Bath Inter Faith Group pilgrimage to Tbilisi Georgia: part one

Eight of us travelled from Bath to Tbilisi Georgia to see a thriving multi faith project working in a challenging environment. Here's a first report.

In April 2026 Bath Inter Faith Group undertook a week’s pilgrimage to Tbilisi Georgia. We wanted to see for ourselves just how powerful and relevant multi faith work can be in a society under strain.

Georgia has been Christian since the c4th and a very conservative Orthodox Christianity prevails today, closely tied to an increasingly repressive state. The late Patriarch Ilya (who died aged 93 just before our visit) abandoned ecumenism, described homosexuality as a “disease” and likened LGBT people to drug addicts.

We were hoping to find something altogether more welcoming and inclusive.

The context is challenging. Georgia is 20% under Russian occupation after the 2008 invasion. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch report a worsening human rights landscape with increasingly repressive legislation and police and prison brutality.

Democracy activists wanting fair elections and the release of political prisoners have been protesting outside the Parliament since October 2024 without success to date.

As we flew into Georgia neighbouring Iran was under specific threat of total obliteration, with the deadline set for half an hour before our overnight flight was due to land.

But land we did, without any fallout nuclear or otherwise, and after a brief rest we strolled down the avenue named after the poet Shota Rustaveli to get some broad context from the excellent Georgian National Museum. Georgia is on the route where mankind first emerged from Africa, on the Silk Road and just south of Russia. So we learned about prehistory and hominid evolution, saw exhibitions of remarkable early artefacts and about the 70 years of Soviet rule.

After that to say we had “lunch” doesn’t really do justice to what happened next. “Supra”, or Georgian feasting, is Unesco-protected intangible heritage. Sofia Melnikova’s Fantastic Douqan gave a perfect introduction to the splendid Georgian tradition of Supra.

Sofia’s Douqan served us salads, khachapuri (cheesy flatbreads), aubergine in walnut and cherry sauce and splendid dumplings (khinkali) washed down with local wine called Khikhvi.

That took us to our real destination: the Peace Project, where an Evangelical Baptist Cathedral is collocated with a synagogue, a mosque and a prayer room for people of all faiths and none in a former warehouse built in the 1940s by German prisoners-of-war. This is where a multi-faith response to antisemitism, islamophobia, homophobia and misogyny has been created in beautiful stone, with a living community that brings a philosophy of good faith, welcome and inclusion.

It’s the faith in action and the realised vision of Malkhaz Songulashvili, the distinguished theologian, battle-hardened supporter of human rights and exceptional bon viveur who serves as Metropolitan Bishop of Tbilisi and the Senior Pastor of Peace Cathedral.

Bath Inter Faith Group visitors share meditations led by Eve Salomon in the Peace Cathedral.

This is where the Bath Inter Faith Group travellers had come to learn, and the next days opened our eyes and broadened our experience in all manner of extraordinary ways.