The Anglican Communion Network for Inter Faith Concerns (NIFCON) has this week launched an exciting and valuable new resource to assist Anglicans and other Christians in their engagement with people of other faiths.
Generous Love: the truth of the Gospel and the call to dialogue – an Anglican theology of inter faith relations was produced in 2008 by NIFCON members. The report, which formed the basis for work at the 2008 Lambeth Conference in this field, has become increasingly well-known over the last three years, and is becoming a bench-mark for involvement by Anglicans in inter faith relations throughout the Communion
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When Generous Love was published the team responsible for it committed themselves to work on a ‘study guide’ designed to help clergy and laity make more effective use of the report. The ‘i-book’ published this week online on the Anglican Communion website is the result. It offers notes and articles on a number of the topics covered in the report, linked Bible studies, prayers and questions for discussion.
Clare Amos, Director for Theological Studies in the Anglican Communion Office and with responsibility for the work of NIFCON said: “Those of us who have worked in this i-book study guide for Generous Love are pleased and excited to see it launched. It offers a new model for educational communication around the Anglican Communion.
“One of the important features of the resource is that it can grow and change to respond to new needs and new insights. Also as it is online (on the Anglican Communion website) it is widely available throughout much of the Anglican World. As well as written material it incorporates some video and audio resources, and we want to expand on these over the coming few months.
“The study guide acknowledges the importance of context in relation to our engagement with people of other faiths: the situation in Pakistan, for example, is very different to the context in Britain, while that for Anglicans in Egypt, Nigeria, India or the United States is varied yet again. I want to make a positive request to Anglicans around the world to share with us any material (particularly video and audio) that they may have which illustrates their engagement with people of other faiths.
“Where possible and appropriate we will seek to incorporate this into the i-book. I would like to thank my colleagues on the NIFCON Management Group who have worked hard on this, as well as the IT and Communications team at the Anglican Communion Office. As Director for Theological Studies I see this i-book as a possible model for further resources in theological education which I hope we will develop over the next year or so.”
You can access the i-book here
http://www.aco.org/_books/