Here is the text of my speech to the III Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Wednesday 1 July 2009:

The role of religious leaders in building peace based on tolerance, mutual respect and cooperation

 The role of religious leaders in building peace based on tolerance, mutual respect and cooperation is to use words as if they were fragile glass or weapons that kill.

I don’t want to repeat things that have already been said during this Congress, but will come back to the matter of words and language later. But, I wish to begin by bringing the greetings of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Congress and to the President of Kazakhstan and his staff – with an expression of gratitude for the invitation to be here and for such generous hospitality. No opportunity for conversation between religious leaders can ever be wasted and the Third Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions has the potential to create ever greater trust and affection between leaders from all over the globe.

The Archbishop has just returned from Istanbul where last week he convened the eighth meeting in the series of Building Bridges seminars focussing on discussion of the relationship between religion and science from Christian and Muslim perspectives. This has proved to be an excellent example of how religious leaders and scholars converse with each other in an intelligent, informed and respectful manner. And this is just one form of such dialogue in which relationships are built up and knowledge and understanding deepened.

Recently the Archbishop launched an initiative in London called ‘Presence and Engagement’. London is a vibrant, colourful and complicated city, bringing together people from every corner of the earth. The Church of England and other Christians are committed to serving in communities where the local population is no longer mainly Christian – being present and engaging openly and in love with people of other faiths. This is in no way a denial or watering down of Christian ministry, but a necessary response to and living out of the Christian gospel by those who claim to follow the Jesus we read about in the gospels.

At the launch of London Presence and Engagement the Archbishop spoke about the power of words and it is here that I wish to address our thinking in the context of our own congress here in Astana. For words matter enormously. And religious leaders are challenged to speak consistently, using language to articulate hope not only at forums such as this one, but also back home in the communities where our voice is heard and heeded. Empty words become a hypocrisy and that is not something religious leaders can embrace.

There are those who criticise events such as this for being ‘all talk, no action’. They say that this is just another example of where religious leaders talk about peace, but never get any further than merely talking. Well, I want to argue that talking is action. Talking together builds relationships of trust, exposes true motives and makes us responsible for what we do as a result of the conversations. The fact that we have spoken about the importance of talking together means that we can never pretend that the conversations never took place. That matters enormously.

During my speech at the Second Congress in September 2006 I said this:

It is vital that religious leaders come together, speak together, listen carefully to each other, and build relationships of mutual understanding and respect with each other. But it must not stop there. Once in a relationship with leaders of other religious traditions, it is imperative that honest and open conversation leads to action and the making of a difference. The challenge to the religious leader is to have the courage to stay with the conversation when the honesty is painful to bear and when the easy option would be to walk away. The promise is only that being a religious leader in such a context will be lonely, painful and personally costly. But it is also true that greatness in a leader is seen when the leader is big enough to stand in the middle, between people of two different worlds, and hold the two together… while being pulled apart by the exercise itself.

But there is a second element and it is simply that talking involves listening. And when it is religious leaders from different faiths and different parts of the world with their different cultures and histories who are thrown together, that act of listening can be difficult. It can be hard to listen to the perspective of someone whose position we find difficult to accept. But, we do listen because we are here together in the same shared space and cannot walk away. This encounter has the potential to change us – and through us to change those whom we lead and serve.

Perhaps it is this notion of ‘shared space’ that goes to the heart of our mutual concerns. After all, the planet is small, life is fragile and our faiths put upon us the responsibility to enable human beings, within their limited environment, to flourish as best they can. There is no other option open to us, despite the best efforts of some religious and non-religious people to create conflict wherever they can. No one who claims the voice of God can escape the obligation to serve the interests not only of his own community, but those interests that promote what has become known as ‘the common good’.

But, to go back to the power of words, we need to recognise that leaders in any sphere of life bear a very heavy responsibility for using words wisely and well. Words can inspire people to lay down their life for the sake of other people; but, they can also be used to conspire in destructiveness, cruelty and neglect of the poor, weak and vulnerable. Words can inspire, but they can also depress. They can give birth to new possibilities, but they can also kill the spirit as well as lead to the killing of bodies. Words can heal, but they can also very easily wound. Words – especially when allied to authority (especially religious authority) – can also either open up relationships or simply close them down, thus condemning us all to misery.

The prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures tell us vividly and frequently through the agony of loss that the people who claim to be God’s people must be the bearers of promise. When the world has closed down for many people who feel trapped in cycles of enmity, hatred or violence, it is the prophets – indeed, the poets – who craft the words that tease people’s imagination with the possibility of a new future, of new birth, of hope. When those in exile are taunted by their apparently victorious oppressors about the apparent futility of their faith, it is the poets who use words to paint pictures of hope, who conjure up images of newness and who keep alive the potential for a different future when such an idea simply looks and sounds absurd.

But such a poetic hope is not simply to be hijacked into defending the narrow interests of a few of ‘my own’ people. Rather, it is to be held out for all people and especially those who suffer whether through their own fault or that of others. Hope cannot be tamed or turned into a possession of those who happen to be most powerful at the moment. A Christian can do no other than lay down his own life and interests and rights if that is the cost that has to be paid for making reconciliation and peace even possible.

And this is why, I think, religious leaders have a vital role in ‘building peace based on tolerance, mutual respect and cooperation’. Not because these are nice or pleasant notions upon which all can agree, but because religious leaders have a massive responsibility to lead their communities towards hope – often, as was the case with the prophets of old, at enormous personal cost. Telling the truth and leading communities in right ways is never an easy option in a world which deems power as the greatest good.

However, religious leaders – as they are represented here in Astana – are only one part of the solution. The problem we have is how to cascade well-meant language down through our communities to every level of religious community and commitment. It is not enough for us to agree to statements at this level if this makes no difference to those who wish to fight or kill or impoverish those they consider to be either their enemy or just ‘different’. If we satisfy ourselves with friendly dialogue and the agreeing of a statement without working these ideas through our networks and communities – using the authority we have by virtue of the offices and roles we fulfil – then we have done worse than fail: we have merely played a religious game and our words will have been nothing other than an empty hypocrisy.

I am – as always – pleased that here in Kazakhstan in this Congress we are able to model relationships and dialogue based on tolerance (as a positive practice), mutual respect (which comes at cost) and cooperation (which demands action). I urge us all as religious leaders to take our words and language seriously, to become poets of hope for hopeless people and to remain dissatisfied until our own actions are effective in challenging, encouraging, persuading, changing and shaping behaviour throughout the communities for which we are responsible and accountable.

More could be said. But I want to strongly endorse the proposals made by Ishmael Noko in his speech earlier and ask that they be taken seriously in preparation for the next Congress in three years’ time.

Thank you.