Making sense of the Census

The 2011 Census was the second Census in England and Wales to provide data on population by religion for regions, counties, London boroughs and districts in England and Wales on census day. The Census data has been analysed by the Church of England to produce data specific for each parish.

Those using the national Presence & Engagement website can click on their diocese to find out about the religious demographics there. It is also possible to search for the religious demographics in your parish by searching with your postcode. This includes a comparison between the 2011 and 2001 data, as well as age data and poverty data (provided via a separate link to the Church Urban Fund website).

Searching for the data on my former parish St John's Seven Kings produces the following as an example of the type and value of the information available:

"This P&E parish has a very significant 63.05% of the population consisting of faiths other than Christianity. It is a P&E parish. The population is 15200."

"The population of ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST, GREAT ILFORD is 15180 and the IMD rank is 9889 out of 12,660 (where 1 is the least deprived parish).

The most significant poverty-related issue in this parish is the relatively high rate of pensioner poverty. The next most significant issue is the relatively high rate of child poverty.

Child poverty and pensioner poverty in this parish are among the highest in the country. Working age poverty in this parish is higher than average compared with other parishes in the country. Qualification levels in this parish are higher than average compared with other parishes nationally."

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George Harrison - All Things Must Pass.

Karamsar Gurdwara visit

Yesterday I took a group of ordinands from the North Thames Ministerial Training Course at St Mellitus College on a visit to the Karamsar Gurdwara in Ilford.

The Gurdwara building was originally a Labour Hall which, in the early 1990’s, was acquired and converted into a Gurdwara by the local Sikh community under the guidance of Sant Partap Singh. Initially a single storey building with a prayer hall (Darbar) in the front and the community kitchen (Langar) towards the rear, the Gurdwara enjoyed tremendous success by catering to the spiritual and emotional needs of the community and soon outgrew the existing facilities. 

In 1998 a project was started to build a newly designed Gurdwara. The culmination of this effort is the magnificent Gurdwara now standing in place of the old Labour Hall. It was officially opened in April 2005 to coincide with Vaisakhi celebrations – commemorating the birth of the Khalsa Panth.

The building gracefully combines traditional sikh and mughlai designs with modern western architecture. Its façade and distinctive domes are perhaps its most striking features. Carved entirely from pink sandstone in Rajasthan-India, it was shipped to the UK and reassembled in-situ. The foyer is a grand and simple space with a skylight bringing in natural light all the way from the third floor. It has prayer halls on the first and second floors with the Langar hall on the ground floor. The interior is all white and uncomplicated.  

Our guide to the Gurdwara was Lakhvir Singh Bhui, who shared stories about the Gurus with us as well as information about Sikh beliefs and practices. It was a very interesting visit for us all and everyone was impressed with the hospitality and welcome. 

For anyone wanting to find out more about interfaith engagement the national and Greater London Presence & Engagement sites are the best first ports of call - http://www.londonpen.org/ and http://www.presenceandengagement.org.uk/.

The training materials I have prepared for parishes on Living with other faiths can be downloaded from the Greater London PEN site - http://www.londonpen.org/?page_id=702.

Information about interfaith initiatives in our parish can be found at: Sophia Hub (multi-faith social enterprise project) - http://stjohns7kings.org.uk/sophia-hub; and Scriptural Reasoning Group - http://joninbetween.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/scriptural%20reasoning.

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Noel Paul Stookey - One And Many.

Conversations and collaborations

"Our society is not simply secular; nor is it simply religious; it is both religious and secular in complex ways. If it is to work well there need to be huge numbers of conversations and collaborations across religious and secular boundaries." David Ford
I found the above quote in a post on the London Borough's Faiths Network blog and it encapsulates a large part of what I was trying to say last night as part of a visit to St John's Seven Kings by a group of ordinands and readers in training from St Mellitus College.

After describing to the group the multi-faith, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic context of our parish - as it contains significant Hindu, Sikh and Muslim communities together with a smaller Jewish community - I then talked them through some of the key arguments from the Church of England's Presence and Engagement report based on the recognition that  “the multi Faith context is now the real context in which a substantial and increasing number of parishes and proportion of the population actually live.”

“The report focuses on these churches and their contexts" - parishes like St John's Seven Kings - because they are increasing significantly and will extend further; because they represent many issues that are strikingly new for local churches in this country; and because they connect the local and the global in many sharply focussed ways.

Furthermore, the situation and experiences of these churches are important learning and teaching opportunities to be offered to the whole Church.”

The question which needs to be asked and answered in and through these parishes is, “in what ways is the Spirit calling churches and individuals to engage with the new diversities?” These parishes provide new opportunities for the learning and future of the Church in the UK, including:

“Opportunity to learn more about other human beings around us, especially those sincerely engaged in seeking God. Opportunity to present our Christian understandings of God by the lives we live and the words we speak. Opportunity to contribute to the common good and above all, opportunity to learn more about trusting in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

The words 'presence' and 'engagement' provide a framework for thinking through our approach to these opportunities. “The word ‘presence' points to our incarnational theology and the word ‘engagement’ to our pentecostal theology ... Presence can be largely passive, a simple acceptance that this is where we are, without any meaningful recognition of the relationship between our presence, the presence of others and the real presence of Christ who seeks constantly to bring human beings into relationship with each other in love. But the Spirit of God is constantly seeking to move us on from the fact of presence to the action of engagement – engagement as a public sign of our commitment to the wellbeing of the world and to the discovery of the Kingdom in the midst of the places where we are present.”

As a result of this thinking, we have sought to renew and further develop the community/outward facing focus at St John's Seven Kings. We have worked with the kingdom model of mission - God>World>Church - which can be summed up in Rowan Williams' phrase, "Mission is seeing what God is doing and joining in."  This model of mission starts with action and partnerships in the community, for the sake of the kingdom. Church is then for those who respond to the call to share in God’s transforming mission.

We have, therefore, promoted and developed the St John’s Centre as a centre for the community - 20+ community groups/activities and 100s of Centre users. We have also become actively involved in local community engagement – Take Action for Seven Kings / Seven Kings and Newbury Park Resident's Association / Living Streets campaigns for improved community facilities. We have also developed a Community Garden, as a visible sign that we are here and we are for the community.

On this basis, mission and ministry can be understood as inviting others to share in a conversation between God and humanity about the nature of life. Mission and ministry then become about identifying the conversations that people in the parish may want to start with God or into which they could be drawn and contributing to those conversations (through action, meetings, preaching, press coverage, projects etc) from a Christian perspective. The starting point is to ask ‘what are the conversation starters in my parish?’

The Bible is, as Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, has said, the record of the dialogue in which God and humanity find one another: “Abraham says: God, why did you abandon the world? God says to Abraham: Why did you abandon Me? And there then begins that dialogue between Heaven and Earth which has not ceased in 4,000 years. That dialogue in which God and Man find one another … Only thus, can we understand the great dialogues between God and Abraham and Moses and Jeremiah and Job.”

Jesus says in John 8: 28 that he speaks just what the Father has taught him and in John 11: 42 that the Father always hears him. These two verses indicate that Jesus and the Father are in a constant dialogue or conversation. This understanding of God and mission is set out clearly in a translation of the prologue to John's Gospel, based on Erasmus' translation of logos as conversation, which I first came across in the Methodist Church report Time to Talk of God:

“It all arose out of a conversation, conversation within God, in fact the conversation was God. So God started the discussion, and everything came out of this, and nothing happened without consultation.

This was the life, life that was the light of men, shining in the darkness, a darkness which neither understood nor quenched its creativity.

John, a man sent by God, came to remind people about the nature of the light so that they would observe. He was not the subject under discussion, but the bearer of an invitation to join in.

The subject of the conversation, the original light, came into the world, the world that had arisen out of his willingness to converse. He fleshed out the words but the world did not understand. He came to those who knew the language, but they did not respond. Those who did became a new creation (his children). They read the signs and responded.

These children were born out of sharing in the creative activity of God. They heard the conversation still going on, here, now, and took part, discovering a new way of being people.

To be invited to share in a conversation about the nature of life was for them, a glorious opportunity not to be missed.” (John 1: 1-14 revisited)

This understanding of mission fits well with the HOPE Together initiative which asks us to imagine all over the country in communities large and small, churches working together, bringing Jesus’ story alive through word and action: “A new model of mission seems to have emerged across the UK in recent years combining words and actions, being good news as well as proclaiming good news … Grass roots collaboration between local churches served by national agencies allows the empowerment of Christians to serve their communities in ways which are appropriate to their situations.” The whole Church, for the whole Nation, for the whole year: An evaluation of HOPE08

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World Wide Message Tribe - We Talk to the Lord.

Inter-faith conference and lecture

Tomorrow sees a conference on inter-faith relationship which will explore how Christians can relate and work with people of other faiths. 

Those attending will hear the example of Faithful Friends, an inter-faith project which has been building friendships between people of different faiths in Forest Gate. Delegates will also hear from Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus who have worked with Christians in Forest Gate. Speakers include, Dr Philip Lewis, Specialist on Christian-Muslim Relations, who will share with us the example of Bradford and the national scene.

The conference is hosted by Faithful Friends and Bishop David, the Bishop of Barking. Venue: Emmanuel Church, Forest Gate. Date: Thursday 22^nd Sept, 2011. Time: 10.30a.m. – 3.30 p.m. To book (free) contact Revd Chigor Chike 0790 515 5494 or e mail chigor.chike@sky.com.

In a similar vein, The Revd Dr Toby Howarth, Secretary for Inter Religious Affairs to the Archbishop of Canterbury and National Inter Religious Affairs Adviser for the Church of England, will give the 2011 PEN lecture entitled ‘What do we bring to the party? The Mission of the Church in a Multi Faith Neighbourhood’ at St Marylebone parish church NW1 5LT on Monday 31^st October 6.30 for 7.00pm. There will be a panel of respondents and time for questions as with last year's lecture.

Both are great opportunities to exchange ideas and to network with practitioners involved with inter-faith initiatives in London and across the country.

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Thea Gilmore - As I Went Out One Morning.

Faiths in the workplace

Yesterday I contributed to a residential weekend for curates in the Diocese of Chelmsford on Presence & Engagement organised by the Greater London Presence & Engagement Network. This is what I had to say as my introduction to a panel session exploring non-institutional approaches to Presence & Engagement:

Prior to ordination I worked in the Civil Service for Jobcentre Plus. What I found there was that the multi-faith nature of urban Britain combined with the diversity and equalities agenda meant that those working in employment and training services needed to understand their customers and employees who were part of faith communities. This development provided an opportunity for me to work on the development of a Faith Communities Toolkit for Jobcentre Plus which provided information for staff on the nine world religions (including Christianity) represented in the UK and ideas and guidance on contacting and working with people of faith. Since ordination, through consultancy work for the Muslim-led multi-faith agency Faith Regen Foundation, I have also been involved in preparing similar resources for staff at Sainsbury’s, Calder UK Ltd and the learning and skills sector, more generally.

Based on these experiences, I want to say two things initially. Firstly, all workplaces have to address engagement with people of faith because of equalities legislation, multi-faith workforces and/or a customer/supplier base that includes those who belong to a faith community. Therefore, every person in your parish, wherever that parish is located, who has a job is engaging with people of other faiths. This means that there is no longer any validity to the argument that, because my parish is not located in a multi-faith area, I do not have to engage with the issues raised by Presence and Engagement. If you are to actively support your parishioners in their daily lives making connections between their faith and their work, you must engage with inter-faith issues.

Secondly, equalities legislation (including the Regulations on Religion and Belief) represents a huge opportunity for Christians and the church in the UK, because it legitimates the raising of faith-related issues at work. This legislation, for example, says that you can ask your employer what provision they will make for people to pray during the working day. An employer has to address that issue if it is raised. They don’t have provide a prayer room or time for prayer unless it is reasonable for them to do so, but they do have to consider the issue, respond, and give reasons (which can then be discussed and debated) if they choose not to act.

So, I want to encourage you – on a one-to-one basis and in parish discussion or study groups – to encourage people to talk about workplace issues and engaging with people of other faiths at work. Two resources that will help with that are, firstly, the Living with other faiths materials from PEN which start by getting people to list where and when they encounter people of other faiths and then explore ways of turning casual encounters into a more active engagement and, secondly, the Christians in the Workplace materials from the Diocese of Chelmsford which include a list of workplace issues that have links to faith and discussion of what people meant by workplace spirituality.

My experience of engaging with these issues in the workplace is firstly, that it is possible to do it; secondly, that it provides a platform for people of all faiths to legitimately speak about their faith commitment in the workplace; thirdly, that relationships with colleagues deepen through knowing more about each others’ underlying motivations; and fourthly, that your own faith deepens as you come to know more about the way in which others practice their own faith. I see these four things as linked to the Parable of the Good Samaritan which is a story about relating to people of other faiths and which challenges us to show care for those who are of other faiths but which also goes beyond that to challenge us, as it is the Jew in the story who receives help from the Samaritan, to receive from those of other faiths. The workplace is a key context in which such encounters and engagement can occur.

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Sixpence None the Richer - The Melody of You.