BLOGS

Christian and Muslim women deepening relationships

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Many of our Near Neighbours supported groups involve Muslims and Christians getting together. We’ve funded project which see those of the two faiths eating together, dancing together and even gardening together!

Our friends at the Christian Muslim Forum are putting on an event which helps to continue and deepen many of the relationships which have beeen started.

Taking place on 19th and 20th March 2012 in Northampton, Come to the Edge is a conference asking important questions such as ‘What are women looking for in a role model?’ and ‘Are community relations becoming harder?’

Leading academics from both faiths will address the gathering. More details can be found below or at the Christian Muslim Forum website.

New funding opportunities in Tower Hamlets – deadline soon!

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If you’re in the Tower Hamlets area, there are certain areas covered by the Near Neighbours scheme. If you’re in Bethnal Green, Bow or Shadwell there’s the chance to apply for funding and support from us for your community project. Click the ‘about’ button above to find out more.

 

However, there are other funding streams if you’re in another area. The following information from Tower Hamlets Council may be of interest…
The Mayor’s One Tower Hamlets Fund is inviting proposals from community, voluntary and resident groups to set up Neighbourhood Agreements. A Neighbourhood Agreement involves local people working together with the council and other service providers to identify priorities for public service delivery in their area.
The Fund will support groups to deliver activities which bring together residents from different backgrounds and develop community leadership to develop a Neighbourhood Agreement. Small Grants of up to £7,000 will be available to successful organisations.
Further information on the fund can be found in the link here: http://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/lgsl/851-900/871_community_grants.aspx

Deadline for applications is 9am Monday 13th February 2012 with successful projects being notified by Thursday 23rd February 2012. For further information or support contact: mohammed.ahad@towerhamlets.gov.uk

Called to Change: Next Sunday’s (CofE) readings

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If you go into most bookshops today, the ‘Mind, Body, Spirit’ section is larger any the section marked ‘Theology’ or ‘Religion’. People are attracted to a form of ‘spirituality’ which treats them like consumers. ‘Spirituality’ becomes another off-the-shelf product. The season of Lent show us a very different vision of the spiritual life – where we need to look outwards as well as inwards. We need Lent now more than ever, so that mind, body and spirit can be released from the self-indulgence of a consumerist, individualistic society. The ‘Good News’ of Lent is how much more we believe there is to life than this.

The Church of England offers special readings for the two Sundays before Lent begins. We can all use these to help us prepare for the season.

The readings for next Sunday (13th February) are John 1.1-14, Colossians 1.15-20, Psalm 104.26-37 and Proverbs 8.1,22-31

The Roman Catholic lectionary is different for the next two Sundays, and we have blogged on this in the previous post.

John 1.1-14 tells us that Jesus has humbled himself to enter our flesh, so that in our flesh we might be united to God. John writes that the disciples “have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father”. This glory is a foretaste of that which God wants us all to share.

It is tempting to think that we find the ‘glory of God’ by running away from ‘the world,’ as if Christian spirituality were about ‘other-worldliness’. But John 1 reminds us that it is into this world that God has entered. He has (in Eugene Peterson’s translation) ‘moved into the neighbourhood’.

This world is capable of showing forth the divine life, and the divine glory. Our calling as Christians is to work with God to make that vision a reality. As today’s Epistle (Colossians 1.15-20) puts it:

In [Christ] all things were created: things in heaven and things on earth, visible and invisible… all things have been created through him and for him….

God was pleased … through him to reconcile all things to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven , by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

John’s Gospel uses the term ‘the world’ in two very different ways. Sometimes it means ‘everything God has created’. As we read in Genesis 1, God looked at the world and saw it was ‘very good’. And s John 3.16 reminds us that ‘the world’ is something God still loves, even after its fall. Indeed, God loves the world so much that he gave his only Son for its salvation.

Sometimes John’s Gospel uses the term ‘the world’ rather differently. ‘The world’ sometimes means, not creation in general, but creation in rebellion against God. In this sense, the disciples are not of ‘the world’ – and Jesus says he ‘overcome the world’ (John 16.33).

So we are called to be ‘in the world’ – called to be in the creation God has made and sent his Son to save, called to be ‘good news for the poor’, challenging injustice and calling for a right use of wealth and power. But we are not called to be ‘of the world.’  The values we are loyal to as Christians are often in conflict with those which dominate the wider culture.

Jesus’ glory is revealed from a manger and cross, not a palace or an earthly throne.  This reminds us that Christian discipleship involves a challenge to the values of our broken world. In Lent, we are called to remove the idols of money and power from the thrones they have in our hearts and in our society. In Lent, we remember that money and power are to be placed at the service of Christ, and of his Kingdom of justice and of peace.

Called to Change: Catholic lectionary readings

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Each week, the Jellicoe Blog will be publishing a reflection on the forthcoming Sunday’s lectionary readings.  On Sunday 12 February, the Church of England and Roman Catholic churches have different readings set.  Here we blog on the Gospel for the Roman Catholic lectionary – a blog on the C of E readings follows:

A leper came to Jesus and pleaded on his knees: “If you want to” he said “you can cure me.” Feeling sorry for him, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him. “Of course I want to!” he said. “Be cured!” And the leprosy left him at once and he was cured. Jesus immediately sent him away and sternly ordered him, “Say nothing to anyone, but go and show yourself to the priest, and make the offering for your healing” (Mark 1.40-45)

In the Greek in which Mark wrote, there is an undercurrent of anger in Jesus. This is something most of our English translations miss. Jesus is not simply sorry about the man’s condition, and eager to put it right. He is angered – maybe even outraged – by it.
Why is this? Lepers are treated as the ultimate outcasts in Jesus’ society. If a “clean” person touched them, that person became unclean. By that law, when Jesus reaches touches the man, Jesus should become unclean rather than the leper becoming clean.
In casting out demons and curing lepers, Jesus proclaims God’s Kingdom as one of liberation – liberation from prejudice and injustice; liberation from the spiritual and physical forces which stop us flourishing. It is not an easy task. Jesus is crossing a boundary, challenging a taboo. He is placing himself next to those his society holds to be worthless.

Multiculturalism: a Christian retrieval

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“Is it possible for a society marked by deep ethnic and religious diversity to identify a workable framework for deep diversity which does justice to all communities?”

Answering this question is the burden of Jonathan Chaplin’s recent Theos booklet entitled ‘Multiculturalism: a Christian retrieval’. In less than a hundred pages, Jonathan explains what multiculturalism is and what it is interpreted to be, and discusses how, and why, Christians can and should retrieve it. His argument is more than a liberal plea for a thin conception of ‘tolerance’, and is predicated on an affirmation of multicultural justice rooted in concrete policies and a deeper definition of shared citizenship.

CTC and PEN was pleased to welcome Jonathan Chaplin to East London recently for a seminar to discuss his essay with local clergy and members of the PEN Network. We met at the Hurtado Jesuit Centre, the UK headquarters of the Jesuit Refugee Service, in Wapping. A diverse group including academics, parish clergy, community organisers and friends of CTC listened as Jonathan outlined his argument and put forward the case for a Christian vision of multiculturalism.

The seminar was received well, and generated a great deal of discussion. Clergy working in the very diverse neighbourhoods of inner-city London reflected on how they felt out of place when returning to predominantly white British areas when on holiday or conference. Different understandings of secularism, and the appropriateness of religious language when negotiating divergent identities, were debated and the legitimacy of different uses of the word ‘multiculturalism’ assessed. Afterwards, those attending said how valuable it had been to have the space to think about and discuss this topic away from the day-to-day practice of mission and ministry in a multicultural, multiethnic context.

The success of this seminar format, and the fruitfulness of the discussion, means that CTC and PEN will be exploring the possibility of making this a more regular programme. If you’d like more details of future events like this, please contact the PEN administrator, Susanne Mitchell, on pen(at)theology-centre.org.

Called to Change

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Canon Dr Angus Ritchie, Director of the Contextual Theology Centre, blogs on a call to prayer, listening and social action this Lent

Lent is traditionally seen as a rather gloomy time, when we turn inward in tortured self-examination.  The truth is very different.  The deeper purpose of this season is to draw us outward – into a deeper communion with God and with neighbour.  Lent is a time of judgement, certainly.  But the ultimate purpose of God’s judgment is always that of love.

God’s judgment confronts us with reality.  His word pierces through our layers of self-deception.  It pierces through the false gods of profit, popularity and status on which we set our hearts, and through our shell of self-protecting cynicism. 

Under the loving judgment of God, we see ourselves as we really are.  We see the futility of our self-deception, the emptiness of our false gods and the destructiveness of our cynicism.  Why does God force this painful truth upon us?  For this reason: it is only when we face the reality of our lives that change and growth become possible.

The prayers and practices of Lent exist to open us to reality.  Their words of penitence urge us to face the truth about our sins and their impact on others.  The chastening words of the Ash Wednesday liturgy ‘Remember thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return’ force us to face the truth of our mortality. 
We won’t go on forever.  The choices we make each day mean there are paths down which we have decided not to travel, possibilities we have shut down, perhaps permanently.  We need to ask what kind of values we will affirm, in our deeds as well as our words.  As I face my mortality, I am forced to ask: what do I want this life to say?

This question needs to be considered alongside an honest examination of what my life currently says.  What would you say my values and priorities were if you looked, not at the beliefs I profess, but at the ways I spend my time and money, the things that preoccupy and vex me, the ways I treat the people around me? 
Lent helps us to explore the gap between the answers we give to these two questions: what does this life say? and what do I want it to say?

These are questions we can also ask of our common life.  In The Rock T.S. Eliot asks:
What is the meaning of this city?
Do you huddle together because you love each other?
What will you answer? ‘We all dwell together
To make money from each other?’ or ‘This is a community?’

Today, many people are asking these questions with a new intensity.  There is a large and growing gap between rich and poor, one which politicians of all parties say they want to see reversed.  And we all live with the ongoing and unpredictable consequences of the global financial crisis for years to come.

This Lent, two Christian social action charities – The Contextual Theology Centre and the Church Urban Fund  – are issuing a Call to Change.  (This is online at www.calltochange.withtank.com and on Twitter at @calltochange.)  It builds on decades of ministry by churches in some of England’s poorest neighbourhoods.  It seeks to draw more people into their work of prayer, of listening and of action for social justice.

The Call to Change is not a call to scapegoat someone else – be they a ‘benefits scrounger’ or a banker.  Each of us is called to open ourselves to reality.  We do this through prayer: as we encounter the ultimate reality of God in Scripture, worship and personal devotion.  We do it through listening: and in particular, a serious engagement with the voice of England’s poorest communities. 

Words are not enough.  They need to take flesh in action.  The experience of our partner churches points to concrete things every Christian and congregation can do – to tackle poverty, and build an economic system that works for poor as well as rich. 

It is through such changes that we grow together into ‘life in all its fulness’.  That is the message of Lent.  And, more importantly, it is the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, God’s word of love made flesh

The People’s Palladium

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Based on one of London’s most iconic streets – Brick Lane – the People’s Palladium is an exciting and dynamic theatre group. It was set up in 2008 with the aim of creating a ‘Theatre of Ideas’ – to provoke local people to think about morality, human relations and history.

Those of all backgrounds are welcomed as performers and audience members. The group says its founding principle was ‘equality of opportunity’ while suggesting that “diversity is a core asset providing creative energy to make play and pleasure the hallmark of The People’s Palladium.”

The People’s Palladium began its life with a production of Federico Garcia Lorca’s ‘Blood Wedding’, a play of love and passion which was well received by the audience at the Departure Arts Centre in Limehouse. The company’s next production was ‘From Here’ which consisted of more than ten different individual stories told simultaneously in a participatory style. It was presented to a full house in Whitechapel.

The most recent performance was another Federico Garcia Lorca classic titled ‘Yerma’. The play deals with themes of isolation, passion and frustration, as well as nature, marriage and friendship. Yerma’ also played to a full house.

As well as bigger productions, the group also puts on workshops which are open to anyone in the local community who wants to come and join in. A good example of this is the recent ‘Scenes for a Spring Evening’ series. These open workshops gave the chance for members of the local community to come and take part in classic plays as actors, production team members or simply by watching.

The People’s Palladium is now looking to the future to further opportunities throughout 2012 and beyond. A grant from Near Neighbours is being put towards an exciting production. The aim is to bring together a group of local young people of different faiths and ethnicities and work with them on a show to be performed at Limehouse Town Hall.  Beginning in January 2012 the young people are taking part in drama workshops and will stage a selection of ‘scenes from world theatre’. They’ll also work together building props and staging. It’s hoped this will lead to lasting friendships.

If you want to find out more about the People’s Palladium, there are many ways to get in touch. You can visit the website: peoplespalladium.com, visit the facebook page or even follow on twitter.

Happy New Year from Near Neighbours

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2012 is now upon us and all of the team at Near Neighbours would like to with you a very happy and joyful new year. 2012 is, of course, a very significant year for the areas we cover. The world’s attention will be on Eastern London when the Olympic and Paralympic Games come to town this summer. What an opportunity for us to show why this is one of the best places in the world to live!

We’ve got many different ethnicities, nationalities and faiths living together to make up one of the most diverse communities anywhere on the planet. We’re delighted to be supporting grass roots community projects which help to encourage people from all kinds of different backgrounds to meet, deepen their relationships and take part in great community activities together.

We would love to hear from you if you’re involved in a project, or you’d like to start one that Near Neighbours may be able to support. For more information, simply click on the ‘About’ button above.

Over the next couple of weeks this blog will be profiling some of the organisations which are already benefitting from Near Neighbours grant funding and support. Watch this space…

Responding to Richard Dawkins’ Christmas message

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Richard Dawkins guest-edited the Christmas edition of the New Statesman – beginning with an open letter to the Prime Minister attackng faith schools, and calling for governmental “neutrality” on religious matters.  In this festive blog, Centre Director Angus Ritchie offers a response.

Dear Professor Dawkins

Merry Christmas to you too! I hope the authorship of this letter isn’t too big a disappointment. When you write to the P.M., you don’t expect the reply to be written by a cleric.

(Just to be clear, I have no authority – or desire – to speak on behalf of David Cameron. The views here are very much my own.)

Time is short.  It seems we both have carol services to attend! So let me cut to the chase. Your letter to calls for “state neutrality” on matters of religion, and an end to any government support for faith schools.  I think your position is anything but neutral.

You imply that the “neutral” way to bring up children is to avoid religious practice until they can decide for themselves. Hence your analogy with economics. We don’t bring up children as Keynesians or monetarists; we let them decide which to be when they are old enough to grasp the arguments. You think we should do the same with religion.

But you can’t bring up children “neutrally”. The economics analogy doesn’t really work. Long before they are able to evaluate the arguments for and against our view of the world, we have to bring children up according to some norms. We teach them by word and deed, what kinds of things are right and wrong, what they should value and what they should dismiss. Some of those norms will have religious, or atheistic, implications. We either bring them up as if God is a living reality, worthy of gratitude and worship, or we don’t. If (as I believe) there is a God, then it is the most natural and right thing in the world to pray to him from the earliest age. If (as you believe) there isn’t, then such a practice is worse than a waste of time.  Neither choice is “neutral”.

“Neutral” parenting cannot be expected of anyone. Some parents will pray with their children, and will also take them to church, and even send them to religious schools.  While we can’t demand “neutrality” from parents or from schools, there are some things we should expect. Every parent and school should bring children up with an openness to other worldviews – and, as they get older, the freedom to draw their own conclusions.

Let’s turn to the wider issue of governmental “neutrality” on matters of religion. You and I agree that the state should not impose atheism or religion on its citizens. But government policy is inevitably, and rightly, shaped by values. That’s something we need more of – now more than ever.

Politics is about how we build a common life, and discern a common good. You can’t expect me to participate in that without bringing my faith to bear. It is the foundation of my convictions about what is good and just. You will have different foundations (a matter to which we must return if this correspondence continues).

Christianity is a holistic view of the world, not a detachable set of private convictions. For a Christian, the nature of God and the teachings of Jesus Christ have implications for economic policy as much as ‘private’ ethical choices. The recent statements by the Vatican and the Archbishop of Canterbury on the financial crisis are a case in point.  That’s why churches are at the forefront of both the Jubilee 2000 campaign (on international debt), and Citizens UK’s Nehemiah 5 Campaign (against exploitative lending). The very names of the campaigns are revealing.

Of course, if Christians are to turn their ideas into reality, they need to win support from others. This involves making arguments that appeal to non-Christians. There’s nothing underhand about that; building coalitions across differences is central to all democratic politics. Whatever your worldview, turning your convictions into government policy involves two things.  Firstly, you try to persuade people of the truth of your worldview. Secondly, you build alliances with those who remain unconvinced. So, in the Nehemiah 5 Challenge, churches advance some reasons for public policy which are distinctively Christian, and some which are not. As part of Citizens UK, they work with mosques and trade unions, tenants associations and student unions, on this and many other issues. (These include the Living Wage Campaign – with deep roots in Catholic Social Teaching – which has now won £70 million for low-paid workers in London alone.)

Of course, Christians disagree amongst themselves – on economics as much as anything else. How to understand and apply the teachings of Scripture and Church is a matter for discussion. That’s one reason we have departments of Theology as well as Religious Studies in our universities (just as we have departments which reflect on moral and political issues without reference to God).

You may ask: “Why should I be forced to live with an economic system shaped by your religious views?” A good question! To which I would answer: “That’s the price of living in a pluralist democracy. I’m forced to live with a system shaped in part by the moral convictions of atheists, and you’re forced to live with a system shaped in part by the convictions of Christians.”  Neither of us is “imposing” our worldview on the other.  What we’re doing is negotiating a common life in the midst of deep ethical and religious disagreement. That’s the challenge, and the joy, of politics.

The elephant in the room – in your letter and in my reply – is whether religious views can ever be reasoned and reasonable.  In the end, your desire to relegate religion to the private sphere is anything but neutral.  It only makes sense if you believe religion has no rational foundations.

If you are willing to engage in this correspondence, I’d love to move on to a more detailed examination of this elephant. There’s a lot more to be said.

In the meantime, this comes with my best wishes to you and your family for a happy Christmas,

Angus Ritchie

Archbishop Sentamu to lecture on Good Childhood

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The Centre has begun a research partnership with The Children’s Society on child poverty, theology and inequality.  So we are especially pleased to publicise their 2012 Edward Rudolf Lecture by the Archbishop of York.  The event will launch the Good Childhood Report 2012 – with empirical research which complements and informs our ongoing programme of theological reflection on the issue

The Children’s Society invite you to join us and the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, in a presentation of our groundbreaking Good Childhood Report 2012 on 12 January 2012 in Church House, Westminster SW1P 3NZ.

The Good Childhood Report, based on the views of 25,000 children and young people, contains compelling evidence on the factors that affect the well-being of children.

 The evening will be an engaging exploration of the ingredients of a happy childhood, consisting of a presentation of the report followed by a lecture by the Archbishop of York, who has been an outspoken advocate for young people in the UK for many years.

 The writers of the report as well as the Archbishop will interact with the audience in a Q&A session following the lecture. Registration opens at 5.30 pm and all are invited to the post-lecture reception lasting until 8.30 pm.

To attend, please email conferences@childrenssociety.org.uk or telephone The Children’s Society’s Supporter Care Team on 0300-303-7000.

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