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Challenging poverty was one of the key agenda items at the recent meeting (September 21) of the Scottish Religious Leaders Forum in Edinburgh at which the United Reformed Church was represented by the Synod Moderator, Revd Paul Whittle.

The meeting agreed to mark Challenge Poverty Week (October 2 -8) with a call to all attending places of worship to work towards:

for a Scotland where we value our communities

for a Scotland where we all have safe, secure and sustainable homes

for a Scotland where we all have enough to live a decent and dignified life

for a Scotland where we can all get to where we need to go

and for a Scotland where no one goes hungry

The meeting considered a number of other big themes, including spiritual care in the NHS, support for chaplains, violence against women and girls, tackling hate crime (with two representatives of the Scottish government’s hate crime team) and the challenges of recent government ‘rowing back’ on their response to climate commitments.

We also heard something of the Parliament of World Religions, which met in Chicago in August, where Ravinder Kaur Nijjar, from the Sikh community, had received a Global Lifetime Achievement Award at that event in recognition of her significant multi-faith work.

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