Doing the Lambeth Walk for peace

Faiths Together in Lambeth invited every community to promote peace and harmony with a Peace Walk visiting faith venues from the south to the north of the borough.

Celebrating Interfaith week

“The aim of the Faiths Together in Lambeth Peace Walk is to show our solidarity to the work of promoting Peace in our community. We do the Peace Walk as part of the Interfaith week which happens each year, usually in the first and second week of November. Our members look forward to doing this every year!” Said Lydia Taiwah of Faiths Together.

Word from the Cabinet

Cllr Donatus Anyanwu, Lambeth Cabinet member for Stronger Communities, said: “It’s been great to see people from diverse faith and non-faith backgrounds join together on this Peace Walk in support of the Interfaith Week aims of promoting peace and harmony between communities. In visiting the five faith venues, walking and talking together, and sharing lunch, the walkers celebrated different faith practices and reinforced common wishes for our community.”

Five faith centres

Police officers, community volunteers, street pastors, and staff from Lambeth’s sanctuary services and community engagement teams also joined the pilgrimage from the Islamic Centre in Streatham to the JamYang Buddhist centre in Kennington.

South London Islamic Centre explained about prayers five times a day, facing the direction of Mecca, with Friday the most important day for prayers and many people attending the mosque after work. All visitors are welcomed and bid farewell with the words “Peace be upon you” in Arabic.

The UK’s second longest-established liberal synagogue – explained their close historical connection with the Jewish community working in Streatham’s 19th century music halls and how they are one of 100 synagogues worldwide to hold prayer scrolls rescued after Nazi persecution in Czechoslovakia.

The Caribbean Hindu Cultural Society welcomed visitors carrying ‘Doing the Lambeth Peace Walk’ banners with a song in English ‘to embrace everyone in the world’ including the message “We all share one sky”. They shared that Hindu belief is usually written in Sanskrit, one of the world’s most ancient languages.

Brixton’s Seventh Day Adventists explained that Saturday, the seventh day, is their day of worship but they believe in active faith through ‘taking a stance against the evil that we see’, healthy lifestyle, and more. ‘Adventist’ refers to the belief that our times of famine, war and rumours of war are the signs that Christ said would foretell his return.

For the pilgrimage’s final stop, with many of the Peace Walkers’ fitness apps telling them they had got in more than 1500 steps today, the JamYang centre welcomed people of every faith and none to visit their prayer rooms with statues of the Buddha, prayer flags, and photos of spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, and to share a meal.

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