So, we’ve asked our resident Chaplain Reverend Richard Harrison to provide an insight into how we are celebrating this day and how the Summer Fields community comes together to celebrate diversity, foster peace, and promote religious tolerance.

“This year, World Religion Day falls on the very first Sunday of the Lent term when we have evening worship here in our beautiful Chapel at Summer Fields.  For a Sunday service, I ask for volunteers to help with the readings and prayers from each of the Lodges in turn. This Sunday, boys from Cottage will help in this way.  I’m always touched by the number of boys who volunteer, coming from a large range of different religious traditions and practices and indeed with some having no experience of worship at all. There is a real sense that gathering in Chapel for worship is at the heart of our community and boys want to show this in an active way and this gives me great encouragement.

There is a living commitment from all the different traditions represented in the school in our Chapel worship (as of course also in the Chapel Choir) and the boys are pleased to gather in this way.

This commitment to shared worship however does not take away from those boys who are also keen to recognise a particular identity and a particular pathway. It is during the very last Sunday service of this term that there will be a service of confirmation for the four boys in Year 8 who will commit themselves to the Christian way of Life, which includes putting others before oneself and a commitment to religious tolerance and mutual flourishing.

It's not for nothing that the heart of the Christian faith is the golden rule, which is "to do to others as you would wish them to do to you". This is true tolerance and mutual respect.”

Reverend Richard Harrison