First Minister celebrates inter-faith search for 'common voice'

First Minister celebrates inter-faith search for “common voice”
Joint efforts to build bridges between Christians and Muslims in Wales will be celebrated at a unique event next week.

First Minister of Wales Carwyn Jones and the Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, will be among the guests at a dinner to celebrate an on-going series of consultations aimed at promoting understanding and tolerance across the country in the wake of international terrorism fears.

Called Finding A Common Voice, the series was started in November 2007 by the Church in Wales and the Muslim Council of Wales, in partnership with the Welsh Centre for International Affairs and, more recently, St Deiniol’s Library, North Wales.

So far 10 events have been held which have focussed on a range of faith issues, including terrorism, the role of women, stereotypes, tackling prejudice in schools, citizenship, community cohesion and environmental challenges. A recent residential weekend on working with cohesion in diversity was supported by the Welsh Assembly Government.

The dinner, at Cardiff City Hall, is being held to celebrate the progress made and among the 150 guests invited will be all the Bishops of the Church in Wales. The guest speaker will be Francis Davies, Government policy adviser on The Big Society and Decentralisation.

Rev Canon Robin Morrison, Bishops’ advisor for Church and Society, organises the events with Saleem Kidwai OBE, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Wales, and Stephen Thomas, director of the Welsh Centre for International Affairs.

He said, “We wanted to develop enough trust in our relationships to face some honest and hard questions together. This is much more than interfaith dialogue. It is a search for a 'common humanity in and under God' which goes far deeper than our religious differences.

"This is a long-term and very worthwhile journey. If we can't do this in Wales what hope is there for other parts of the world where there are far greater tensions and the continuing threat of violence, hatred and misunderstanding?”

Carwyn Jones said, “It’s important to build a bridge between the world of politics and faith communities and work together in a spirit of unity and co-operation to ensure that people in Wales can lead their daily lives without fear of abuse and violence. Through these events, we can show the world and our own citizens that we have laid the foundations for a modern, culturally diverse and more tolerant Wales.”

Saleem Kidwai said, “We started on this journey to learn, understand, accept, respect and value our similarities and commonalities as well as our differences. If we celebrate and work on our similarities then we can live with our differences – as every family has to do. We in Wales are very lucky to have church leaders with the vision, passion, enthusiasm and sheer humility to drive this agenda forward.”