Theme - Young People
Faith plays an influential role in the lives of many young people, not least by setting their moral compass, forming their ideas of right and wrong and shaping their attitudes and identities. Faith groups up and down the UK acknowledge that young people are a top priority for them. Each one seeks the best way to bring the next generation on stream.
The CRC joined Durham University to research this, and their report "Walking Alongside Young People" is unique in opening a window that allows us to see how this happens in different communities in the North East. It looks at how faith communities involve their young people and offer activities and projects for all young people regardless of their faith. It explores how faith is negotiated with parents, peers and faith leaders as young people wrestle with the moral challenges and practical problems of modern life, and the role of the youth workers in this. The felt need among young people to have a sense of belonging, of being valued, of being able to contribute, comes across strongly in this report. Indeed, these are the three components of a person's identity (or a community's identity, for that matter), like legs on a tripod. This is where inclusion, or exclusion, happens.
Such research can never be just an academic exercise. young people offer 'grown-ups' the wonderful gift of re-connecting wiht our roots, bringing us back to the basics, because they ask "Why?" They challenge us to retell the faith story in a way that resonates with them today. Exclussion occurs when this fails to heppen, young people become disconnected and our places of worship become inaccessible to them.
The Churches' Regional Commission has shown itself over many years to be committed to inter faith work and has played a key role in developing the North East Regional Faiths Network which it currently chairs. Faiths have much to offer to, and learn from, each other for the benefit of all and at no time do we come closer than when we share our spiritual journeys and struggles together. We hope that this report (found at this link), along with the DVD, will encourage both inter generational and inter faith connections, understanding, respect and dialogue.
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