A Community of Cultures

Kingston – Community of Cultures reflects the diversity of our town and our university – a place of many faiths. KCC was launched in Autumn 2011, and has already proved a valued place for shared engagement in serious inter-faith issues. The 2012 Spring-Summer discussions are introduced by a mix of eminent visiting speakers and members of the group.

 

This is your chance to explore and share thoughts on these controversial issues.

The story in the media, helped by controversialists like Richard Dawkins, is all about believers and unbelievers fighting it to the death. But in reality, do the two communities share more than one might think – and could they both gain from a warmer relationship? Explore these issues, introduced by Marilyn Mason, Secretary of the Kingston Philosophy Cafe and a card-carrying Humanist, together with Martin Corner, Reader

at All Saints Church and former Kingston University English lecturer.

At their consecration, Bishops commit themselves both to teach the doctrine of Christ and to promote peace and reconciliation. Bishop Richard Cheetham, Bishop of Kingston, Co-Chair of the Christian Muslim Forum and a former pupil of Kingston Grammar School, is joined by a senior Muslim cleric to explore how both deal with what theologians call ‘conflicting truth claims’.

A wave of negativity greeted Archbishop Rowan Williams comments when he discussed the place of Sharia law in Britain. Some senior judges supported his comments, pointing to the long-established Jewish Beth Din courts in Britain. Even so, could religious law undermine the concept of shared citizenship under shared law? Stephen Shaw, a Judge and member of the Golders Green Synagogue, together with a Muslim expert, talk about what Beth Din and Sharia law actually involve, and about what British Muslims themselves think on this issue.