Faith Space

I ought to have been aware of our local University's Faith Space: it must have opened a while ago, but I only noticed it this morning, as I was cutting through Park Campus.

It presumably replaces what was the campus chapel, which always seemed - to a passer by - a singularly uninviting place, albeit part of the original Christian teacher training college complex.

Things have changed in Cheltenham over the decades, and the new pocket-sized prayer spot is rightly inter-faith. Unfortunately, it was closed today - I guess because it's the vacation, and there's nobody about to keep an eye on it. (In principle, it needs to be ever open, but that could be tricky, I appreciate.) It's certainly in a prominent enough position, and let's hope well-used.

Honoured

Great news from our friend Sarah Thorley! She's been awarded an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours, for her services to inter-faith dialogue: she came to Cheltenham to speak about her experience last year - as I noted.

"Sharing Eden"

Three Festival of Literature events today: near my limit! Two of them were sponsored by the splendid Coexist Foundation. On the platform for the first of these, a discussion took place between followers of the three great Abrahamic faiths, pooling insights which could secure a better future for our planet. As Rabbi Nathan Levy (2nd from left in my photograph) said, "Even if we don't all share the same vision of heaven, we share the same Earth."

A common Earth manifesto subscribed to by the world's great religions? It could give people of faith that credibility they often lack within our sceptical yet green-inclined society; but how can we hope to achieve such a thing when within each of our faiths there are those who question any commitment to the importance of global stewardship?

This said, I bought the book after the event, the first time I'd succumbed this Festival: I usually buy more, but I'm in a mean streak.

Rabbi Nathan, a co-author of Sharing Eden, reminds us that people of faith are uniquely placed to speak truth to power about a concern for environmental justice. Politicians work to a five-year plan, business people may adopt a ten-year plan, but we are used to thinking longer-term: only after seven times seven years do we celebrate jubilee: "And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."

A lot – or sometimes very little – can change in 50 years. As I recorded last month, it’s that period since I started at university: had I instead, as destined, gone into articles in a solicitors’ firm in Birmingham, my life would have been very different. Yesterday was 50 years since the 2nd Vatican Council opened: some would say, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." More mundanely tomorrow will be 50 years since the last train went from Cheltenham to Kingham on the old Honeybourne Line, running 50 yards from our front gate: what would we now give to have back the comprehensive rail network, which Beeching axed?

Cheltenham Inter Faith

I'm not a member, but have been along to Cheltenham Inter Faith before. Tonight, our friend Julia Neuberger came to talk on "Why Inter Faith relations matter": as can be seen, she attracted a big audience, but not a lot of non-WASPs. At least, I'd guess many of them were WASPish: I counted the other Catholics I knew there on the fingers of one hand, and there were equally few obvious Muslim, Hindu, Sikh faces.

Julia is always worth listening to. Of religious education for children, she said, "They have to believe it matters." And that's the same, not just for children, but for all of us who wish to be taken for credible defenders of faith by an unbelieving world.

The problem is, where to go after we have got up from drinking our cups of tea together. I put it to her that, in this week of Rio+20, shouldn't people of all faiths make some joint commitment to strive for simpler ways of living for individuals and sustainable development for the world at large. "No," came the firm reply. She favours, rather, joint action for those in current need - which brought Groucho Marx to mind: "What has posterity ever done for me?" But surely it's not a case of either/or, Julia?

Nevertheless welcome back to Cheltenham! You are a lovely ambassador for your faith, and you really do walk the talk.

A moral climate

Michael Northcott came to Cheltenham last evening, to address a Cheltenham Inter Faith meeting. His talk was based upon his 2007 book, "A moral climate: the ethics of global warming."

Professor Northcott comes across less as an academic (he is Professor of Ethics at Edinburgh University) than as a campaigner. Not that I have anything against a passionate speaker, but I emerged from the normally tranquil setting of the Friends' Meeting House feeling rather shell-shocked.

Or should that be "Shell shocked"? The first part of the Northcote fusillade was aimed at the oil companies. "Shell paid my school fees... but oil and blood have often intermingled," he told us. Tar sand extraction was "an unbelievably filthy process." And he had brought along the images to prove it.

Professor Northcott's thesis is that inequity is the central feature of the climate crisis; that those who suffer are least responsible, whilst those who are the cause are least affected. The climate, he says, is a global commons, and commons are not traditionally managed by either markets or states; yet the atmosphere is now being "enclosed" by the carbon emissions trading procedure. Climate change cannot be resolved by emissions trading: we have to "keep it in the ground".

The faiths can contribute two things towards meeting this challenge. First, the dimension of healing and restoration (in Christian terms "resurrection"); and secondly their sense of posterity: again, as a Christian, he pointed to the Communion of Saints: we worship God in churches which are traditionally built with graves - containing the bodies of the Saints - all around them. "I am a hopeful person," he concluded (albeit with a rare note of hesitation in his voice).

"Which is the true religion?"

A ring with the power to make its owner loved by both God and his fellow man is passed down the generations, father to son, until one father has three sons he loves equally. To avoid choosing between them, he has two other rings made. No one now knows which is the authentic ring and arguments between the sons ensue. A judge advises them that, if the ring really possesses its reputed power, the true owner will make himself known, so they should each act as if theirs were the true ring.

A parable told to Saladin by Nathan the Wise at the time of the Third Crusade (1192), as retold by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in 1779