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Ecumenism: A Guide for the Perplexed is a comprehensive introduction to the methods, achievements, and future prospects of the modern ecumenical movement. The authors begin the volume by charting out a serviceable definition of ecumenism, a term that has long been a source of confusion for students of theology and church history. They review the chronology of the modern ecumenical movement and highlight the major events, figures, accomplishments, and impasses. This historical survey is followed by critical examinations of three significant challenges for contemporary ecumenical theology and practice. Along the way, the authors provide commentary upon the difficulties and prospects that the ecumenical movement might anticipate as it enters this new millennium.

What is unity and how does it serve as a goal for ecumenical dialogue? How can churches, ecumenical organizations, ministers, and theologians effectively approach this goal in the twenty-first century? Sustaining the Hope for Unity offers a methodological reflection on these questions using insights of contemporary critical theory. With particular attention to the work of Jürgen Habermas, the book develops a framework for exchanging religious narratives in a postmodern context marked by pluralism and ambiguity. Using this framework to address questions that have emerged out of the life of the World Council of Churches, Sustaining the Hope for Unityargues that unity must be imagined eschatologically in order to achieve inclusive and non-coercive dialogue between diverse Christian communities. Looking ahead to ecumenism in the twenty-first century, it makes a case for the role of the WCC as a public space for the exchange of religious narratives.

Before his death more than twelve years ago, Jacques Dupuis, a prominent Catholic theologian who faced a long persecution by his own church for his teachings on religious pluralism, sat down for a book-length interview with Gerard O'Connell, a noted Catholic journalist, for America. Dupuis insisted that the frank and honest transcript ("unburdened and unbuttoned," in the words of a fellow Jesuit) not be published until after he died and certain other curial figures were out of office. This hidden treasure is finally unburied and presents not only Dupuis' life story (including his tragic final years) but also his views on religious pluralism, interreligious dialogue, and ecclesiology.

Thinking beyond the absolutes Christians and other religious persons increasingly find "deabsolutized" in our modern thought world, Swidler reflects on the ways we humans think about the world and its meaning now that increasingly we notice that there are other ways of understanding the world than the way we grew up in. In this new situation we need to develop a common language we can use together both to appreciate our neighbors and enrich ourselves, what the author calls Ecumenical Esperanto, because it should serve as a common language without replacing any of the living languages of our religious and ideological traditions. Of course, such thinking anew about the world and its meaning must necessarily mean thinking anew about all of our religious beliefs--but this time, in dialogue.