Welcome to the Scriptural Reasoning Society - Shalom Aleichem, As-Salamu Alaykum, Peace be with You

The Scriptural Reasoning Society is a diverse community of people dedicated to the shared reading of Jewish, Christian, Muslim and other sacred texts. By reading together, we seek to understand better and respect each other's important differences of belief, and to work together in building our shared civic life in Britain.

While much of its focus is civic, SR is at heart a practice of people of faith. We want to ensure every level of observance is able to feel comfortable with the handling of Sacred Scriptures and the conduct at our meetings. Therefore, this website is developed and run under Jewish halachic and Islamic shari'ah supervision of the London Beth Din and the Fatwa Committee of the Islamic Cultural Centre and London Central Mosque. For the practice of SR, we have obtained a fatwa (click to download the fatwa in Arabic or in English) of the Shari'a Court that permits and regulates Muslim participation in this practice.

The Scriptural Reasoning Society is one independent “School” of Scriptural Reasoning (colloquially known as “The Oxford School”) within the broader family of different independent SR Schools in communication.  We share important commonalities with other practitioners of Scriptural Reasoning, both in relation to the way we think about and do SR, and at the same time we also hold to some distinctive and fundamental differences in our approach to Scriptural Reasoning vis à vis other SR groups.  We uphold these, our unique and distinctive characteristics, in a spirit of conversation, friendly disagreement and healthy academic collaboration between differing opinions with other practitioners of Scriptural Reasoning – true to the promise that SR is about “not consensus but friendship”.
The Scriptural Reasoning Society is a network of free and independent local Scriptural Reasoning groups, which are bound together by a shared “Community Ethic” (also known as “The Oxford Ethic”) to which they all formally subscribe, and by a commitment to support one another in the advancement of Scriptural Reasoning as a free and egalitarian practice, for the sake of God.

On these pages, you can find information about what SR is and how it works, about the ethos of our "Reading Community" (click to download a copy of our Community Ethic, the Oxford Ethic), and of course texts and times of meetings at various venues around the UK. All Scriptural Reasoning activity in the Society is undertaken in accordance with the Oxford Ethic - the Community Ethic of the Scriptural Reasoning Society (click here to download the Oxford Ethic in PDF format).

You can also visit our Online Scriptural Reasoning Discussion Forum where you can take part in virtual Scriptural Reasoning discussions. Please go to: http://www.scripturalreasoning.net/