Bishop David Shares His Thought for the Day

The Rt Revd Dr David Walker, Bishop of Manchester, shared this Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4 this morning:

Good morning

Every atrocity brings its own unique awfulness. In 2017, it was the killing of people leaving a pop concert attended by many children and young adults. Yesterday, Manchester was targeted again. This time the victims appear to have been chosen for their Jewish religious faith; the timing selected because they would be gathering for worship on Yom Kippur, that most solemn of holy days.

I won’t speculate on the motives behind the attack. Not only because the facts are still emerging, but because to do so can all too easily slip into imagining there can be some rationale or justification for the cold blooded murder of innocent people. In my experience, the acts of individual perpetrators owe more to their own warped and twisted life journeys than to any moral or political inspiration. The overwhelming majority of human beings, no matter how passionately we may favour some ideology, do not seek to wreak havoc among those who do not share our position or perspective. We affirm that common humanity to which Judaism, Christianity and other world religions hold fast. The hardest challenge though, can be to recognise that those who commit such dreadful deeds are also fellow human beings. But they are.

In my own religious tradition, the story of Jesus, facing down even death itself, and rising victorious, is the ultimate demonstration that love is the one thing stronger than hate. As we did in Manchester in 2017, we defy the hatred espoused by those who seek, through violence, to sow divisions amongst us, not by seeking revenge against them or the communities from which they come, but by drawing ever closer to one another. Just before the summer holidays I and other civic and community figures joined Jewish and Muslim leaders from across our city region at Manchester University as they signed a new concordat, pledging themselves and their communities to strengthen dialogue, especially in difficult times. These are the small practical steps that lead towards a future very different from that which those who kill and maim are seeking.

Sadly, the Jewish families who live and worship in this part of Manchester, a neighbourhood that is my own home too, are used to having to hold onto God in the midst of atrocity. Many of their ancestors came here fleeing the violent pogroms that scarred Eastern Europe and Russia in times past. Others fled Hitler’s holocaust less than a century ago. I know they will draw on the long stories of their faithfulness in times of adversity, to see them through this present time of darkness. I, along with the people of Manchester and from far afield, will do what we can to stand with them.

+David