four - How participation changes things: ‘inter-faith’, ‘multi-faith’ and a new public imaginary

Summary

Widening circles of engagement: context, definitions and scope

In recent decades the ‘religious landscape’ of the UK has changed significantly, as has the approach of government to religions. Especially at local and regional levels, government and other public bodies have become engaged with inter-faith initiatives, organisations and structures that have the contribution of religions to public life and civic society as a central part of their rationale.

It was argued in Time for a change: Reconfiguring religion, state and society (Weller, 2005a p 73) that the UK's ‘religious landscape’ has become increasingly ‘three-dimensional’ and is now ‘exhibiting contours that are Christian, secular and religiously plural’. Each of these dimensions is contextually important in achieving an appropriate and balanced public policy understanding of the religious situation in the UK, including the emergence and role of inter-faith and multi-faith initiatives.

These initiatives are known by a variety of names. Exploration of this terminology can assist an understanding of the ‘inter-faith’ and ‘multi-faith’ initiatives that are the focus of this chapter. Thus,

When a society or an event or a project is described as ‘multi-faith’, it usually means that it includes a variety of religious groups. While the use of ‘multi-faith’ highlights variety, use of the term ‘inter-faith’ points more to the relationships between religions and the people who belong to them.… The term ‘inter-religious’ is occasionally used interchangeably with ‘inter-faith’ … ‘inter-religious’ can sometimes be used in ways that denote the simple state of encounter between different religions in a religiously plural context, whereas ‘inter-faith’ tends to be used in circumstances which involve ‘dialogue’ between the religions and the faiths. The unhyphenated term ‘interfaith’ is found but some prefer to avoid this for fear of giving the impression of a movement that blurs the distinctiveness of the religions involved. (Weller, 2001, p 80)

The names of these organised initiatives, such as the descriptors of ‘group’, ‘council’ or ‘forum’, often reflect how their participants understand their aims and objectives. Thus, ‘group’ in the title, as in the Derby Multi-Faith Group, can indicate a more informal style of organisation and individual basis of membership rather than an attempt to be a more ‘representative’ body. By contrast, ‘council’ in the title is generally indicative of something more ‘organised’, a project that attempts to achieve a ‘balanced’ representation between the principal religious traditions.