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The school summer holidays are over in Scotland and there’s a sense of purpose and industry around. After a quiet few months our interfaith committee has become very busy. In the last week or two there has been an Eid dinner hosted by the Scottish Ahl-alBayt Society, a day with Church students, taking them to places of worship and introducing them to the work of interfaith in Scotland, a meeting with young people from three Catholic schools, working with St Mungo’s Museum to plan a programme which they will organise in their schools during interfaith week and a 24 hour colloquium on faith in public life.

 

This colloquium has become an annual event but this year it was special. For one thing we planned it in partnership with the Justice and Peace Commission and the Bishops’ Parliamentary Office and we had a Sunni and Shia Muslim and a Baha’i participating. This meant the majority of people attending were Christian but even this small number of people from other faiths made a tangible and significant difference. It was important to have an interfaith dimension, even if small, as we were reflecting on our common civic identity. The inspiration for the event and the title of the colloquium came from Lord Jonathan Sack’s book ‘The Home We Build Together’.  In that book Lord Sacks suggests that the image of a home could be a powerful motivation for people of all faiths and none to work together to bring about the kind of society we would all like to live in – in other words to work for the common good.

 

The key note speaker, who set the scene for subsequent reflections and discussions, was Lord John Mcfall, a person of faith with long experience in politics. He reflected on the relationship between faith and politics, suggesting that both have the same intention in that they are working for a better world. He had some interesting and challenging things to say. Change, he said was the only reality in life and not to be afraid of it. While we lived in a time of instability and insecurity, people were yearning for answers to the big questions of life, something religion had to offer. It could be that religion might be the only architecture to hold society together – quite a challenge! 

 

Cardinal Newman has a famous saying ‘to live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often’. But on the whole religions are conservative institutions and not often in the forefront of change. Religious founders were certainly innovators, often challenging the inflexibility of the conservatism of the faith and culture from which they sprung. But the developing tradition has a tendency to institutionalise the charisma and put its energies into maintaining the tradition. Religion, like nations, can look back with nostalgia to a golden age when all was well, stable and secure. But there was, of course, no such thing. Such thinking is a refuge from a world that is frightening in its insecurity and instablitiy. It’s this kind of thinking that has given rise, I think, to what we call identity politics, an attitude which also influences religions. There’s real evidence of a battening down the hatches in both religion and politics – a fear of the other, a sense that others are out to get us and we must look after ourselves and our own interests or ‘they’ will take over and deprive us of our livelihood and identity. In so far as this is the case, religions are in danger of setting themselves against society, rather than being the architecture that holds it together. This is only possible by embracing society, looking for the positive and good and speaking truth in love while inspiring fellow citizens to commit to accepting the human dignity of all and working for the common good.

 

To do this religion needs to learn a new language - the language of citizenship which Rabbi Sacks suggests should be the first language of us all, despite our second languages of ethnicity or faith. Someone at our colloquium suggested we needed to be bi-lingual. This may well be true but perhaps faith communities need to reflect on how far their language, especially in the area of morals and values, reflects the reality of today and is expressed in language that is positive and meaningful. In my own Church much of the language of faith and morals uses medieval concepts which are no longer relevant and suggest a cosmology and reality that is outdated. No wonder young people cannot take it seriously and are ahead of us in meeting some of the issues facing our planet and its future.
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There was much more of course and in due time a report will be published on our website. Recently Pope Francis encouraged us to avoid unproductive discussions. In interfaith no meeting is unproductive if it establishes a  bond of friendship and understanding but it was good to have discourse over matters that are important to all of us. The intention is that this should be the start of many more productive dialogues.

 

originally published in Interfaith Journeys at  http://www.interfaithjourneys.net/ 

 

 

Challenge Poverty in Scotland?  Aye, we can!

• Too many people in Scotland are trapped in the grip of poverty
• By boosting incomes and reducing costs we can solve poverty
• Solving poverty is about ensuring we can all participate in society
Why not take part?
You can get involved in Challenge Poverty Week by organising an activity or creating communications content. You can, for example:
• Organise a themed discussion
• Have an open day at your organisation
• Write a blog, make a video or talk to the media about the solutions to poverty
• Speak to a local politician about what needs to be done

To get more ideas on how to take part, ask us for a copy of our activity toolkit. Email Irene at irene.tortajada@povertyalliance.org

We are hoping to get substantial media coverage of the participant’s actions on a local and national level, with a focus on ensuring most of them use the framed messages and content we are disseminating for the Week. These messages are based on research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on public attitudes towards poverty and the most effective ways to build support to solve it by using framed language. We are offering free training to all participants in the Week about the learnings from this research on framing, with a focus on how to use language effectively when engaging with the media. You can learn more and sign up on our website: www.challengepoverty.net

The solutions we are advocating

 

Objectives for this year’s edition

The majority of participants in 2018 were third sector organisations, followed by elected representatives, and a smaller number of very active faith-based organisations and local authorities. The rest were public sector organisations and trade unions.

This year we hope to keep counting on strong support from the voluntary sector, alongside more active local authorities. We are also targeting more faith-based organisations and charities whose work is not directly anti-poverty, which we hope will help our message reach further.

How can we help you?

The Poverty Alliance will give all the support we can to help you participate in the Week. This support will include:

• Provide an activity toolkit to help you get involved. Ask Campaigns Officer Irene for a copy: irene.tortajada@povertyalliance.org
• Provide free training on media and how to build support for the solutions to poverty
• Promote your activity through local media, social media and our event calendar
• Give individualised advice. (Email Irene at irene.tortajada@povertyalliance.org)
• Provide social media graphics, media templates, lesson plans and petition letters
Together we can challenge poverty
Challenge Poverty Week is a real, practical opportunity to build a stronger movement against poverty and demonstrate our values of justice and compassion. At a time when life is becoming tougher for many people, it is vital that we build support for solving poverty.

To find out more and get involved:
Website: www.challengepoverty.net
Twitter: @CPW_Scotland on Twitter
Email: irene.tortajada@povertyalliance.org
Phone number: 07561881374

Fifty years ago the Apollo 8 astronauts were overcome by their view of the earth’s ‘singular beauty, isolation and fragility’.  Today that sense of fragility has taken on a new meaning as we hold the future of the planet in our hands.

 

Conservative projections indicate that the world is on course to become at least 3 degrees hotter by the end of this century than in pre-industrial times.  We have not seen a 3 degrees rise for around 3 million years and 4 or 5 degrees for tens of millions of years.  Such a temperature rise would transform the relationship between human beings and the planet.  Most of Southern Europe would look like the Sahara desert, with Bangladesh and Florida largely submerged.  Hundreds of millions of people could be on the move, with severe conflict a certain outcome.  The World Bank estimates there could be upwards of 140 million refugees by 2050 – more than 100 times Europe’s Syrian crisis. 

 

The Australian National Centre for Climate Restoration says that human civilisation as we know it may have already entered its last decades.  We are burning 80% more coal than we did at the turn of the millennium - proof that globally we are not doing enough. 

 

So what more can governments, politicians and society do?

 

In a recent House of Lords lecture, the Astronomer General, Lord Rees of Ludlow, emphasised that no political decision is ever purely scientific.  It involves economics, ethics and politics.  So politicians need to work with as many groups as possible in the global race to save the planet.  This is where the Church and, in particular, Laudato Si’, enter centre stage.

 

As a ‘practicing but unbelieving Anglican’, Lord Rees was encouraged by Pope Francis to contribute to the encyclical.  He praised the pope for his global leadership and said: ‘There is no gainsaying the Church’s global reach, its long-term vision and concern for the world’s poor.’

 

Jeffrey Sachs, described by Time magazine as ‘the world’s best known economist’, is an unabashed Pope Francis fan.  He says that Francis offers the most compelling leadership on the planet, warning about economic and environmental degradation and projecting a compelling vision in a world threatened with extinction.  He argues that Catholic Social Teaching, from the Gospels to Laudato Si’, puts the question of economics into a moral framework.

 

Laudato Si’ is a radical call to conversion.  It advocates ‘ecological conversion’ in which our encounter with Jesus is realised as a ‘vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork’.  In a recent interview, Pope Francis said that it is not a green encyclical but a social encyclical based on a ‘green’ reality, the custody of creation.

 

Over the years, I have seen the good work done by Justice and Peace groups in schools and communities throughout the country.  Laudato Si’ strikes me as being a tailor-made manifesto for Justice and Peace groups in the 21st century.  With possible catastrophe facing humanity in the coming decades, there is no more relevant social teaching than Laudato Sí, which addresses not just a single issue, but the great global challenges of our time.

 

Lord John McFall  

 

On Saturday 21st September 2019 Justice and Peace Scotland are holding a conference on the environment in Glasgow - Laudato Si - Care For Our Common Home, to find out more and to book a place at the conference click here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/laudato-si-care-for-our-common-home-tickets-59884089925