EACH YEAR International Day Of Peace is observed on 21st September. The UN has declared this as a day devoted to strengthening the ideals of peace, through observing 24 hours of non-violence and cease-fire.

But achieving true peace also requires building communities where all members feel they can flourish, creating a world where all people are treated equally. This is what we aspire to do in our Open Table communities.

This year’s theme of International Day Of Peace is End Racism, Build Peace. This echoes the theme of the Gathering Voices online conference on Saturday 15th October: Embracing diversity – exploring the intersection of faith, LGBTQIA+ & ethnicity. READ MORE & REGISTER FREE.

Since 2018, the Open Table Network has been an active partner in Gathering Voices, a collaboration of Christian organisations that encourage churches to be fully inclusive and affirming of all people without regard of gender and sexuality.

On Saturday 1st October, OTN trustee Augustine Tanner-Ihm will share a short video to introduce the theme of this year’s conference, in response to the question: ‘What is intersectionality?’ on the Gathering Voices YouTube channel.

At our national gathering in June this year, one of our local members said that Open Table is for them ‘the only community where I don’t have racism’. It is sad that prejudice is so widespread for them that Open Table is their only sanctuary from it, though we give thanks that they found our community a safer space to be. We’re not complacent though - we know that many of our communities are not fully representative of the diversity of the town or city in which they meet, and we are committed to enabling better representation wherever we can.

For more than forty years, each day at noon, people of all faiths and none have prayed the Universal Prayer For Peace. The prayer was first publicly used in July 1981 by Mother Teresa in St James' Church, Piccadilly, London. In its original form, it is found in A New Zealand Prayer Book.

This version, read by United Reformed Church minister Revd Fiona Thomas from our Open Table community in Blackheath, South London, was adapted for our online service in January 2021 to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day, remembering those Jewish people, and millions of members of other groups killed under Nazi persecution, and in the more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur. Watch the whole service here [40 mins - including British Sign Language and captions].