Global South Anglican

Source: Living Church

04/05/2006

The cultural diversity of the Anglican Communion has worked in its favor, according to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Most Rev. Rowan Williams launched the fifth Building Bridges seminar by stating that the diversity of the Communion has enabled it to foster relationships and significant interfaith dialogue at a March 27 town hall meeting at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

The Building Bridges seminars bring together Christian and Muslim scholars from around the world to discuss understanding and commonality between faiths. The focus of this year’s conference was “Justice and Rights in Christian and Muslim Traditions.”

According to Archbishop Williams, the Anglican Communion’s interfaith dialogue is having a profound local impact and he pointed to two instances within the past two years in which Muslims in Qatar and Madagascarhave donated land for construction of new Anglican churches.

“The Church of England has an active role in the interfaith dialogue,” he said. “The cultural diversity of the Anglican Communion has worked in our favor in that it has enabled us to foster relationships through the work of interfaith dialogue with significant individuals such as the Rt. Rev’d. Dr. Mouneer H. Anis [Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Egypt with North Africa and The Horn of Africa]. Also, in Nigeria, we are having a difficult but powerful conversation, and we have facilitated a critical dialogue in Pakistan.”

At the town hall meeting, which was conducted in a question-and-answer format, Archbishop Williams responded to inquiries from the audience on topics as wide-ranging as blasphemy laws and the function of free speech in a democratic society, to the role the Anglican Church is playing in the advancement of the interfaith dialogue. The theme that runs through these issues, and that is at the heart of the Building Bridges seminars, is the preeminence of fostering civil discourse, said Archbishop Williams.

- Heather Newton