Learning to Live Well Together. Tom Wilson
Agreement is not; indeed, constructive disagreement can be the catalyst for dynamic action as we co-operate together.
We can only learn to live well together if we co-operate with each other. No one person or faith community has all of the solutions to the many different challenges we face as a society. Many of the solutions can only be realised if we work together, as the problems are broader than those of any particular faith community. Encounter can develop into understanding, creating the conditions for trust to flourish and enabling co-operation on areas of common concern. The Salaam Shalom Kitchen (SaSh), a joint initiative of Nottingham Liberal Synagogue and not-for-profit Muslim organisation Himmah, is a good example of how these four values might play out in practice. Initially started as an initiative funded by the Near Neighbours small grants programme (of which more in a subsequent chapter), it has been running since May 2015 and has now achieved independent status, although it remains dependent on donations to cover ongoing running costs. Muslims and Jews encountered each other, understood both their differences and their common concern, developed trust for each other and now co-operate in running a weekly drop-in café for the homeless.
The four values of the St Philip’s Centre do not necessarily interact in a solely linear fashion. Co-operation may be the basis for encounter. New volunteers joining projects such as the SaSh kitchen, for example, begin by co-operating with each other, and through volunteering together encounter difference and develop understanding of each other. A desire to understand difference may be the motivation behind a search for encounter. And so on. This book is organised in the linear fashion followed above, but each chapter notes different stages at which that particular value can become important.
A final point to note is that encounter with difference may happen as much within a particular faith community as between faith communities. Indeed, intrafaith encounter may be far more complex and challenging than interfaith encounter. Enabling Hindus to trust and co-operate with those Hindus within the ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or Hare Krishna) movement can be a challenge. It can be hard to enable trust and co-operation even within a particular grouping or denomination, as various public debates within the worldwide Anglican Communion make clear. People of a particular disposition may find they have more in common with those of other faith traditions who share their disposition, than with those of their own faith. Thus, for example, ultra-Orthodox Jews and Muslims are united in concern to protect their rights to raising their children in solely Jewish or Muslim environments. Equally, those actively campaigning for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people of faith may form alliances across different faiths rather than with those who have different views but share the same faith tradition. This is a complex world where answers are not straightforward, but the opportunities for learning and growth are immense.
The chapter closes with two case studies of work the St Philip’s Centre has been involved with around the general theme of learning to live well together. They are included to illustrate the points made in the chapter and to provide material for reflection and discussion.
CASE STUDY 2.1: ANGLICAN EDUCATION
TOM WILSON
The education sector is one important area that should facilitate learning to live well together. The St Philip’s Centre, in partnership with the National Education Office of the Church of England, has been running a series of events on precisely this theme.
On 8 December 2015 a group gathered in Church House, Westminster, to discuss the theme of ‘Living Well Together’. The day focused on two key questions. First, how does the education provided and the ethos lived out in our education establishments foster living well together? Second, what challenges do education establishments face in promoting living well together and how can these be overcome?
The initial stimulus for the day was the debate over exactly what constitutes ‘British values’ and how they should best be taught in schools. Rather than generate an overly negative focus on aspects of educational policy that are contentious, the planning team decided to invite religious participants from a variety of faith backgrounds and educational settings to contribute to a positive discussion on how religious faith both helps and hinders our living well together as a cohesive society. At the outset, we recognised that the place of religion in public society today is contested. Moreover, it is evident that a very small minority of religious people act in a way that divides and hinders our living well together in diversity in modern Britain today. Whilst this is the case, we believe that the vast majority of such contributions are positive and that these positive contributions should be highlighted and showcased. Furthermore, many religious foundation schools have a very positive track record in equipping pupils to live well together. This belief was confirmed when, following his visit to the Living Well Together day conference, Lord Nash, parliamentary under-secretary of state for schools, commented in the House of Lords:
Faith schools have an excellent track record on community cohesion. I attended only last week the Church of England’s Living Well Together conference, which brought together students, teachers, faith leaders and others to share ideas about how we live well together and promote peaceful coexistence. I was very impressed by what the Church of England is doing to promote these discussions within schools. (Hansard 2015)
What follows is a distillation of feedback from the day. Although the feedback is, of course, important, the process of generating the ideas and preparing them for presentation is the foundation for enabling delegates to take the ideas of how to enable living well together back to their own settings. In a sense the journey is more formative than the destination.
Some central observations from the London day conference would be the following:
»Living well together requires certain dispositions, such as being open-minded, respectful of difference, honest, compassionate, welcoming, secure in personal (and corporate) identity, welcoming and accepting of others and a good sense of humour.
»The skills needed to enable self and others to live well together include empathy, listening, the ability to treat others impartially and modelling dialogue.
»Religious faith helps living well together, because:
»It helps you to think beyond yourself, enabling you to look at the world without always having yourself at the centre.
»It helps you understand different morals and teachings; serious study of a variety of religious traditions reveals commonalities, including teachings about compassion and community.
»It encourages virtues such as compassion, hospitality and neighbourliness.
»It can lead to an increase in community cohesion.
»Religious faith can hinder living well together, because:
»People in a particular religious tradition may be limited by ignorance and fear. They may have a sense of their own innate superiority or a self-understanding that because they have exclusive access to the truth, everyone else is inferior.
»Religious institutions can paralyse followers of a particular religious faith or get caught up in defending self-interest.
»The baggage of history can be a challenge for forming relations in the present.
»The media can report complex religious problems over-simplistically or inaccurately.
The delegates at the London day conference suggested the following are essential components that should be taught to encourage living well together. The key skills identified included: emotional intelligence; the ability to facilitate discussion; the resilience to cope with challenges and disappointment; critical thinking and the ability to discern and question; and good communication skills and mediation skills. The topic of identity was argued to be central; if we are to live well together, then we must know ourselves and others. This would include teaching about self-value and self-awareness, as well as improving abilities of self-regulation. More generally, delegates argued that there is a need for improved religious literacy, including discerning the core values/shared values of the different religious traditions. This does not preclude discussing differences and debating what stances and attitudes are unacceptable in modern British society.
The overwhelming opinion