Multiculturalism: Interfaith Dialogue

Lord Chartres Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of London]

My Lords, it is a very great privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, because I think that he has done more than almost anybody to provide us with a vocabulary—a grammar— that commends and communicates the dignity of difference. I know that I speak for many people when I say how grateful we are.

I declare an interest as the president of St Ethelburga's Centre for preventing and transforming those conflicts that have a religious dimension. The centre was established in a church bombed by the IRA—of course there is a conflicted history there—with the support of Cardinal Hume and indeed of the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, who is Chief Rabbi, and various Muslim friends as well. I mention that not just to draw attention to a piece of work that is relevant to the debate initiated—for which we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell—but to acknowledge a recent shift in attitudes that, I am glad to say, has already been reflected in government policy. After the very serious disturbances in the northern cities, the subsequent reports and discussion tended to suggest that religion was a problem and that faith schools were a problem. Of course, faith schools are rather different from the church school that the Chief Rabbi attended. It is a quite different idea. We resent very deeply being lumped into that constituency. However, after the northern cities, there was quite an emphasis on religion as a problem.

What happened at the riots in August? Religious tensions did not play a part. Actually, parishes and religious communities were in the forefront of trying to help. That enormously impressive plea from the father of that young man, with the subsequent prayer meeting, was an example of that. Here is another extraordinary example from Tower Hamlets. Already the provocative demonstration of last weekend has been described. A woman member of the EDL got detached from her company and was assaulted not by someone from a different faith but by a totally apolitical ruffian of the borough. He went for her. She was rescued by stewards of the Muslim forum for Europe, who threw a cordon around her and escorted her politely to the Underground station. It is a wonderful vignette of community relations in Tower Hamlets, which, like Luton, sometimes gets a very bad press.

It seems to me that often we have a suggestion that members of certain faith communities are hostile to what are called western values such as freedom and tolerance. In my experience, it is not so much that there is a hatred of our values, but people are appalled by a vacuum of values and an absence of moral true north of the kind visible on our streets in August. That is where there can be a useful partnership between government and faith communities. It is clearly desirable that there should be religious literacy at all levels of government, not least in local authorities, with the capacity to distinguish self-appointed community leaders from people with real followership and commitment to the common good.

I pay tribute to the work that has already been done by government thinking and planning on social cohesion in this area. I am grateful in particular for the Near Neighbours programme, which recognises the positive capacity of churches, mosques, synagogues, gurdwaras and temples to engage with one another across confessional boundaries, and to build alliances in the interests of the common good. I believe that we are in a new world.