A Multi-Faith Day

I’m on placement at the moment and one of the duties of the Methodist Minister I’m with is to be part time Chaplain at the local university in a multi-faith chaplaincy.

As its Fresher’s Week at the University we have spent the day trying to promote the Chaplaincy Centre to new students as well as to remind existing students that the Chaplains are there to serve people with faith and people with no faith.  The means of promotion is very simple, free cakes and drinks are on offer; all students have to do is visit the Chaplaincy Centre and they can eat and drink their fill.

We have seen a steady stream of students throughout the day.  The vast majority have been Muslims coming in at lunchtime to pray in the special Muslim Prayer Rooms (one for each sex).  They were all very amiable and some stopped and chatted for a while, putting to shame the view of radical fanatics that many seem to hold.  Their dedication to prayer is commendable and puts many Christians to shame.

We saw some Christian students as well and met somebody looking for a Jewish Chaplain, which unfortunately the university doesn’t have as there is no Jewish community in this particular city.  I was able to point her towards a synagogue in a nearby town.

I have to admit that I have very little experience of the multi-faith environment, though I am taking a course in College next year on multi-faith.  My background is that I have always believed that Christianity is the only path to God, based on Jesus’ words, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16) and “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No-one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).  My gut reaction is that Jesus is indeed the only way to God and that all other faiths are at best misleading and at worst of the Devil.

And yet today I have met and talked with people whose faith is as deep as my own…..

It is argued that where different faiths agree they can and should work together ; but if Christianity is the only true way are we misleading people by working with those of other faiths?  Can we as Christians work with other faith groups if we think that they are leading people away from God or even towards the Evil One?

There are no easy answers to the question of multi-faith and I won’t attempt to give any here.  Meeting people of other faiths has opened my mind to some of the difficult questions and I’m sure there are others.  Hopefully over the next year I can work out my personal response to some of these questions and thereby follow a path that, first and foremost, honours God through the Lord Jesus Christ, a path that is true to the words of the Scripture I hold so dear, but that at the same time honours the right of every human being to choose who to worship (or indeed whether to recognise deity at all) and what form that worship will take, if any.