Friday 31st March 2006
There is surely nothing more urgent on the world's current agenda than finding an alternative to strife. Whether it is Islam versus the West, nationalism versus globalization, Jew versus Arab or, more basically, race versus race, we seem no closer to finding the 'way that makes for peace’ than were our forebears. The bloodshed and violence simply goes on and on.
Marcus Braybrooke, until recently parish priest of the Baldons in Oxfordshire, and a life-long campaigner for inter-faith tolerance and understanding, boldly offers what he calls 'the inter-faith alternative' in this new book. I say 'boldly', because at a superficial level so many of the world's present conflicts seem to be triggered by religious antagonisms, suspicions or fears. How can the followers of those faiths be the answer as well as the problem?
As president of the World Congress of Faiths, Marcus Braybrooke has worked for many decades with leaders of the world's faith communities in pursuit of an 'inter-faith alternative'. If religious divisions are often the cause of strife, then, he argues, religious understanding and tolerance are necessary first steps on the path to peace. He has worked with leaders of the faith communities to seek agreement at least on what he calls 'fundamental communalities' - such things as respect for life, a just economic order, a culture of tolerance, truthfulness and recognition of equal rights and partnership between men and women. Such a set of propositions was expressed in a Declaration of 'Global Ethics' as long ago as 1993. With many examples from experience, including his own, Marcus Braybrooke pleads his case: can the religious communities give a lead in non-violence, in the struggle for a fairer world, in the meeting of human need, even for such basic things as clean water?
The reader of this book may have to counter a natural tendency towards scepticism about some of this - equal rights for women in many Islamic cultures (and some Christian ones, too) looks to be centuries away. Burning mosques and bombed out churches provide an ugly back-drop to these aspirations. Yet it is useless to abandon hope, and A Heart for the World does offer genuine grounds for hope. Our world needs prophetic voices and Braybrooke's is certainly one of them. This is a book for Christians, as well as others, to read and ponder, perhaps to study in home groups. It is also a book to turn back to for its unquenchable optimism, when it seems that the bullet and the bomb are the determining factors in the world of a gracious Creator and for a people made in the image of a God of love.
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A HEART FOR THE WORLD |
