The consultation was a major step forward in what has been a long process of ‘testing the waters’. For the past five years the WCC and Boldern Academy have worked closely on a curriculum for inter-religious education for women in various European contexts: the Ecumenical Forum of European Christian Women, the European Women’s Synod and the European Women’s Summer Academy, in workshops that comprised between 20 and 60 participants. These workshops were directed at Christian women, training them for living in a multi-religious Europe, and perceiving Europe as an increasingly multi-religious continent.

In its self-understanding, Europe has been a Christian continent. Historically, such a perception needs to be challenged. Throughout the centuries, large communities of Jewish and Muslim people have lived and live in Europe. On the one hand they made important contributions to European life and culture. On the other hand, Muslim conquests in the Balkans and on the Iberian peninsula also left memories of suffering and hatred.

While the histories of these communities are quite different, they were, at different times and in different measure, targets of discrimination, and violent persecutions, which lasted right to the end of the 20th century.

Europe’s future will be one of many faiths. Therefore it is urgent to overcome the enemy history Europe has with the other "religions of the book", and to develop new and creative ways of relating to each other.

Out of these experiences, and inspired by the methodology of the European Women’s College, which works with educational modules in various countries of Europe, a curriculum has been developed for interreligious education, initially aimed at women and focussing on learning about Islam and with Muslims. The aim of the February consultation was to discuss the feasibility of moving forward with a pilot project, which would offer this curriculum to women in different parts of Europe.

The Project
Religion is one of the factors that make up personal and group identities. Time and again however religions have been misused to legitimate other issues and mobilise people around them. The project intends to harness the potential of religions to motivate their believers to strive for peace, justice and tolerance in everyday life situations.

Given the special history of Islam in Europe and taking into account the fact that many European countries have sizeable Muslim populations, this project will focus on Christian-Muslim relations. This is the more urgent, as existing prejudices against Islam are continuously nourished by a mix of political events, cultural incompatibility and ignorance in religious matters.

The pilot project is designed as a course for women. Women are important in creating conditions for daily living, in families, neighbourhoods and social and cultural communities. They usually have practical experiences and personal competence. While the importance of women’s experience within the family and society in general is recognised, women often lack the opportunity for reflection and analysis and thus the chances to reflect these experiences, to analyse them, and to acquire the theoretical knowledge necessary to manage sensitive and/or conflictive situations. Especially in an interreligious setting stereotypes often prevail.

The issues of women, their social and religious roles, the perceptions of women’s sexuality and bodily functions, the question of women’s human rights are in themselves divisive issues, within Christianity and Islam and between these religions. These issues need to be addressed carefully and in an informed manner.

The goals of the project are:

• To educate Christian women who live with people of other faiths, to express their identity as Christian women and to learn to understand and respect the identity of others. The focus of the pilot project will be Christians and Moslems living together.
• To help women understand the faith of their neighbours and learn to relate to them:
  • to create an understanding of the ‘otherness’ of the ‘other’ person .
  • to make women aware that living with differences can be a source of enrichment in building community.
• To show the complex relationship between religion, culture, politics and economics, and to highlight the factors which lead towards misuse of religion in situations of conflict.
• To identify religious principles, moral and ethical values, and norms that are comparable and that can be negotiated for a life together;
• To highlight positive historical experiences in living together
• To establish a platform where additional women’s perspectives can be brought in to the ongoing discussion on a ‘Global Ethic’

The Participants
The project is designed to help women who live and work in multi-religious contexts to develop sensitivity, knowledge and skills to act in their life and work-situations in a better and more informed way. The project will be particularly targeted at

• Social workers, teachers, pastors or students in these professions
• Personnel managers or people in similar positions
• Police or security personnel, immigration officers etc.
• Journalists and communication workers
• Trainers of volunteer workers and other personnel in inter-faith projects

The Curriculum
The curriculum is written by Ms. Teny Pirri-Simonian, World Council of Churches, and Dr. Reinhild Traitler, Programme Director of the Boldern Protestant Academy in Zurich. It is based on the insights gained in workshops on interfaith learning, developed over the past years in the framework of the Office of Education of the World Council of Churches, the Ecumenical Forum of European Christian Women, the European Women’s Synod and the European Women’s Summer Academy of the Protestant Study and Education Centre Boldern.

The curriculum is designed to:

• affirm religious identities as important instruments to deal with insecurity and conflict
• build awareness of the complexities of the secular context in which religions exist today
• identify and make intentional the contribution of women to shaping a Europe of many faiths
• be a contribution to the ongoing discourse on human rights/women’s rights
• bring insights from the women’s movement and feminist scholarship into interreligious teaching.

The Future
The Group is continuing to work together looking at prospective partner organisations in the various countries and also at the question of funding. This is an ambitious project, but all those involved believe that it is timely, worthwhile and achievable. It is also a very good example of collaborative working across institutions and organisations, between the Church and the secular world and across different countries.

Anne Davison in Inter Faith and International Advisor to the Church of England Diocese of Chelmsford. She is also is the Deputy Moderator of the Advisory Group on Interreligious Relations.