I promise later today and tomorrow once the meetings finish to go in a bit more detail of some of the discussions. Tony Richie's paper on Ecumenism, ethics and evangelism interested me especially and I'll do my best to give you all an idea of what's been going on on both in the meting on conversion and in the meeting we are now in on Christian self-understanding and religious plurality.
However, it seems some of you think I may have been working too hard while here, so let me be clear that another reason I've blogged less these last two days had been because our coffee break discsussions have become more interesting and animated - as has our late night beer drinking, including long discussions about feminist theology with a self-confessed conservative Roman Catholic. I should add that we neither of us managed to convert the other to our point of view; at the end of our discssion he admitted to reflecting that it was interesting how much more in common we had than he had supposed - and I reflected that it was clear that we were both pretty clear about our respective identities! Did we learn anything from each other, I hope so. Also help, arbitration and support in the discussion came from a (to me) rather unexpected quarter, that of an Orthodox particpant at the meeting. Just goes to show we should never assume we know what other people think or believe, which is why dialogue, debate, discussion... and drinking beer are so important.
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