Association of Interchurch Families

Bridgefolk participants may be interested in the Association of Interchurch Families and its website, http://www.interchurchfamilies.org/.  The following description is from the front page of the website:

“Some people come to this site to learn more of what the churches are saying on the journey to Christian unity. Others come here because they have a family member or friend who is married to, or considering marrying, a Christian of another tradition. Still others come in an attempt to make sense of the pain and frustration they are feeling as they live in their marriage the impact of the scandal of churches divided…. Interchurch families (where the partners belong to different denominations – often a Roman Catholic and a Christian of another communion) are increasingly found all over the world. We have found that as we draw closer to Christ, we draw closer to each other, and to each other’s churches. Today we are gathering in groups and Associations in various countries. We lend support to each other, share information, and discuss how to live the often painful and confusing situations arising out of the divisions in the churches. We also reach out to other interchurch families so they, too, may come to discover and celebrate the richness of each other’s traditions, a richness of our baptismal unity which we know from experience far exceeds the divisions.

This web site seeks to link all those families, groups, and Associations so that together we may grow in Christian unity, and become for our churches an ever-greater gift of healing of the scandal of disunity.  It takes seriously both our marriage commitment to one another and the fact that two churches are represented in our family; by affirming at local, national and global levels the gifts of interchurch families and their potential as a catalyst for wider church unity….”