Called Together: Identity, Accountability, Hospitality (North American Academy of Ecumenists 2011 Annual Conference)

The North American Academy of Ecumenists will hold its next annual conference September 23-25, 2011 in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The conference theme "Called Together: Identity, Accountability, Hospitality" is rooted in the World Council of Churches Faith and Order paper Called to be the One Church (Porto Alegre, 2006), which calls churches to acknowledge their mutual responsibility to one another. "Yet," the conference announcement on the NAAE web site observes, "churches continue to act independently and to seek renewal by accenting distinctive identities. The call to mutual responsibility is challenged in substantial ways: pressures for organizational survival, growing cultural disenchantment with religion, and wide diversity in decision-making procedures that can address current questions of faith and life in contravening ways.The 2011 NAAE Conference will study possibilities for mutual accountability, analyze specific forms of ecclesial identity and query the habit of hospitality toward one another as a means for realizing how 'The Church's oneness is an image of the unity of the Triune God in the communion of the divine Persons' [Called to Be the One Church II.3]."

Registration information and additional materials related to this upcoming conference are available on the NAAE web site.