One of the major problems with interfaith work, as I see it, is that those undertaking this work suffer from a surfeit of naivety. In too many interfaith groups I have come across, encountered or asked to support, the guiding principle of those involved seems to be to not ask the awkward questions that need to be asked if interfaith work is go be of any worth. It is pointless to just gloss over the bad or contentious bits about each others faith or avoid hard questions, that’s not how proper and effective interfaith work is done, The British Council of Christians and Jews for example did not succeed in breaking down barriers between these too faiths by forbidding both sides from asking difficult questions and airing often painful and shameful religious histories.
Unfortunately the Council of Christians and Jews is a tiny nugget of success in what is an ocean of easily manipulated, naive, cowardly and foolish people who are involved in the interfaith scene in the United Kingdom. Most of those whom I have met who are involved in interfaith work are pathologically averse to asking hard questions of those of other faiths that they work with and are also far too willing to accept on face value about these faiths without challenge or evidence. This attitude of not wanting to offend anyone, not wanting to ask hard questions and acceptance of whatever words tumble out of people’s mouths without question, is partly how we have ended up with what has happened recently in Blackburn Cathedral.
According to the Daily Mail a ‘peace concert’ was put on by Blackburn Music Society and held the night before Remembrance Sunday (yes I definitely smell naive interfaith types here) in Blackburn Cathedral which included the piece ‘The Armed Man – A Mass for peace’ composed by Karl Jenkins. This piece is one which has a variety of texts quoted in it, including, in its second movement, from the Koran. Now this piece might be suitable for a concert hall, but I tend to believe that the inclusion of the Islamic call to prayer in this piece makes it unsuitable for a church. This is because this call to prayer contains within it words that attack the whole basis and doctrine of Christianity. In my view it was no more appropriate to have an Islamic Imam stand up in a church and declare ‘there is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet’ than it would be for the church to stick a Satanist in the pulpit to deliver the sermon.
I suspect that the music society that put this event on are stuffed full of people of the ‘kumbaya’ variety, the sort of individuals who see no ill in anybody or any religious ideology or who may have had no concept that the Islamic call to prayer is a supremacist statement. This is a dangerous view to take as, unlike humanity itself, not all religions are created equal, some are good, some are just and some are threats to peace, goodness and justice. The Mail added that Blackburn Music Society put this ‘peace concert’ on, with the Islamic call to prayer included without the advance knowledge of the church staff. The music society may have thought that they were being all ‘interfaithy’ by including this call to prayer, but all they’ve managed to do is whip up a whirlwind of anger at what some Christians and others are treating as a desecration.
The naive, cowardly and foolish people who put this event on at the cathedral could not be seeing further than the ends of their own noses when they agreed to put on this piece, the prime importance for them seems to be virtue signalling about how much they love being loving to others. This view, although comforting for those who hold them, is a suicidal one as it prevents members of different faith paths asking awkward questions of those who believe differently to them. I believe that the Jenkins piece should never have been performed in a church or even for that matter a synagogue or a Sikh or Hindu temple. This is because it contains within it an exhortation to worship a deity which has inspired the murder of millions of Christians, Jews, Sikhs and Hindus over the last millennia and a half.
I certainly seems from the Daily Mail story that the Church authorities took their eyes of the ball and vacillated for fear of giving offence with regards this ‘peace concert’. According to the Mail the Dean of the Cathedral, The Very Reverend Peter Howell-Jones, did not realise until shortly before the concert was to take place that the Islamic call to prayer was not only to be included but would be given by a local Islamic Imam. Unfortunately when he did realise what was to be included, he did not step in and deal with this problem in a suitably muscular way, which may have been the better path, instead he told the Mail that he ‘didn’t want to cause upset by removing it’. Well I must say, that policy hasn’t worked has it? Blackburn Cathedral is now at the centre of a storm with people demanding the resignation of the Dean for his handling of this affair.
Maybe the Dean should resign, he’s certainly shown bad judgement over letting this event go ahead in the form it did. He has also shown that he can be subject to complacency, as he gave as a reason for not checking what the music society was doing, the fact that they’d put on concerts before without much in the way of trouble. Now I know, from personal contact with them, that senior churchmen and women such as Deans are often very busy people, they have a lot of spiritual and temporal work that they need to do to keep their cathedrals running smoothly, but the the Very Rev Howell-Jones should have taken time to check the proposed piece? In defence of the Dean however, it may well be that it was his staff at fault here as they should also have informed the Dean that the piece that the music society were thinking of putting on was contentious to say the least. But, at the end of the day it is the Dean who has to carry the can for both his own mistakes and any of the mistakes that may have been made by his staff. The Cathedral have said that there will be no repeat of the incident that allowed the hostile Islamic call to prayer to be spoken on their property.
The way that this concert was approved by the church is a microcosm of the sort of malaise that has affected not just Christianity but some other non Muslim religions in the West. In attempt to be all things to all people the Church of England at least have failed to courageously challenge bad ideas. The Anglican Communion has been infected with the sort of naive interfaith thinking that is lacking in honesty, lacking in vigour and lacking in understanding of the harsh reality that not all religions are the same and some are more threatening to the concept of peace than are others. A desire not to give offence does not bring peace, it only gives succour to bullies who claim that they are ‘offended’ whenever their religious ideology is challenged. The great success of the Council of Christians and Jews that I mentioned earlier came about because both Christians and Jews were prepared to ask each other harsh and sometimes offensive questions about our respective religious paths. A failure to ask similar questions of Islam by the sort of naive interfaithers who hold political sway in the Church of England, has led us to the situation where an Islamic Imam is allowed get up in a cathedral and issue an audible ‘sod you’ to the congregation and it is not prevented from doing so for fear of ‘giving offence’ to people.
This incident is solid evidence as to exactly why the ‘nice but dim’s’ of the Interfaith world and their fellow travellers, should be challenged on their naivety and their lack of awareness of which religions pose a threat to all of us and which religions plainly do not. I suspect that after this furore, Blackburn Cathedral will be a little more cautious about providing a venue for Blackburn Music Society or will at the very least will hopefully be vetting their proposed performances much more closely.
