Acts of faith

Now a retired Anglican parish priest, living at Clifton Hampden, near Abingdon, his quest to help Christians, Jews, Muslims and all other faiths respect and accept each others’ traditions and beliefs has taken him all over the world.

During this time he has rubbed shoulders with many influential and controversial figures, from the Dalai Lama, Chief Rabbis and Imams, to freedom fighters in Northern Ireland and the Middle East.

He is also the author of more than 40 books including The Pilgrimage of Hope, a history of the first century of interfaith encounter; What We Can Learn from Islam; An Explorer’s Guide to Christianity and A Peaceful World.

In his latest, Beacons of Light, he examines the life and work of 100 people who, he believes, have shaped the spiritual history of mankind.

Adam and Eve, Krishna, Moses, Buddha, Muhammad, Plato, Aristotle, Freud, Martin Luther King, Gandhi and Desmond Tutu are among the familiar and more obscure individuals included.

A year spent at Madras Christian College after completing his degree at Cambridge, set him on his life-long quest to address conflict and to strive for a more equal society, as he explained: “It really deepened my interest in other religions and appreciation of its more mystical side. With India, one never forgets the poverty as well as the splendour.”

But it was while living and working as a curate in north London in the 1960s, that he joined the World Congress of Faith, of which he is now the president.

“In those days, interfaith was not approved of and there was hardly any other inter faith work going on,” he pointed out.

“When you had encounters with people of other faiths, your task was to convert them, not to converse with them,” he laughed.

The cornerstone of his work, back in the 1960s, was to help new faith communities settle and encourage other Christians to be hospitable.

But his efforts were not always met with enthusiasm, as he recalled: “At one parish in south west England, I got to know some Sikhs. When I found they were meeting for worship in the back room of a pub, I offered them use of the church hall and that got me into trouble.

“Some people were outraged, demanding how could we allow people who worship idols, which of course was not true, to worship in a Christian building?” he said.

Thankfully, attitudes are very different today and interfaith co-operation has become a major plank of government strategy.

But, according to Dr Braybrooke, 71, the state and the World Congress of Faiths have always had small but crucial differences in motives.

“We saw it as part of one’s personal spiritual journey and not just a matter of social cohesion,” he pointed out.

“The World Congress has always been a body of individual members committed to discovering spiritual fellowship.

“Our view has always been that we respect other faiths and recognise God’s presence or the presence of the divine and in each case, learn from it,” he added.

So did he ever find it difficult to come back to the less glamorous role of local vicar and family life with his wife Mary and two children, now grown up and with children of their own?

“I have always enjoyed parish life although occasionally, there were clashes,” he said.

“I remember Mary and I had been to a conference in Mexico and stayed on for a few days’ holiday in Cancun, when a fax arrived about the date of a funeral in the parish,” he smiled.

In fact, being a practising vicar has advantages in terms of his interfaith role.

“I am grateful to be planted in a faith community because what can sometimes happen in interfaith is that you lose your own roots.

“I think it was Hans Kung who once said that if Muslims want to meet Christians, they want to meet believing Christians not has-been Christians,” he added.

But surely a person who is devout in a particular religion is automatically handicapped in peace talks, as they believe their own faith superior?

“Let us start from the belief that God’s love is for everyone. He is at work with healing and love and that is expressed through all religions of the world,” he said.

“For me, the primary experience of the love of God is in Jesus Christ but I do not see the need, or feel I am in a position, to challenge the spiritual experience of people of other faiths.

“Put another way, I am glad I am English but it does not mean that I think the French are worse,” he concluded dryly.

He is a strong believer that the doctrines of religion are secondary to the spiritual experiences of faith.

“I believe that God is present in all the great traditions. And that is what I have done in Beacons of Light — draw from people of every tradition.

“I am convinced there is one God. Our images may be different but it seems that often the different images enrich us,” he added.

It took him two years to research and write Beacons of Light which mentions 1,000 people in the index and contains a staggering quarter of a million words.

While working on it, he spent vast amounts of time pouring over books and texts, particularly in the Bodleian and Harris Manchester libraries. “I could not have done it if I did not live near Oxford. Where possible I tried to read something that the person themselves had written, rather than just what other people have written about them,” he explained.

Dr Braybrooke’s hope for the book is that it will help people to have a sympathetic awareness of other traditions and cultures.

“Another really important area is learning to forgive and that is something religion should be able to contribute to. Particularly after conflict,” he said.

He has first-hand experience of this, having travelled to international trouble spots on several occasions over the years.

“I went to a conference in Northern Ireland, sat down next to the Sinn Fein local councillor and met people who had taken part in both sides of the conflict,” he said.

Although officially retired as a vicar, Dr Braybrooke is still quite active in the parish of Dorchester-on-Thames and is still a patron of the International Interfaith Centre in Oxford, which he founded.

He has no intention of slowing down, planning to visit interfaith conferences in Chicago this month and Australia in December.

“There is so much to do. The need is enormous. But I don’t think you can influence people by hectoring and lecturing,” he pointed out.

“For most people, change comes when they really get to know somebody from a different tradition and realise the stereotypes don’t apply.

“If you attack people’s beliefs they will always become defensive, so I tend to talk about my own experiences as suggestions rather than absolutes,” he added.

What is sure is that despite 40 years at the coalface of international relations, Reverend Dr Braybrooke has managed to keep his understated yet unshakeable faith in the future.