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Interfaith Dialogue: doing it
Together rather than apart
by Dr Ian Linden
During several visits to Tehran in the last decade I learnt three lessons about inter-religious dialogue.
Firstly philosophical and theological discussion does not count for much when the political chips are down; arriving in Iran as the Danish Cartoon crisis exploded was, to say the least, educational in this regard. Secondly friendships that grow up over the years count for a lot. Finally, forging a temporary unity through common distaste for modern forms of secularity is a form of cheap Grace and, I still think, short-sighted.
That is why the approach to interfaith work characteristic of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation launched in July 2008 is so appealing. To use the metaphor of hands, heart, and head, it starts out with an emphasis on hands, co-operation and practical interfaith work for the Common Good, and builds relationships and conversation from that base. To be precise, in our Faiths Act, programme, the focus is on increasing the commitment of the different faith communities to the promotion and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – whenever feasible through interfaith action.
It can be argued that the MDGs are the secular world’s best shot – arguably since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – to create a moral consensus around a fundamental ethical issue for the 21st. century, the persistence of global poverty. They set out time-bound targets for implementation to roll back poverty and the causes of poverty on an international scale. This is an obvious opportunity for collaboration between religious and secular, and such collaboration has been developing steadily in the last eight years.
It is questionable to what degree youth have bought into the MDGs. Nothing like to the extent of reaction to climate change and destruction of the environment. For this reason our Faiths Act programme is striving to build up an interfaith youth movement. Next year thirty young people between 18-25 years selected from faith communities in the UK, USA and Canada will be trained to become “Ambassadors for the Millennium Development Goals”. A core part of training will take place in Africa where they will learn about the difficulties in achieving the MDGs and how these are being confronted. The focus will be on primary health care. This is because in many African countries the faith communities contribute massively to health provision, in some cases accounting for 60% of delivery of services, formal and informal.
But in nearly all African countries the distribution of churches and mosques enable faith leaders and workers to reach segments of the population, the poorest, most distant from main transport routes, illiterate, that government cannot reach. The best overarching national health plans rarely reach more than 50% of the population.
The anomaly is that in a period when the big global funds are making possible the halting and reversing of the spread of major endemic diseases, HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, very little money goes to those most able to reach the people most effected in the rural areas, the faith communities. This is for a variety of reasons, donor fears about the effectiveness of faith communities, government fears about the creation of parallel health systems non-compliant with government priorities, and big hurdles for FBOs to jump before becoming eligible for global funds. Interfaith action on HIV/AIDS, the creation of national interfaith networks, has been an outstanding example of the hands before heads and hearts approach. In many countries the cooperation has created a breakthrough in interfaith relations as well as galvanising the compassionate spirituality of each community. This is less true of the struggle against malaria. In some ways this is surprising. Malaria kills up to one million people each year, mostly in Africa, mostly under fives and pregnant women. The problem is that if undiagnosed little children often begin dying within two days of the onset of malarial symptoms. People need diagnostic kits, anti-malarials, bednets, but above all women need education and training to spot common diseases before it is too late. And this means good local primary health care workers attached to churches and mosques. With the advent of retrovirals, the problem is now that people, for a variety of reasons - the belief that nothing can be done – justified in the past - stigma, ignorance, present too late for effective treatment.
So when the young ambassadors for the MDGs return to start work in interfaith pairs in their faith communities, they will focus on health and malaria as the best way to mobilise and build awareness about the MDGs. Because deaths from malaria are totally preventable. This simple fact raises the moral stakes. Muslim Zanzibar eliminated the parasite last year with considerable international support.
If you can save a million lives with rudimentary education and a little literacy, bed-nets and ACTs (artemisin-based composite treatment), at a modest cost - about the sum required to save a small failing US bank - then faith communities should think about doing it together rather than apart.
For more information on the Faiths Act Fellows go to www.faithsactfellows.org
For more information on the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, go to www.tonyblairfaithfoundation.org
Dr Ian Linden is Director of Faiths Act at the Tony Blair Faith Foundation
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Dr Ian Linden, 05/02/2009 |
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