How fifty years in ecumenical and interreligious life have changed me.

Zikmund, Barbara Brown

The year after the Journal of Ecumenical Studies began publishing, I moved to Philadelphia. My seminary and graduate studies at Duke University were over, and I had a research grant to work on my doctoral dissertation. My husband, a political scientist, had a job at Temple University. I was twenty-five years old and had just been ordained by the United Church of Christ to serve in campus ministry. My parents had met at church, and I had been "churched" my entire life. I was eager to support the commitments of the U.C.C. to promote and embody Christian unity, but I knew very little about the ecumenical movement.

Looking back, at that stage in my life I was ecumenically naive. I did not understand the importance of doctrinal differences and ecclesiastical legacies. I thought contemporary Christians simply needed to get acquainted, or re-acquainted. In grade school my best friend had been Roman Catholic, and I had many Jewish neighbors. I was sure that we could all get along if we just listened and did not get defensive. I knew about the early Christian schisms and the various church-dividing arguments that splintered Protestantism into many denominations, but those things seemed long ago. My local Congregational church had become part of the U.C.C. in 1957. I was inspired by the passion of the U.C.C. to fulfill Jesus's prayer "that they may all be One" (Jn. 17:21). I was also excited about the Second Vatican Council. In the mid-1960's I believed that God was leading people of faith into new expressions of shared religious understanding and action.

This essay is my attempt to look at the past fifty years and share reflections stimulated by my personal ecumenical and interfaith journey. I have asked myself: How did I change? What things happened to me? The Journal of Ecumenical Studies has documented many of the changes that I have lived through. Yet, it was personal experience, not simply reported events, that transformed my thinking. During the past fifty years I have lived into new ways of thinking about (1) the Bible and my Christian faith, (2) the Christian church (churches), and (3) contemporary discipleship in the midst of religious pluralism. I am still a Christian, but I am a very different Christian at age seventy-five. I am more confident about the outrageous message of Jesus Christ, and I am more critical of the way humanity has manipulated that message in the church and the world. I remain deeply connected to the church. It is a large part of who I am. My ministry, my research, my teaching, and my involvement in religious organizations are driven by my conviction that God (the Holy, the Divine) was/is in Jesus Christ reconciling the world. I do not understand fully what that means, but I am inspired by the power of religious convictions and actions around the world. That power remains a mystery and a gift that I cherish and seek to share.

Over the years I became a seminary professor, a feminist advocate, a church historian, an academic administrator, and later the president of a theological school. I have participated in national and international Christian commissions and programs that seek to educate religious leaders to serve church and world. I have stretched my thinking beyond classic ideas of Christian mission and embraced the new challenges and gifts of religious pluralism. My horizons expanded, pushing me into places beyond my comfort zone. And, as I learned to walk with other religious people, to see and to hear what they see and hear, I changed. This is a humbling process, causing me both to question my Christian faith and at the same time inspiring me to claim my Christian identity with more confidence.

This essay clusters my reflections and experiences from the past fifty years around three areas of change that have been reshaping ecumenical and interreligious work;

1. The expansion of information about the Bible and the ways it defines Christian faith and worship.

2. The willingness of Christians with diverse histories, doctrines, and traditions to explore and assert more openly what they hold in common.

3. The knowledge that Christians have about other religions (not merely how Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc., differ from Christians, but how new relationships can serve humanity and the environment) is changing the ways people define what it means to be religious and shaping new first-hand interreligious/interfaith experiences.

There are downsides to some of these changes, but, before I fret about those, I want to celebrate what has happened. It has been an amazing journey. Centuries of religious warfare, unholy arrogance, and the dehumanization of the religiously other have given way to a world where recognition, protection, tolerance, and even interreligious hospitality are increasingly valued. Things are dramatically different than they were fifty years ago. I am thankful--not just for what I have learned but also for the ways in which the human community has been blessed by these changes.

Shared Knowledge of the Bible

There has been an expansion of information about the Bible and dramatic changes in the ways biblical texts define Christian faith and worship.

My parents' generation studied biblical content. They knew what the text of the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible said. Today, however, Christians know so much more about the Bible. During my lifetime, knowledge of biblical sources and the accuracy of biblical texts have expanded. In grade school my Roman Catholic friends told me that they did not need to read the Bible; they just went to Mass and memorized the Catechism. The Roman Catholic Bible had more sections, and the English words in their Bible were different. Today, Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and Protestants (as well as Jews) are all engaging the Bible in new ways.

In Sunday School I was puzzled by what was called the "Old Testament." My church taught that Jesus fulfilled all of its promises, so I concluded that the "New Testament" replaced or superseded the "Old" (not that I used the word "superseded"). Christians left the "Law" behind when they accepted the "Gospel." Later, when I was told that the Old Testament was important, I wondered how God's covenant with the Hebrew people could still be valid. I memorized Bible verses, but most of the time I had no idea how those texts, lifted out of context, related to the rest of the Bible.

In the 1950's, when the Revised Standard Version of the Bible was released, it did not sound like the Bible. Many Christians were upset, but there was no turning back. Today, there are hundreds of biblical translations, and the best Bibles are produced by teams of Jewish, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant scholars working together to render the original Hebrew and Greek into up-to-date English.

Collaboration in biblical research and archeology enables all Christians today to read, study, teach, and preach from more accurate Bibles. Quaint, out-of-date words have been replaced with more understandable English. Expanded knowledge about ancient languages has made translations more accurate. Discoveries of previously unknown manuscripts, especially materials in the Dead Sea Scrolls preserved by the Qumran community, now enhance all modern biblical texts and translations. Today's Bibles, such as the Common Bible New Revised Standard Version, now bind together into one large book all materials considered canonical by Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant communities. There are modern English study Bibles, Bible dictionaries, annotated New Testaments by Jewish scholars, feminist Bible commentaries, and inclusive-language versions that are produced and shared by communities and denominations that would have had nothing to do with each other in earlier eras.

The use of the Lectionary is another sign of the way biblical research and publication has promoted the ecumenical movement. In much of church history, Christian churches have used a series of biblical readings in worship. This list of texts guides worshipers through the cycle of the church year, so that over time Christians hear and explore the most important passages in the Bible. During the sixteenth century, however, Protestant reformers often rejected the Lectionary, arguing that Christians should have access to the whole Bible and be free to read and study it in any order in their vernacular language. As a child in a Congregational church, I knew nothing about a Lectionary. When I heard about it and asked why Protestants did not follow it, I was told that the Lectionary was too Roman Catholic or too limiting. Protestant pastors needed to be free to preach on all parts of scripture as led by the Spirit.

In seminary I learned more about the Lectionary. I have come to value its capacity to help preachers cover more of the Bible in their preaching, rather than revisiting well-known biblical stories over and over. I celebrate the way it forces religious leaders to wrestle with difficult passages. Over the past fifty years, more and more Christian churches and leaders have adopted an ecumenical Lectionary known as the Revised Common Lectionary. This Lectionary has become an ecumenical tool that has changed relationships among Christians. Today, on a given Sunday or holiday, Christian worship services in different congregations, in different denominations, and in different parts of the world are shaped by the same biblical texts listed in the Common Lectionary. In villages and cities clergy from different Christian traditions gather weekly for common Bible study. Many church school educational materials follow the Revised Common Lectionary readings, so that what children learn, what parents hear in worship, and what neighbors encounter in their churches are similar. In the same spirit, there have been additional ecumenical efforts to develop common English translations of the ancient creeds and prayers used in Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant worship throughout the English-speaking world.

In the 1960's and 1970's the feminist movement raised general awareness about the gendered habits of the English language. Words referring to male and female were predominantly masculine (such as "mankind"); words referring to God were generally male (for example, "father" and "Lord"); metaphors explaining salvation promises were often masculine and hierarchical (such as "kingdom"). Feminists argued that the biblical message was being distorted by these habits of the English language, and they pressed for what became known as "inclusive language."

Debates over inclusive language still divide Christians. However, my point is that discussions about these language issues, which secular education and the media have also pursued, have pushed Christians from diverse traditions into shared conversations about biblical texts, interpretations, and uses. Historic divisions based on doctrinal and ecclesial differences are explored during conversations about biblical-language usage. Feminist biblical hermeneutics has expanded the agenda and stretched conversations in new ways. In these language discussions, church-dividing assumptions are revisited and sometimes reconciled. Even the radical Westar Institute Jesus Seminar, which pushed biblical scholarship beyond where many Christians were willing to go in assessing biblical materials, has expanded ecumenical conversations.

Finally, in recent decades Christians try not to read the Bible in isolation. The Bible is part of a library that is linked to Jewish and Muslim texts (the Talmud, the Qur 'an, and the Hadithi). Scriptural scholars (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) regularly work together to discover meanings--and in that work new ecumenical/interfaith respect is nurtured.

Awareness of What Christians Hold in Common

There has been a steady increase in the willingness of Christians to assert what they hold in common and what they are willing to say together.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, immigrant rivalries and mission competition between Christians sometimes eroded respect and collaboration. Bigoted words and actions resisted acknowledging commonalities. Denominational camps were confident that each had the key to Christian truth and salvation, and rivalries among Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Adventists, Mainstream Protestants, and new groups such as Mormons were bitter. Even within religious groups, internal divisions based on geography (for example, Northern and Southern), race (for example, African American, Hispanic, Asian, and Anglo), and ethnic loyalties (for example, Polish and Irish) undermined ecumenical thinking.

I grew up in Detroit, where it was impossible to ignore religious, racial, and ethnic diversity. In sixth grade the parents of my Roman Catholic girlfriend transferred her to a parochial school to keep her Catholic. In high school Jewish friends were sometimes not allowed to date a gentile. Yet, in school we worked together on the newspaper, and we made music together in the orchestra. I became active in a church youth program attended by kids from several denominations. My friends and I (Jewish, Roman Catholic and Protestant) talked about religion for hours. At one point I wanted to be a nun. Sometime later I imagined becoming Jewish. There were moments at church camp when I thought that God was calling me be a missionary. I had never seen a woman minister, but I began to think about religious leadership. I was not alone. My generation took religion seriously and we discovered that we had a lot in common with all Christians.

So, I went to seminary. I was not sure about my vocation, but I was sure that old patterns of Christian identity were changing. Mission cooperation, global peacemaking, civil-rights activism, the new assertiveness of younger women, religious pluralism, and the ecumenical movement inspired me to get involved. Patterns of religious thinking and organization were changing, and I wanted to be part of it.

In the early 1970's I was invited to be a U.C.C. representative on a Roman Catholic-Presbyterian/Reformed Dialogue. That was an ecumenical eye-opener. About the same time I went to a conference of Roman Catholic women religious who were reassessing their charisms in response to Vatican II. In 1975 we moved to Chicago, where I became the first full-time female faculty member at Chicago Theological Seminary. The U.C.C. and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) were in serious conversations about a deeper commitment to church union. As I became more visible in theological education, I spoke and wrote about the history of my church and its ecumenical vocation in the twentieth century.

I left Chicago five years later to become the Dean of the Faculty at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA (part of the Graduate Theological Union). The G.T.U. was an ecumenical pioneer, pooling the resources of six Protestant and three Roman Catholic schools in partnership with a state university. It sought to live out the vision of Christian unity. Faculty wanted to teach there, and students were eager to study there to imbibe and promote ecumenical thinking. I became committed to making that happen.

While I was in California, I served on the National Council of Churches and World Council of Churches Commissions on Faith and Order. It was an exciting time. Scholars and church leaders from Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant churches had been working for over fifty years to say some things together about Christian understandings of baptism, eucharist/communion, and ministry. Finally in 1982, at a meeting in Lima, Peru, the efforts of the Faith and Order Commission became public. This "Lima document," also called "BEM" (Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry), articulated some growing agreements among Christians about the sacraments. It also listed some of the ongoing differences in the life and work of Christian churches. "BEM" invited Christians all over the world to discover and name "convergences" and to imagine how mutual recognition among Christians might be promoted.

A year later in 1983, when I attended the World Council of Churches Assembly in Vancouver, Canada, I (and many other Christians) were inspired by the ways the Assembly worship drew from the "BEM" text. My Vancouver experience deepened my involvement in international ecumenical work and opened some opportunities for interfaith conversations. I continued participating in local, regional, and national bilateral Christian dialogues and attended ecumenical events, such as the annual conference for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (long sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church). I celebrated when separated groups of Presbyterians reunited--creating the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 1983. I was inspired when a large number of Lutheran churches with Scandinavian and German roots formed the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (1988). Twenty years later I cheered when the Formula of Agreement among Lutheran, Presbyterian, Reformed, and U.C.C. churches was sealed in 1997. There were many other ecumenical milestones during the past twenty-five years that did not touch my life quite as directly. The pages of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies have documented them with great care.

I also became more aware of ecumenical experiences cultivated by more conservative evangelical Christians. Inspired by the Rev. Billy Graham, in the 1970's Evangelicals gathered in Switzerland and launched the Lausanne Movement--inviting Christians to join an ecumenical covenant to promote unity, humility in service, and active global evangelization. The Lausanne movement opened lines of communication between so-called "ecumenical" and "evangelical" Christians. I was not directly involved in that turn of events, but students and faculty in the schools where I worked were part of this development, building new ecumenical bridges.

The Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada, where I served as president during the mid-1980's, confirms the importance of these bridges. It is one of the most ecumenical organizations in the world, because in the A.T.S. Christian educators from various ecclesial camps come together to pool their expertise and resources to educate leadership for their churches. In the A.T.S., which now has over 250 members, schools serving Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and mainline/evangelical Protestants, as well as representatives of multi-denominational and nondenominational schools, all work together. They are not seeking Christian unity (no one talks about that); they simply want their schools to be accredited. However, by working together to develop and monitor shared educational goals the A.T.S. opens new windows for ecclesial hospitality. There, theological disagreements and historical rivalries are put on hold while representatives from faith communities that would normally have little to do with each other work together to establish common standards that sustain institutional integrity, academic excellence, and Christian values in theological education.

In 1988 I went on a pilgrimage to the Soviet Union to mark the millennial anniversary of the Russian Orthodox Church. My Protestant assumptions were humbled in the face of Orthodox Christianity. Although the Berlin wall had not yet fallen, relations between Western and Eastern Christianity were changing. Years of rivalry and animosity about right doctrine and right practices had mellowed.

New organizations and efforts to bring Christians together came and went every year. Taize, Iona, the Consultation on Church Union, Christians United in Christ, Sojourners, and the Wild Goose Festival are only a few examples of Christian efforts to overcome divisions and live out the gospel more fully. Sometimes, learning about different Christian views and practices can make people afraid that they will lose their faith. However, there are times when it works the other way--allowing people to understand differences, recognize commonalities, and cultivate shared hopes. I have lived this ecumenical journey. The Journal of Ecumenical Studies has reported on these and many other efforts where Christians have been able to temper rivalries and increase their understandings of what they hold in common and what they can say together.

Encountering Other Religions and Having New Religious Experiences

The knowledge that Christians have about other religions (not merely how Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc., differ from Christians, but how new relationships can serve humanity and the environment) is changing the ways people define what it means to be religious and shaping new first-hand interreligious/interfaith experiences.

Determining what Christians hold in common and can say together does not happen in isolation. In fact, as I rejoice over trends that have promoted Christian unity during the past fifty years, I worry about the capacity of Christianity to flourish in a religiously plural world. I cannot date it exactly, but somewhere in the 1970's I began to make a distinction between the ecumenical movement and interfaith or interreligious relations. Although the Greek word behind the word "ecumenical" points to the whole household/whole inhabited earth, in religious history the term "ecumenical" has been most commonly used just to name efforts to unite divided Christians.

Today, the use of the word "ecumenical" has become ambiguous. Most scholars and ecclesiastical leaders use the word "ecumenical" only when they refer to efforts, movements, or actions seeking to unify Christians. They then use such words as "interfaith," "multifaith," or "interreligious" when writing and speaking about relations with and among different religions. Unfortunately, public conversations and the media are not that consistent. Repeatedly, religious people and public leaders use the word "ecumenical" to describe any effort or movement that brings together different religious bodies or diverse religious people--Christian and non-Christian.

As mentioned, my Christian identity was shaped by my experience in a high school that was 95% Jewish. In that setting I had to figure out who Jesus was and what it meant to be a Christian. I was always struggling with the biblical mandate to take the gospel to the whole world, but I did not think the Jews needed it. When people talked about mission, I became uncomfortable. In college I studied other religions. I continued to wrestle with how I could share my faith and at the same time respect the religious convictions and practices of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and people of other religious traditions.

In the 1980's I was asked to serve on the Programme on Theological Education of the World Council of Churches. For eight years I made periodic visits to theological institutions and faculties in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific. I became part of the World Conference of Associations of Theological Institutions (WOCATI), an organization with connections to the North American Association of Theological Schools. Talking with Christian faculty members and students who were living and working in cultures dominated by other religions made me realize that being Christian in religiously diverse settings is the new challenge for contemporary Christians (not Christian unity). North Americans have some experience relating to the Jewish community, but we have a great deal to learn about other religions, both in the United States and in other countries.

Circumstances pushed my thinking forward in 1990 when I was asked to become the president of Hartford Seminary in Connecticut. The school had been founded by Congregationalists in 1834 and developed into a thoroughly ecumenical school of missions. Hartford was teaching the Arabic language in the 1890's, and many Hartford-trained missionaries went to the Middle East. By the 1920's the school had developed expertise in Islamic studies and was sponsoring a scholarly journal called The Muslim World, which it still publishes.

During my presidency, we reclaimed Hartford's strength in Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations. We hired Muslim faculty and recruited Muslim students. We developed a program in Abrahamic Religions with the Jewish center at the University of Hartford. We sponsored travel seminars to the Middle East and Morocco. We supported special programs for women, blacks, and Hispanics. We challenged Christian clergy and Muslim imams to explore what it means to be Christian or Muslim in multifaith settings.

While I was president of Hartford Seminary I became involved with the interfaith relations work of the National Council of Churches (N.C.C.). Interest in interfaith relations was increasing dramatically. I remember when I was asked to do an "in-service training presentation" on diversity in the workplace at a large Hartford bank. I prepared to talk about race and gender and other kinds of diversity, but the only thing employees wanted to talk about was religion. How should they respond when their Muslim co-worker had a death in her family? Would people be offended if someone read the Bible on a lunch break? How could Muslims pray in the workplace? What food and drink were acceptable?

In 1990 there were two small N.C.C. committees concerned with Jewish and Muslim relations. By the end of the decade, an Interfaith Relations Commission had been established. That commission took the initiative to draft an N.C.C. Policy Statement on "Interfaith Relations and the Churches" and engineered its unanimous passage by the N.C.C. General Assembly in November, 1999. Those who endorsed it did not embrace everything in the policy statement; however, they acknowledged that interfaith relations raises fundamental theological questions of Christology, ecclesiology, missiology, and ethics. This N.C.C. action recognized that contemporary Christians cannot avoid the question, "What does it mean to live as a faithful disciple of Christ side by side with men and women of other religions?"

Given the increasingly pluralistic historical, political, and social contexts in which Christians live, a section in the N.C.C. Policy Statement restated Christian understandings of (a) God and human community, (b) Jesus Christ and reconciliation, and (c) the Spirit of God and human hope. It also named some important theological issues on which Christians do not agree and where more work needs to be done--such as the salvation of non-Christians, the meaning of mission (evangelism or service), and the nature and role of interfaith dialogue. It mentioned, but did not provide guidance on, a few practical questions--such as interfaith marriage, prayer in interfaith settings, and proselytizing.

For me the most important part of this N.C.C. document spelled out six "marks of faithfulness" that Christians need to recognize and cultivate in authentic interfaith relationships: (1) meeting is basic (nothing happens without meeting); (2) risk must be real (all sides need to imagine changing); (3) respect is essential (we cannot belittle differences); (4) integrity is upheld (allowing people to define themselves); (5) accountability and respect must flourish (based on mutual appreciation); and (6) true relationships should lead to service and solidarity (because words are not enough).

Hartford Seminary and my numerous interfaith experiences during the 1990's reshaped my priorities. After ten years as president, I moved to Kyoto, Japan, where I joined the faculty of a Graduate School of American Studies at Doshisha University. For four years, while living in a society that is decidedly not Christian, I found opportunities to reflect deeply about religious pluralism and the future of Christianity in the world. I gained new insights from my Japanese colleagues and students about the ways people in other parts of the world see Christianity and relate to the West. The destruction of the World Trade Towers (September 11, 2001) forced me to decide why I was still a Christian.

Living in Japan, far from the Christian legacy that permeates the U.S., I had time to sort out what was important. I did not speak or understand the Japanese language, and, because the university wanted me to teach in English, I learned to cultivate my religious life through experiences: I attended a Japanese Christian church, visited Buddhist temples, made a pilgrimage to Ise (the most sacred Shinto Shrine in Japan), participated in tea ceremonies, watched Matsuri (festival) parades, visited Buddhist cemeteries, paused at street-side shrines, listened to silence in Japanese gardens, and talked with Japanese students and colleagues about religion.

In Japan, and in Washington, DC (where we returned to live after Japan), I became deeply engaged with numerous interfaith organizations and activities. I became part of a Japanese think tank called the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Monotheistic Religion, joined an Interreligious Dialogue on Education at the Woodstock Center at Georgetown University, and became active in the Metropolitan Washington Interfaith Conference, editing an educational resource on scriptures in eleven different religious traditions. I joined a research institute at Catholic University of America; met monthly with DC-area Daughters of Abraham to discuss religious topics with Jewish, Christian, and Muslim women; and served on the national advisory board of the Roman Catholic Paulist Office for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations.

In recent years my commitment to Christian unity has been recast. Christian unity is still important, but it is now a means, not an end in itself. That was true before, but the end has expanded. I now believe that the biggest challenge facing Christians in our contemporary world is how to keep "the (Christian) faith" and live with genuine interreligious hospitality into the future.

Looking Ahead

As I look ahead, I want Christians to become much less arrogant. We will and should continue to confess the importance of Jesus and our conviction that the message of the gospel is for the whole world, but we must do this with more humility. We must recognize the legitimacy of other religions and cultivate new ways to relate to neighbors. As a Christian I do not want to be silenced. I want to share my faith, but I am less confident. Being less confident in religious matters is often viewed as a weakness, but I am convinced that sharing my Christian wonder about God in Christ and my commitment to continue to grow in faith and practice will make my Christianity more authentic.

Being a Christian in the twenty-first century involves more than sharing our biblical insights and ecumenical life together, more than recognizing and belonging to united ecclesial organizations that recognize convergences and name unresolved differences, and more than simply embracing religious diversity. Religion is shaped and reshaped by daily life--faith-full experiences made up of actions, smells, sounds, visions, and emotions. Many younger Christians (indeed, younger people in general) are not interested in doctrinal unanimity, ecclesiastical mergers, classic worship experiences, or greater exposure to global religions. They either already know about these things or have no interest in them. Their religious life (if one can call it that) is looking for ways to make the world a better place. Religion is about peacemaking, saving the environment, feeding the hungry, ending bullying, promoting fairness, providing economic opportunity, overcoming bigotry--and many other things.

I close with five caveats--warnings about the challenges Christians face in the twenty-first century that I have learned during my fifty-year journey:

First, I want to celebrate ecumenical and interreligious hospitality, but I know that differences are real and that differences need to be respected. I do not believe that living together will dilute religion to the lowest common denominator. Therefore, in the future we must continue to honor differences and realize that they may never go away. As we aspire to live alongside people with different religious convictions and practices, Christians dare not forget that our calling is to live with differences, not to escape from them.

Second, religious ignorance is still rampant. In theological schools and in higher education, leaders and students know quite a bit about different expressions of Christianity and interreligious diversity in the U.S. and in other parts of the world, but most people do not. People remain afraid of difference, and in that fear they perpetuate religious ignorance. The fact that a large percentage of U.S. voters still think that President Obama is a Muslim and that Islam is a dangerous terrorist religion illustrates the scope of religious ignorance. We must become more intentional about enhancing educational opportunities to correct misinformation, and we must provide more face-to-face opportunities for Christians to meet adherents of different religions. Our children are already marrying across religious lines; our workplaces are becoming religiously diverse; and our neighborhoods are looking more and more like the United Nations. It is time to cultivate honest information and become more intentional about overcoming religious ignorance.

Third, memories of colonialism last for generations. The legacy of Christian missionary work created biases and codified misunderstandings that continue to shape how people view Christianity all over the world. When my Hindu friend told me not to use the word "mission," I thought I understood, for mission history is entangled with colonial power. I asked him what words I could use to talk about my religion if I wanted to share my faith. If "mission" was a problem, was it o.k. for Christians to give "witness" to their beliefs, with no intention to proselytize--no ulterior motive? How could I share what is important to me? "No," he said, "the word 'witness' is no better." It implies that I have something that others do not have. It sounds as if I want to promote an agenda. It is a put-down. "O.K.," I asked, "are there any words that a Christian can use to speak about his or her religion?" I have a faith I want to share. He thought a while and then said, "Unfortunately, there aren't any words." Do not use words. The history of those words is too painful; instead, use actions.

Fourth, when we wrestle with religious questions and issues, we need to remember that religious options are often driven and limited by political realities. The existence of the State of Israel shapes interreligious conversations all over the globe. Political rivalries between Mexican workers and Anglo establishments in Southern California chum up religious bigotry. Contemporary tensions between Hindus and Muslims on the Indian subcontinent date back to Muslim invasions before the sixteenth century. Territorial and tribal power in Africa limits religious freedoms. It is important to remember how politics and economics color and distort honest religious engagement.

And, fifth, contemporary science and medicine are creating unusual alliances and animosities within and between religious communities. Roman Catholic teachings about reproduction and abortion are often in agreement with Muslim traditions. Understandings of evolution, sexuality, marriage, and the environment split faith communities into different political camps. As science and medicine change in the future, what is scientifically known and medically possible will both unite and divide religious people. Just when people of faith think they have things figured out, science and medicine will change the context.

I wrote at the beginning of this essay, "In the mid-1960's I believed that God was leading people of faith into new expressions of shared religious understanding and action." I still believe that, but today it is much more complicated than I ever imagined--and it is not going to get easier. I pray that religious people of all traditions will find new courage for the days ahead.