Virtues of Faith: Enquire, Deepen, Expand
In an age of fragmentation and shifting values, virtues can guide us back to a place of understanding and cooperation. But in the UK’s hyper-diverse society, how do we have meaningful conversations across faith groups and sectors? A virtue may be shared among Christians and Muslims, but does it mean the same thing to both groups? And why does it matter?
Virtues
“Virtues are intrinsically practical. They can only exist by being lived out. You can have an internal value and hope it finds expression, but the exciting thing about virtues is the sense that they’re collective and passed down through communities through traditions.”
- Good Faith Partnership Co-Founder David Barclay
These are some of the questions Good Faith Partnership and the Jubilee Centre for the Development of Character and Virtues seek to answer through Virtues of Faith, a research project that applies the principles of covenantal pluralism to the role of faith in society—as well as policy—to reinvigorate interfaith dialogue and ultimately solve society’s most intractable problems.
Covenantal pluralism calls people beyond tolerance to real engagement across lines of difference. Using this lens, the Virtues of Faith Project is gathering insight on how virtues across faith and belief groups can help facilitate relationships, cohesion, and belonging at scale both in community and at national levels to open the door to new possibilities.
Faith can have a tangible impact on bettering people’s lives and the systems in which they live. Even as trends in religiosity fluctuated and secularism is debated, religion and faith are seen as important factors determining people’s outlook in life—including the virtues that are central to one’s character and the crafting of society.
Identifying shared virtues across groups is a new phase of understanding pluralism. It allows us to know—more deeply—what is being said and meant by a certain virtue, leading to more meaningful conversations and collaborations across society that act as a catalyst for change and source of understanding.
The Possibility of Transformation Through Unlikely Partnerships
Good Faith Partnership believes that a better world is possible and engages organizations across government, faith groups, and the private and public sectors, bringing them together—in good faith—to respond creatively to societal issues from immigration and isolation to houselessness and the cost of living crisis.
This was just a hypothesis when Good Faith launched its consultancy firm in 2016, but we have seen this pluralistic approach work in ways we never imagined, leading to the creation of:
Warm Welcome Spaces, a community response to the cost-of-living crisis
The Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy (RAMP), an effort across parties to create a world class migration system in the UK
The AI Faith and Civil Society Commission, creatively uniting leaders from different faith and belief backgrounds and sectors to feed into global discourse about the opportunities of AI for human flourishing.
But there remains a gap in understanding of the UK’s religious communities and the virtues that bond, bridge, and differentiate the people who live here. With the Virtues of Faith Project, we seek to bridge this gap, and we have already seen the possibilities through the pilot study we conducted in 2023.
The pilot surveyed people from six faith backgrounds: Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, and Humanism to gain insight into the similarities and differences among UK groups about virtues and found an appetite for research and understanding—receiving six times the number of expected respondents.
“There’s a will in the world for people to know each other even though the world seems to be drifting away from that. There is a hunger to live in harmony and disagree well.”
– Dilwar Hussain, Lead Researcher
KEY FINDINGS
All religious groups had at least three virtues in common in their respective top six selected virtues
Honesty was the only virtue in the top six across all belief strands
Members of faith groups placed more emphasis on moral virtues than Humanists/those of no faith
The findings have helped inform our cross-sector and multi-disciplinary work, including with immigrants and refugees, isolated communities across the UK, and work on freedom of religion or belief.
Read the full report here.
The Possibility of Belonging Through Deeper Understanding
But in many ways, the pilot unearthed more questions than it answered. Now, with funding from Templeton Religion Trust and in partnership with the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues at the University of Birmingham we are deepening and expanding this project—both in number of respondents targeted and a data set that accounts for factors like age, gender, and denomination.
This expanded research will dive more deeply into the 24 virtues as the pilot in the pilot, exploring religious nuances and traditions that may untap new understandings of the terms. We will expand our knowledge of the top virtues from our pilot, including honesty, gratitude, devotion, and compassion, and do so through the lenses of covenantal pluralism.
The Virtues of Faith Project is rooted in a bold vision for our life together—in the possibility that a deeper understanding of shared virtues can act as a catalyst for societal transformation. And, with it, we have the potential to not just do research but to shape how diverse groups within the UK come together to solve societal problems and create change.
There is a huge potential to craft a more inclusive and positive framework for collaboration—despite differences—around virtues in public life. The data here indicates there is more in common than we may imagine.
If today’s academic, political, civic, and faith leaders tap into the potential of shared virtues, together we can open the door to new possibilities for a more virtuous society built on the principles of covenantal pluralism.