IF YOU have just erected a genuine Bedouin tent in your back garden, what should you do with it? It is not a question troubling most people in the City of London. But St Ethelburga’s, the Centre for Reconciliation and Peace that has risen from the ruins of the medieval church bombed by the IRA, has just opened a magnificent architect-designed tent that is to serve as the focus for its programme of inter-faith dialogue.

As the Bishop of London reminded leaders of nine faiths gathered at the tent’s inauguration by the Prince of Wales, many of the world’s great faiths began in a tent in the desert. There is something intimate and unpretentious about a round space, carpeted and lit by an oriental lamp, with colourful divans forming a circle around a central low table. A perfect setting, many would say, for a discussion of faith, belief, spirituality and dogma. This is the timeless atmosphere of the desert, and something of the desert’s simplicity and hospitality — perhaps even the smell of the goat-hair weave — comes through, even amid high-rise banks and offices in Bishopsgate.

St Ethelburga’s already has an ambitious programme for this urban oasis. Over the next two months the tent will be used by three separate discussion groups: a multi-faith inquiry to look at spiritual life, belief and practice; another on the dilemma of living with peace and living with nuclear weapons; and a third on the place of women in faith.

The first discussion group will meet weekly to focus on such issues as free will, celibacy and sexuality, death and dying, and humanity and the Earth. Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus will pose the eternal questions of each other’s faiths: Do we see the Earth as a place of suffering and illusion to retreat from in favour of the inner life? What does free will really mean? Do sexual relations take us away from God or bring us closer? How do our beliefs affect the way we cope with bereavement?

Meeting every Thursday evening, they will also look at such divisive themes as money, suffering, spiritual authority, dreams, conversion and the purpose of ritual.

On Wednesdays, the tent will be used to debate the status of women — in Christianity, in Afghanistan or in Muslim tradition. How do Muslims relate to Western-style feminism, and what do non-Muslim women believe about Islam? How have women fared in Afghanistan since the end of Taleban rule?

But tents are not only for earnest discussion. In Arabia, they are also the venue for music, storytelling and feasting. And so it will be in Bishopsgate. In June and July there will be a festival of concerts featuring exotic instruments: an exponent of Far Eastern music will play the haunting shakuhachi, a Japanese bamboo flute; contemporary and traditional music for the Japanese koto (13-stringed zither) will feature in another; and the third concert will concentrate on the ney, a primitive flute and the oldest pitched instrument that is a symbol of Sufism and spirituality.

The storytelling will include a life of Christ set side by side with a life of Baha’ullah (founder of the Baha’i faith); a life of Buddha, interspersed with music and meditative silence; and stories on wisdom and wonder for parents and children up to the age of 9.

It is an ambitious programme for a simple goat-hair tent. But the very strangeness of the venue is what may give it appeal. St Ethelburga’s says the tent is open to everyone, believers and non-believers alike. But there are, of course, rules — the same as those that govern tents in the oases of Arabia. The first is the law of hospitality: all those who gather under the fawn-coloured drapery must do so in friendship and respect.

The second rule is that visitors must remove their shoes. That will come as no surprise to Muslims; it will also serve to keep the place clean in winter. And the third is no alcohol. This could be in deference to the anonymous benefactor who gave the large sum to have the tent woven to order by traditional craftsmen in Saudi Arabia; more practically, it could be because alcohol and tents rarely mix well together.

Until recently, a certain gentle scepticism governed the view of interfaith dialogue: a worthy venture, most people agreed, but more an academic and ecumenical exercise than a process that could change basic attitudes or soften atavistic divisions. That view has changed. Religion is more and more playing a central role in political discourse — not just in the Middle East, but across Europe.

In Britain, often seen as one of the most secular countries in the West, faith issues have rarely been so prominent in political discussion. It is not only the agonised discussion about and within Islam following the bombings in London last year; it is also because the search for a definition of Britishness has reached back into common values that have their origin in Britain’s Christian heritage.

The need, therefore, to understand why faith motivates people, often in dangerous directions, has become a political imperative. And although a former medieval church in the heart of London has only limited leverage, the need to bring together faith leaders in an attempt to seek common solutions to violence, terrorism, climate change and social development has now been underpinned by politicians.

Dialogue begins in private. The most fruitful relationships are often those once inhibited by social, tribal or religious division.

But in the Middle East, where, as the proverb says, no friendship lasts for ever but nor also does any enmity, the tent is the place where taboos can be broken and reconciliation replace warfare. So, St Ethelburga’s hopes will it be in the heart of London.

www.stethelburgas.org