Paper short abstract:

Interfaith initiatives in London address a wide range of social and community issues, seeking to establish religious actors as crucial agents for the production of post-secular pluralist coexistence. The paper explores interfaith activities and their contribution to shaping the shared urban future.

Paper long abstract:

Since the 1980s, interfaith initiatives in the UK have expanded into the realm of civil society, seeking to establish themselves as key interlocutors for politicians and community leaders managing religious coexistence. Interfaith engagement initially focussed on the niche practice of formalised dialogue — theological discussions exploring scripture religious truth — and addressed Jewish-Christian relations and new forms of diversity in the wake of post-empire immigration to Britain. Whereas issues of race and culture dominated British postwar debates on the ramifications of diversity, the Rushdie Affair in the 1980s revealed the impact that religious identities and faith practices were having on urban conviviality. In response, interfaith initiatives intensified their commitment to shaping public and community life in the post-secular British capital, both illustrating and seeking to capitalise on the ongoing importance of religion.

Today, interfaith initiatives prosper. A focus on social action and advocacy — in fields as wide-ranging as housing, LGBTQ, refugee support, homelessness, discrimination, or public education — brings young people into the field, as well as previously sceptical secular humanists. Such wide-ranging activities illustrate the dynamism of grassroots interfaith engagement in London, and highlight interfaith practitioners' contribution to debates about living with religious difference and confronting its implications. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in London in 2017/18, this paper explores the role of interfaith initiatives in shaping innovative forms of conviviality and pluralism from the bottom up. I illustrate the importance of religious actors in post-secular London, and examine how interfaith practitioners conceptualise the shared urban future.