The resignation of Pope Benedict VXI in February, the first Pope to step down as Head of the Catholic Church in 600 years, has sparked much reflection for my work as a Muslim woman, and a Community Organiser in East London. In the Pope’s 2012 year-end address to the Curia, he discussed interreligious dialogue not as a means to convert others but as process of understanding in which both parties remain consciously within their identity. I am struck by these words:
“It is necessary to learn and accept the other in his otherness and the otherness of his thinking. To this end, the shared responsibility for justice and peace must become the guiding principle of the conversation”
This is a message that seems to resonate with the experiences of Christian, Muslim and Secular leaders who are involved in Community Organising in East London. Although they have differing worldviews, they are able to compromise and work together for the common good in their community.
However, the congregating of these values is not without its compromise and tension.
Service, Mission, and Advocacy
My research for Contending Modernities (pdf) focuses on the relationships between religious and secular leaders in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, and how their motivations to work for the common good interplay with the compromises and tensions they experience in animating their values in public life.
The study considers three key factors: service; mission; and advocacy as congregating values that are integral to motivating these different communities to work together, and explores the underlying conflicts that can arise from their differing perspectives. Through a series of interviews, community leaders have articulated openly how they have overcome some of challenges that working together can pose.
Some of the challenges discussed include: the prioritising of time to the wider community or the institution, relationship building as an opportunity for soft evangelism or conversion, dilution of faith values, religions versus secularism and tensions in leadership.
Despite these challenges, Christian, Muslim and Secular leaders in Tower Hamlets remain committed to relationship building and working together for positive change in the community. Interestingly, interreligious dialogue does not go far enough– action is the oxygen that keeps these relationships alive in the messy politics of public life in East London. Community organising facilitates the finding of common ground in uncertain terrain.
