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Bishop of Dorking leads delegation to Kazakhstan

23 September 2022

Dr Wells became the first woman to read the ‘declaration’ at the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions

Nick Baines/Twitter

The Bishop of Leeds, the Rt Revd Nick Baines, and the Bishop of Dorking, Dr Jo Bailey Wells, in Kazakhstan, on Wednesday of last week

The Bishop of Leeds, the Rt Revd Nick Baines, and the Bishop of Dorking, Dr Jo Bailey Wells, in Kazakhstan, on Wednesday of last week

THE Bishop of Dorking, Dr Jo Wells, played a prominent part in an international meeting of faith leaders in Kazakhstan last week, becoming the first woman to read the “declaration” at the conclusion of the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions.

Dr Wells led the two-person delegation from the Archbishop of Canterbury, which also served to represent the Anglican Communion at the seventh triannual meeting.

The Bishop of Leeds, the Rt Revd Nick Baines, who has attended four previous meetings of the congress, joined Dr Wells in Nur-Sultan, the capital of Kazakhstan. On Tuesday, Bishop Baines described his colleague as having “played a blinder”.

Dr Wells, who is a member of the working group and secretariat that plan the congress, gave an address in the opening plenary session on Wednesday of last week, in which she referred to Queen Elizabeth II as a “role model” for the congress. “A deep commitment to one faith does not require a narrowing of interest or a closing of doors to people of other faiths,” Dr Wells told the leaders.

More than 100 religious leaders from 50 countries attended the congress, including Pope Francis; the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed El-Tayeb; and the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, David Lau.

The Pope had previously expressed his hope of meeting Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, at the event (News, 19 August), but, a week beforehand, the congress began it was confirmed by a spokesman for the ROC that the Patriarch would not be attending for “a number of reasons”.

At the plenary, Pope Francis used his allotted time to decry fundamentalism and set out four challenges: to support others in the recovery from the pandemic, to nurture peace, to accept one another with kindness, and to protect the environment.

On the second day of the congress, participants divided into four focused sessions: the part played by education in peace-building; countering extremism and promoting dialogue; “strengthening spiritual and moral values in the contemporary world”; and exploring the part played by religions in “supporting women’s social status” along with “women’s contribution to the well-being and sustainable development of contemporary society”.

Dr Wells was the co-moderator of this session, alongside the Grand Mufti of Kazakhstan. “We only met three minutes before the session began, and he told me how it was going to run, to which I offered a challenge,” she said on Tuesday.

They came to a compromise that would allow members of the audience to have time to discuss issues among themselves, in a departure from the standard procedure of set-piece speeches.

“It’s fascinating how much feedback I got from that, because women just said they’d never seen anyone challenge the Grand Mufti before, and also the norm for how these dialogues are done, but I thought, ‘It’s not a dialogue if it’s a series of monologues,’” Dr Wells said.

The formal structure of the congress was “necessary but limited”, Dr Wells said, adding that the “real conversations happened beyond those set pieces, in the lunch breaks and the coffee breaks and so forth.”

Only about six of the 100 or so delegates at the congress were women, Dr Wells said. She expects this number will increase with every iteration of the meeting.

“I felt whenever I did speak that my voice was perhaps magnified because I was female,” Dr Wells reflected. “I was well received and graciously heard . . . I haven’t felt hampered, nor have I felt in any sense suppressed or quashed.”

The congress is organised and sponsored by the government of Kazakhstan. “There isn’t a strong Anglican presence in Kazakhstan, and yet they give quite a significant place to us,” she said. “I think this is is because Anglicans have played such a role as bridge builders in the past, there’s a sense of trust.”

Dr Wells concluded that Anglicans “punch above their weight”, but highlighted the “need to grow a new generation of leaders prepared to engage in interfaith dialogue”.

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