11/05/2005: Jeffrey Newman

It is a great honour to be invited to take part with Canon Andrew White in this 35th Cardinal Bea Memorial Lecture. This is only the second time that Canon White and I have met. Perhaps it is fitting that the first was last December, outside the offices of Saeb Erekat, in Jericho – he was entering, as a group which I was leading, came out.

Andrew’s work, particularly with the Alexandria process which he has described is of enormous importance and we have certainly become aware of some of the costs. It is a gruelling, potentially dangerous and endless series of almost impossible encounters. As he has pointed out Religion can and must play a crucial role in peacemaking and governments to date have been scared of religion and its role in conflict.

None of us in Europe twenty, (still less forty years ago when I first became involved) foresaw to what an extent religion would play such a major part mainly negatively but potentially positively.

“Speak truth to power” – but here the power is religion. Many of us thought of politics as only secular but we now see that is a world of fallacy and fantasy.
Religions, as in any other field, can wield power for good or ill.


This evening I want to approach our topic from a slightly different perspective. Andrew’s graphic illustration of his work enables us to ask a number of questions which underpin, perhaps, what he is doing and I want to raise a few of these. For example I acknowledge a sense of ENVY – I believe what Andrew does in the front line to be of extreme importance, and I fully recognise the truth of what he says when he comments on one meeting:

“This was not the nice inter faith encounter that is often experienced in the west. It was and continues to be interreligious dialogue at the cutting edge. Here it is a matter of life or death. It is not an issue of saying nice things to each other in the safety of western suburbia here it is often painful, there is shouting and tears but in the end there is usually greater understanding and a renewed commitment to the search for peace.”

Where does this leave us? I’m reminded, oddly, of the Gospel story of Martha and Mary (cf Luke 10:38-42). What is our role, here – is there anything more than support, encouragement, money, all of which are, of course, vital?

A similar thought occurred to me when I looked at Andrew’s web-site on the Permanent Committee for the Implementation of the Alexandria Peace Process. Again, it is a comment with which I entirely agree. The Alexandria process, he points out,

“gains its validity from the fact that most of the delegates do not have any involvement with interfaith dialogue and co-operation and therefore can make a contribution which is not possible for ‘liberal elites’”.

But again, the question emerges - what then are we – and what can be our contribution? I want, therefore to suggest the centrality of Theology and faith; of our struggles and questions about God – issues of meaning, understanding. Our work of exploring the meaning of Creation and creator – of order and chaos.and the place and responsibility of humanity in this fragile world. All these are also costs of peace building.

I also want to suggest that it is these values that underpin the work when Andrew, for example states:

If anybody had ever thought that the work of peacemaking was easy, and for the weak in life the experience of Iraq has proved differently. The attempt to create a peace respected by religious and secular has been a huge challenge.

How do I understand the importance of theology and faith in conjunction with this work? I suggest that the qualities required are fostered and developed in the personal struggle – the energy, the diplomacy, the sensitivity and must arise and be honed in the encounter with the mystery of Being. It is necessary, for example, as Hannah Arendt puts it, to develop the ability to train the imagination to go visiting, in order to move away from our accustomed view and see through other eyes.

This calls for an inner security, self-assurance and stability – not of course automatically associated with the research I am speaking of, but nevertheless intimately bound up with what Keats would call ‘negative capability’ – living with uncertainty, insecurity, anxiety, the unknown without needing to bring about immediate closure or coming down on one side of a dilemma.

Hannah Arendt, incidentally, provides another wonderful image of one of the necessities demanded of any peace-maker, in whatever situation – the ability, as she calls it, to ‘think without banisters’. We are always facing new, cutting edge challenges, and we need an agility and to be able to find a quick, but reliable and humane response.

There is a critical need, too, I believe, for peace-makers to take risks, to trust their judgment born of experience, learning and training. You cannot be a peacemaker and play safe.

At the same time, paradoxically, as Andrew says, strengths of PATIENCE and preparedness for ‘the long haul’ call upon depths of faith and hope that change is possible, that there can be a better future, that violence and bloodshed are not the only way. Andrew also rightly states that: often there is a need for a third party who can be trusted by both sides. This is a key point and we should not pass over it lightly. What is it that enables a ‘third party’, an outsider to be accepted, for example in a marital squabble? What enables them to be trusted? They have to show qualities of reliability, constancy, faithfulness. They have to demonstrate integrity. These concepts all share spiritual roots – trust / emunah and emet /truth – nursing mother/artist.

But peace and true peacemaking, of course, look beyond the cessation of hostility towards that understanding of ‘shalom’ which suggests fulfilment and wholeness, which can be achieved only through righteousness and justice.

In order to see a situation from the other’s viewpoint and recognise the legitimacy of their calls for justice, I have to stop seeing myself as victim and acknowledge my own power – the freedom I have, for example, to adapt my own particular attitude, whatever it might be, whether envy or bitterness or hatred or generosity. The Dalai Lama or Nelson Mandela, for example demonstrate that we have choice.

All this, all these human qualities which are demanded of the peacemaker, that is, the true price of peace, call upon inner resources which need careful attention and cultivation. They cannot be taken for granted and can easily be abused. I suggest they are manifestations of faith which depend also upon our theology – our understanding of who we are in this Universe.


Where is theology in this? “Blessed be the peace-makers: I come to bring not peace but the sword!” (Matt 5:9) The place and meaning of faith in this situation?
Shema Yisrael adonai eloheynu adonai echad…(Deut.6:4) (Here O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord).

So, finally, Peace – at what price? Always, there must be sacrifice, a giving up: of pride, of fear, of rigidity. What do we know of making peace within our own family or the community?

We, too, must distinguish carefully between religious forms and faith, between ethnic and tribal identities and ethics, between nationalism and long-term security, between categories and slogans and human values and spiritual truths. The fact that we call ourselves or are called Jews or Christians or Moslems means nothing and may even act as a barrier to peace. Without humanism, that is, true humanity there can be no peace.


Most of all, we have to listen, without judgment. We have to be prepared to hear what is hateful to us and enter into pain and grief and anger that we do not wish to share. We have to be prepared to accept responsibility for our words and actions – and for the times when we said too little or kept silent. We have to be prepared to cry.

We learn truth through our actions. This is the truth which expresses itself to us when we choose righteousness and justice. As Maimonides taught:
Prefer the truth and right by which you seem to lose, to the falsehood and wrong by which you seem to gain.

Perhaps we are the ‘liberal elites’ of whom Andrew writes and some of us, many of us perhaps, are deeply committed to interfaith dialogue. I understand Andrew’s comment, rightly or wrongly, in a different way.

Those of us who can speak and meet together in this way are absolutely essential as bridge builders – and it is upon the bridges that we build in our work together, that others – the more Orthodox, let us say, may cross, slowly and carefully, trusting that they can rely upon us and our work to have created a secure basis on which they can place their more cautious feet. Maybe without our work together, nothing lasting or substantial could take place.