Interfaith Week 2023 begins on Remembrance Sunday, 12 November and runs until Sunday 19 November. It is an opportunity to come together to consider how best to create a just, peaceful, and harmonious world. It’s hoped that by celebrating diversity and commonality, we can promote a greater understanding and interaction between people of different backgrounds and faiths.
As Bath and Wells Interfaith Adviser, the Revd Narinder Tegally’s role is to communicate and connect with people of other faiths and faith leaders in the diocese. She says, “I hope my role will help people to start talking to one another, to have that conversation and hear about their faith journey without the need to impose our own beliefs and values on each other.
“In that way we can better understand how different traditions and cultural needs influence our daily lives. Racial background and faith shape who we all are as human beings. I think doing that helps us to look at ourselves and think about where we are coming from and what our beliefs are. In turn that will help us understand what it is to be neighbour and to love one another.”
This year as part of Interfaith Week, Narinder has organised a series of talks and prayer sessions to foster and encourage that understanding of one another. She says, “What is unfolding, in the Middle East, now, illustrates clearly how land, history and religion can actually cause so much division. When that happens the sense of humanity just goes out of the window. People become polarised about what they need and what they think is their right. Understanding each other, knowing each other and each other’s faith, helps, in some way, to bridge those divisions.”
Narinder, who is also Lead Chaplain at the Royal United Hospital in Bath, has encountered many different faiths through her work. She recognises that for many people their faith is part of their identity, it is deeply rooted in their culture and traditions. Narinder believes a deeper awareness of that helps us to recognise that we are part of one family.
- Sunday 12 November – Facing our Collective Shadow: An Interfaith Conversation for Positive Change with Vicki Burke. In the Beech Room, Weston Hub, Pen Hill Road, Weston, Bath.
- Tuesday 14 November RUH Interfaith Service – sharing stories of faith
- Wednesday 15 November – Online discussion “But why interfaith?” with Join Alex Raikes, SARI Director: Marcus Braybrooke, President of the World Congress of Faiths; Revd Narinder Tegally, Interfaith Advisor and Farzana Saker, formerly executive member of Bristol Multi Faith Forum. Please email admin@ammerdown.org for the Zoom link.
- Sunday 19 there will be a prayer Vigil for Israel and Palastine time TBC
If you would like more information about Interfaith Week, please email Narinder.Tegally@bathwells.anglican.org