Short talk on the role of interfaith work in making Bath “a home for everyone”

Bath's faith groups were invited by the Mayor of Bath Clle Michelle Doherty to share thoughts on her theme for her mayoralty year: "a home for everyone". As the Quaker rep on teh Bath Inter Faith Group here's my piece.

Madam Mayor

Your theme “a home for everyone” speaks to your known personal commitment to social justice and inclusion. It makes us think immediately of the homeless in Bath, also of the difficulties for young people, essential workers and refugees in finding adequate and affordable housing.?

Nationally projects like Quaker Homeless Action, Quaker Housing Trust and Quaker Social Action are active in addressing just that sort of need and also in challenging and helping to shape housing policy. Locally Bath Quakers used to house Genesis Trust work before the sale of our Meeting House, now the beautiful independent bookshop Toppings.?

Key to Quaker life are specific testimonies or commitments including to simplicity, community, equality and stewardship. These are underpinned by our practice of mostly silent worship. The experience of the Society is that if we listen patiently, we will be led correctly and able to discern what is right. Sometimes we get answers. Other times we just get the right questions.

Mindful of that I’d like to interpret your exam question in a slightly different way.?

Is Bath a “home for everyone”??

Is it inclusive? With our huge inequality, and surrounded as we are by the legacies of colonialism and enslavement, we can’t be complacent about that; we can’t know the true answer unless we also see Bath through the eyes of minoritised and excluded groups, people who struggle, people not just of different ethnicities and faiths but gender, sexuality, ability.?

Committing to equality is easy; actually working towards it takes real effort and almost always entails some conflict.?

When we plan for the future, is our vision to make Bath “a home for everyone”? The architects of Georgian Bath prioritised beauty, and not just for those living in the Crescents. The Dundas Aqueduct and Brunel’s railway are there for everyone. The Assembly Rooms and Sydney Gardens were notably inclusive spaces.?

When we make big plans about our socio-economic future do we plan for inclusion? Do we give proper emphasis to beauty as a public good? Are our plans based on deeper values cherished not just by people of faith but by all people of good will: hope, charity or compassion? Or are decisions about planning or development driven almost entirely by desperate short-term anxieties over public finances and private profit imperatives?

Where are our noblest principles and beliefs to be found in their most concentrated form? Are they in the Council Chamber? In the beautifully restored Abbey? In the boardroom of YTL which owns our water and operates our sacred springs? In our Universities, our hospital and other “anchor institutions”? Perhaps more so in the secular community organisations who do selfless and inspiring work.?

Nurturing, redefining and cherishing the principles and beliefs that are necessary for working towards a more just, equal and sustainable community is surely the role of Bath’s faith groups. For all their human failings, these are the core teachings they have emphasised for many centuries. But - apart from tonight - I’m not sure that voice is even invited, probably not expected, and certainly not coming across loud and clear in our civic discourse.?

If this sounds like a call to action for the Bath Interfaith Group then that’s exactly what it is. With support of our Patrons - you Madam Mayor and the Lord Lieutenant - drawing on and celebrating the diverse faiths and traditions in our community, Bath’s faithful can surely do much more to provide the voice our community needs to hear whether it’s big issues of crises of climate, pandemics, divisive riots, how we redevelop the city centre or how we determine our priorities for investing time and resources.?

If Bath is to be a “home for everyone” then we need an effective network and protocol of collaboration that pulls together the people who can share our best principles and values, allowing distinctive traditions to inform and nourish each other. We need good and informed communication between the very diverse perspectives of the city’s faiths and its secular institutions.?

One piece of Advice the Society offers to Friends is this:?

Do you work gladly with other religious groups in the pursuit of common goals? While remaining faithful to Quaker insights, try to enter imaginatively into the life and witness of other communities of faith, creating together the bonds of friendship.

Having the faiths working effectively together may prove to be an essential underpinning of how we make Bath a home for everyone. /ends