Assisi 2012: Where we dwell in common

‘Thinking outside the box’ of ecumenical and interfaith dialogue: that was the unusual and challenging goal of a four day international encounter in the Italian city of Assisi this week. The gathering brought to the city of Saints Francis and Clare participants from 55 countries and a wide variety of Christian and other faith backgrounds to focus on the theme ‘Where we dwell in common: pathways for dialogue in the 21^st century’. While not ignoring the official dialogues that take place at national and international level, the aim of the encounter was to explore other innovative, grassroots initiatives that are gaining ground and bringing people of faith together to tackle the pressing problems facing our world today. One of the main organisers of this four day Assisi 2012 event was Gerard Mannion, theology professor at the University of San Diego and Director of its Centre for Catholic Thought and Culture……
Listen to Philippa Hitchen’s interviews with the Assisi 2012 participants..

At the heart of this new ecumenical vision is the idea that each Church must look hard at its own difficulties or shortcomings to see what models it might receive or adapt from other Christian communities. The buzzword being used by experts in different countries is Receptive Ecumenism and one of its pioneers was attending the Assisi conference – he’s Professor Paul Murray, a member of the ARCIC, Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission and director of the Centre for Catholic Studies at Durham University…

If it all sounds rather academic and something best left to the ecumenical experts, well the aim of Assisi 2012 was to prove just the opposite and to see what methods of conflict resolution might be borrowed from or shared with other non-Christian or secular organisations. One of the newcomers at the meeting was Mary McClintock Fulkerson, a Presbyterian minister and professor at Duke Divinity School in North Carolina, whose areas of expertise include the divisive questions of gender and race relations..

At local level in many countries, Christians and other people of faith are working closely together, often sparking a sense of frustration that the formal dialogues seem to lag so far behind. Canon Paul Avis is former General Secretary of the Church of England’s Council for Christian Unity and theological advisor to the worldwide Anglican Communion…

Learning to look and listen to others’ experience of Church in a new way was at the heart of the Assisi 2012 encounter – and it’s also an important focus for Canadian theologian Catherine Clifford, vice dean of the theology faculty at St Paul university in Ottawa…