Young Christians and Muslims will this Sunday join their Jewish brothers and sisters at the Great Synagogue in Sydney as part of the Jewish celebrations of Chanukah. This is part of an exciting new inter-faith project, the ‘Journey of Promise’, aimed at addressing religious and racial disharmony and walking together in peace. The current festival period, beginning with the Muslim Eid Ul-Fitr (end of Ramadan) celebration, was chosen deliberately for this reason. ‘Each of our faiths proclaims peace to all at the heart of our festivals, said the Revd.Dr.Jon Inkpin, coordinator of the project, ‘and in sharing these special occasions together, we therefore wish to affirm all that unites us and to light candles together to dispel the darkness and ignorance of our world.’
These visits to religious festivals mark the first steps in the Journey of Promise project, which is supported by the Australian Government’s Living in Harmony initiative. This project has been developed jointly by the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the National Council of Churches in Australia. The centre-piece of the project will be a six-day intensive at the end of January, when 30 young Christians, Muslims and Jews will live together residentially. During this period they will visit and meet a variety of different religious and secular places and people in Sydney, and reflect together on how best to develop religious and cultural understanding. A further celebration will be held to mark Harmony Day on March 21 next year, and the experience is also being professionally recorded by Karl McPhee Productions in a video which will be used to enable others to make their own journeys of promise together.
Already the results of meeting one another across religious divides have been striking. As one young Christian observed after attending the Eid Ul-Fitr prayers at Zetland mosque: ‘the experience was new, amazing and revealing. New and amazing because it was so foreign for one coming from a Pentecostal Christian background, revealing because we were given the opportunity to see a community of faith celebrating one of their happiest and holiest festivals.’
For further information:
Contact the Revd Dr Jon Inkpin OR Emily Ninnes at the NCCA
Tel: (02) 9299 2215 or 0410 583 013
Journey of Promise webpage:
http://www.ncca.org.au/dov/journey_of_promise
Living in Harmony website:
http://www.immi.gov.au/harmony/index.htm
