Ruth Gledhill - Times Online - WBLG

Faithbook on Facebook

'Faithbook, a new social networking facility for people of different faiths on Facebook, goes live tomorrow,' said the press release yesterday. I'm sorry to say I didn't get too exercised. Surely this was just one more of many thousands of groups on Facebook, my own included.  But in fact it is much more than that, as our news story shows. Senior members of the nine main faiths, including Judaism, Islam and Buddhism, have signed up and are contributing to discussions. The group, set up by the Movement for Reform Judaism with the help of Simon Cohen of Global Tolerance, is also taking the scriptures of each faith seriously,  with illustrations and plans for analysis of the common ground between the faiths as found in the scriptures. See Dave Walker's interesting take on it in The Church Times.

 

Persecution Index 9: Burma

Poor Burma. Its people's troubles are endless, as the story from which this pic is taken shows. There is a long history of persecution of Christians in Burma, as this article from January last year illustrates. But really Christians there are not targeted more than any other group, as the writer of the piece makes clear. The Buddhist religious are equally victims, as we have seen recently, of a regime determined to keep itself in power, even when its population is dying by the thousands  because of a freakish 'act of God'.

CofE pays £250,000 for interfaith centre

On seeing the designs for Guildford's new £6.5 million multi-faith centre, funded partly by the Church of England, I had the same sensation as when first setting eyes on the groundbreaking ecumenical church of Christ the Cornerstone in Milton Keynes. That was nearly two decades ago, and was controversial in its day. Thinking back to then, a multifaith centre along the lines of this one would have been simply inconceivable. So whatever the doom-mongers are making of the response to RW on Sharia, things have moved on. (nb have updated post and corrected errors, many apologies, ruth)

Reality TV comes to religion

About 10 years ago, I encountered a bumptious young clergyman who might or might not have been going places. Newly-ordained after a career in advertising, he was just that bit too media savvy, too quick on the uptake, too good-looking and generally too funny to have realistic hopes of ever becoming a bishop. I wrote a little story about a book he had written that made a couple of pars in the old, broadsheet Times. (This column appears in this week's Church of England Newspaper.)

Buddhists, Bennites and Brian Eno

I wept when I watched this video.

Faith in 'all things beautiful' at Chelsea

My favourite event at this time of year is usually not religious at all. It is the Chelsea Flower Show. This year, even Chelsea, like every other event, seems to have succumbed to religion fervour, presenting me with the perfect excuse to spend a heaven-scent day out of the office.