Negative feedback

.
The only reportage on yesterday's conference was in the 'Echo', and didn't fail to disappoint.

It was based on the press release issued beforehand, and the only quote in it was from a member of the National Secular Society, dismissing our proposals. I wonder if their cohorts contribute as much as £10.8 million to the City's economy? Most annoyingly the idea of proposing an appointment of a member of the Council Diversities Team with a remit to develop more useful working relationships with all the city's faith communities, was labelled 'religious supremo' in the report - the vocabulary of power and confrontation replacing the vocabulary of participation and service - deliberate invention, sowing division and contention. Well, I guess all those who appear in the countless number of sports new pages have it a lot worse, and more often.

Building an idol in order to smash it seems to be the ambition most cherished by the press in a power game that is determined to exclude religion from the public domain any way it can, other than as a subject of old fears and prejudices. Religious faith and religious behaviour has a lot to answer for in its many failures to be true to itself. Whilst it's arguable that religion now gets all it deserves, this ignores the powerful good done in the past and present by people of faith, whose moral and social vision has long provided much of the backbone of society, whether noticed or ignored. Trouble is, when a culture turns its back on coherent sets of religious beliefs as a guiding light, it ends up believing all sorts of foolish ideas instead.

At least in this internet age, one has the possibility of searching for information, ideas, arguments in all their variety and complexity, and is less then ever dependent upon old news sources and their dedication to 'entertaining' people's fears, resentments and vanities.

Archbishop Rowan's response on Monday to the Muslim scholars who wrote the remarkable 'Common Word' open letter, addressed to Christians, was long considered and constructive, to my mind, not minimising the difficulties of dialogue, but setting the tone for warm and honest exchange based upon Christians and Muslims being people of faith and people of the book. Reports on his response mainly highlighted the necessary cautions which one would expect from an orthodox (though not in the GAFCON sense) Christian teacher and scholar, turning something positive into something less than positive. Perhaps the truth is just too hard, too complex to craft into readable news, which puts great responsibility on people of faith to keep up the task of telling the truth, and doing regardless of how others handle it.

Spiritual Capital Conference day

Finally, the day arrives - after months of delay and postponement, the launch of the Spiritual Capital research project report and database, with an afternoon conference at the Future Inn Hotel opposite County Hall, where the event would have taken place if, it were not for an employees strike.

Over seventy people turned up of the ninety who booked in. A broad cross-section of members of the city's faith communities, and a handful of political leaders and civil servants. There would have been more of the latter if it hadn't been for the strike.

The Spiritual Capital-Cardiff website relays all that's necessary to know about the day. I was much relieved that it had happened at last, discharging fully all the commitments we'd made to the Community Development Foundation who funded the project, albeit four months late.

Despite the strike we got double the number of attendees we thought we would get at the outset which only goes to show how much interest was generated by the survey and follow-up. Where we go from here remains to be seen. The report proposes the appointment of a Council Officer for religious communities to enable closer partnership and participation.

Gwilym, whose outfit 'Pollenshops' organised the conference has expertise and interest in relating to 'hard to reach' groups, in current consultative jargon. I think that verifying the database was something of nightmare for him, as he discovered how difficult it can be to contact many religious groups for whom you have advertised public contact details. This is precisely why a fieldworker working on creating this kind of useable network would be an asset in community relationships across the Borough.

Still, who is going to fund such a post? A lot more work needs to be done to make a reasonable and attractive case for this kind of social investment, and there are plenty around who would deny this has any value at all. If only it were easier to mobilise invistment in such an initiative from faith communities themselves. We can't expect everything to be done 'on the Rates' as my mother would say. I can but dream .... anyway the follow through will be interesting, simply due to the satisfaction this afternoon provided. Well organised, well researched, encouraging and positive for a change - a minumum of moans regardless of the opportunity.

One moan. Where were the press? Conspicuous by their absence. Not surprising really given that their contribution to the process of social communication involving religious was widely criticised by many present. In my view this was a major editorial faux pas on the part of Media Wales. How the bosses can expect the collaboration and trust of citizens who often find they are mis-represented, whose good news stories are passed over for bad news more often than not beggars belief. The reporters all missed a great event, with a good story to tell about people interested in making Cardiff even better than it already is. Miserable lot!