Christians and Muslims must now work together in pursuit of peace and justice

Today and tomorrow nearly 40 Muslim and Christian scholars from Britain and around the world will meet in the Guard Room at Lambeth Palace to take part in an unprecedented seminar entitled "Building Bridges: Overcoming Obstacles in Christian-Muslim Relations".

One might be forgiven for imagining the odd raised eyebrow among the 17th and 18th-century Archbishops of Canterbury whose portraits hang on the walls. Certainly in their day no such gathering would have been imaginable, but the challenges and opportunities facing Christians and Muslims today make the event absolutely necessary and deeply encouraging.

Cynics might mutter about shutting doors once horses have bolted. After all, September 11 apparently confirmed that Islam and the West could not live together in harmony.

Yes, those terrible events have injected new urgency into the pursuit of better Christian-Muslim relations. But the reality is that in recent years there has been a steady growth in the number of Christian and Muslim leaders and scholars emphasising those themes within their own traditions which call them into dialogue. They do so in the conviction that they are serving God's purposes by reaching out beyond their own community, in friendship and co-operation, for the common good.

Christians, for example, can see in dialogue an obvious but demanding example of Christ's commandment to love our neighbour as ourself. Love requires understanding. So, through dialogue, Christians may come a little closer to the attitude of St Francis, who is said to have prayed "not so much to be understood as to understand" (a prayer which those involved in dialogue might do well to inscribe deep in their hearts).

Muslims are also finding that dialogue prompts fresh reflections on their relationship to the "other". For example, a much-quoted Koranic text states that religious uniformity is not God's will ("Had God willed, He would have made you one community") and the relationship between faith-groups is to be characterised by a striving for mutual dignity and respect.

Nevertheless, among both Muslims and Christians one can still encounter considerable suspicion of inter-faith dialogue. This may be related to a fear that all that is distinctive - and cherished - about one's own faith will be lost; a concern that questions of truth and ultimate meaning, questions about the very nature of God and of God's purposes for us, will be disregarded in the pursuit of an unsatisfactory "lowest common denominator".

That is certainly not the outcome we will be pursuing in this seminar. In fact, one of the key challenges is how to handle difference. "The dignity of difference" (a striking phrase of the Chief Rabbi's) is a challenging, but exciting, reality we must all address in the conviction that our faith will not be diminished but enhanced. We can discover much that is good and true in those who are different from ourselves and at the same time can come to a deeper understanding of our own tradition.

A distinctive feature of this seminar is that it will be a meeting of scholars, and we make no apology for that. The beliefs and values of Islam and Christianity influence the lives of billions of people. If we are to live together with a well- informed and sympathetic understanding of each other, there is a crucial educational role for those who know our traditions well and can interpret them in today's world.

As part of that learning process, we welcome the growing recognition in many areas of public life of the need for a better understanding of religion and of how it helps to shape and motivate attitudes and perceptions.

That understanding is important, we believe, both for faith communities and for those who lead the political, economic and social life of nations in the 21st century. It is significant that the Prime Minister has given strong support to this seminar and will be among the speakers at our opening session.

An important priority is the potential of Christianity and Islam to work together for peace and justice. In this sense our dialogue involves not just a reaching out to members of a different faith, but also a willingness to turn our attention to challenges like globalisation, the environment and poverty.

Initiatives such as The World Faiths Development Dialogue, bringing together religions and financial institutions, demonstrate that the moral energy and grass-roots credibility of different faith communities can be harnessed in shared action to address some of the world's most pressing problems.

What is likely to be the outcome of this gathering? In one sense, the event is valuable simply as an opportunity for listening and growing in mutual understanding - a model in itself, we hope, of how Christians and Muslims might relate to one another.

We are certainly not looking for quick fixes or slick conference slogans. There is much work to be done and we, along with many other Muslim and Christian leaders, are committed to it.

So we do not expect our deliberations to change the world. But we do hope that our dialogue, and the published documents that flow from it, will offer fresh insights both for our own faith communities and for those beyond them. Insights about what lies at the heart of relations between Christianity and Islam and how we may travel together into the future for the benefit of all.

That journey involves building bridges of friendship and respect. It is those bridges we will be working on today and in the years to come. And it is those bridges, we hope, that will help to turn raised eyebrows into nods of approval.

Article from: The Times, London by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Principal of the Muslim College, London.

©The Times - no reproduction without permission.