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'Settle differences by dialogue'

Theological or ideological difference is dealt with by dialogue,not force, says the Archbishop of Canterbury.

ACNS  |  24 Jul 2015  |

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has used a lecture speech to call for increased dialogue to tackle religiously motivated violence (RMV).

The Archbishop gave his lecture at the Liverpool John Moores University in England, where he has been elected as an honorary Fellow.

“In common with other Christian denominations, with other faith traditions, and with those of no faith, the Anglican Communion has bitter experience of RMV,” Archbishop Welby said. “In the last 18 months Anglican dead have been certainly in the hundreds, even into the low thousands.

“Around the world we face the reality and deal with it. Our bishops are in dialogue with those who attack, risking their own lives in the dialogue. This is not academic.”

He singled out the Church of England’s Near Neighbours programme, which is supported by the British government, as an example of the church acting in the area of inter-religious dialogue; but said that “We are neither naive about the evil of those involved in RMV, nor despairing of dealing with it.

“On the contrary, it is clear that with this is a challenge that can and will be met. It requires a careful approach, an understanding of each other's traditions, a clear approach to reconciliation in which we seek to transform destructive violence into good disagreement.”

Archbishop Welby criticised phrases such as “a war of civilisations”, which he described as a “dangerous myth”.

Christians and Muslims “disagree passionately”, he said, before adding: “Islam is not our enemy, but a faith with whose theology, as a Christian, I disagree profoundly.

Important lesson

“The experience of 180 years of European religious war is that theological difference, or ideological difference, however, is not dealt with by force, but by dialogue. That is the most important lesson of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.”

But the Archbishop made clear that he was not advocating direct talks with the so-called Islamic State (ISIL/Daesh), saying: “that perverted terrorist group must be faced and contained in the sort of quasi police action that the United Nations has authorised.

“Their appalling attacks on so many of all faiths and none are a lethal danger to the human values on which civilised life depends.”

He said that the world was seeing “a rise in religiously motivated violence and suppression of religious freedom around the world.

“We can point to Myanmar, south India and Sri Lanka, where the persecution and violence directed at the Muslim population has been indescribably severe.

“We can look to the Central African Republic, where violence between Christian and Muslim militias is more brutal and inhuman than we can begin to imagine.

“These are but a few, partial, examples around the world. There are many more that I could list and elaborate on. And they are contagious and spread, because they are seen without seeing human beings.”

In almost half the provinces of the Anglican Communion, “the Church is living under persecution and the threat of serious violence. They fear for their lives every day.”

Archbishop Welby blamed a desire to return to a “mythical golden age” where “power and strength were demonstrated on a grand scale, and where we might seek to please whatever deity or belief structure we embrace” as one of the causes in the rise of RMV.

“At its worst, this separation from the world, this bunker mentality, and this myth of a golden age, in our own group’s narrative, is leading to a global rise of religious and fundamentalist violence in defence of a tradition that has little evidence of ever having existed in the form now imagined. . .

“ISIL certainly appeals to the tradition of a religious society to justify their violence.

“They root themselves in an interpretation of the traditions and teachings of early Islam, reviving traditions that have been dormant for hundreds of years, whilst at the same time, ignoring and violating 700 years of Muslim scholarship and jurisprudence that at points was the most sophisticated system in the known world.

“For them, any supposed innovation that conflicts with their worldview and tradition is a denial of its initial perfection; any deviation is apostasy. And the punishment for apostasy is death.”

ISIL, he said, demonstrated “a most extreme form of the bunker mentality.”

Supporting his call for increased inter-religious dialogue, Archbishop Welby gave the example of Nigeria, where the Church has brought together two groups of Christians and Muslims.

“First, a group of influential Imams and Pastors, and second a group from universities where radicalisation is strongly suspected to occur. Some of them had never met face to face with someone of the other faith before.”

One of the participants was a Muslim lawyer who has “admitted that he now realised that his speeches at the Muslim Students Society had encouraged antagonistic attitudes to Christians. As a direct result of his encounter with Christians, he now uses speaking engagements as opportunities to appeal to thousands of Muslim students to embrace Christians as their fellow Nigerians.

“Those two groups between them, 30 in each year, have so far communicated personally with 60,000 Nigerians.

“We need to turn face to face with other religious leaders, other politicians, with integrity and generosity.”

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