interfaith

The Ethiopian Community in Glasgow

Christianity, Religious Practice, Scotland / By

By Anthony MacIsaac

During my last trip to Glasgow, a few weeks ago, I took the opportunity to visit a thriving Christian community from Ethiopia. Their Church is one of the most ancient in all Christianity, having split from mainstream Catholicism in AD 451. To most Christians, they often seem forgotten about – indeed, it seems true that while people often know about the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Oriental Orthodox Churches are virtually unknown. The same might be said for the Assyrian Church of the East, but that’s another community altogether. For many centuries the Oriental Orthodox were known as the “Monophysites”, but they prefer to be known as “Miaphysites”. This nomenclature and theological differences over Christ’s Nature are too complex to detail here, but it is interesting to note that over the past 20 years or so, movements towards full Communion with Rome are underway. Pope Francis seems to have been leading some of the most recent efforts, in 2015 creating a Catholic Church for Eritrea, in close dialogue with the Eritrean Tewahedo Orthodox Church. Eritrea and Ethiopia share the same patronage, and while their Church has two branches for each country their core is one.

Ecclesial background asides, the community in Glasgow is vibrant indeed but still finding its feet. For a few years, the Kinning Park Church of Scotland have very generously given over their premises to the Tewahedo congregation, who celebrate their Liturgy in the afternoon. St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Hyndland has likewise kindly provided Eucharistic services, around once a month, for the same group. Worship on most Sundays is thereby at Kinning Park, but Eucharist is celebrated at St. Peter’s through the year too. During the Liturgy at the Church of Scotland building, there are a variety of striking points.

My friend Kevin and I were immediately welcomed with open arms by the presiding Deacon and other members of the congregation. Each man wore a white robe, loosely wrapped around the shoulders, with a Cross imprinted on the back. The women wore long dresses, also in white, with veils on their heads too. Within minutes of our arrival, we were impressed in that the Deacon immediately offered us robes for the service, which we gladly wore in a spirit of fraternity. We would wear these for prostration, the Orthodox equivalent to kneeling. As we sat awaiting the start of worship, various Holy paintings (or Icons) – some inspired by the Catholic “L’Art Saint Sulpice” – were erected on chairs at the front of the Church. In the middle of these was a special chair, laden with blue velvet covering, upon which rested a painting of the Holy Trinity. This was to serve as a kind of throne for this Holiest of images. The Church congregation kindly explained the origin of each piece of Sacred artwork, and their pride was an Icon of St. Hripseme. Though being an Armenian Martyr, from the 3rd century, she holds a very special place for the Ethiopian and Eritrean Churches. The official patronage for the Glasgow Ethiopian Church is under her name.

The service (which we expected to last 45 minutes) took about 3 hours to end! Afterwards we were encouraged to take tea and banana cake with the community, which we felt we couldn’t refuse. We were invited to return again, and I’m sure we shall. Indeed, generally the whole experience was very uplifting, and in the service especially. Dancing and liturgical singing took up at least half of the time – all in the praises of God, but a chance also for the people to enjoy themselves. Turns were taken in playing the drum, and people practiced their singing. Children were accorded a first place in the whole Liturgy – it was they who read the Scripture, they who intoned the prayers of the Faithful. Moreover, they were free to run about and play through the whole three hours, even if they had to keep relatively quiet! Overall, the spirit of Christian Joy was clear in the whole experience.

The Home We Build Together

Bishops, Interfaith Dialogue, Scotland / By

From Sr Isabel Smyth SND – Interfaith Journeys

The school summer holidays are over in Scotland and there’s a sense of purpose and industry around. After a quiet few months our interfaith committee has become very busy. In the last week or two there has been an Eid dinner hosted by the Scottish Ahl-alBayt Society, a day with Church students, taking them to places of worship and introducing them to the work of interfaith in Scotland, a meeting with young people from three Catholic schools, working with St Mungo’s Museum to plan a programme which they will organise in their schools during interfaith week and a 24 hour colloquium on faith in public life.

This colloquium has become an annual event but this year it was special. For one thing we planned it in partnership with the Justice and Peace Commission and the Bishops’ Parliamentary Office and we had a Sunni and Shia Muslim and a Baha’i participating. This meant the majority of people attending were Christian but even this small number of people from other faiths made a tangible and significant difference. It was important to have an interfaith dimension, even if small, as we were reflecting on our common civic identity. The inspiration for the event and the title of the colloquium came from Lord Jonathan Sack’s book ‘The Home We Build Together’.  In that book Lord Sacks suggests that the image of a home could be a powerful motivation for people of all faiths and none to work together to bring about the kind of society we would all like to live in – in other words to work for the common good.

The key note speaker, who set the scene for subsequent reflections and discussions, was Lord John Mcfall, a person of faith with long experience in politics. He reflected on the relationship between faith and politics, suggesting that both have the same intention in that they are working for a better world. He had some interesting and challenging things to say. Change, he said was the only reality in life and not to be afraid of it. While we lived in a time of instability and insecurity, people were yearning for answers to the big questions of life, something religion had to offer. It could be that religion might be the only architecture to hold society together – quite a challenge!

Cardinal Newman has a famous saying ‘to live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often’. But on the whole religions are conservative institutions and not often in the forefront of change. Religious founders were certainly innovators, often challenging the inflexibility of the conservatism of the faith and culture from which they sprung. But the developing tradition has a tendency to institutionalise the charisma and put its energies into maintaining the tradition. Religion, like nations, can look back with nostalgia to a golden age when all was well, stable and secure. But there was, of course, no such thing. Such thinking is a refuge from a world that is frightening in its insecurity and instablitiy. It’s this kind of thinking that has given rise, I think, to what we call identity politics, an attitude which also influences religions. There’s real evidence of a battening down the hatches in both religion and politics – a fear of the other, a sense that others are out to get us and we must look after ourselves and our own interests or ‘they’ will take over and deprive us of our livelihood and identity. In so far as this is the case, religions are in danger of setting themselves against society, rather than being the architecture that holds it together. This is only possible by embracing society, looking for the positive and good and speaking truth in love while inspiring fellow citizens to commit to accepting the human dignity of all and working for the common good.

To do this religion needs to learn a new language – the language of citizenship which Rabbi Sacks suggests should be the first language of us all, despite our second languages of ethnicity or faith. Someone at our colloquium suggested we needed to be bi-lingual. This may well be true but perhaps faith communities need to reflect on how far their language, especially in the area of morals and values, reflects the reality of today and is expressed in language that is positive and meaningful. In my own Church much of the language of faith and morals uses medieval concepts which are no longer relevant and suggest a cosmology and reality that is outdated. No wonder young people cannot take it seriously and are ahead of us in meeting some of the issues facing our planet and its future.

There was much more of course and in due time a report will be published on our website. Recently Pope Francis encouraged us to avoid unproductive discussions. In interfaith no meeting is unproductive if it establishes a  bond of friendship and understanding but it was good to have discourse over matters that are important to all of us. The intention is that this should be the start of many more productive dialogues.

Farewell to Mary Catherine

Bishops, Scotland / By

In early July we said goodbye to our intern Mary Catherine O’Reilly Gindhart who has worked with us for the past two and a half years.

Mary Catherine has been an enthusiastic addition to our team and has enjoyed all she has learned about interfaith relations. She continues with her PhD work and will teach a course on interfaith for Cabrini University, Pennsylvania  in the autumn. We wish her well and thank her very much for all she has done for us.

         

 

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