Thought for the Day, 19 November 2008

The Rev. Dr Giles Fraser

Last week, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Chief Rabbi made a joint visit to the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. The Chief Rabbi spoke of being struck by the horrible efficiency with which the Nazis collected everything of use - teeth, hair, shoes, glasses. Indeed, it seemed they had a value for most things - everything, that is, apart from the millions of men, women and children that they were throwing away as worthless. The Archbishop read from the 23rd Psalm: "Though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me."

It's perfectly possible that there were distant relatives of mine who ended up in that unspeakable valley of death. My father's family escaped to this country sometime before the war. They changed their names to hide from anti-Semitism. My grandmother went from Miriam Beckerman to Mary Baker, my grandfather from Harold Friedeburg to Harold Fraser. Like countless Jews over the centuries, the family sought safety by blending in and hiding their Jewishness.

I guess they never expected that this process of assimilation would eventually lead to one of their grandchildren becoming a Christian priest. Yet even here I think my Jewish Granny regarded my robes and dog collar as the ultimate social camouflage. But for me it's been different. There will always be a part of me that regards my Christianity as an act of betrayal. That in becoming a priest I lined up with the persecutors against the persecuted. But priest I am, and Christian by conviction. I live with the tension.

So given all this, it's predictable that I found the visit of the Archbishop and the Chief Rabbi to Auschwitz especially moving and important. But it's more than a personal thing. For the question of how we live with our differences is the ultimate question of modern politics. And the challenge for religious believers is whether we are going to regard our faith as something that unites us or divides us.

Importantly, the call to unity is not a call to find some lowest common denominator of religious belief. For what is particularly impressive about the joint witness of Rowan Williams and Jonathan Sachs is that they don't water down the distinctiveness of their own faith when they express their solidarity with each other. On the contrary, it's as if the more they are true to their own traditions, the more they are able to grow in fellowship with each other. In other words: unity is no betrayal.

Hilter believed that only by the elimination of the Jewish people could the German people flourish. Hence Auschwitz. But the truth is exactly the opposite of this. Our own flourishing, whoever we are, is completely bound up with the flourishing of other people, whatever their creed and whatever their colour. And until we understand this completely, we can never be confident that we have discovered a way out of the valley of death or the shadow of Auschwitz.