On Saturday the 21st of May I attended an interfaith day organised by the Jesuit Community at Manresa House, Clontarf. It was a day I was both eagerly anticipating and anxious about. My anxiety was caused by a worry that I would be the only one there without a doctorate in theology and that I would be surrounded by Cardinals and professors. I need not have worried there were as many lay people as there were religious scholars. The group of about twenty contained one or two doctorates but these people were affable and spoke a language I could understand.
Amongst the group were Catholics, Muslims (both Sunni and Shiite), some Unificationists, a Scientologist, a Bahai, representative, two members of The Society of Friends and of course, myself.
I got sat between a member of the Unification church and the Scientologist, something to test my own prejudices! I would have had strong reservations about both religions, and still have, but realised on the day that religion has little to do with what an individual is like. I found myself drawn to the Scientologist more than the Unificationist, but this was a matter of personality than religion. Indeed of all the people there the warmest was probably the Sunni Muslim, an affable South African who had spent some years in exile in the days of aparthied and I hope to keep in touch with him in the future.
The day was split into periods of reflection, devotion, discussion and introduction. There was time to talk about our thoughts on particular given statements and to talk about our own spiritual journeys. Certainly I found hearing other peoples stories the most fascinating part of the day (I always do) but the other discussions were stimulating too. Interestingly enough from a Unitarian perspective the one thing that struck me most about our discussions was that there was repeated calls for the word 'tolerance' to be dropped from religious language and to be replaced with 'acceptance' on the basis that it is more inclusive. Given our tenets of Freedom, Reason and Tolerance it may be something for us to contemplate on.
Keith Troughton