Ecumenism Quotes

My own understanding is similar to that of scholar of religion and pastor Howard Thurman. I find a profound teaching in Thurman's saying that "what is true in any religion is in the religion because it is true; it is not true because it is in the religion." Thurman's saying is true for Christian theology. If there is truth in a theology, then it is present simply because it is true, not because it is in the theology. Whether or not we can find truth in a school of thought or particular theological construction is most important, not the school of thought or particular theological construction. Therefore, I find events of truth to draw on from a diversity of theological writings, rather than locate my work in a particular school of thought. The truth we Christians seek, beyond all our words and all of our labels, is found through unity in diversity. It is the common ground we all long for. No one theology alone is capable of revealing this common ground. We require a diversity taken together, each with its distinctive gifts. Together, these various insights into Christian truth correct and inform one another. This is the gift of ecumenism.

Karen Baker-Fletcher

For a Catholic understanding of the faith there is no reason why the basic concern of Evangelical Christianity as it comes to expression in the three “only's” should have no place in the Catholic Church. Accepted as basic and ultimate formulas of Christianity, they do not have to lead a person out of the Catholic Church. . . . They can call the attention of the Catholic church again and again to the fact that grace alone and faith alone really are what saves, and that with all our maneuvering through the history of dogma and the teaching office, we Catholic Christians must find our way back to the sources again and again, back to the primary origins of Holy Scripture and all the more so of the Holy Spirit.