Last night I was lucky enough to have been invited to attend the inaugural City of Peace lecture at Newcastle’s Civic Centre.

Just to remind you what is City of Peace, its an intuitive to:-

• Encourage communities, individuals and organisations in Newcastle upon Tyne to get to know each other better
• Safegaurd vulnerable people and groups and give support where needed
• Bring about greater integration, but also respect for difference
• Reduce inequalities and promote social justice
• Tackle prejudice, create a positive and safe environment, reduce tensions and promote good citizenship.

Some very noble aims and as a city we doing our best to move closer to them every day.

Anyway back to the lecture. We were blessed to have the Archbishop of York, the Most Reverend John Sentamu, basically the head of the Church of England in the North. His lecture was on the theme of “Gracious Magnanimity versus Tolerance”, a most thought-provoking topic.

The Archbishop was introduced by the Lord Mayor, and was given the honour of being named an honorary Geordie, to which he could only say “Whey-Aye Man”.

He started by explaining how tolerance is seen as part of what makes Britain, Britain, but he argued that tolerance was actually a negative quality, resulting in narrow-mindedness and oppression.

He used the example of brothels in France which are referred to as ‘maisons de tolérance’or Houses of tolerance. He stated his belief that tolerance is putting up with something that is different and that we don’t particullarily like, and instead argued that we should gravitate more towards the quality of Gracious Magnanimity, or meeting people halfway as he put it. He said that:-

“We are more likely to hear the language of people asserting their rights, waving the terms of the contract under someone’s nose and getting in first. Yet it is these positive virtues of gracious magnanimity which I believe could help us to transform our country today.

Aristotle also discussed gracious-magnanimity in the Nicomachean Ethics. He says that gracious-magnanimity (epieikeia) is that which is just and sometimes that which is better than justice (Eth. Nic. V. 10.6).

It corrects the law when the law is deficient because of its generality. And he compares the person who is graciously magnanimous (epieikes) with the person who is immoderate (akribodikaios.)

The person who is immoderate is the person who stands up for the last title deeds of their legal rights; but the person who is graciously magnanimous knows that there are times when a thing may be legally completely justified and yet morally completely wrong.

A person has the quality of gracious-magnanimity if they know when not to apply the strict letter of the law, when to relax justice and introduce mercy.

Similarly I would say, a graciously-magnanimous Church has a responsibility to both affirm moral standards and to ensure that its rules don’t seem rigorous to the point of inhumanity. That should also be true of all civic authorities. That should be true of all of us.”

He then moved on to an interesting and moving example of this quality from South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

“At the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa a woman was at the hearing about her son’s murder. The police officer who had ordered the brutal killing was there, shamefacedly hearing read out the details of what he and his colleagues had done. At the end the room was quiet. The chair of the commission, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, asked the woman if she had anything to say to the man who had killed her son.

She responded:

“I am very full of sorrow. So I am asking you now – come with me to the place where he died, pick up in your hands some of the dust of the place where his body lay, and feel in your soul what it is to have lost so much. And then I will ask you one thing more. When you have felt my sadness, I want you to do this. I have so much love, and without my son, that love has nowhere to go. So I am asking you – from now on, you be my son, and I will love you in his place.”

She went on to say –

“I can say this – I can only do this, because Jesus loved me and gave himself up for me.””

I have to say that story was very touching and extremely powerful, the room drew a gasp at this and several members of the audience, including the Lord Mayor were brought to tears.

Its a nice sentiment and a fantastic quality and one I think is worth striving towards. He finished by wishing us luck in the City of Peace inituative and that Newcastle United will flourish, which recived a massive round of applause!

My prayer for Newcastle in the months and years ahead is that you may hold fast to this vision, that you work with humility, good humour and imagination together to build-up your common life. May God bless you, Newcastle and may the fortunes of Newcastle United ever flourish.

I was also fortunate enough to meet him just prior to the lecture, and I have to say his is a charming chap, and I found him to have some extremely interesting insights to the way the UK and indeed the world is today.

I was most interested by his comments, which he later expanded upon in his lecture, about groups such as the National Secular Society, who expect those of us who hold religious views to keep them entirely private. It fits in my thoughts on hats, which I will explain another day. Anyway he said that how can we expect people to simply put their religious beliefs away in a box when they are in the public domain. The truth of the matter is that someone’s religious beliefs is a core part of their identity and without it, that person loses something.

And the experience of the religious, dealing with organisations like the National Secular Society, are exactly what Gracious Magnanimity can help us to address. We can meet half way and allow us all to happily get along and strive towards making not only Newcastle a City of Peace, but the whole Earth a Planet of Peace.

Anyway you can read his lecture here.

God Bless

Michael