TRANSFORMATIVE CONVERSATIONS IN ECUMENICAL AND INTERFAITH DIALOGUE

At Leicester University early this evening, for the Annual Chaplaincy Lecture, which is being delivered by Dame Mary Tanner, European President of the World Council of Churches. Her topic is "Transformative Conversations in Ecumenical and Interfaith Dialogue". The talk is in the Ken Edwards Building, Lecture Room 3, starting at 1730. Despite the fact that I did the second half of my Masters Degree at Leicester University in Ken Edwards, I can't find lecture room 3. So I'm a little late (in my defence, it was only one session a week and it was several years ago).

The World Council of Faiths came into being in 1948 from the efforts of several earlier ecumenical movements, to develop closer understanding amongst the various Christian churches of Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant traditions. At the same time it also built up experience of intger-faith dialogue amongst Christians, Jews and Muslims.

The talk starts off in ecumenical territory, regarding what Dame Mary called "inner-Christian" dialogue, quite a lot of which concerns dialogue between Roman Catholics and Lutherans (there are some Lutherans whom she seems to know in the audience, which might account for that emphasis). In this context, our speaker outlines a number of precepts for successful dialogue:

• having the rght attitude when entering dialogue (i.e. commitment to inclusiveness for others and to loyalty to one's own tradition);
• the ability to give an accurate and fair account of one's own faith;
• the desire to move beyond dialogue in words to dialogue in action; 
• that dialogue should be lived out by (and within) whole dialogic communities in actions for reconciliation, justice and peace.

Moving on to consider dialogue between communities of different faiths, Dame Mary presents four principles that the churches came up with in the 1980s to guide Christian response to the growing presence and prominence of other religions in Britain. these are not unlike those she has already presented when discussing dialogue among differing Christian communities:

• dialogue begins when people meet. (This is not as simplistic or trite as it sounds; the more genuine the meeting, the more genuine the dialogue)
• dialogue depends on mutual understanding and mutual trust;
• dialogue gives us common courage to enter into service to the community;
• dialogue can become a medium for authentic witness of our own faith, in any tradition.

After her formal talk is over, Dame Mary takes questions from the floor. Here are three of them:

"What new insights into the nature of God and of spirituality are afforded by inter-faith dialogue?"

"How might the visit of Pope Benedict later this year differ from the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1982 and what opportunities for dialogue might his visit present?"

"Does inter-faith dialogue have a destination or is it a never-ending journey?"

Her response to the last of these is, essentially, that the end of the journey is not in our hands. The essence of Dame Mary's talk is that we live in an age of increasing convergence and consensus - and that there is no other way for us to move forward into the future except by dialogue.