Church magazine backs dialogue for faiths

The Church of Ireland Gazette has given its backing to the development of inter-faith relations, following controversy arising from the visit of the Dalai Lama to St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast last November.

The Buddhist leader took part in an inter-faith meeting, at which a packed congregation shared in readings and prayers from Christians and representatives from a wide range of other faiths including Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews.

Canon Norman Jardine, a member of the cathedral chapter, earlier wrote to the gazette to publicly “disassociate” himself from the event which, he claimed, had lacked “theological integrity” and which had been “unnecessary and unhelpful.”

However, the Dean of Belfast, the Very Rev Dr Houston McKelvey, defended the service and stated in his Cathedral Digest magazine that it had been “a wonderful experience of winsome evangelical contact.”

The Church of Ireland Gazette, in its latest edition, noted that the cathedral service had raised the issue of the extent to which “Christians may engage with people of other faiths in an event of a religious nature.”

While there was “a graduation of opinion” on “these things”, the paper concluded that: “It is only reasonable in this day and age…that events of an inter-faith nature should take place,” and that “creativity and sensitivity will be the dual hallmarks of such initiatives.”

It underlined that the current Week of Prayer for Christian Unity was “a time of special focus on ecumenical relations” and that inter-faith relations were also part of the ecumenical agenda.”

“By engaging together in dialogue with other faith traditions, Christians may also come to understand one another rather better.”

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