ANGLICANS are to be encouraged to read the Bible in the light of scriptures from other faiths in a new way to promote inter-faith relations.The call comes in a new document published this week by NIFCON – the Anglican Communion Network for Interfaith Concerns – and to be sent to every Anglican Bishop.
“Our Scriptures speak to us in new ways when they are brought alongside the sacred texts of other religions in the practice known as ‘Scriptural Reasoning’,” the document states.
The treatise, entitled Generous Love: the truth of the Gospel and the call to dialogue, comes out of the work commissioned by previous Lambeth Conferences and is hoped to be a useful tool to equip and train bishops for mission and ministry.
The document took four years to produce was considered vital to draw up a solid foundation for inter-faith dialogue within a Christian context.
It is also distinctly Anglican in its theology as it has strong Trinitarian foundations, as it considers how tradition and reason relate to the reading of scripture and patterns of discipleship shaped by the double context of Church and Society.
In a foreword to the document the Archbishop of Canterbury commends the document as a useful springboard for study and discussion.
He writes: “[This document] is offered for study to the Anglican Communion – and more widely – in the hope that it will stimulate further theological thinking among Anglicans who share that double conviction that we must regard dialogue as an imperative from Our Lord, yet must also witness consistently to the unique gift we have been given in Christ.”
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