Ecumenism and Interfaith Harmony: What’s the Difference?

by Tom Ryan | Jan. 30, 2016

We have just come out of the Jan. 18-25 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, and are heading into the Feb. 1-7 Interfaith Harmony Week put in the calendar for annual observance in 2010 by the General Assembly of the United Nations. How are the two different?

The question is real in the minds of many. During the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity I led a five-day retreat on the theme of "Together in Christ." Although the primary focus was on the importance of an increasingly more visible unity among us as Christians, given the tensions in the world today between people of different religions, towards the end I devoted a few of our conference sessions to interreligious relations as well.

In doing so, the questions from participants indicated a fogginess concerning the difference between the goals of work for Christian unity and the goals of interreligious dialogue. In the exchanges, some referred to other denominations of Christian faith as "other religions."

But Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Evangelicals are not "other religions." They are simply traditions of faith in the religion called Christianity. Denominational names like Roman Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, Pentecostal are all adjectives. The noun is "Christian," and grammatically the noun is called the substantive in the sentence because that’s where the most substance is. It’s not in the adjective or qualifier.

http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/ecumenism-and-interfaith-harmony-what-s-difference