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A Decade of Appreciative Conversation: The Building Bridges Seminar under Rowan Williams
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A Decade of Appreciative Conversation The Building Bridges Seminar under Rowan Williams LUCINDA MOSHER ‘‘In the months following that appalling catastrophe,’’ explained Rowan Williams, reflecting on his decade as convenor of the Building Bridges Seminar, ‘‘my predecessor . . . believed it necessary to draw together as many as possible of the representatives of Christianity and Islam who were willing to engage seriously with each other about mutual understanding and cooperation in a very fragile global situation.’’1 In January 2002, as one response to the catastrophic 9/11 attacks on the United States, Archbishop George Carey, with cohosts Prime Minister Tony Blair and HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan, invited thirty-eight Christians and Muslims to Lambeth Palace (the London home and offices of the Archbishop of Canterbury) for a seminar titled ‘‘Building Bridges: Overcoming Obstacles in Christian–Muslim Relations .’’ Thus was inaugurated an ongoing international Christian–Muslim dialogue under the auspices of the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The intent was to create an environment for bridge building in the sense of ‘‘creating new routes for information, appreciation and respect to travel freely and safely in both directions between Christians and Muslims, Muslims and Christians.’’2 When Carey retired in October 2002, plans were in place for another Building Bridges seminar, albeit somewhat different in character: it would be longer and would have collaborative study of scripture as its core activity. During his tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams made Building Bridges a priority. Each year he chose Muslim and Christian scholars to meet with him for three full days of deliberation on some theological theme by means of pairs of public lectures , closed plenaries, and small-group sessions. This essay reviews and reflects on Christian–Muslim bridge building under his leadership.3 259 260 A Decade of Appreciative Conversation 2003: Doha, Qatar Having accepted the invitation of His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa alThani , Emir of the State of Qatar, Building Bridges moved to a Muslim-majority context when it convened for a second time. In spite of meeting in close proximity to the US Central Command briefing platform for the invasion of Iraq, the March 2003 seminar remained focused on a topic chosen months earlier: ‘‘Scriptures in Dialogue: Christians and Muslims Studying the Bible and the Qurān Together.’’ In preparation, participants wrote short responses to the question, ‘‘When, where, how and with whom do I read scripture?’’ Many of these essays are quite moving; taken together, they reveal a range of approach and multiple levels of engagement among members of both communities of faith. Plenary presentations included an account of how the Bible is perceived by and functions for Christians; an explanation of the prominence of listening as a Qurānic notion; a reflection on the Qurān as theophany; a consideration of the ethics of gender discourse in Islam; a review of the history of biblical interpretation—with a report on the exegetical approaches of African women theologians; and explication of various challenges of modernism, postmodernism , and fundamentalism. Williams later would call Doha the ‘‘seedbed’’ of the Building Bridges enterprise . From the Lambeth seminar in 2002 had come the sense that these conversations should be regular, extended, and searching, and should alternate between Christian- and Muslim-majority venues from one year to the next. The Doha meeting had tested these notions and had ‘‘encouraged all those who took part in it to believe that it was possible, desirable, and indeed necessary that the conversations which we had begun should be continued.’’4 2004: Washington, DC Hosted by Georgetown University, the 2004 seminar considered Christian and Muslim perspectives on the nature of prophecy, the calling of prophets and apostles, prophets and their peoples, the place of Jesus and Muh .ammad in prophetic religion, and the completion of prophecy. Small-group sessions of ‘‘scripture dialogue’’ involved intensive close reading of preselected, challenging pairs of texts. [44.192.132.66] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 09:51 GMT) A Decade of Appreciative Conversation 261 On the eve of this seminar, Rowan Williams gave a public lecture proposing that more dialogue be invested in ‘‘looking at what is disbelieved in other religious discourses’’ because ‘‘we can learn better how to understand other religious believers if we learn better how to understand unbelievers.’’5 The result would then be twofold: the emergence of ‘‘a conceptual and imaginative world in which at least some of the positive concerns of diverse traditions are seen to be held...