Abrahamic Ecumenism

I  moved to Bradford in 1996.

An early memory was of the Billboard on the inner ring road advising me to read The Koran which the poster described as 'The Final Revelation'.

Another memory was my first visit to the Synagogue for worship and seeing the mix of faiths represented in the congregation.

I was involved in a project which sought to create a visitor attraction as part of the Cathedral's celebration of the Millennium which aimed to illustrate the significance of faith as a response to the human search for meaning and identity.

Historically immigration into Bradford was by no means unusual.

Part of the historic quarter adjacent to the Cathedral was called Little Germany, Bradford was an international centre of the worsted cloth industry and it was said that on the floor of the Bradford Wool Exchange it was possible to hear every European language on any morning of the week.

Indeed in the Bradford Club train timetables on display allowed members to plan journeys to almost any country where there was a railway.

Without a flow of  migrants to work in manufacturing cities like Bradford much of the industrial revolution would not have happened. Indeed the most recent wave of immigration was by invitation as Britain and cities such as Bradford looked overseas to india, Pakistan and Bangladesh to a fill a shortage of workers in its textiles industry.

I reflected on this again when recently I visited family in Bradford.

Our meal was ordered from the local restaurant Eastern Spice which is one of a number of restaurants alongside the imposing Aakash situated in a redundant Congregational Chapel in Cleckheaton.

The multi-cultural, multi-racial identity of the City might horrify some and community relations have been strained by riots in the City, inappropriate comments from politicians and events that have happened or are happening on the Asian sub-continent.

When I lived in Bradford I found myself thinking of the City as reflecting what I chose to call, 'the future becoming of British society'.

Britain as a whole and Bradford in particular is a City where faiths are meeting and the result of this meeting reflects the possibility of moving away from the mistaken ideas of the past towards a new form of ecumenism.

In his book Abraham Sign of Hope for Jews, Christians and Muslims Karl-Josef Kuschel observes that the reason why such deep seated bitterness exists between these three communities of faith is that this is in reality a family quarrel.

What elements do we need if we are to establish the possibility of an Abrahamic Ecumene that would enable Jews, Christians and Muslims to continue in their faith traditions but to recognise that as, 'people of the book' they share more with each other than divides them and what they share is their common bond in the person and character of Abraham the father of many nations.

When Sarai his wife was rushed from the old peoples home to the maternity ward it was then that God's promise to Abraham was demonstrated, that his descendants would be as the dust of the earth, too much and too many to count.

What would an Abrahamic Ecumene need to draw together the people of the book?

In the Bradford Millennium Project the Exhibition designers engaged in an iterative dialogue which led us toward a focus on great life events and the stories of faith that surround them and the search for answers to the existential questions, Where am I from? Who am I? What will become of me?

These are fundamental questions, at the end of the First Millennium Wulfstan Archbishop of Canterbury identified these questions as being of concern to his contemporaries and they are no less pressing on our generation.

So the exhibition focused on the ceremonies in and by which the faiths which celebrated birth, marriage and death and alongside these exhibits we explored dress, food and worship.

The outcome of this focus was to see illustrated the commonalities which extended across all faiths but particularly Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Kuschel points towards the need for Abraham to be placed at the centre not as a substitute for Christ or Muhammad but as a 'primal image of faith', he then demonstrates that Abraham is a constant and critical figure demonstrating trust in God and the rejection of idolatry. This trust points towards the image of Abraham as a peacemaker and the places associated with the children of Abraham as places of peace, Hebron, Jerusalem and to which I would add Mecca.

Kuschel concludes his search with a passage exploring how the faiths can pray together for peace and reconciliation.

In my job as Director of the Charity Toc H a colleague developed a project 'Taking Tea with Toc H' which encouraged neighbours, communities, peoples of faith and no faith to 'take tea together' the results of this project were extraordinary insofar as the original invitations were reciprocated and tea was taken in synagogue, church and mosque. 

In Bradford I accompanied the Bishop to attend Friday Prayers as a gesture of solidarity at times of international stress and crisis.

Kuschel concludes with a chapter on prayer which contains the words of a meditation by Ibn 'Arabi a mystic who lived in the Caliphate in Spain with christian and jewish neighbours.

To one whose religion is different from mine,

I shall no longer say,

My religion is better than yours,

For my heart is ready to accept any form, 

to be a pasture for gazelles,

a monastery for monks,

a temple for idols,

the Ka'ba for one who has made a vow,

the tables of the Torah, the scroll of the qur'an.

For me there is only the religion of love:

wherever your ascent leads me,

love will be my confession and my faith.

The current atmosphere of fear and hostility generated by the rise of terrorism and counter terrorism the hostility directed at people of other faiths can only ever lead to greater conflict and deep unease. Western imperialistic attacks on Iraq and civil war in Syria and the rise of Isis make the need for an Abrahamic Ecumene ever more urgently necessary and ever more impossible to imagine.

But imagine it we must and what better place to start than a City like Bradford where the future becoming of British society is being shaped and imagined in schools, temples, synagogues, Gurdwara's, Mosques and churches.