The Story of EIFA's Founder, Reverend Professor Frank Whaling (1934-2022)

With Frank at the centre of such a world-renowned course, a great many people from across the world visited the Whaling household, as Ruth recalls: “I remember one story from when we had the Panchen Lama [second only in spiritual authority to the Dalai Lama in the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism] staying with us. At breakfast, there were a box of Sugar Puffs on table. The Panchen Lama picked the box up and pointed to the speech bubble from the honey monster and said: “Tell him about the honey mummy!” [the brand’s famous 1970s advertising]. His people and all of us just cracked laughing for about five minutes. So, there were lots of unusual things like that happen in our childhood because of dad’s work.”

Established in 1989, The Edinburgh Interfaith Association was founded by Reverend Professor Frank Whaling. In this story, Frank’s two children, John and Ruth, recall their memories of his life and work. 

By any metric, Frank Whaling had a remarkable life. Born in 1934 to a non-churchgoing family of humble origins, and growing up in Pontefract, Yorkshire, from the very beginning Frank was a high achieving and intelligent man – a benign revolutionary. He became the first in his family to go to grammar school and university, obtaining degrees in History and Theology at Cambridge before being awarded a doctorate in theology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1973. In the same year, Frank (and family) returned to the UK to take up a brand new post  at the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh.  This academic career had been preceded by 4 years as a Methodist missionary in India, then 3 years as Minister in Eastbourne.

Remembering Frank’s character, Ruth remarks that: “He was just fascinated by everything: the most curious person. But it’s one thing to have that kind of brain that can go everywhere. What was special about Dad was that he backed it up with engagement with people and kindness. He humanised his curiosity so that it didn't stay at that intellectual level. He made sure to speak to the person in front of him”.

Perhaps the greatest manifestation of Frank’s curiosity and kindness was his work in founding the Edinburgh Interfaith Association (EIFA) in 1989. It is a mark of how unprecedented this was that EIFA is now the oldest interfaith organisation in Scotland. Since being founded the scope of EIFA’s work has grown exponentially in size, but its core aim remains the same: to bring people together to work towards the common good, building meaningful relationships, and represent the interests of faith communities.

For John, over and above the ideas and openness he helped instil in thousands of individual students from around the world over two generations, EIFA is his Frank’s most tangible lasting contribution: “He created a sort of faith-based UN in Edinburgh, you know, for the benefit not just of those individual communities, but for everyone. His great personal legacy is his work founded on the belief that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and, moreover, in the importance and potency of the cross-pollination and -fertilisation of disparate things. It’s there where the magic happens.”

Throughout his time at Edinburgh, Frank’s academic research spanned the depth and breadth of the world’s religious traditions, a pioneering approach at a time when plurality of this kind was far less common, as John comments: “He was a very, very early adopter of what was at the time, a quite radical field of comparative religion, encompassing the idea that all faiths have got something to offer. It opposed the idea that you had to have one set of beliefs dominate another”. Becoming a world-leading expert in Hinduism, Frank wrote many books including Understanding Hinduism (2009) and Understanding the Brahma Kumaris (2013). Having been recruited to establish and grow new BA and MA degrees in religious studies at the University of Edinburgh, by 1988, these were the widest courses of their kind in the United Kingdom, with a continuous stream of Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and other students.