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 Archbishop of Canterbury’s Speech at the Launch of the UK Government's Inter Faith Consultation
Monday 17 December 2007
The Archbishop spoke at the launch of a new document, issued by the Department of Communities and Local Government, on inter faith relations.
People who hold a religious faith are people who believe that there is more to human beings than a lot of others around them realise. They are people who are alert to an extra dimension of dignity and possibility. An extra dimension of human richness. One of the most important things we could every say about religious faith is that it doesn't shrink, but enlarges our sense of what human beings are like and what human beings are about. That is one of the most significant things that all religious traditions hold in common. A deeply, gloriously, and thankfully ambitious idea about human beings. As a Christian I express it in terms of my belief that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God. Other traditions have their own ways of talking about this. And it's that sense of a deeper, more lasting and more solid dimension to human dignity that is the specific gift that people of faith bring to the social conversation. Whether they do that in their conversations and relationships with one another, recognising in one another a depth and seriousness of conviction, or whether it's in the work they do together, pushing out the boundaries of what is possible in serving human dignity and human possibility. It comes from the same basic sense. And that's why of course it's very important that inter faith dialogue and cooperation is not about looking for some watered down version of each faith which is just about able to manage to get along with others, it's about people who have very deep and very passionate convictions.
But one thing that I've tried to argue in various contexts in recent months and years is that the deeper the conviction, the deeper the faith in fact, the less likely people are to seek to solve their problems by violence. Violence is always a mark of lack of faith, violence says 'I've got to end this situation of tension, oppression, stress, now - and I will end it by violence'. The person of faith says 'I trust that there is more around in the world than my resources, or yours. I trust that there is a divine presence and power, and purpose, upon which I can rely and therefore I don't have to resort to violence. I don't need to get that desperate.' Now I think that is something which we need to hear. I think it's something which, as a culture, we desperately need to be assured of, that there is more resource available to serve and nourish our humanity than a pragmatic and secular approach offers. Pragmatists and secularists in the audience will no doubt want to argue and that's fine, that's what it's about. But if we want to identify what it is specifically and distinctively that is offered here, I'd say that is it – the sense of something more, something more to humanity, something more to the universe, something on which we can rely so profoundly, so gratefully, we're not driven to the downward spiral of violence and resentment and retaliation. So that inter faith work is about connecting with that depth, it's not about looking for superficial ways in which we can modify our convictions so that we can more or less agree. It's about going to the very depth of our passion about God and about humanity, and finding there the harmony that we need to work together. Not compromise, but deepening together, side by side and face to face.
from http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1301
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November 10 - 22
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