tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298850992012-01-18T09:02:18.197+01:00Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.comBlogger281100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-21775379357867567582011-04-20T22:36:00.000+02:002011-04-20T22:36:12.982+02:00

Reading an interesting piece in Etudes Théologiques & Religieuses about Karl Barth's take on Vatican II. In the piece, "L'ombre de Karl Barth à Vatican II", Gilles Routhier of the Université Laval in Québec argues that Barth, unlike his Calvinist confreres - W. A. Visser 't Hooft and Lukas Vischer - was less interested in the significance of Vatican II for ecumenical relations than what it said

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-51269629269340183152011-03-07T11:39:00.000+01:002011-03-07T11:39:03.139+01:00

The former president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Cardinal Walter Kasper sees "significant progress" in ecumenism according to a report in the German Protestant news agency, the evangelischer Pressedient. In the foreword to a new book by German Lutheran Bishop Friedrich Weber, "Zeitansage - Texte zur ökumenischen Lage", Kasper notes developments such as the declaration

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-80697757574429889612010-09-01T22:37:00.000+02:002010-09-01T22:37:13.244+02:00

Konf: Säkularisierung oder Rückkehr des Religiösen? "Veranstalter:Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, Bonn BonnDatum, Ort:16.09.2010-17.09.2010, Konferenzsaal IIDeadline:12.09.2010Autoren-Workshop des Archivs für Sozialgeschichte: Säkularisierung oder Rückkehr des Religiösen? Gesellschaft und Religion seit der Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts Traditionelle Formen von Religion,

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-20312914068481521652010-07-01T21:12:00.001+02:002010-07-01T21:12:51.851+02:00

Maybe it is a cyclical generational thing, but suddenly there seem to be a whole series of reflections on the globalization of the ecumenical movement in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. In Karlsruhe, there is the project on the globalisation of the World Council of Churches, which is organizing a conference on the theme in March 2010. Now there is a new book by Angel D. Santiago-Vendrell,

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-28481608910729509272010-06-16T00:51:00.001+02:002010-06-16T00:54:14.803+02:00

Out at lunch today, I was pleased I had taken a copy of Le Monde with me because I came across its review of "L'Islam Republicain: Ankara, Teheran, Dakar" by Jean-Francois Bayart. In one sense the book is a investigation of the relationship between religion and the state in three majority-Muslim countries.In another, it's a polemic, sparked off by the discussion on a burka ban, with a prevailing

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-23726044231384070082010-06-13T16:19:00.000+02:002010-06-13T16:19:12.457+02:00

The opening today of the European Christian Internet Conference in Sigtuna, Sweden, seems like the right time to pose the question of what "operating system" is needed for the ecumenical movement. It might seem superfluous on a blog called 'Open Source Ecumenism' for such a question even to be posed: surely the answer is clear: the Mac/PC dichotomy is to be transcended through a common appeal to

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-82427084978669040852010-06-12T15:58:00.004+02:002010-06-13T15:53:04.473+02:00

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the unexpected, untimely and tragic death at the age of 54 of Marlin VanElderen, officially the executive editor of World Council of Churches publications, but in reality the force tranquille of the WCC, sought out for his careful advice and his ecumenical memory, the chief drafter of the WCC's Common Understanding and Vision document, and known for his

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-66269596973929879712010-05-25T20:27:00.001+02:002010-05-25T20:28:32.494+02:00

Today I offered a meditation in the Ecumenical Centre to mark Pentecost as the great festival of communication. Here's an extract: God's Spirit breaks down the barriers between nations, the barriers of culture, and the barriers of language. Being drawn together, being one, does not mean being identical. It means transcending the barriers that separate us, holding together our diversity in the

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-34248722674025417862010-03-28T14:33:00.002+02:002010-03-28T15:37:47.235+02:00

I first came across Thomas Kuhn's theory of the "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" in my first week at university, presented as a tool used by some economists to explain why economic theories change over time: Broadly, this concept draws attention to the tendency for groups of intellectuals to become totally absorbed in the logical puzzles of a particular theory. When outside change occurs,

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-60924616759034694932010-03-17T21:22:00.001+01:002010-03-17T21:23:14.398+01:00

Rather overshadowed by the sexual abuse scandal engulfing the Catholic Church (and others as well), Pope Benedict XVI for the first time visited the Lutheran church in Rome, only the second time that a pontiff has visited the place of worship (the first was Pope John Paul II in 1983, the year of the 500th anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther). Benjamin Lassiwe has an article (in German)

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-81847681558808602472010-03-12T19:25:00.002+01:002010-03-12T19:47:35.362+01:00

Without "civil disobedience" from below, there will be no movement forward in ecumenism - the words of German Lutheran theologian Joachim Track when presenting his new book, "Kirchengemeinschaft jetzt" ("Ecclesial communion now" doesn't have quite the same ring in English), with co-author Catholic theologian Johannes Brosseder, in Munich on 11 March. It's one of what is likely to be a flood of

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-26886530050679116902010-03-11T14:51:00.002+01:002010-03-11T14:52:46.800+01:00

Following its third assembly in 1961 in New Delhi, the World Council of Churches developed from being a body with a mainly North American/European orientation to one with a global scope.The integration of the WCC and the International Missionary Council opened the council to the churches of Africa and Asia.  At the same time, the broader Orthodox participation that followed New Delhi meant a

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-83117672288423488912010-03-05T14:59:00.001+01:002010-03-05T15:06:19.742+01:00

Today - 5 March 2010 - marks the 20th anniversary of the opening of the World Convocation on Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation (JPIC) . Planned as the culmination of the JPIC process - better known in the then two German states as the "Conciliar Process" - delegates from all parts of the world converged for a week's deliberations in the South Korean capital of Seoul. It was intended to

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-67295131684888602502010-03-04T14:02:00.133+01:002010-03-05T21:39:39.229+01:00

Some years ago, while working in Brussels, I wrote an article (posted here) looking at the parallels between the European Union and the ecumenical movement. The starting point was the widespread feeling in the early 1990s of stagnation in the European Union, with the Single Market not being able to meet the challenges posed by the disintegration of communism and the end of the Cold War. There

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-4178047473008021232010-01-12T23:46:00.006+01:002010-03-04T09:46:56.037+01:00

In his first sermon as general secretary of the World Council of Churches, Olav Fykse Tveit spoke of the need to enter into the depths of this world and its suffering and divisions - and together, to be the voice calling to newness of life. But he also quoted a poem by a Norwegian poet, Olav H. Hauge, expressing the dream of love, love for the life we have, love for the world we live in, today

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-56509409552880604372009-12-16T22:41:00.005+01:002010-03-04T20:09:07.380+01:00

Dan Smith, who in the 1980s was a prominent activist in the movement for nuclear disarmament, has just published a blog post which analyses Barack Obama's intellectual debt to the just war theory, in the U.S. president's acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize.Smith notes The Just War tradition is prevalent to a degree many people do not notice and it is perhaps surprisingly durable. Any time

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-67346059479221031962009-12-14T08:10:00.004+01:002010-03-04T20:09:54.029+01:00

Alongside the events in Copenhagen for the climate change summit, a brief press release on Friday (11 December) in Danish announced that the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark has decided to join the Porvoo Communion of Anglican churches in the British Isles and Ireland, and Nordic and Baltic Lutheran churches. The communion is based on the Porvoo Declaration signed in 1996 established

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-81606322007557460042009-12-10T09:28:00.003+01:002010-03-04T20:10:23.726+01:00

The Zenit news agency today carried a report that Benedict XVI had told a group of Brazilian bishops on 5 December that Brazil needed to get over the divisions left by Marxist-inspired liberation theology (the Vatican text of the Pope's statement is here in Portuguese). According to the Zenit translation, Benedict noted that August marked the the 25th anniversary of the instruction "Libertatis

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-70633076307885945122009-12-09T09:23:00.011+01:002009-12-09T17:10:43.142+01:00

The Irish School of Ecumenics has announced a 2010 conference on "From World Mission to Interreligious Witness: Visioning Ecumenics in the 21st Century": The centenary of the ecumenical 1910 World Mission Conference in Edinburgh is an opportunity to engage, critically, with the achievements and failures of Ecumenics as that can be interpreted through the changes of vision and action manifest in

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-27174505247862864282009-12-08T22:49:00.003+01:002010-03-04T20:11:41.289+01:00

On Saturday I enjoyed listening to a programme on BBC Radio 4 about how Bob Marley dropped out of the Jamaican music scene and spent a year driving a forklift truck in the Chrysler car factory in Wilmington, Delaware (programme can still be listened to here until 11 December). Then, as I happened to visit Ben Myers' Faith and Theology blog, I came across a whole post devoted to Rastafari Theology

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-22088126950399832642009-12-08T09:00:00.018+01:002010-03-04T20:12:03.900+01:00

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lesslie Newbigin, an English Presbyterian missionary to India who went on in 1947 to become one of the founders and a bishop of the (United) Church of South India, and subsequently general secretary of the International Missionary Council and associate general secretary of the World Council of Churches. Coincidentally, the Times newspaper on 5

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-52163849728682738792009-12-07T10:16:00.043+01:002010-03-04T20:12:26.902+01:00

The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomeos I and the Vatican recently exchanged messages to mark the visit to Istanbul by a delegation headed by Cardinal Walter Kasper for St Andrew's Day, the "thronal feast" of the patriarchate. Both referred to to the continuing discussions of the Orthodox Roman Catholic international theological commission on the primacy of the Bishop of Rome. In a message to

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-10849525376700619042009-12-06T22:12:00.003+01:002010-03-04T20:13:07.838+01:00

One of the phrases most of associated with the ecumenical movement in the past fifty years has been the slogan, "Unity in Diversity", the idea that church unity does not mean uniformity. It has also been suggested that this slogan has influenced the European Union in its quest - it is used as the title for a document setting out different persectives and common goals in the enlerged EU. But one

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-22553351074757839732009-12-05T23:04:00.007+01:002009-12-09T17:09:05.259+01:00

Are we moving toward a "united Christianity"? That's the assertion made by Adrian Pabst on the Guardian's  Comment is Free site. In the article, Pabst suggests that by opening a new chapter of theological engagement and concrete co-operation with Orthodoxy and Anglicanism, Pope Benedict XVI is changing the terms of debate about church reunification, leading to "the end of the Great Schism between

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-13665169064482657092009-09-27T21:29:00.005+02:002009-09-28T08:17:32.856+02:00

Diarmaid MacCulloch wrote a brilliant history of the Reformation and now he has turned his attention to 3000 years of Christianity.Rowan Williams reviewed the book in the Guardian: The sections on Christianity's expansion eastwards and the tragic history of the churches of central Asia, still a little-known and under-researched subject, are among the very best in the book. Also outstanding are

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-76783108882171043222009-06-06T23:38:00.001+02:002009-12-05T23:42:45.899+01:00

There's an interesting piece in the latest issue of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies in which Paul Schreck of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America suggests a joint declaration by the Catholic and Lutheran Churches to mark the Reformation in 2017 on the Confessio Augustana (CA, or Augsburg Confession), the primary confessional document of Lutheran churches.* The Augsburg Confession was

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-26813654770097756952009-03-19T23:44:00.000+01:002009-12-05T23:45:53.460+01:00

In his general audience on 5 March, in the course of an exposition about St Leo the Great, Pope Benedict XVI focussed on the issue of the primacy of the bishop of Rome: Leo the Great, constantly thoughtful of his faithful and of the people of Rome but also of communion between the different Churches and of their needs, was a tireless champion and upholder of the Roman Primacy, presenting himself

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29885099.post-48961917578876599982009-03-12T23:47:00.000+01:002009-12-05T23:47:30.598+01:00

So, The Times is reporting that Pope Benedict XVI is planning to rehabilitate Martin Luther. A Times beat-up, at first sight, with the only person quoted directly being Cardinal Kasper, and even then without it being clear in exactly what context the good German cardinal was pronouncing these words. The Vatican meanwhile has issued a denial of the story. At least though it has got the blogosphere

Open Sourcenoreply@blogger.com0