Cardiff, diverse in faith and culture

Without our faith communities Cardiff would not be the great city it is today. The conference and report are also a timely reminder that the continued welfare of this city depends upon an active dialogue between the city's politicians and faith groups.
Jonathan Morgan, Assembly Member Cardiff North

Wales' Capital City Cardiff is home to a third of a million people, many of whom have settled here from other parts of Wales, the U.K., Europe and other continents of the world, bringing with them their languages, cultures and traditions of religious faith.

Over 35,000 Cardiffians meet to worship and interact socially in any week of every year in over 200 faith communities, great and small, and a much greater number attending occasionally. Spiritual life remains important to a significant proportion of the Capital's citizens, and their local communities of faith.

The oldest of these communities trace their origins back 1,400 years, deep in the roots of Celtic Christianity. The era of Cardiff's industrial expansion and population growth in the nineteenth century saw the establishment of the majority of the city's present places of worship, including its first mosques.

The era of immigration in the second half of the twentieth centuries has seen a new growth in diversity with the influx of new Muslim communities, Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist communities, also new Christian communities with origins in Africa, Asia and North America.

In today's highly mobile era, ten percent of Cardiff's faith communities have active international roots and links of markedly different nature from those forged by British missionaries to countries 'overseas' in the colonial era.

Places of worship provide places of welcome for newcomers, help in adjusting and integrating into a new society, and support in maintaining their inheritance of community values and culture. This is as true for North Walian settlers in the Capital as it is for Bengalis, Poles or Nigerians.