A JEWISH student, a Christian student, and a Muslim student were sitting round a table in a Leeds coffee shop. During the conversation, the Jewish student observed, “We [that is, Jewish students] live in a faith bubble.” The Muslim student suggested that Muslim students did just the same, and the Christian student agreed that Christian students acted in a similar way.
This conversation inspired one of the authors to try to burst the bubble; and so it was that a few families in the congregation of St George’s, Leeds (a church that has a thriving student congregation), each agreed to host two students from their own congregation for a meal in their homes alongside two Muslim or Jewish students.
These went down well: in the first round, a few years ago, students didn’t leave their hosts until late — one group at nearly midnight, and others not much earlier. These meals have continued over the years, with a break during the ravages of Covid (although hosts now endeavour to finish a little earlier. . . ).
TWO years ago, one of the student workers at St George’s suggested that Jewish and Muslim students might join the St George’s students when they gathered on a Sunday afternoon for student teas. The first cohort consisted of two members of the Islamic Society. Since then, both the Jewish and Islamic societies have been challenged to beat the previous figure. The gatherings have grown to the extent that numbers now have to be capped at 20 from each, to join 40 or so students from St George’s.
Things have moved on from there. Christian students have been to meetings organised by the Jewish Society (JSOC), and have been invited to one of their Friday-night dinners on campus. Muslim students have invited students from St George’s to a sisters’ book-club meeting, and they have used the church centre as a venue for a fund-raising event. Meal hosts are to be invited to a Muslim charity dinner in a local banqueting suite.
STUDENTS in Leeds are well aware of the growth in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia which has manifested itself on campus. A house used by JSOC was daubed with graffiti, and some of the society’s members were subjected to abuse. Muslim students have been asked whether they are terrorists.
The late Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, observed that, although Britain was supposed to be a multicultural country, in practice it was as if different communities and faiths inhabited separate rooms in the same hotel. He argued that society needed to come together — in other words, different groups in society, especially those of different faiths, needed, like the students, to have their bubbles burst.
We have both been involved in an interfaith event at St George’s which was initiated by one of the church’s own students. The event, Faith in a Multifaith Culture, involved 30 or so students from St George’s in listening to a trainee rabbi, a vicar, and an imam, answering questions about their faith communities and what it meant for each to be a Jew, a Christian, or a Muslim. The questions didn’t focus on differences between the three faiths, but on commonalities. So, each speaker talked about what they saw as similarities between the three faiths, about the issues that their own community was currently facing, and why they thought that being a member of a faith community was important. Rather than simply learn facts about other faiths, students began to understand what it might be like to be a Jew, a Christian, or a Muslim.
AT THE end of the panel interviews, the students held a discussion. One of the expressed aims of St George’s is to “serve the city”: this includes interfaith activity, intended to help community cohesion. The students discussed what they felt the congregation should do in this regard, and how being involved in interfaith activity might enhance their own individual faith rather than — as it is sometimes claimed — weaken it.
Sharing their thoughts at the end of the meeting, one student was resolved to consider how he might support his Muslim colleagues during the approaching month of Ramadan. Another said that she had always seen interfaith activity as something not very important: she had now changed her mind. A third was inspired by the idea that adherents of all three faiths worshipped God — even though they might each describe him differently. And the Jewish and Muslim faith leaders encouraged the Christian students to stay firm in their own faith, and to live out the Christian ethic.
SIR KEIR STARMER has suggested that interfaith work has been damaged by the Israel-Gaza conflict; and this makes it even more urgent that faith communities should seek to break down the barriers between them. Jews, Christians, and Muslims have all recently faced an increase in negativity or active hostility towards them. To speak up for, and defend, not only ourselves but each other, we must first understand one another; and we can only do that if we break out of our faith bubbles. Working together, we can do so much more than we might do alone.
The Jewish, Christian, and Muslim students involved in interfaith activity at St George’s would say that being a member of a faith community was something very positive. We must draw on that positivity in building relations beyond our own bubbles — with one another and the wider community.
David Kibble is a retired deputy head teacher, and a licensed lay minister at St George’s, Leeds. Qari Asim is the senior imam at the Makkah Mosque, in Leeds, and chairs the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board.
