Last Saturday we had a little ‘children’s work road trip’ as three of us from the Diocese headed to Birmingham for a day conference organised by CURBS (Children in Urban Situations) entitled ‘Remaining distinctively Christian whilst connecting with children/families of other faiths’. It was hosted at the Faithful Neighbourhoods Centre and brought together around 30 practitioners from around the country to learn, explore some of these issues and have a good curry for lunch!
After a successful journey, made all the better for the luxury of not having to use my mum’s old Fiesta and a bag of Liquorish Allsorts, we were ready for session 1. In it Claire Clinton did the basic run down of what the major faiths represented in our communities believed; and how we, as Christians could find both common ground and appropriate points of difference and discussion.
After a coffee break and few dips into a tub of Cadbury’s Heroes we were ready for session led by Andrew Smith. He is the Bishop’s Director for Interfaith Relations in the Diocese of Birmingham and comes from a good Children’s Work background having previously been a field worker for Scripture Union. He spoke excellently and thought provokingly and left us with three main insights to take away that formed questions we should be asking if working in a multi faith context. I shall share them with you so you can feel as if a little part of this road trip was yours, but without the sweets.
How should we work when people already have a belief system?
Andrew made the observation that most evangelistic resources have the assumption that the person comes from a place of having no faith or a nominally Christian one and therefore tends to major on the need to give up on an ‘old life’ and repent to begin a new one. Andrew observed that you can sound pretty silly telling someone who prays five times a day that they need to radically change their life. Perhaps, he suggested, we should think about affirming what is there and seeing how to include Jesus in it?
How do we exercise our ministry when the people we are working with don’t have free choices about their spiritual life?
He said that this could especially be a problem if our focus is on conversion as leaving Islam for example, can be seen as an unforgivable sin. Opposition to a child’s involvement in Christian activity is based around a fear that if they convert they will not share the afterlife with them and their child will go to ‘hell’. It would also mean that the child would be rejecting a great deal of culture and heritage that was central to family life and it would be painful for all involved; we should remember how we would feel if some of our children went to join another faith, we would be hurt just as much.
Andrew said that his aim in working with children was for them to grow up understanding and thinking about Christianity but not seeing everyone one as required to act like Daniel in the Bible and make a stand for their faith, reminding us that most of God’s people in exile were told to ‘marry, plant gardens and live in peace’.
How do we work in these places when lots of people say it shouldn’t happen at all?
To answer this concern Andrew drew parallels between the views the Jews in Jesus’ time held of the Samaritans and the views that Christians can have towards Muslims. Jesus’ response to this was to repeatedly visit Samaritan territory and even heal the 10 lepers on one of his visits.
He said a key to this dialogue was to take seriously the whole of 1 Peter 3.15. This verse is often used to remind Christians of their need to be ready to give the reason for their hope but the second half can be neglected. In it we are told to do so with gentleness and respect which he saw as the key to answering this question. We are to go and share our hope but we do it in relationships that are full of mutual respect.
This word ‘relationship’ came up again and again through the day as a key thing. All of the potential problems of working as Christians in multi faith areas become easier when your relationships into other faith groups are strong and based on mutual respect. There was a real challenge that came from the day to get out, meet people and get to know them.