THE people of the Middle East have lived the reality of inter-religious communities since the wandering Arameans began to settle their herds.

Across the world Christians, Muslims and Jews have always lived together, negotiated boundaries, found ways to muddle along together, tolerated different views, watched out for each other's children. All this quietly and largely unnoticed. It is only when the rhetoric of extremes amplifies disharmony that we notice. Britain has not invented multiculturalism but we do seem to be inventing labels that define people by faith. Labels that cause anger across divides we define as religious. And all this noise is dangerous.

On Sundays on Radio 4 there has been highlighting of the place of religious communities during the First World War. This week, the focus was on the Quakers. I was struck by a quotation from the diary of a certain Bert Brockelsby who had been on holiday with his family at the outbreak of war:

'Here I may record my first conviction, however many might volunteer, yet would not I and for this certainty in my mind, that God had called me to work for his kingdom that whatever any other man (sic) felt he must do, God had not put me on the earth to go destroying his own children.'

Maybe no faith community has been more influential for peace than the Society of Friends, and yet mysteriously they are also the quietest of people in worship and demeanour. They have conscientiously sent observers to the Middle East and to other potentially violent parts of the world. And it brings me to reflect that the most effective way to defuse a situation is to lower the volume. Of course, I don't mean that we should say nothing, but rather our convictions should be strong yet quiet, embodied rather than voiced, firm but not strident.

I am reminded of Rowan William's writing concerning the Biblical story of the stoning of a woman 'caught in adultery' and of the time taken by Jesus to write in the sand. I wonder how we can also open up a new way of being together in our own communities that quietly stands alongside people different from ourselves? How we can take a deep breath before referring to someone as 'they'. It's a much harder call than shouting, holding fast to that which is good, wherever and in whom we find it.

Touchstone is a centre of listening and learning committed to intercultural and interfaith engagement in Bradford

Listening to and with each other, Touchstone expresses the Methodist Church’s call to discipleship among people of other faiths and has particularly strong partnership links with the people of Pakistan.

by Barbara Glasson from the Methodist Church, Touchstone Centre, Bradford