Riots Lead to Call for Faith Groups to Work Together

The riots in Birmingham last weekend have led to the call from local Christians for faith groups to work more closely together in a bid to improve community relations.

|TOP|Riots in the mainly black and Asian Lozells area of the city on Saturday lead to the stabbing to death of 23-year-old Isiah Young-Sam just yards away from his home, with another death resulting from further clashes with police on Sunday.

Rodney Reed, Baptist Union of Great Britain specialist mission networker for interfaith issues and pastor of the nearby Handsworth Baptist Mission, attributed the violent disturbances to a divisive competitiveness for resources in an area of economic and social need, reported The Baptist Times.

Mr Reed pointed to the area’s Regeneration Zone programme which he said had led to competition between different communities for a larger share of funds for their own community projects.

“There’s an underlying unhappiness,” he said. “At each level, everyone feels that someone else has more than they do.

“Whenever the faith groups or ethnic groups meet up, there’s a competition for funding. The leadership of each faith group wants more for its own community. It’s all about, ‘You have to compete and win’. There are very few examples of inter-faith cooperation.”

Mr Reed also blamed the lack of a local-level forum for religious leaders to meet each other in a non-confrontational setting, despite good city-wide links between the different faith groups.

“There has to be an opportunity for people to meet and talk about important community issues without having to compete for funding,” he said.

|QUOTE|“If I were to take a quick poll of church leaders, and ask how many leaders from other faiths they could just ring up, or how often they eat together, most of them couldn’t tell me,” said Mr Reed.

The Baptist pastor also complained at the lack of communication from Christian leaders directed toward the wider community: “Each Christian group tends to talk only to our own people, not to the area. Christian leaders should make a real effort to meet up and form relationships with people from other religions.”

The Rev. Dr. David Tennant, pastor at Birmingham’s Hampstead Road Baptist Church, situated at the edge of Lozells, echoed Mr Reed’s sentiments.

Dr Tennant, who is a member of the Urban Churches Together group, which includes 23 churches in north-west Birmingham, supported the development of a local-level forum but warned that while some church leaders would welcome an open and broadly-based approach to other faiths, others would see closer relationships as opportunities to convert members, reports The Baptist Times.

The proposal was also supported by the Rev. Clifford Fryer, pastor of influential Cannon Street Memorial Baptist Church, who said it could help in a “very complex situation”.

Community representatives issued a statement in which they condemned the violence over the weekend, saying, “escalating violence is not the answer”.

“We utterly condemn those who are endeavouring to stir up hatred and discord, we condemn those who are perpetrating crimes in the name of the community,” read the statement.