Of late I have been somewhat… sporadic in my blog reports. For reasons that have seldom been particularly clear to me, there are people who take a polite interest in my life as expressed here, and in conversations with several of them recently it has become apparent that I have left large gaps in my coverage, many of which go back years. So I thought I’d attempt a few State of the Unit addresses on different strands that make up the rich and varied tapestry that is What I Have Been Getting Up To. Today I shall take for my topic the matter of the Christchurch Inter-Faith Council.
In early 2001, the advent Al-Aqsa Intifada in Israel-Palestine sparked a minor wave of concern for relations between Jews and Muslims in Christchurch, and somebody put out a call for people from different religions to form an interfaith group. I can’t remember how I heard about it, but if it was the usual way these things work, I expect that the Bahá’í community received a bulk email, somebody from the Assembly rang around a bunch of likely volunteers, and I was the one who put my hand up… actually, I do remember now. It didn’t get as far as ringing around, because I was on the Assembly myself at the time. So I went along to some meetings in a Presbyterian Church Hall in Riccarton.
Inter-faith activities often seem to begin with the formation of a group, to be followed at some length by a determination of what the purpose of the group ought to be. On the face of it, this would not appear to be an advisable way to organise anything, but it turns out to have some wisdom. Serious discussion of the purpose of a group can’t take place until the members are convinced that a group is possible, and the best way to convince people a group is possible is to arrange for them to turn up in a room and give them cups of tea and biscuits.
Lots of people did turn up, and over the course of several months it emerged that there were two broad schools of thought on what we should do, as reflected in the ungainly title we arrived at by a process of consensus and excessive politeness: the Inter-Faith Coalition for Justice and Understanding. Don’t blame me, I suggested Inter-Faith Christchurch. Loosely speaking, the Justice people wanted to go to protest marches and have panel discussions about the situation in the Middle East, and the Understanding people wanted to have fireside chats about what different religions believe.
Then the 9-11 attacks (or the 12-9 attacks as we insist on calling them around here in my brain) happened. It seemed to me that there was unlikely to be a shortage of protest marches and panel discussions about political matters with loose religious connections, so I gravitated towards the Understanding group. Sure enough, the ICJU faded away, and a group of us carried on as the ICU. But we did end up running our own public meetings with panel discussions about various topics, which led on to smaller gatherings in which various members talked about their experiences in the various religions to which we belonged. We also ran several devotional meetings for the annual Week of Prayer for World Peace. I learnt a lot at these meetings, and made some lasting friends, but by the time I moved to Auckland things had got rather quiet.
Not long after I returned to Christchurch, the Baha’i community received another email, I got a phone call of the type I would have got before, and I volunteered to pop along to another inter-faith meeting with a couple of other Baha’is. It seemed that Rafaa Antoun, who works for the Labour Party in Tim Barnett’s electorate office, had spotted that Auckland and Wellington have both for several years had well-recognised Interfaith Councils to liase with local and national government. Christchurch didn’t have one, which seemed rather shameful, so Rafaa organised a meeting to begin one.
I hasten to add that this was Rafaa’s personal initiative, and not motivated by the Labour Party. The party has been very supportive, however, and I suspect that they wouldn’t be averse to promoting any development that might get a bunch of moderate religious people more involved in civil society to counter the popular impression that all religious people are extremely conservative and vote for National. But that’s really none of my concern.
At our first meeting we went through the usual process of deciding that there should be an Interfaith Council before we had much idea what it should do, but it was clear that this one would be rather more high-powered, and attempt to take on a role mediating between communities and liasing with governments rather than holding small public meetings. I volunteered to be on the Working Group.
This has got rather longer than I planned, so I shall leave it at this crucial cliff-hanging point for the time being. Be sure to read on for my further adventures in the exciting world of committees. No really, I am genuinely excited about where this goes next.