issues as well. Different customs, different ways of dressing, different expectations of how people should behave.
People are often suspicious of what they don’t know or understand.
Therefore it’s difficult to have trust in a religion or a culture you don’t know.
One good thing is that, certainly in London, people of different religions and cultures often live in the same neighbourhoods.
If my neighbour is a Muslim or Hindu, I can get to know him and realise how much we have in common.
When I hear someone saying bad things about (for example) Muslims, I can say, ‘That isn’t true of the many Muslims I know’.
As a bishop, I have both local and national responsibilities.
At the national level I am a member of our Department for Dialogue and Unity.
It promotes greater understanding between different Christian churches and different religions.
One of the things we do to further mutual understanding is to organise visits to different places of worship.
Over the years, I’ve visited various important centres, such as the Hindu temple in Neasden and the Jain temple in Potter’s Bar.
I’ve also visited many mosques and cultural centres, as most of my interfaith work is with Muslims.
I’m the Co-Chair of a small but nationally active organisation called the Christian Muslim Forum.
This brings together leaders from different Christian churches and different Islamic traditions.
I said that trust takes time to develop. At the CMF we have been engaging in ongoing dialogue for many years. I’ve been involved in this myself for nearly twenty years.
We bring people together to discuss difficult issues with the aim of coming to a common understanding.
For instance, with help from many contacts and advisors, we developed some guidelines for leaders advising those entering interfaith marriage.
Similarly, guidelines for witness. Knowing how to witness to our faith (as our religions require us to do) without aggressively trying to convert others.
Another area where trust is needed is between religions and the wider community. Eg. in Finsbury Park after the atrocity in 2017, where a driver deliberately drove into a crowd of people coming out of the mosque.
There was a lot of support from the local community, in terms of practical help and moral support.
It was important that good relations had built up over the years, as I had already discovered when I went there for an Iftar celebration on about three or four earlier occasions.
Trust is also needed between different traditions of the same religion. For instance, between different Christian churches. I’ve seen many examples of this, over the years, and it’s very encouraging to see.
On all these different levels, trust is all the more important in when we live in a society that can often have a negative attitude towards religion.
An example is attitudes to ‘faith schools’, which so easily come under suspicion because local and national government doesn’t understand religion.
An encouraging example of cooperation between religions and churches, is over the issue of Assisted Suicide.
One very important thing we have in common.
We believe that we are created by God and we live in a world that is subject to his rules.
In a world where people want to be independent and to make their own moral rules…
…it isn’t popular to say that there is a moral code that we have to respect.
It’s often said that different religions have different moral codes, but in fact the differences are very minor, compared with what we have in common.
Such differences as there are will often be more due to culture than to the fundamentals of our religions.
So, for these reasons, I would say that trust between religions is very important…
…and that it isn’t actually as difficult as people might often imagine.
John Woodhouse: On September 29th 2024 during the Season
of Creation 24 Laudato Si’ Animators from around the country gathered for a Laudato Si’ encounter at the Laudato Si’ Centre in Salford. Laudato Si’ Animators are members of the Laudato Si Movement, a global community of prayer and action, who animate their local parishes and communities to engage in ecological spirituality, sustainable lifestyles and advocacy for climate and ecological justice.
Animators work to bring Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ to life and care for our common home. The animators https://laudatosianimators.org/ are trained by the Laudato Si’ Movement to get the message of Pope Francis into the parishes. Most of the animators knew each other from bi-monthly zoom meetings and taking part in prayer vigils and marches about the climate and biodiversity.
The day began with a tour of the centre given by Emily Cahill their environmental and learning officer. She stressed that Bishop John Arnold’s vision for the centre at Wardley Hall was that it was for everyone as a centre for learning, spirituality and wellbeing.
One of the suggestions made was to write to the bishops and environmental leads in each diocese asking
- a) have you visited the Laudato Si’ centre?
- b) have you looked in detail at the centre’s website and programme https://laudatosicentre.org.uk/?
- c) do you have the vision to establish something similar in each diocese?
What is needed is some land owned by the Diocese preferably with woodland and near to public transport. Trained staff would be needed to run the centre supported by volunteers. Disabled access and safeguarding are important. In terms of buildings the outdoor classrooms and portaloos were perfectly adequate. But the most important thing is prayer and vision.
How are we to get the message of Pope Francis to clergy and laity? A centre like this would be wonderful for doing just that. A place like this in every diocese would help towards the commitment for 2030 (30% of church land to be rewilded) a centre for peace and reconciliation and evangelisation.
We were told about young people who had attempted suicide coming to the centre and beginning to find hope again. We all responded to the inspiring experience of being in creation. How many children never experience this? So many spend their lives glued to their phones and live in a virtual world. So many have mental health issues. Laudato Si’ needs to be seen as a spiritual and evangelical document. Our young people are pushing us to do so much more and they respond very positively to the message of Pope Francis.
In four years a lawn has been converted into a thriving garden. The woodland area is ideal for groups. Over 3000 people have visited the centre especially school and parish groups.
We then were given leaves from various plants to attach to our sheets on which we wrote what inspired us to be animators and what our hopes for the future are.
Each of us chose a picture and spoke about it as we introduced ourselves. After a simple vegan lunch where we were joined by the director of the centre Emma Gardner, we split into groups and noted down our responses. The rain brought us back into the outdoor classroom where Bishop John greeted us all and a photo was taken.
Sr Joan Kerley then gave us an inspiring talk about St Hildegard of Bingen and St Kateri and the Haudenosaunee (Iriquois) Creation story. We sang two songs about creation and then started to answer the 7seven questions the Laudato Si’ movement had given us. We ended with prayers from the Haudenosaunee Greetings to the Natural World.
Dr Isa Jahangir: I am honoured to be part of this gathering. Thank
you for inviting me to share my views and concerns about this important topic. When we talk about revitalisation of faith communities we presume that there are some challenges in the faith communities and the faith institutions and an important step would be to see what they are.
The faith communities have not been able to address these challenges effectively. We need to talk about revitalisation and bringing trust back to the faith communities. One of the important challenges we have been facing as faith institutions for the last two centuries is modernization the post modern condition.
Secularization has been with us. Some elements of secularization have been a challenge to some of the faith communities. Not being able to address the challenges of modernity and post modernity gradually the members of the faith communities, the young people especially who grew up with modern mentalities and post modern life styles see a gap and disconnection between themselves and religious centres. They don’t see the religious education which is provided by faith communities as meeting their psychological traits and their needs.
On top of this are misconceptions and misrepresentations of religion. And there are misrepresentations of Islam. But I would lie to focus on the factors which are rooted mainly with ourselves.
Muslims, Christians and Jews have responded differently. As far as the Muslim religion is concerned there are some groups which totally reject it and some which totally accept modernism and post modernism. Some have been selective rejectionists or selective exceptionalists. Some have been revitalists like Islamists. And some have been reformists. They have kept the principles of the faith but they can bring some reforms.
It is an issue that we have not been able to keep up with the pace of change in society. The faith communities and the faith leaders have not been able to keep up with the speed of this change.
When a young person asks a question some of us may not even understand where the question is coming from. What is the original paradigm of the question. It is not the paradigm of faith. It is a very different paradigm that they are living in. When I do not know where the question is coming from how I am supposed to address that question? So the solution and the answers should also be modern.
There is a verse in the Quran which says God does not change the condition of people unless they change themselves. The change should come from within. The first change should be about the issues regarding facing modernity and modern life.. Facing changes lying down is not what Islam says. It is not what Christianity says.
For me the best solution is taken from the Quran. The Quran says you are a modern community. What is the meaning of a moderate (al wasat) community. I don’t think it is right to say that there is a traditional moderate community. The bench marks by which this moderation can be identified and explained are changing. There is a mechanism for change within religion and that is what religion does. Ijitihad is the mechanism which can answer the questions of modern issues.
Let me give you an example. I was involved in some of the Sunday schools in the UK. The parents thought their children were not learning about religion so they sent them to weekend or Sunday schools. I am sure the same thing happens in Christianity.
I went to one of these schools in Luton. I asked to see their books. They were teaching the concept of necessary existence to seven year olds. This is a very complicated concept. The speech of God is eternal. Even the teachers did not have a deep understanding of this concept and even if they did what is the point of teaching these terminologies. They are not sacred. What is sacred is God himself.
So we were using traditional approaches for hundreds of years. The children would not understand this. They can’t relate to what is happening in the Islamic centres. There must be an understanding of religion and ideology which is releatable to young people, to those who are thinking in a modern way.
This is the main thing we have to deal with. The Quran says hold fast to the rope of Allah. We have to see how we are providing a platform for modern life. Are the challenges being addressed properly.
We should have the courage to say that we are scared of bringing some of the reforms. If we bring some of the reforms the whole religious identity will eventually melt away and as result we end up having very specific people. With all due respect most of the people here today are not young people. We are not addressing the real issues that the young people can relate to. We should prepare the ground so everyone can be catered for.
His Eminence Archbishop Angaelos: I am so pleased to be here with
you all today. I think the fact that people are here we are, as we say in the church, preaching to the choir. We are talking about the importance of religion and the applicability of religion. In actual fact everyone here would agree with that.
I need to point out that I would think that for most of us here today religion is part of who we are. It is inseparable, it is indistinguishable. This is different from a lot of Western concepts in some ways that we can compartmentalize. So we can be good citizens on one side and have religion completely distanced from that.
I think you all know as human beings we are complex creatures. In the bible we read that God created us intricate beings and that is an interconnectivity of body mind and spirit that functions best when it is holistic and disfunctions – non functions – when it is separated. So for us to think of issues as logical issues, social issues or religious issues is a false separation because when we make decisions we will call into that decision making process everything about us.
So religions for us is an important indistinguishable part of who we are. We must demonstrate that to the world. We must speak in a way people understand. I will focus on the word revitalize. I don’t think there is any re about it. Re is to do again. What we ned to do is look forward to make things relevant and relatable and make things accessible. So when people look at us as people of faith they understand why it is that we do things a certain way and why it is that this is important.
I would think that for all of us here today there are some moral imperatives that would cross religious boundaries: social justice, equality, freedom of religion, freedom of belief, the importance of every individual, the sanctity of life, human dignity.
Those are things that affect us all, touch us all and should be important to us all. It is only when we speak together that we give a strong and powerful and important message to the world
I have been here for almost 30 years and I have served beside my own pastrol ministry my community and I have been very blessed to serve in various ways including inter faith and inter religious dialogue. I am very blessed to have served with Bishop Paul and Julian Bond in the Christian Muslim Forum ever since it was established.
It is important for us to function together. I am a Christian from a Coptic background in a country where we have lived in dialogue, in relations for 1400 years. This is not something that is new to us. It is not problem solving. It is not crisis management. It is a way of life. So for us to show that properly it needs to be a normal way of life.
Religion is not something that is wheeled out where it can be utilised or instrumentalized because there is a crisis and then put back on the shelf because it no longer has a purpose. Religion does matter. In a recent review that was done by the Bishop of Winchester it was noted that 80 percent of the world’s population holds some kind of religious belief.
Now if we were to look at statistics and media and social media and social discourse we would think that is ridiculous. We would think that religion doesn’t matter, that people don’t care and at best religion is irrelevant and at worse it is the source of all conflicts. That is not true. And we must speak powerfully to change that narrative because that narrative is false.
Religion is a firm foundation for many people not only around the world but here in this nation, here in this city.
It becomes problematic due to the erroneous application of religion where religion is utilized to oppress, to alienate, to marginalize and that is where it becomes problematic. Where my religion as a Christian protects others even if it does not agree with their faith or belief that is a message that every person matters.
I have been involved for the past 25 years with religious freedom. And we first started advocating for Coptic Christians in Egypt who were persecuted and in some cases killed by Islamists, Not Muslims, Islamists because in Egypt there are 85 percent Muslims and 15 percent Christians. There are between 15 – 20 million Christians. We have seen in the recent uprisings that Christians and Muslims stood side by side, shoulder to shoulder on many issues.
But there are some whose perspective is very narrow, who don’t just persecute Christians but persecute Muslims who do not think the way they think because that is the only way to think. In the uprising in Egypt when there was a breakdown of law and order the first attack by Islamists was not on Christians. It was on Sufi shrines. So when we misuse religion, when a pastor in the USA decided he was going to burn a Quran we said no that is not what Christianity is about.
So we need to own our own religion own our own discourse and own our own narrative and speak when we see application. This is what gives us credibility.
The uprisings spread through the Middle East and we saw what happened to Christians in Iraq, Syria and Libya. And we saw what was happening to the Yezidis in Iraq and the Rohingya in Mayanmar and the Uyghurs in China and the Ahmedia in Pakistan and the Christians in Nigeria.
And in my mind the most unchristian thing I could do is to just advocate for Christians. So we established an advocacy office that advocates for people who suffer violations due to their belief. We stand with the Bahais, with the Rohingya, the Yezidis, the Shabbak as well as with the Christians because as people of faith we believe in the sanctity of life and the importance of every life. Then we give a strong indication that religion is not a problem but a solution.
So it is not about revitalizing. It is about owning our space, It is about presenting faith as it should be presented not as exclusive, not as alienating, not as something that is beyond anyone else but as something that makes us better people.
I am saying to our own teams we do not want to introduce people to the orthodox church, we want to introduce people to Christ. If they accept him, they accept him, if they reject him he gives them that right to reject him. We cannot change hearts. The best way to preach as a Christian, as a Muslim as a Bahai is to be good people. As Jesus said to his disciples that people should know them and glorify their father in heaven. And that is how we make our faith and our religion relevant.
It needs to be accessible, it needs to speak to this generation. It needs to be multilingual. And I don’t just mean the spoken word, but culturally in thought, in approach.
We also need to demonstrate that it is a solution to many things. I don’t know of any war in the world that has been resolved through military might. Every war ends with some sort of truce. Every war ends with some sort of agreement whether it is symmetrical or asymmetrical, even or imbalanced it ends with conversation and religion must be part of that conversation to give people hope.
There is so much in our world now that takes hope away and that is bleak, that is dark. Religion for us in this room and for billions in this world – 80 percent – must also bring hope. So in any group we would imagine that four out of five hold that their religion is a solution. One in five if they see that equation will be affected positively.
One of the Christian principles that what we have is light in the world. And as we come to the feast of the nativity in the words of the gospel of St John : the light came into the world.
So that is what we believe as Christians for the Muslims, for the Bahais, for the Hindus for the Sikhs for anyone else. They will find an equivalent understanding of hope in light. And if we all live according to our religion and focus on that point and come together on it then that is where we bring hope into a hopeless world. Light into what appears a very dark world and a promise of goodness in a world that seems to be void of it.
*Bishop Paul Hendricks is the Auxiliary Bishop with pastoral responsibility for the Kent area of the Catholic Archdiocese of Southwark. He was born in 1956, and grew up in Orpington, Kent. He studied Physics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and worked for GEC for two years as an electronics engineer. He then studied for the priesthood at the English College in Rome, specialising in Philosophy at Masters-degree level. In 1984 Bishop Hendricks was ordained a priest and a year later was appointed Assistant Priest at St Boniface, Tooting. From 1989 he taught Philosophy full-time at St John’s Seminary, Wonersh. After ten years he was appointed as Parish Priest of Our Lady of Sorrows, Peckham in SE London. In 2006 he was ordained bishop. Within the Bishops’ Conference, he was appointed to the Department of Dialogue and Unity. He is also an Ecumenical Canon of the Anglican Cathedral of Southwark.
**Dr Isa Jahangir is the Principal of the Islamic College, London. He undertook his Islamic studies at the Seminary of Qum, and the International Institute for Islamic Studies, completed his BA and MA in Sociology, and a PhD in Culture and Communication Studies. He Has taught different subjects regarding Islamic studies and Muslim social thought. Currently he is the principal of the Islamic College, London. He has published many books and papers on Shia and Islamic studies.
***John Woodhouse is a Roman Catholic who organises the Westminster cathedral interfaith group and is co-ordinator of Laudato Si’ animators UK. John is organist and choirmaster at St John the Evangelist, Caterham Valley. He has been married to Liz for 50 years and they have 3 children and 3 grandsons. He paints in oils, enjoys swimming, opera and the Proms and is a retired librarian. He founded the Westminster Cathedral Interfaith group 13 years ago and it meets monthly to discuss papal documents and visit mosques, synagogues, temples and exhibitions. He has been on Faiths Together in Croydon walks in the parks and has been involved with the group about combatting hate crime.
****His Eminence Archbishop Angaelos is the first Coptic Orthodox Archbishop of London, having served as General Bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom since 1999, and as a monk priest from 1995-1999.
Archbishop Angaelos is widely recognised for his extensive advocacy work, and was conferred the honour of Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty The Queen for ‘Services to International Religious Freedom.’
Archbishop Angaelos has also been conferred the Lambeth Cross for Ecumenism by
the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Coventry Cross of Nails for Reconciliation.
Archbishop Angaelos specialises in initiatives relating to advocacy, international religious freedom and development work, and is a member of, and chairs, numerous
local, national and international bodies dealing with these matters. He is founder and
convener of the Asylum Advocacy Group which works closely in partnership with the
All Party Parliamentary Group on International Religious Freedom or Belief.
