Category: Announcements

Press release: 2010 Bridgefolk conference explores footwashing

Collegeville, MN (Bridgefolk) – For the ninth consecutive year a voluntary group of North American Mennonites and Catholics will meet for three days this summer for conversations about the faith which unites them—and the issues which divide them.  The Benedictine community at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville MN will host the gathering, as it has six previous conferences.

Called the Bridgefolk conferences, these annual gatherings seek to build bridges between these two long-estranged Christian communities.  This summer’s conference will be held on July 22-25.  It is open to the public.

This year’s topic is the practice of footwashing, which has emerged in previous conferences as a common practice which both groups have traditionally shared, and which participants in the Bridgefolk movement have found they can share despite the divisions which still exist between their two communities.

This summer’s conference will be the first in a series focusing on the common spiritual practices which sustain both Catholic and Mennonite life.

The 2010 Bridgefolk Conference is subtitled “Practices for our Life Together in Christ.”  It will explore issues such as service, hospitality and non-violence. Speakers will include scholars, pastors and laypersons from both Mennonite and Catholic traditions offering theological, academic and personal reflections on the practice of footwashing and its role in discipleship and Christian formation. Continue reading “Press release: 2010 Bridgefolk conference explores footwashing” →

Bridgefolk director calls new book the fruit of much interchurch dialogue

Gerald W. Schlabach, Bridgefolk co-founder and long-time director, has just published a new book on the practices of stability that all Christian churches need to sustain community in an age of individualism and mobility of all kinds. “I know I’m being a little provocative with the title,” says Schlabach, “but Unlearning Protestantism is really the fruit of many years of interchurch dialogue. I have tried to listen to various traditions as they have grappled with the challenges of loyalty and dissent, and to share my reflections in a way that helps all of us grow together toward Christ.” Continue reading “Bridgefolk director calls new book the fruit of much interchurch dialogue” →

Summer conference travel information

Those traveling to Minnesota for this summer’s conference may be interested in extended their trip to include a visit to the Twin Cities area.  The Dead Sea Scrolls will be on display in the Science Museum of Minnesota.  See this link for additional information.  Visitors to the museum can also view a display of the St. John’s Bible, a hand-written, hand-illuminated Bible commissioned by St. John’s University.

Mennonite-Catholic dialogue featured in ecumenical conference

The recent Mennonite-Catholic dialogue will be among the projects discussed at an upcoming ecumenical conference in St. Paul, MN.  Hosted by Saint Paul Seminary, “A Century of Ecumenism” will be held June 17-19.  The conference is organized by Monsignor John Radano, Vatican staff person for the Mennonite-Catholic dialogue.

From the conference website:

The goal of this seminar is to concentrate the attention of scholars on an assessment of specific achievements of international dialogue. Special attention will be paid to international bilateral dialogues that began immediately after the Second Vatican Council involving the Catholic Church with many different churches and Christian World Communions, and the multilateral dialogue sponsored by the World Council of Churches’ Commission on Faith and Order.

The conference schedule and brochure can be found here.

Resource for interchurch families

Follow this link to the website for the Association of Interchurch Families.  The organization “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.”

The most recent newsletter can be found here.  Topics in this newsletter include “Spiritual Ecumenism in Interchurch Marital Spirituality” and “Interchurch Families: Domestic Churches.”

Bridgefolk co-sponsors ecumenical peace conference

Peace Among the Peoples is a gathering of ecumenically minded Christian peacemakers. This conference will be an opportunity to reflect on the future of ecumenical peacemaking in North America, and beyond. Bridgefolk is a co-sponsor of this conference.

In May 2011, the World Council of Churches will hold the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation in Kingston, Jamaica, culminating the 2001-2010 Decade to Overcome Violence program. The immediate objective of Peace Among the Peoples is to critically appropriate the agenda of the 2011 Convocation.

The meeting will include panel presentations from leading thinkers and activists, such as Stanley Hauerwas, Rita Nakashima Brock and Brian McLaren.

For more information, click here.