Study guide to help prepare world convocation on peace
Geneva (WCC) — “Telling the Truth About Ourselves and Our World”, a study guide on overcoming violence in contemporary contexts, has been published by the World Council of Churches in English, French, German and Spanish as part of the build-up to the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC) in May 2011 at Kingston, Jamaica.
Gathering about 1,000 representatives from church-related peace networks from all over the world, the convocation will mark the culmination of the ongoing ecumenical Decade to Overcome Violence (2001-2010) – Churches Seeking Reconciliation and Peace.
Four main sections of the study guide provide resources for discussion of the central themes of the IEPC: peace in the community, peace with the Earth, peace in the marketplace and peace among peoples.
The pattern suggested as a process for considering each theme provides an opportunity to relate the theme to one’s own context and experience, further reflection on the theme in a global perspective, a search for one’s own vision of peace and a commitment to action.
The study guide also provides resources for prayer, study, further reading and action.
The publication is now available in English, French, German and Spanish on the Decade to Overcome Violence (DOV) website.
Printed booklets may be ordered from dov@wcc-coe.org; these hard copies are free of charge, but there will be a charge for shipping quantities of more than 25.
The DOV would welcome offers to translate the study guide into additional languages. Such translations would then be posted on the website.
The new study guide is a follow-up to the widely used DOV publication “Why Violence? Why Not Peace?” which has been translated into 16 languages.
Study guide “Telling the Truth About Ourselves and Our World” (pdf, 1.1 MB)
Decade to Overcome Violence (DOV)
International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC)
Bridgefolk director calls new book the fruit of much interchurch dialogue
Gerald W. Schlabach, Bridgefolk co-founder and long-time director, has just published a new book on the practices of stability that all Christian churches need to sustain community in an age of individualism and mobility of all kinds. “I know I’m being a little provocative with the title,” says Schlabach, “but Unlearning Protestantism is really the fruit of many years of interchurch dialogue. I have tried to listen to various traditions as they have grappled with the challenges of loyalty and dissent, and to share my reflections in a way that helps all of us grow together toward Christ.” Read more
Resource for interchurch families
Follow this link to the website for the Association of Interchurch Families. The organization “seeks to link all those families, groups, and Associations so that together we may grow in Christian unity, and become for our churches an ever-greater gift of healing of the scandal of disunity.
It takes seriously both our marriage commitment to one another and the fact that two churches are represented in our family; by affirming at local, national and global levels the gifts of interchurch families and their potential as a catalyst for wider church unity.”
The most recent newsletter can be found here. Topics in this newsletter include “Spiritual Ecumenism in Interchurch Marital Spirituality” and “Interchurch Families: Domestic Churches.”
Recommended reading: “As Different as We Think: Catholics and Protestants”
Protestants and Catholics may use much the same vocabulary to express their respective beliefs and practices, but behind this common language lie different ways of thinking. Becoming aware of and paying attention to these differences is essential for fruitful ecumenical dialogue.
Bridgefolk board member Darrin Snyder Belousek calls our attention to a recent article in Books & Culture that explores those background assumptions in an especially succinct and helpful way. The full article is not available online, except to the magazine’s subscribers, but Darrin shares his summary below: Read more
Resources for prayer for Christian unity
Click here for Resources for The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and throughout the year, jointly prepared and published by The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and The Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches.
Mennonite historian reviews book by Ivan Kauffman
John A. Lapp, Mennonite historian and former executive secretary of Mennonite Central Committee, writes favorable review of a Follow Me: A History of Christian Intentionality by Bridgefolk co-founder Ivan J. Kauffman in this week’s issue of Mennonite Weekly Review. Click here to read.
Joint statement by Mennonites and Catholics to WCC Decade to Overcome Violence now available
Following up on their 1998-2003 dialogue and ground-breaking document, Called Together to Be Peacemakers Mennonite and Catholic leaders met together for a brief conference October 23-25, 2007 in order to offer joint suggestions for the World Council of Churches’ Decade to Overcome Violence (DOV). The DOV will culminate in an International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC) in 2011. In preparation, representatives from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Mennonite World Conference met at the Centro Pro Unione in Rome with the goal of submitting theological reflections that Mennonites and Catholics, committed to overcoming violence, might affirm together as a witness to peace in the ecumenical context. Read more
New publication on martyrdom
Martyrdom in an Ecumenical Perspective: A Mennonite-Catholic Dialogue, edited by Peter Erb, is the most recent publication in the Bridgefolk Series by Pandora Press. Acknowledging the martyrdom of Anabaptists, the 1998-2003 bilateral discussions between the Catholic Church and Mennonite World Conference resulted in a call for further reflection on the experience of martyrdom. In 2003 and 2004, Saint John’s Abby of Collegeville, Minnesota hosted two conferences in which Catholics and Mennonites discussed this subject. Martyrdom in an Ecumenical Perspective is a collection of perspectives presented at these meetings.
Contributors:
- Brad S. Gregory
- Neal Blough
- Helmut Harder
- Margaret O’Gara
- C. Arnold Snyder
- John D. Roth
- Drew Christianson, S.J.
- Chris K. Huebner
- Jeremy M. Bergen
Books may be ordered from: www.pandorapress.com
New Monasticism in the news
Recent stories
Two recent stories in national newspapers offer different perspectives on what’s happening in new monastic communities. For a description of the movement by a scholar of American religion, see Molly Worthen’s piece from the Boston Globe:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/02/03/the_unexpected_monks
For an up close look at the day-to-day challenges of a community in its first year, see Stephanie Simon’s piece from the L.A. Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-monk26jan26,1,7718645.story?track=crosspromo
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove has written an introduction to new monasticism, especially paying attention to what new monasticism means for the church–and why new communities need the church. You can help get the word out about the book by pre-ordering a copy now:
http://www.amazon.com/New-Monasticism-What-Todays-Church/dp/1587432242
School for Conversion: Updated Calendar for 2008
If you’d like to be part of a School for Conversion event in 2008, a fresh list of locations and dates is now online at:
http://newmonasticism.org
As a matter of fact, the whole www.newmonasticism.org site has been overhauled. Check out new descriptions of SFC Latin America, new courses, links to community of communities and forthcoming books. Let us know what you think–and what else you’d like to see.
New Monastic Library Series
In partnership with Wipf and Stock Publishers, School for Conversion announces its New Monastic Library Series. For over a millennium, if a Christian wanted to read theology, practice Christian spirituality, or study the Bible, she went to the monastery to do so. There people who inhabited the tradition and prayed the prayers of the church also copied manuscripts and offered fresh reflections about living the gospel in a new time. Two thousand years after the birth of the church, there is a new monastic movement stirring in North America. In keeping with ancient tradition, new monastics study the classics of Christian reflection and are beginning to offer some reflections for a new time. The New Monastic Library Series exists to share reflections from new ! monastics and to print classic monastic resources unavailable elsewhere. To see books in the series, visit:
http://wipfandstock.com/browse/series/New%20Monastic%20Library:%20Resources%20for%20Radical%20Discipleship
About Paul Dekar’s new book, Community of the Transfiguration: The Journey of a New Monastic Community, Phyllis Tickle writes in her foreword: “What Dekar has managed to do here is tell his own story, a monastery’s story, and a movement’s story in such a way as to make them all of one piece. Like layers of a well-rendered landscape, each gives depth and texture to the other, each lends grace to the other… the news is of other Christians and their ways of devotion, of other winds of the Spirit blowing across our times, and of other witnesses for whose encouragement we can pray. May each of us find in all those things reason to rejoice as well as a passion and devotion by which to measure and amend our own.”
To read more or order a copy of Dekar’s Community of the Transfiguration, visit:
http://wipfandstock.com/store/Community_of_the_Transfiguration_The_Journey_of_a_New_Monastic_Community
