Comment (July/August 2010)

with Bishop Martin Wharton

Two months ago I wrote about the visit of a group of Orthodox Jews and Christians from Newcastle to Auschwitz. It was a deeply moving experience. We talked and sang and laughed and cried and prayed together at a place of unspeakable horror and destruction.

Through the experience, we grew in knowledge and understandings and deepened our relationships with each other. A few weeks later at the beginning of June, Newcastle Civic Centre hosted a significant national conference ‘Forces for Good, Forces for Peace’.

This event brought together members of all the faith communities in the city, civic leaders and senior members of the Armed Forces. We paid tribute to the members of our Armed Forces who give of themselves selflessly, skillfully and sacrificially to keep the peace and security of our world. We also renewed our commitment to work for peace whenever and wherever we find ourselves.

The conference opened with prayers from the Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Muslim, Jewish and Christian Chaplains of our Armed Forces, because we believe that the peace of the world must be prayed for by the faiths of the world.

I still find two conflicting attitudes whenever I talk about relationships between members of the different faith communities in our city and region.

One is the belief that any friendship across religious boundaries is a fatal compromise. This is nonsense. In every faith there have been members and leaders who have seen beauty in the worship and beliefs of others. The other and opposite view is that there are no real differences when it comes to religion. It is said, that nothing in each religion matters very much, beyond the fact that there is one God and one humanity. That too is absurd. Each great world faith is not reducible to any of the others.

What matters is the ability to respect differences and yet be true and close friends. A true friend is one who honours our principles and who never asks us to compromise our conscience as a condition of friendship.

Such relationships between the faiths have not been common in history. Indeed there are some extremists and fanatics today, as we saw in Newcastle only weeks ago, who continue to ferment division and discord between peace loving people of all the faiths.

That such special friendships not only exist but flourish in Newcastle is a special blessing to us all. But more needs to be done.

The continuing challenge is to get to know people who are different from ourselves. The effort of a local church to link up with a synagogue, mosque or temple, or, of individual members of different faith communities to get to know each other and count each other as friends, may seem insignificant against the backdrop of global conflicts. Yet it is only the lived reality of such personal relationships that will be strong enough to hold us together when stereotyping in the media tries to drive us apart.

We need to rediscover what it is to be friends and neighbours in our streets and communities. Friendship, harmony and mutual respect characterise the best kinds of living together. May they long continue to be the mark of all relations here as we commit ourselves to be a City for Peace.