Vibrant Christianity in Multifaith Britain

Equipping the church for a faithful engagement with people of different faiths

Andrew Smith

• Publisher: BRF
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9780857467416
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Ministro del culto cristiano

Vibrant Christianity in Multifaith Britain is an accessible and thought-provoking approach that encourages readers to think seriously about how we live out our faith in an increasingly multifaith society. Whether we meet people of different faiths or just hear about them in the media, this book will give Christians confidence to express our faith in a religiously diverse world. Drawing on scripture and the author's many years of experience, the book challenges preconceptions and offers practical advice.

The Bible Reading Fellowship

15 The Chambers, Vineyard

Abingdon OX14 3FE

brf.org.uk

The Bible Reading Fellowship (BRF) is a Registered Charity (233280)

MOBI ISBN 978 0 85746 574 0

EPUB ISBN 978 0 85746 741 6

Published 2018

All rights reserved

Text © Andrew Smith 2018

This edition © The Bible Reading Fellowship 2018

Cover image © iStock

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Acknowledgements

Unless otherwise stated, scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version (Anglicised edition) copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Publishers, a Hachette UK company. All rights reserved. ‘NIV’ is a registered trademark of Biblica. UK trademark number 1448790.

Every effort has been made to trace and contact copyright owners for material used in this resource. We apologise for any inadvertent omissions or errors, and would ask those concerned to contact us so that full acknowledgement can be made in the future.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Contents

Introduction

1 What do we think of other faiths?

2 A different question

3 Them and us?

4 The great commission

5 Doing dialogue

6 Being peacemakers

7 Cultural issues

8 The church: reaching out and welcoming in

Notes

Acknowledgements

About the author

Introduction

Back in 1978, when I was 11 years old, I used to love watching Top of the Pops on a Thursday evening. It was a highlight of the week’s TV schedule, which, let’s face it, was meagre fare back then. Although I enjoyed the programme, and am now able to watch endless repeats, many of the acts were pretty forgettable. But occasionally one would stand out from the crowd. One such band was Boney M, who suddenly appeared wearing shiny silver jumpsuits and singing a song that I didn’t understand but which my parents assured me was from the Bible, with its lyrics about rivers of Babylon and singing the Lord’s song. I never really liked the song and thought Boney M looked a bit embarrassing, but it had one of those tunes that gets stuck in your head, irritatingly catchy and unforgettable. One of the lines that I always remembered was ‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’ Many years later I discovered that the lyrics were indeed from the Bible and came from Psalm 137, referring to the people of Israel’s exile in Babylon. They were taken to a ‘strange land’ where people spoke a different language, ate different food and worshipped foreign gods, and when it was demanded that the they sing their worship songs, the Israelites found that they couldn’t do it. Being in such a strange place meant that the old songs didn’t make sense; indeed, how could they sing the Lord’s songs in such a strange country?

Over the past couple of decades I’ve met with many Christians who have asked how they can make sense of their faith in a country that is home to an increasing number of people from different faith traditions. For many people who grew up in the UK before 2000, the world has changed dramatically, religion is rarely out of the news, usually for all the wrong reasons, and Britain is increasingly described as a multifaith society. Other faiths, particularly Islam, are much more visible in politics, education, popular culture and the news. Consequently, when people are discussing how to share their faith or what place Christianity has in society many of the old certainties have gone; we are no longer the one dominant religious voice in a sea of unbelief, but one of many – and not always the loudest. For many Christians this raises numerous questions about how they express their faith, through either words or actions. In other words, how do we now sing the Lord’s song in this strange land?

This is a journey that I went on back in the mid 1990s in Birmingham. I’d grown up in a Christian family, attending a big evangelical church in the south of England, but until I was about 28 I’d never actually met someone who was a member of a different faith. At school in the 1980s, pretty much everyone rejected the idea of God or religion and there was a general view that all religion was slowly dying out. If Christians had ever taught me anything about other religions, it was that they were inferior to Christianity and that there was no spirituality in them; rather, they were purely ritualistic. Our job as Christians was to tell people of other faiths about Jesus, because then they would be spiritually fulfilled when they became Christians. This made sense to me, until I actually met some Muslims. I met some people who loved being Muslim, talked about faith in spiritual rather than ritualistic terms and articulated very clearly how they found spiritual fulfilment within Islam. Obviously a young Christian turning up and preaching simplistic sermons at them was not what they were looking for. Consequently, like so many others, I started to ask the question in one form or other: ‘How do I sing the Lord’s song in this strange land?’

Having only ever mixed with secular people, I’d never had to work out how I related to or understood the faith of others. In many ways it challenged the simplistic notions of faith and Christianity that I had. Here were people who thought religion was a good thing and weren’t expecting it to die out; they believed in God, prayed, read scriptures, went to a place of worship, wanted to tell others about their faith and thought that their faith should inform the way they lived. It all seemed really close, yet vastly different, to the Christian faith that I experienced. One consequence was that I asked big questions of the Christian faith. Was Jesus ‘the way and the truth and the life?’ What was it that made Christianity unique? How did the message of the gospel relate to people who seemed to be quite godly people yet denied that Jesus was the Son of God?

These are some of the questions that this book will seek to answer. Since that time, I have got to know and become friends with people of many different faiths, including Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews. I have spoken to large numbers of Christians trying to make sense of the changing world and wanting to ‘sing the Lord’s song’ in ways that make sense to people of different faiths, yet not sure what words to use or how to get started. I’ve also come to realise that there are many different ways in which Christians answer these questions, often disagreeing quite strongly about what we should be doing and how we should go about doing it.

Although there are now many people engaging with those of other faiths in creative and interesting ways, I firmly believe that this is a task for the whole church and not just a few interfaith experts or specialised cross-cultural missioners. Having spent over 20 years trying to share my faith and be a witness to the good news of Jesus with people of different faiths, I can honestly say that it’s been rewarding, fun, frustrating, disappointing and enriching in equal measure (and this is true of my work with churches over that time as well). My faith in Christ has been deepened; I’ve made some really good friends and I’ve also changed the way I read the Bible. I find myself asking, ‘What would my Sikh friend think if she read this passage?’ or ‘How would this sound to a Buddhist?’

I’ve also gone back to scripture time and again to interrogate it for myself, to try to discern what God might be saying to me in the context of multifaith issues or in relation to specific questions or challenges. Sometimes I’ve discovered passages that I haven’t noticed before, but more often I’ve rediscovered more well-known texts or found God speaking to me in new ways through them. One such text is Luke 6:31, ‘Do to others as you would have them do to you.’ This saying has been so commonly referred to, often as ‘The Golden Rule’, that I think we’ve neglected to consider what it would mean to obey it. When considering what it means to live a vibrant Christian life among people of different faiths, I’ve discovered that this verse is deeply challenging and really helpful. Do I want people to listen to me talk about my faith? If the answer is yes, then I need to do the same to them and listen to them talk about their faith. Do I want people to visit my church? If so, then I need to be willing to visit their gurdwara or mosque. Not only did the verse challenge me to think differently when I started this ministry, it also reassured me that it’s okay to visit a Buddhist vihara or listen to a Hindu explain their faith. Jesus wants me to treat them as I want to be treated.

I’ve also been aware of how little I know. I have a simple rule that’s stood me in good stead for 20 years and that I’ll pass on to you. All I do is smile and ask. That’s it really. Whether I want to know why a Hindu temple has a deity that I haven’t seen before or why a Muslim friend is fasting, all I do is smile and ask. So far no one’s been offended or upset; usually it leads to a conversation that goes in all sorts of directions. So, if you remember one thing from this book, use this as a way of getting to know and understand different faiths: just smile and ask.

1 What do we think of other faiths?

A spiritual scale?

A young man thinks he’s got everything: money, power, youthful good looks, but still feels uneasy about his life. All those big questions about who he is, what will happen when he dies and what the purpose of life is keep haunting him. Then one day he hears that the rabbi that everyone’s talking about, famous as a great preacher and miracle worker, is in town. So, the young man rushes off and to his surprise gets right up close to him. He blurts out the first thing that comes to mind. ‘Good teacher,’ he calls out, ‘what must I do to receive eternal life?’ He’s hoping for a resolution to this most perplexing question, but when the answer comes it’s not what he’s looking for. Although he insists that he keeps God’s laws, this new preacher takes him by surprise. ‘Go,’ he calmly says, ‘and sell all your possessions, give the money to the poor, then come and follow me.’ The young man is stunned. When he said ‘eternal life’, he meant in the future, after he’d died; he wasn’t expecting it to affect the way he uses his money now. So, he has only one option: he turns and walks away.

That story from Matthew 19:16–26 highlights many people’s starting point when thinking about how Christians relate to people of other faiths. The questions they have are all about what people must do to receive eternal life. But usually this is code for ‘who is going to be in heaven?’ Typically, these questions are about whether people of different faiths will get into heaven, and what about people of different faiths who have never heard the gospel? For some people, it’s clear that no one except Christians will be in heaven; others are less certain, especially if they’ve started to meet people of other faiths who are living good lives and ones centred on prayer and worship.

These questions also apply to peo...

Table of contents

• Vibrant_Christianity_ebook