Celebration of Community, Sun 4th Dec.'05: contributions to the theme "Tolerance"

Spiritual Elders Meet Emerging Visionaries - Sunday 31st October 2004, 7 - 9 pm

Sixty members of local faith communities in Cambridge City and University met at the Michaelhouse Centre for a new model of faith encounter. Half of them were under 30 - young people enthusiastic about their faith. The others were 'elders', many of them leaders in their communities.

After opening remarks by Malcolm Stonestreet, Chief Executive of United Religions Initiative, the participants sat down, two to a table, in the Michaelhouse cafe area. The 'elder' encouraged the 'visionary', who was a member of a different faith, to talk about his or her journey of faith, and what faith meant to him or her. Then they changed roles, and the visionary questioned the elder.

There was a change for wider discussion over a meal, and we heard about some local initiatives: the East of England Faiths Agency, Cambridge Inter-Faith Group, the multi-faith chaplaincy for asylum seekers at Oakington, and Michaelhouse itself.

A student visionary wrote:
"The evening did NOT involve holding the hands of those next to you of differing faith and together singing in harmony and peace. Moreover, it did involve taking up the opportunity to ask probing questions of someone from a different faith as well as forcing an introspective look at one's own belief system. Conversation was both intelligent and intriguing and at its very heart, enlightening."