Part of the Problem?
Well, that was one of the worst organised meetings I've been to in a long time.
It was the Oxfordshire Religious and Faith Groups meeting on Community Cohesion, at the invitation of the County Council's Social and Health Care department? division? - just Social and Health Care. More than 400 invitations had been sent out to all the different faith groups they knew about. So we turned up at Speedwell House to be greeted with the now customary security arrangements: print your name on this slip, who you're visiting, time of arrival, tear off slip, insert in plastic visitor badge, wear this all the time while you're in the building. And then it's, Oh I'm sorry, I've run out of plastic holders, just carry it or put it in your pocket. (Naturally the idea of having a meeting with lots of people attending doesn't connect with making sure you've got plenty of badge holders at reception.)
Then the room's noisy and barely big enough, and the advertised refreshments, which in our case we have not got, until someone is sent out to buy a few packets of biscuits and bring them in with a trayful of cups and saucers and two thermoses of hot water for me and another Anglican vicar to make tea with a teabag in each cup, or a little twist of instant coffee.
Of course, it's not easy to know how many will attend from such a large invited number (though I'm sure I had filled in a reply slip to say I was going); and what a strange lot we were. Including a Buddhist lama with little English and a minder, two Unitarians (is that one short of a Trinitarian?) who naturally embrace and espouse this kind of thing, and probably invented it, a sensible representative of the synagogue, and Mogg who represents 'the Pagan Community'. Or I suppose, if they are a really cool post-modern faith group, the pagan community (lower case). Their concern, nationally, is that so many of their members have been wrongfully accused of child abuse (as in the Isle of Lewes and other rural, backward and 'redneck' (sic) areas); accusations which it's suggested have been orchestrated 'by another religion'. (We were too polite to ask, and he to name, which one.)
There were sad absences: no Muslim representatives, and very few Anglican parish clergy. Yet it's an important opportunity: how can people of faith get together to talk about how religion can be part of the solution, instead of (as it so often seems) part of the problem? Moreover, how can we ensure that this kind of opportunity isn't just hijacked by local government to further their own agenda? How can we prevent it consisting only of those who like this kind of thing and are already this way inclined, when the very ones who make religion a problem are not there because they won't talk to other groups? Hell, the problematic Anglicans won't even talk, or rather listen to, other Anglicans; and that must be mirrored in lots of other faith groups.
We decide to meet again, and possibly plan a conference next spring. Oh dear. No good deed goes unpunished.
It was the Oxfordshire Religious and Faith Groups meeting on Community Cohesion, at the invitation of the County Council's Social and Health Care department? division? - just Social and Health Care. More than 400 invitations had been sent out to all the different faith groups they knew about. So we turned up at Speedwell House to be greeted with the now customary security arrangements: print your name on this slip, who you're visiting, time of arrival, tear off slip, insert in plastic visitor badge, wear this all the time while you're in the building. And then it's, Oh I'm sorry, I've run out of plastic holders, just carry it or put it in your pocket. (Naturally the idea of having a meeting with lots of people attending doesn't connect with making sure you've got plenty of badge holders at reception.)
Then the room's noisy and barely big enough, and the advertised refreshments, which in our case we have not got, until someone is sent out to buy a few packets of biscuits and bring them in with a trayful of cups and saucers and two thermoses of hot water for me and another Anglican vicar to make tea with a teabag in each cup, or a little twist of instant coffee.
Of course, it's not easy to know how many will attend from such a large invited number (though I'm sure I had filled in a reply slip to say I was going); and what a strange lot we were. Including a Buddhist lama with little English and a minder, two Unitarians (is that one short of a Trinitarian?) who naturally embrace and espouse this kind of thing, and probably invented it, a sensible representative of the synagogue, and Mogg who represents 'the Pagan Community'. Or I suppose, if they are a really cool post-modern faith group, the pagan community (lower case). Their concern, nationally, is that so many of their members have been wrongfully accused of child abuse (as in the Isle of Lewes and other rural, backward and 'redneck' (sic) areas); accusations which it's suggested have been orchestrated 'by another religion'. (We were too polite to ask, and he to name, which one.)
There were sad absences: no Muslim representatives, and very few Anglican parish clergy. Yet it's an important opportunity: how can people of faith get together to talk about how religion can be part of the solution, instead of (as it so often seems) part of the problem? Moreover, how can we ensure that this kind of opportunity isn't just hijacked by local government to further their own agenda? How can we prevent it consisting only of those who like this kind of thing and are already this way inclined, when the very ones who make religion a problem are not there because they won't talk to other groups? Hell, the problematic Anglicans won't even talk, or rather listen to, other Anglicans; and that must be mirrored in lots of other faith groups.
We decide to meet again, and possibly plan a conference next spring. Oh dear. No good deed goes unpunished.
posted by Tony at 7/22/2004 07:20:00 pm
1 Comments:
Thanks, Daniel - well, I hope it won't be that bad!
Too bad I missed you when you were in Oxford. Maybe next time?
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