I recently visited the British Museum exhibition; Living with Gods https://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/past_exhibitions/2018/Living_with_gods.aspx and found it fascinating. It seems there are more than 6,000 religions in the world today. People have always sought to understand the unknown and make sense of the world in which they live.
The exhibition is packed with religious artefacts from around the world and the past six millennia. You quickly realise that whilst Christianity is the default religion for the Western world, it is far from the oldest or the most widely followed. There is an old Quaker bonnet in one of the displays, reminding visitors that Quakers have always valued simplicity.
But what struck me most, was not that religious differences are so often the cause of conflict. It was the realisation that anyone from any of those religious backgrounds would be welcomed to a Quaker Meeting. That cannot be said of many!
I’m very happy to be a Quaker, and even happier that Friends are a tolerant bunch, with no creed to follow or expectation that all will see God in the same way. We each strive to deepen out understanding of God within the silence that is our weekly act of worship. It doesn’t matter what our upbringing has encouraged us to believe. It is our faith in humanity that matters most.
Robert Ashton
Comments