Â鶹Éç

Available for over a year

If you’re looking for a stress free environment, don’t pick an airport. Notorious for delays and cancellations, prone to unexpectedly long security and passport queues, and plagued by connections missed as incoming flights fail to land on time. This week, Manchester Airport has been hosting a gathering of the International Association of Civil Aviation Chaplains, and on Thursday night I joined them for their Closing Ceremony and Dinner. Airport chaplains are women and men, drawn from right across the major world faiths. Some work full time and are paid, others offer as volunteers. They walk the gates and concourses, specially trained to help those in need or distress. I vividly recall, a few years back, the Manchester chaplaincy team working round the clock, comforting and supporting passengers who had arrived on emergency flights from a tourist resort that had seen a terror attack. The team are ALSO trained to spot signs that someone is being trafficked into modern slavery. The humanitarian values that underpin chaplaincy are held in common by our major faiths. For me, as a Christian, they are rooted in the ministry of Jesus. He didn’t just preach to win souls, but helped those in need, whatever their background or circumstances. Chaplains in airports, as in hospitals, prisons, schools and the armed forces, are formed and informed by their faith. They engage at a spiritual, as well as secular level, recognising and responding to the faiths of those who turn to them. It usually matters little if a person’s religion differs from their own. That recognition of faith and how it might influence someone’s worldview, is essential for understanding society today. In our turbulent times, religious knowledge helps to comprehend complex geopolitical situations. That’s why I welcomed the announcement that Religious Education is set to become part of the National Curriculum in England. RE is not about indoctrinating pupils into any specific faith tradition. It is about building a nation where every pupil leaving state education has a working knowledge of faith. Enough to enable them to understand and sympathise with the beliefs and practices of others, and so engage with them appropriately. Across the world, religion and belief underpin the values and attitudes of most people. Faith can affect the foods we eat, the clothes we wear, the ways we invest our money, even the intimate relationships we form. A basic level of religious understanding is therefore, in my view, as essential to modern life as numeracy and literacy. Being faith informed and faith sensitive isn’t something we can safely leave to religious professionals and volunteers, people like the aviation chaplains now winging (literally in many cases) their ways back home from Manchester, no matter how skilled and experienced they may be. It’s a task, I would urge, for the many, not the few.