大象传媒

From the Reverend Richard Coles:

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It was the school Faith Tour on Wednesday, when we take our Year Sixes to Bedford, which conveniently has, within walking distance, a Gudjwara, a mosque and a church. The three communities associated with those places have become friends, and are a model of cooperation in a town which has a long history of cheerfully tolerating religious and cultural difference. For our Year Sixes, it also offers the more immediate attractions of a packed lunch, free stuff, and a chance to test to its limits a carefully compiled risk assessment. Heads covered or uncovered, shoes on or off, they are curious to engage with three of the world鈥檚 great religions, as their guileless questioning confirmed - about Sikh undergarments, methods for managing Ramadan, and the differences in Christian practice in the far-flung places our kids come from, in Eastern Europe, Equatorial Africa, Kettering.

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For a religious professional, sitting at the back, trying not to put off the church lady explaining vestments (immaculately) to the children, it was fascinating to see how the they engaged with the things that are different from what they鈥檙e used to - the art of the turban, working out where Mecca is and why it鈥檚 important, swinging the thurible with intent to endanger life. For us grown ups, it鈥檚 different, trying to work out how we solve the problem of living alongside each other with unmanageable demands; but it鈥檚 not just about big things, it鈥檚 about little things too, and in these, common enterprise was striking. Everywhere we went there was a rota: to read, to provide refreshment, to meet and greet. Everywhere we went stacking chairs were taken out and put away again. Everywhere we went there was a sort of back stage area, where religious kit, our props and motley, was stowed, awaiting its appearance at the altar, the min-bar, the takhat.

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Wouldn鈥檛 it be great if we all got on, our differences - religious, political, ideological - done? But difference preserves identity, and identity is extraordinarily important to people, as our recent politics and distant history remind us. So maybe learn to live with difference, rather than wish it away? No matter how ominous the risk assessment, while we may disagree about fundamentals we will still need a pint of milk, help to put the bins out, and somewhere to sit.