Willson Lectures: April 7-8, 2008
The Public is Welcome
The Quaker Testimony of Community: Interfaith and Intrafaith
For more than a century, Friends have been actively involved in formal relationships of dialogue and collaboration with followers of other religions and with many Christian communities. In everyday settings, we experience the "dialogue of life" with an even wider variety of other religious groups. Among Friends, we have engaged one another to understand our differences, deepen our appreciation of what we share and reach toward deeper spiritual community.
Rooted in living faith, spiritual experience, the Bible and our Quaker tradition, these processes of dialogue draw on all of our historic testimonies. Viewing interfaith and intrafaith dialogue through the lens of the historic Friends testimony of community offers a fruitful but underdeveloped resource for assisting Friends in assessing what we have learned in the dialogue experiences of the past and helping to articulate and practice those principals that have the most possibilities for guiding our deepening relationships in the future.
This year's lecturer:
Friend ANN RIGGS is an independent theological author and editor and a member of the adjunct teaching faculty at Earlham School of Religion. She holds a Ph.D. from the School of Religious Studies, Catholic University of America. She has served the U.S. Roman Catholic bishops in their ecumenical office and the National Council of Churches USA as Associate General Secretary for Faith and Order. She has represented Friends and the wider community of Christians of the United States in a wide variety of national and international dialogues and discussions. Co-editor of Seeking Cultures Of Peace: A Peace Church Conversation, a book of essays from the 2001 international Historic Peace Churches meeting in Bienenberg, Switzerland, and a member of the planning team for Watu Wa Amani, the 2004 international Historic Peace Churches meeting near Nairobi, Kenya, she will lead the Friends group working with Brethren and Mennonites to plan an international Historic Peace Churches meeting in the Americas in up-coming years.
Ann Riggs is co-author of Introduction to Ecumenism and co-editor of Ancient Faith and American-Born Churches. Dialogues between Christian Traditions. Her articles and book reviews have appeared in Quaker Theology, Quaker Religious Thought, One in Christ, Ecumenical Trends, Journal of Ecumenical Studies and Theological Studies.
Schedule of Events |
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Mon.,
April 7 |
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Tues.,
April 8 |
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| Earlham
School of Religion 228 College Avenue Richmond, IN 47374 (765) 983-1423 or (800) 432-1ESR Email Contact |