This is Pat Morrissey of the Baha’I Community speaking about his Journey of Faith at the launch of Scottish Interfaith Week in Kilmarnock this afternoon.
I went to represent our church – and I went because this is important to our church. On any level, I think it is significant. As I drove westwards with the radio on, I was listening to the political tide south of the border turning against immigration and multiculturalism. I know that it’s different here – Scotland has not seen immigration on the scale of some parts of England. But attitudes here are warm and accepting – and the ability to celebrate religious and cultural diversity is one of the best things about Scotland today.
So I hope that the programme for this week will be well-supported and successful. Later in the week, I’ll be at a meeting of Religious Leaders of Scotland in Dunblane. It’s a meeting of that character which Archbishop Desmond Tutu attributed to Anglicans. ‘What do we do? We meet’. It’s important to meet and to keep meeting – to keep learning and learning to understand one another