All in Good Faith

Author(s): Jean Potter, Marcus Braybrooke
Publisher: World Congress of Faiths

Page 35

'One God'
All in Good Faith
Those who defend interfaith services may say that all are worshipping the same God. however, raises two questions. The first is whether there is sufficient common understanding of what is meant by 'God' to make the occasion significant. Secondly, does this allow for the participation of non-theists, such as Buddhists?
This,
'We all meet in the one God', said Canon Hugh Montefiore, who later became Bishop of Birmingham, when as Rector of Great St Mary's Church, Cambridge, he welcomed people to a WCF All Faiths service there.. He suggested there are four stages in our meeting with people of other faiths. First, there is learning about what they believe. Then, there is reflection about what this new knowledge means to us. Then comes the confrontation, when we are stripped naked and grapple with each other in our agreements and disagreements. Then, 'beyond doctrines and convictions, we move into the reality of God Himself'. We retain our religious identity. 'We simply acknowledge that we are all creatures of the one God, his Spirit is in us all, we all experience the one God, that all our lives are lived in him. As our different prayers and scriptures in this service witness, we experience before him human sinfulness and awe: we offer to him human thanksgiving and gratitude: we place before him human desires and hopes: we receive from him all that is good and beautiful and true. To deny the propriety of common worship seems to me almost a blasphemy against the One God who made us all, and it is certainly a denial of our common humanity' (7).
If it is accepted that there is One God and that people of many faiths seek to worship that God - although this view is challenged by some Christians such as Tony Higton (8) - it can also be said that people do not have to agree to everyone else's picture of that God. Part of any interfaith service is a listening to the beliefs of others. Only when some words are said together need there be the supposition of agreement. David Brown, who was Bishop of Guildford, in his address at the WCF service at St Martin-in-the-Fields in 1976 spoke particularly about the limitations of language. The most universal language, he said, is that which crosses the frontier between the Eternal and the contingent. This may be why sometimes it is most helpful to meet in prayerful silence.
The second concern is the rejection by most Buddhists and Jains of belief in a Creator God and in intercessory prayer. Addresses to a Creator God or requests for divine favour and help will be unacceptable. At the Chicago Parliament of the World's Religions in 1993, some Buddhists made a protest on this point. At the 'Assembly of Spiritual and Religious Leaders', Ven Samu
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