All the info about the Charter is available online at the movement's website and, perhaps most engagingly, here's Karen Armstrong's 'pitch' for it at TED in Feb 2008...In just over two months the Charter for Compassion will be unveiled to the world. On that day, November 12, 2009, Karen Armstrong will read the Charter at a global press launch. This briefing will be followed by a week of celebratory events - from concerts to art fairs, lectures and readings - and a weekend of sermons coordinated in houses of worship large and small.Also on November 12, a plaque inscribed with the words of the Charter, designed by Yves Behar, will be hung in important religious and secular buildings in ten or so cities around the world. Images and video of these "hangings" will be shown at the press launch and then posted on the Charter for Compassion website, re-launching that same day.
Compassion is one of those big all-inclusive, feel-good words that, I hope, every Christian should be lining up to cheer for, but what do you make of this particular take on it? Karen Armstrong's take on "belief" isn't quite the one I'd go for, though she makes a good point that it's not merely an intellectual ascent, but it's about behaving a particular way.
Listening to Armstrong above, I want to cheer about "only understanding doctrines when you put them into practice" and it must be true that "compassion" is a great linking word/lifestyle across faiths.
The problem is that what she pitches is (to quote her) "a test for true religiosity"...
According to whom?
For Jesus, the test of true religion was loving and following him - which, sure, is to be lived out and shown in lifestyle, nor mere intellectual belief... but he was absolutely clear that no lifestyle, however pure and compassionate, is enough to be right with God, nor to change the world.
On the other hand, I'm reassured by these words on the website itself:
The Charter does NOT assume:
- all religions are the same
- compassion is the only thing that matters in religion
- religious people have a monopoly on compassion
The Charter DOES affirm that:
- compassion is celebrated in all major religious, spiritual and ethical traditions
- the Golden Rule is our prime duty and cannot be limited to our own political, religious or ethnic group
- therefore, in our divided world, compassion can build common ground
What do you think? Do these sort of declarations change anything? Do Christian water down their faith in signing up, or is this exactly the sort of thing we need in a fractured world?
