experience as guest speaker

My initial response to being asked to be a guest speaker was - Help, I don’t know how to talk about my faith anymore! I used to talk about it keenly every day, what with becoming a Christian at sixteen and studying Theology at university. But after all my questioning, and a lot of unsatisfactory answers, I had long decided it was time to put my talk into practice.

So I was quite apprehensive to talk about my faith again—especially in front of a class of high-school students!—and my heart was thudding as the Three Faiths Forum facilitator laid down some ‘tools for trialogue’. The students were great, though, really responsive to the import of their choice of words and tone of voice.

My Muslim and Jewish co-speakers gave short presentations on what their faith means to them. Their religious identities seemed to have a strength that I think some Christians lack in the UK, where faith seems to have become a personal affair, and over-verbalization of the sacred can appear intellectually vulgar or extreme. As I gave my presentation I felt like I was learning to talk for the first time! But it felt good to establish my beliefs, both for the class and for myself.

Next the floor was opened to the students, who had prepared questions about ‘relationships’, ‘justice and ethics’, ‘personal faith’ and ‘perceptions of people of faith’. Some intense debate: Is it OK to have sex before marriage? Is homosexuality wrong? Do suicide bombers really go straight to heaven? Why don’t people who proclaim the gospel in the streets give their loudspeakers a rest?

Unsurprisingly, we didn’t come to any decisive conclusions, but I got the feeling people enjoyed talking about these things in the open, the class dynamic was much more trustful by the end of the session - and I’ve remembered my ability to talk.

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