Christian-Muslim relations were high on
the agenda last week when the world-wide debate launched by
A Common Word
took a further step forward with an
international conference at Yale, one of the world's leading
universities.
The conference was co-hosted by Professor Miroslav Volf
of
Yale's Divinity School
and
Center for Faith and Culture
and by HRH Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal of Jordan. It
attracted an impressive array of
Christian, Muslim and Jewish religious leaders, scholars and
intellectuals from around the word. The Tony Blair Faith
Foundation was pleased to be represented at the meeting.
In his opening remarks last week Professor Volf drew
attention to the Christian-Muslim tensions which menace the
modern world, but also sensed that a
wind of hope was beginning to blow and new light penetrating
the darkness, of which the Yale conference was a further
manifestation.
The conference was dedicated
to deepening understanding between the
two faiths, a deepening which is absolutely necessary
in a world where faith remains of vital significance to
billions of people -how they think, how they behave, how
they interact with each other. And in a globalised world
where travel, communications and migration are constantly
pushing diverse people closer together, such understanding
becomes urgent. Religion is not simply
a private affair, a common misconception in the West in
particular, but a force with profound implications for the
public arena. Indeed, this is
precisely what motivated Tony Blair to establish his
Foundation in the first place.
Prince Ghazi stressed that this was not an attempt to
create an artificial union between the two faiths
but an endeavour to find an essential
common ground, the better to ensure that religions are part
of the solution and not an impediment.
Although primarily focused on Christian-Muslim relations,
a number of Jewish representatives
were present, because of the appropriateness of including
insights from the third and oldest of the Abrahamic
religions.
Momentum on A Common Word will be maintained through
further meetings at Lambeth
Palace and Cambridge University in the UK, the Vatican,
Georgetown University in the USA and Jordan over the next
year, demonstrating the seriousness with which the Common
Word process is being taken.
The Yale conference was an
important milestone in the dissemination and reception of A
Common Word. And A Common Word, and the dialogue flowing
from it, offers an important opportunity to help
turn conflict into co-existence and suspicion into respect.
