EcuBlog from Fr. John Ford, CSC

Ancient Faith and American-Born Churches: Dialogues Between Christian Traditions.
Edited by Ted A. Campbell, Ann K. Riggs, Gilbert W. Stafford
Faith & Order Commission Theological Series
Paulist Press, 2006. Paperback: ISBN 0-8091-4321-6, $19.95.

Can Christians from a diversity of traditions really dialogue? This book is basically a guidebook that presents a method for ecumenical dialogue, along with eight examples of ecumenical dialogues on a wide diversity of topics:

1. “Holiness” — Dialogue between the Wesleyan and Roman Catholic Traditions
2. “Reconcilition in Worship” — Dialogue between the Holiness and Eastern Orthodox Traditions
3. “Apostolicity” — Dialogue between the Stone-Campbell and Roman Catholic Traditions
4. “Creeds and Confessions” — Dialogue between the Reformed, Methodist and Quaker Traditions
5. “Christian Initiation” — Dialogue between the Baptist and Roman Catholic Traditions
6. “Teaching Authority in the Church” — Dialogue between the Stone-Campbell and Lutheran Traditions
7. “Authority and Function of Scripture” — Dialogue between the Lutheran, Reformed and Roman Catholic Traditions.
8. “Eschatology and Mission” — Dialogue between the Anglican and Adventist Traditions

Each of the above dialogues includes a basic position paper from each participant, followed by responses of the participants to each other. Each response tries to indicate: where do we agree? where do we differ? where don’t we understand each other?

The Introduction to this book by Gilbert W. Stafford is available at:
http://www.ncccusa.org/unity/fandostafford.html

The dialogue partners in this book followed the methodology presented in the article on “Theological Language and Ecumenical Methodology” by John T. Ford, which is available at:
http://www.ncccusa.org/unity/fandoford.html.