Fear and Friendship Anglicans Engaging with Islam

Many encounters between people of different religions are marked by an initial sense of incompetence, ignorance and fear-- of getting it wrong, of causing offence, of ulterior motives. Such fears are here explored honestly, in stories of actual situations and relationships - often unexpected, sometimes funny, invariably profound. Friendship is presented as a public rather than merely a private phenomenon, enabling relations of trust and depth to develop and leading to the possibility of authentic talk and reciprocity of respect and courtesy. It emerges as a risky venture in learning how to be human, involving honest negotiation, self-sacrifice and a seeking after the truth. It can enable people to address the fears that so often prohibit inter-religious encounters from deepening beyond the superficial. A strong underlying theme is how the Church of England can contribute to social cohesion in a religiously pluralistic society, even if local clergy and congregations at first feel untrained or wary.

Frances Ward is Dean of St Edmundsbury in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury Ipswich, and gained experiences of interfaith work when she was residentiary canon at Bradford Cathedral from 2006 to 2010. She is a member of the Christian Muslim forum. Sarah Coakley is Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, UK and was previously Mallinckrodt Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, USA. With Samuel Wells she co-founded the Littlemore Group of priest-theologians who produced Praying for England (Continuum, 2008), to which this volume is a sequel.