Churches Weekly Newsletter, 12 June 2022
Bradford is to to be the UK City of Culture in 2025. Are you pleased?
“In the welfare of the city shall you find your welfare,” Jeremiah wrote to God’s people exiled in Babylon. The Area Bishop of Bradford Dr Toby Howarth quotes this in a Church Times article celebrating Bradford’s successful bid to become UK City of Culture 2025. “Now, as we prepare for 2025 and beyond, we are asking, as religious communities and specifically as the Church, what this welfare means for us.”
“Bradford is where Yorkshire meets 170-plus cultural heritages from around the globe,” writes Dr Howarth. “City of Culture will tell stories of individual and community journeys that have contributed to Bradford’s story. Historical and contemporary, these are stories of trade and empire, grinding poverty and spectacular wealth, the breaking up of old identities and the forging of new ones.Part of that global heritage is about religious faith.”
Bradford has a strong religious heritage, played out in its cultural and social life; think of the devout Congregationalist Titus Salt applying his form of compassionate capitalism to his relationships with his workers; think of the creativity emanating from the Parsonage at Haworth; consider the latter-day religious influences involved in the work of Peace Studies at Bradford University and the multi-faith relationships developing with sensitivity and enthusiasm between the people of the modern city’s churches and mosques.
Bishop Howarth along with the President of the Council for Mosques sit on the district’s senior leadership team, along with colleagues from the council, health, education, police and fire services, business, and the voluntary sectors. He sees Bradford’s winning bid as an opportunity for us in the city-region’s churches to consider what this means for us, and how we might share in the celebrations.
For me, I’ll start with my great-grandparents and grandmother, shoemakers of Shipley; and what are your Bradford connections, what’s your take on the region’s contributions to culture and the place that faith plays in all that?
