Early this week I spent time with students from various seminaries and university across the United States for a 2-day seminar on interfaith dialogue in Boston, MA. The experience was exciting and new territory in the ever-changing shape of my faith. The faith that had been discovered in the context of Fundamentalism has over the past few years slowly eroded to make room for new content, and this was surely one of those moments. This new direction seems appropriate. The Ecumenical Institute of Theology prepared me for inter-denominational dialogue. As a Fundamentalist, I had trouble accepting the sincerity of other Christian traditions. Calvinists had misunderstood free will as a guarantee of the Confessionalism that was necessary to come to Christ. Roman Catholics gave inordinate expression to sacramental grace, works, and the veneration of Mary had robbed them of a genuine experience of the life-giving salvation found only in Christ. As these walls crumbled during my time at the Ecumenical Institute, inter-denominational dialogue was logically extended to interfaith dialogue, and the fruit of that came this weekend as I spent time with Jews and even a Tibetan Buddhist discussing our traditions. In fact, I found the Christians who were attending to have expressions of faith much different than mine, hinging almost on something entirely different. I plan on following this with a much more extended reflection of my time in Boston.
The next stop is an emerging educators conference on interfaith in Connecticut in June.
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