Richard Seebohm
On 15 March I went with Meryem Kayalci to one of the regular meetings of the Oxford Council of Faiths.
We usually have interesting speakers. Last time it was the chaplain to the Thames Valley Police, whose service was to a large extent counselling. (I wonder how her counterparts in the Met are coping …) Imam Monawar Hussain came to our meetings when he was Oxfordshire High Sheriff.
This time there were two from Oxford City Council. Mili Kalia was the project manager for Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) strategies. Her colleague Lee Clayson was a locality hub team leader. They stressed that as well as academic and professional excellence, Oxford had an above average level of deprivation. One in four of its children were below the poverty line. Thus there were six locality hubs to meet some of the unmet needs. These hubs encouraged ‘asset-based communities’ – sharing rather than just food bank handouts; also, ‘the good gym’. The Council provided a one-stop contact for services and problems.
A key EDI concern was to avoid designing policies without consulting the people affected. ‘If you want to know how to treat people, ask them.’ Within the office, you had to recognise in counselling that it was hard to be decent when over-stressed. We gathered that the Council had its own consultation platform for faith communities.
Our Charlbury Friend Ian Cave was then able to introduce his project on tackling climate change. He reckoned that the powers that be were treating it as just another agenda item, whereas it was of existential urgency. Hence he wanted to recruit Oxfordshire faith leaders (not merely existing committed environmentalists) to engage in a quiet diplomacy process to work out how to exert the necessary influence. He was encouraged to take the proposal forward.
We went on to raise faith issues. One was cemeteries. Oxford was running out of space for these. The present concern was mainly for faiths that could not accept cremation. Some had their own cemetery space but even for them the Council now charged a fee of £3,000 for believers who died outside the City limits, a seemingly unfair rise over the £200 charged some ten years ago. We also asked whether Oxford street-parking charges could be remitted for Sunday/holy day worshippers of minority faiths who had nowhere except Oxford
to go.
Outside the meeting, I have now made contact with the Christian ecumenical body, Churches Together in Central Oxford. This is a subsidiary of the (rather more active) Churches Together in Oxfordshire. Another concern is the burglary/vandalism in the Marston (Ferry Road) Orthodox church. Although subject to the Russian patriarchate, the Russian Orthodox churches outside Russia are united in condemning the Ukraine war, and it was donations for Ukraine that were in fact stolen.
The Oxford Interfaith Friendship Walk is to be held this year on Thursday 19 May, starting at 17:45 for 18:00 (slight change in start time). The walk starts at the Jewish Centre (synagogue) on Richmond Road in Jericho, passes St Giles Church, proceeds to St Mary the Virgin Church in the High Street, and ends at the Central Mosque in Manzil Way. See https://oxcof.org.uk/friendship-walk/
Alternatively, join this year’s virtual walk, listen to reflections from members of different faith traditions who live and work in Oxford.
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Forty-Three Newsletter • Number 516 • April 2022
Oxford Friends Meeting
43 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW
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