Baptist World Alliance news: statement on refugees; dialogue with World Methodist Council

The Baptist World Alliance, the Christian world communion to which I belong, has issued two press releases this week of interest to readers of Ecclesial Theology.

Today (February 3) the BWA issued a statement on refugees that "decries recent actions by the United States Government to issue a blanket travel ban on seven countries that specifically targets refugees and that seems to especially affect Muslims" (click on hyperlink for full statement).

Earlier this week delegations from the BWA and the World Methodist Council convened in Jamaica for the fourth annual session of a five-year bilateral ecumenical dialogue between the two communions, February 1-8 (click on hyperlink for press release).

"Real Baptists Pursue Church Unity"

The new issue of Baptist World, the magazine of the Baptist World Alliance, includes my article "Real Baptists Pursue Church Unity" (vol. 63, no. 4, October-December 2016, pp. 9-10). The article is part of a feature section of articles on Baptists and unity, with other contributions by John Briggs, Elizabeth Newman, Ross Clifford, and Frank Rees and several news articles reporting on various regional and national expressions of Baptist involvement in the pursuit of Christian unity. The issue is available online; an excerpt from the beginning of the article follows:

The experiences of many Baptists and the impressions of many of their external observers run counter to the assertion made by this article’s title. Baptists have their origins in ecclesial division, and their subsequent history is marked by ever-increasing intra-Baptist divisions. Division is certainly a DNA sequence in the genetic code of “real Baptists.” Yet intertwined with it are genetic markers of an impulse toward ecclesial unity, and Baptists are being “real Baptists” when they allow that impulse to move them toward the full participation in the life of the Triune God and in the life of the body of Christ that Jesus prayed would mark his followers: “that they may be one, as we are one” (John 17:22 NRSV)....(read the full article and other articles in this issue here)

Neville Callam on Baptist Identity and the Ecumenical Future (EthicsDaily.com)

Neville Callam, General Secretary of the Baptist World Alliance, devoted his July/August BWA Connect column to my new book Baptist Identity and the Ecumenical Future: Story, Tradition, and the Recovery of Community (Baylor University Press). My previous Ecclesial Theology post linked the version of the column that originally appeared on the BWA web site; now EthicsDaily.com has published a version of the column as well.

Here's an excerpt:

....Many discerning readers will welcome not only the vision of the ecumenical future that Harmon espouses and commends, but also what Harmon’s excellent book implies and actually states concerning the proper work of theologians.

The project Harmon undertakes is done in the service of faithfulness to the Lord of the church. Harmon writes primarily as one who is dedicated to the service of the church and its unity. His is not a fascination with theological ideas for their own sake. His articulation of the vocational dimension of a theologian’s work is as clear and impressive as that offered by another outstanding contemporary Baptist theologian, Molly Marshall.

In richly documented chapters crafted by a competent Baptist ecumenical theologian, Harmon deals with a number of issues which Baptists may need to rethink in the light of the long and rich history of the one church of the living God of which they are a part. Readers will appreciate the clarity that marks Harmon’s book – a clarity that is born in a profound understanding of the issues themselves and also in enviable communications skills.

Baptist Identity and the Ecumenical Future should be required reading for Baptist leaders....(read the full article on EthicsDaily.com)

Order Baptist Identity and the Ecumenical Future from Baylor University Press or via Amazon.

Baptist World Alliance General Secretary on Baptist Identity and the Ecumenical Future

Neville Callam, General Secretary of the Baptist World Alliance, devoted his July/August BWA Connect column to my new book Baptist Identity and the Ecumenical Future: Story, Tradition, and the Recovery of Community (Baylor University Press). Here's an excerpt from the column:

....Many discerning readers will welcome not only the vision of the ecumenical future that Harmon espouses and commends, but also what Harmon’s excellent book implies and actually states concerning the proper work of theologians.

The project Harmon undertakes is done in the service of faithfulness to the Lord of the church. Harmon writes primarily as one who is dedicated to the service of the church and its unity. His is not a fascination with theological ideas for their own sake. His articulation of the vocational dimension of a theologian’s work is as clear and impressive as that offered by another outstanding contemporary Baptist theologian, Molly Marshall.

In richly documented chapters crafted by a competent Baptist ecumenical theologian, Harmon deals with a number of issues which Baptists may need to rethink in the light of the long and rich history of the one church of the living God of which they are a part. Readers will appreciate the clarity that marks Harmon’s book – a clarity that is born in a profound understanding of the issues themselves and also in enviable communications skills.

Baptist Identity and the Ecumenical Future should be required reading for Baptist leaders....(read the full article on the Baptist World Alliance web site)

Order Baptist Identity and the Ecumenical Future from Baylor University Press or via Amazon.

International Baptist-Methodist dialogue continues in Germany

The Baptist World Alliance has issued the following press release regarding the continuation of the international dialogue between the Baptist World Alliance and the World Methodist Council this week in Elstal, Germany:

Baptists and Methodists hold third dialogue session in Germany

Created: Tuesday, 02 February 2016

The Baptist World Alliance (BWA) and the World Methodist Council (WMC) will be engaged in the third session of the international theological dialogue between the two Christian World Communions. Both teams will meet at the Theological Seminary at Elstal, Germany, from February 3-10.

Previous sessions of the BWA/WMC dialogue were held in the United States in 2014 and in Singapore in 2015.

The week of meetings will cover the theme, “Making Disciples: Baptism as Christian Initiation” and will explore topics such as “Ecumenical conversations and agreements on baptism in Germany” and “Regional soundings on baptism from various parts of the world” such as Africa, Asia, Caribbean, Europe, Latin America and North America.

Historical, theological, liturgical and ecumenical perspectives and understandings of baptism will be explored.

Relevant excerpts from international and regional ecumenical texts regarding baptism are being selected, collated and distributed, with participants encouraged to contribute material from their respective region.

Other activities will include a tour of the German capital of Berlin and a visit to the birthplace of Martin Luther. Protestants, Baptists included, will mark the 500^th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation in 2017.

Luther had nailed 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, German, in 1517, an act that sparked the Protestant Reformation movement and a major break from the Roman Catholic Church.

The BWA delegation comprises dialogue Co-chair Curtis Freeman, research professor of theology and director of the Baptist House of Studies at Duke University Divinity School in the United States; Deji Isaac Ayegboyin, professor of Church History and African Christianity and at the Department of Religious Studies, University of Ibadan in Nigeria; Valérie Duval-Poujol, professor of biblical exegesis at the Catholic Institute, Paris, France, and director for its Institute for Bible and Orientalism; Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School of Samford University in the US; Stephen Holmes, senior lecturer in theology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland; and R. L. Hnuni, principal of Calcutta Bible Seminary in Kolkata, India.

Methodist representatives are dialogue Co-chair Tim Macquiban, minister of Wesley Church and superintendent minister in the United Kingdom; Paul W. Chilcote, academic dean and professor of historical theology and Wesleyan Studies at Ashland Theological Seminary in the US; Christine Gooden-Benguche, secretary, Jamaica District Conference, Methodist Church of the Caribbean and the Americas; Lauren Claire Matthew, minister in the Umngeni Circuit, Natal Coastal District in South Africa, district supervisor of studies of the General Committee of Education for Mission and president of the Youth and Young Adult Committee of the WMC; Ulrike Schuler, professor for Church History, Methodism, and Ecumenism at Reutlingen School of Theology in Germany; and Malcolm Tan, pastor, Barker Road Methodist Church in Singapore.

BWA director of Mission, Evangelism and Theological Reflection, Fausto Vasconcelos, who serves as co-secretary along with Paul Chilcote, will also be present.

Baptist World Alliance®
© February 2, 2016

Further Conversations between Anglicans and Baptists

Representatives of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and the Church of England met from 2011 through 2014 for a second series of ecumenical conversations between these two British ecclesial communions, following up on a previous series of conversations held from 1992 through 2005. In 2015 the joint commission to the second series of conversations published its report: Sharing the Faith at the Boundaries of Unity: Further Conversations between Anglicans and Baptists, ed. Paul S. Fiddes (Centre for Baptist History and Heritage Studies, vol. 12; Oxford: Regent's Park College, 2015). The 148-page report is now available online as a downloadable PDF (click on the hyperlinked title above). It builds upon both the report from the first series of conversations, Pushing at the Boundaries of Unity: Anglicans and Baptists in Conversation (London: Church House Publishing, 2005), and the report from an international dialogue between the Anglican Communion and the Baptist World Alliance, Conversations Around the World 2000-2005: The Report of the International Conversations between the Anglican Communion and the Baptist World Alliance (London: Anglican Communion Office, 2005). Both of those book-length reports likewise are available online as downloadable PDFs (click on hyperlinked titles).

This paragraph from the introduction to the new report provides a sense of its unique approach:

Ecumenical reports frequently refer to 'conversations' between members of different communions. However, what they offer is not an account of the actual conversations themselves but a distilled account of their conclusions. Readers can often deduce what the cut and thrust of debate must have been that lies behind the 'agreed statement', but for the most part they have to guess at it. This report is different, deliberately. Just as the previous report 'pushed at the boundaries' that inhibit unity, this one also reaches beyond, even breaks, the normal framework of reports. It 'pushes the envelope' of a report in aiming to give the reader a taste of what the participants said to each other. In so doing it seeks to give insight into the life and ethos of each communion, rather than simply repeating established viewpoints (pp. 2-3).

I'm grateful for the report's reference to my book Towards Baptist Catholicity: Essays on Tradition and the Baptist Vision (Studies in Baptist History and Thought, vol. 27; Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2006) and to the report from the 2000-2005 Anglican-Baptist international conversations, for which I served as a member of the Baptist delegation for its North American phase.

Creighton symposium on Unitatis Redintegratio; Baptist-Methodist dialogue continues

This Saturday I will speak at Creighton University's symposium on the Vatican II Decree on Ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio along with William Rusch, former executive director of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Office for Ecumenical Affairs and former director of the Faith and Order Commission of the National Council of Churches and now adjunct professor of Lutheran studies at Yale Divinity School, and Fr. John Crossin, executive director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The symposium is part of a three-year series on Celebrating the Legacy of Vatican II commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Council. A Creighton University press release provides details and links to additional information about the symposium and series.

Meanwhile, the second session of the international bilateral ecumenical dialogue between the Baptist World Alliance and the World Methodist Council is meeting in Singapore February 5-10. This year's round of conversations focuses on theological issues such as the nature of the church, the nature of authority, sanctification and justification. A Baptist World Alliance press release issued yesterday includes additional information and a roster of the Baptist and Methodist delegation members.

New issue of Ecclesiology: Harmon on Holmes, Chapman on Baptist-Catholic dialogue, Lim on new WCC F&O text

The new issue of the journal Ecclesiology published by Brill includes several articles and reviews of interest. Among them: my review of Stephen Holmes' book Baptist Theology in the T&T Clark Doing Theology series; David M. Chapman's article "Roman Catholics and Baptists in Dialogue: Convergence and Divergence Assessed"; and Timothy Lim's article "'What If We Could?': An Essay on Productive Ecumenism" that engages the recent text issued by the World Council of Churches Commission on Faith and Order, The Church: Towards a Common Vision. Previews and abstracts of these are available online (click on hyperlinks above). The table of contents follows:

• Publisher’s Note

  • pp.: 1–1 (1)

• Contributors

  • pp.: 3–4 (2)

• Editorial: An Agonistic Ecclesiology

  • Author: Paul Avis
  • pp.: 5–8 (4)

• Evaluating Church Organisations by the Light of Lumen Gentium

  • Author: Christina Kheng
  • pp.: 9–33 (25)

• From Infants to Mothers

  • Author: Cristina Lledo Gomez
  • pp.: 34–64 (31)

• ‘What if We Could?’

  • Author: Timothy Lim T. N.
  • pp.: 65–83 (19)

• Roman Catholics and Baptists in Dialogue

  • Author: David M. Chapman
  • pp.: 84–92 (9)

• Book Review: Anglican Theology, written by Mark Chapman

  • Author: Alan Bartlett
  • pp.: 93–97 (5)

• Book Review: Pro Communione: Theological Essays on the Anglican Covenant, edited by Benjamin M. Guyer

  • Author: Simon Oliver
  • pp.: 98–101 (4)

• Book Review: The Ecclesial Canopy: Faith, Hope, Charity, written by Martyn Percy

  • Author: Elaine Graham
  • pp.: 102–105 (4)

• Book Review: Trent: What Happened at the Council, written by John W. O’Malley

  • Author: Gerald O’Collins, SJ
  • pp.: 106–108 (3)

• Book Review: Witness of the Body: The Past, Present and Future of Christian Martyrdom, written by Michael Budde and Karen Scott

  • Author: Michael Nazir-Ali
  • pp.: 109–112 (4)

• Book Review: From Trent to Vatican II: Historical and Theological Investigations, edited by Raymond F. Bulman and Frederick J. Parrella

  • Author: Norman Tanner
  • pp.: 113–116 (4)

• Book Review: Exegesis and Theology in Early Christianity, written by Frances Young

  • Author: Mark Santer
  • pp.: 117–119 (3)

• Book Review: Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World, edited by Katherine Van Liere, Simon Ditchfield, and Howard Louthan

  • Author: Felicity Heal
  • pp.: 120–122 (3)

• Book Review: Baptist Theology, written by Stephen R. Holmes

  • Author: Steven R. Harmon
  • pp.: 123–126 (4)

• Book Review: Pacifism, Just War, and Tyrannicide: Bonhoeffer’s Church-World Theology and His Changing Forms of Political Thinking and Involvement, written by David M. Gides

  • Author: Javier Garcia
  • pp.: 127–129 (3)

• Book Review: The Last Judgment: Christian Ethics in a Legal Culture, written by Andrew Skotnicki

  • Author: David Grumett
  • pp.: 130–132 (3)

• Book Review: Evangelicals and the Early Church: Recovery. Reform. Renewal, edited by George Kalantzis and Andrew Tooley

  • Author: Martin Wellings
  • pp.: 133–135 (3)

• Book Review: The Cambridge Companion to Francis of Assisi, edited by Michael J. P. Robson

  • Author: Jeremy Worthen
  • pp.: 136–138 (3)

• Book Review: What Christianity is Not: An Exercise in ‘Negative’ Theology, written by Douglas John Hall

  • Author: Paul Avis
  • pp.: 139–140 (2)

• Book Review: The Anglican Understanding of the Church: An Introduction, written by Paul Avis

  • Author: David Tustin
  • pp.: 141–143 (3)

New publication--"Free Church Theology, the Pilgrim Church, and the Ecumenical Future"

The new issue of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies (vol. 49, no. 3, Summer 2014) includes my journal article "Free Church Theology, the Pilgrim Church, and the Ecumenical Future" (pp. 420-42). The précis published at the beginning of the article follows below:

Within the framework of receptive ecumenism, this essay addresses the question: is there anything distinctive about theology in the Free Church tradition that constitutes some portion of the ecclesial gifts that the rest of the church might contemplate receiving from the Free Churches? The author’s own Baptist tradition serves as a particular example that represents the larger Free Church tradition in this connection. A survey of the international bilateral dialogues with Baptist World Alliance participation reveals a Free Church theology that is both radically biblical and radically catholic and yet relentlessly pilgrim in its resistance to overly realized eschatologies of the church and its doctrinal formulations. After establishing connections between Free Church and ecumenically shared expressions of a pilgrim church theology, the essay concludes by proposing seven ecclesiological theses rooted in the narrative Christology of Baptist theologian James Wm. McClendon, Jr., regarding what it might mean ecumenically for the church to embody the story of Jesus as a pilgrim people.

French Baptist sole female fraternal delegate to Synod on Family

Today the Extraordinary Synod on the Family convened by Pope Francis concludes the first week of its two-week gathering at the Vatican. The synod is intended to be representative of the universal church: among the 253 men and women from five continents participating in the synod are not only Catholic clerical representatives, including 114 presidents of Catholic bishops' conferences, 13 heads of the Eastern Catholic Churches, and 25 heads of divisions of the Roman Curia among Catholic clerical representatives, but also laypersons--including 13 married couples and 16 experts in various fields germane to the matters under discussion--as well as 8 "fraternal delegates." representing non-Catholic traditions. Among these, Valérie Duval-Poujol, a professor of biblical exegesis at the Catholic Institute of Paris, France, is representing the Baptist World Alliance and is the only woman among the eight fraternal delegates to the synod. On Friday, October 10, she gave an address to the synod. A transcript of her address appears on the web site of the Fédération des Églises Évangéliques Baptistes de France (en Français). Earlier this week she was interviewed on Vatican Radio (audio also en Français).

Prof. Duval-Poujol, whose academic specialty is Septuagintal studies, serves as President of the Ecumenical Commission of the Protestant Federation of France and is a member of the Baptist delegation to conversations between the BWA and the World Methodist Council. An interview with Duval-Poujol about her role as a fraternal delegate to the synod appears on the web site of the Protestant Federation of France (print; also en Français). (In the course of the interview she also mentions the work of an ongoing national bilateral dialogue between Baptists and Catholics in France that has produced several significant reports on their work over the past two decades, including most recently a document summarizing their conversations on Mary.)

The other seven fraternal delegates to the synod are as follows. Ecumenical Patriarchate: His Eminence Athenagoras, metropolitan of Belgium; Patriarchate of Moscow: His Eminence Hilarion, president of the Department of External Church Relations of the Patriarchate of Moscow, Russian Federation; Coptic Orthodox Church: His Eminence Bishoy, metropolitan of Damietta, Kafr Elsheikh and Elbarari, Egypt; Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch: His Eminence Mar Yostinos, archbishop of Zhale and Bekau, Lebanon; Anglican Communion: His Grace Paul Butler, bishop of Durham, England, Great Britain; Lutheran World Federation: Mr Ndanganeni Petrus Phaswaha, president of the Lutheran Evangelical Church in South Africa; World Communion of Reformed Churches: Rev. Benebo Fubara-Manuel, president of the Nigerian Communion of Reformed Churches, Nigeria.

(Many thanks to Jane Stranz, a French Reformed pastor who coordinates ecumenical relations on the staff of the Fédération protestante de France, for making me aware of Prof. Duval-Poujol's participation in the synod via Twitter and Facebook contacts.)

Update: A YouTube clip is available from a press conference in which Valérie Duval-Poujol summarizes (in French) her address to the synod, beginning at 14:58 in the clip. After she speaks, a translator summarizes her remarks to the press corps in English.

Update #2: Jane Stranz has posted as a Facebook note an English translation of the text of Prof. Duval-Poujol's address to the synod on behalf of the Baptist World Alliance.

Fr. William Henn on Pope Francis and Ecumenism

Fr. William Henn, O.F.M.Cap., has been one of the Catholic Church's leading ecumenical theologians since the 1987 publication of his dissertation on The Hierarchy of Truths According to Yves Congar. Currently serving as the Robert Bellarmine Professor of Ecclesiology and Ecumenism at Gregorian University in Rome and consultant to the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Henn represents the Catholic Church as a member of the Standing Commission of the World Council of Churches Commission on Faith and Order and has served on the Catholic delegations to international bilateral dialogues with the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, representatives of Pentecostal churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the Mennonite World Conference, and the second phase of conversations with the Baptist World Alliance. I had the privilege of serving as a member of the Baptist-Catholic joint commission with Fr. Henn, for which we both presented papers on the relationship between Scripture and tradition in the Vatican II Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum and co-drafted a preliminary version of the section on "The Authority of Christ in Scripture and Tradition" in The Word of God in the Life of the Church: A Report of International Conversations between The Catholic Church and the Baptist World Alliance 2006-2010.

A month after the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis last year, Fr. Henn granted an interview to the National Catholic Reporter offering his perspectives on the ecumenical implications of the beginning of Pope Francis' papacy. I discovered it only today, but it's such an insightful article, with observations that hold true a year-and-a-half later, that I thought it worth calling to the attention of readers of Ecclesial Theology now.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of John L. Allen, Jr.'s interview article:

Rome – For years, experts on ecumenism have said that the main stumbling block to putting the divided Christian family back together again isn’t so much the papacy, but a certain overly monarchical model of it. If we could find new ways of exercising primacy, they prophesied, unity might move a massive step closer to reality.

One veteran expert believes those “new ways” may have arrived with Pope Francis, predicting that this pontiff will prove a “boon” to ecumenism.

“He’s bringing to life what Vatican II added about the role of the papacy being understood from within the college of bishops and the communion of churches,” said Capuchin Fr. William Henn of Rome’s Gregorian University....(read the full article at National Catholic Reporter)

Fr. Gregory Fairbanks on dialogue and unity

Fr. Gregory J. Fairbanks

Fr. Gregory Fairbanks has responsibilities for relationships with ecclesial communities of the West in his role as an official with the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. In that connection he was one of our dialogue partners in the conversations between the Baptist World Alliance and the Catholic Church in which I participated from 2006 through 2010. (The report from those conversations, The Word of God in the Life of the Church, is available online on the Vatican web site.) In comments offered to the Catholic News Service for its May 8 story "Hope and hard work: U.S. priest trusts Christian unity is possible," Fr. Fairbanks reflects on these conversations in testifying to the surprising work of the unifying Spirit that can emerge from honest dialogue between divided Christian communities. Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the article:

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The issues dividing Christian communities have changed over the past 50 years, but a Philadelphia archdiocesan priest working in ecumenical dialogue at the Vatican is confident that Christian unity is possible.

"We are people of hope. We trust we have the same Scriptures, the same belief in Christ," said Msgr. Gregory J. Fairbanks, an official at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.... (read the full article at Catholic News Service)

Ecumenical news update: Pan-Orthodox council announced, Baptist-Methodist dialogue begins

Baptist World Alliance-World Methodist Council joint delegation

Catching up on sharing on Ecclesial Theology some recent ecumenical news:

At a meeting of the archbishops of the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox churches at the Phanar in Istanbul March 6-9, they issued a "Message of the Primates of the Orthodox Churches" which announced that "The Holy and Great Synod of the Orthodox Church will be convened by the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople in 2016." This Pan-Orthodox Council would be the first such assembly since the Second Council of Nicaea in AD 787, reckoned by many churches as the Seventh Ecumenical Council. In Orthodox perspective, this could be considered the Eighth Ecumenical Council, since as Metropolitan Kallistos (Timothy Ware) notes in his book The Orthodox Church, "...the Orthodox Church also believes that, if it so desired, it could by itself convene and hold another ecumenical council, equal in authority to the first seven. Since the separation of east and west the Orthodox (unlike the west) have never in fact chosen to summon such a council; but this does not mean that they believe themselves to lack the power to do so." (It should be noted that there was a Fourth Council of Constantinople in 879-80, an attempt at East-West reunion, that some regard as an Eighth Ecumenical Council.) At the very least, the 2016 council has the potential to be something of an "Orthodox Vatican II."

In other news, the bilateral international ecumenical dialogue between the Baptist World Alliance and the World Methodist Council had its initial meeting January 30-February 5 at Samford University's Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. Below is the official communique from the meeting as posted on the World Methodist Council Ecumenical Relations page:

Communique from the Bilateral Dialogue between the Baptist World Alliance and The World Methodist Council

Representatives of the Baptist World Alliance and the World Methodist Council met January 30-February 5 at the Beeson Divinity School of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. The meeting was the opening round of conversations in the first international dialogue between Methodists and Baptists. The overall theme of the dialogue is faith working through love. The delegations were welcomed by the Provost and Executive Vice President of the University, Dr. J. Bradley Creed, as well as Bishop Debra Wallace-Padgett of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church and Rev. Dr. Mike McLemore, Director of Missions for the Birmingham Baptist Association.

Participants discussed presentations on the history, theology, and contemporary global situation of Methodists and Baptists. The dialogue is co-chaired by Rev. Dr. Tim Macquiban, Superintendent Minister of the Cambridge Methodist Circuit and minister of Wesley Methodist Church in Cambridge, England, and Rev. Dr. Curtis Freeman, Research Professor and Director of the Baptist House of Studies at Duke University Divinity School, Durham, North Carolina. Rev. Dr. Paul Chilcote, Dean of Ashland Theological Seminary in Ashland, Ohio, and Rev. Dr. Fausto Vasconcelos, BWA director of Mission, Evangelism, and Theological Reflection, serve as co-secretaries.

Other members of the Methodist delegation present were Dr. Ulrike Schuler, Professor at the Reutlingen School of Theology in Germany; Rev. Malcolm Tan, Pastor of Barker Road Methodist Church in Singapore; Rev. Lauren Matthews, Minister, Umngeni Circuit, Natal Coastal District, Methodist Church of Southern Africa; and the Rev. Christine Gooden-Benguche, Secretary, Jamaica District Conference, Methodist Church of the Caribbean and the Americas. The additional Baptist members present were Rev. Dr. Deji Isaac Ayegboyin, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria; Dr. Valérie Duval-Poujol, Professor of Biblical Exegesis, Catholic Institute, Paris, France; Rev. Dr. Timothy George, Chair, BWA Commission on Doctrine and Christian Unity and Dean of Beeson Divinity School, Birmingham, Alabama; and Rev. Dr. Stephen Holmes, Senior Lecturer in Theology, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland. Also attending were Rev. Professor Robert Gribben, chair of the ecumenical relations committee of the WMC, from Melbourne, Australia, and Rev. Dr. Neville Callam, General Secretary of the BWA.

The participants worshipped together each day drawing on the two traditions, and attended the Sunday service at the Dawson Memorial Baptist Church in Birmingham. They made a pilgrimage to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church where they met with Rev. Carolyn McKinstry, author of the book While the World Watched based on her experience as a survivor of the 1963 bombing of the church. They then visited the Civil Rights Institute where they particularly noted the participation of local churches in the struggle for racial justice.

The meeting next year is planned for Singapore where they will take up the conversations on the nature of the church with special attention to justification and sanctification.

5th February 2014