Ecumenical dialogues are both a “dialogue of truth” and a “dialogue of love”, the head of the World Council of Churches told the 25th Pentecostal World Conference meeting in Canada last week.
Speaking as a panellist during a workshop looking at “Pentecostals and Christian unity”, Rev Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, said the call to Christian unity was “for all disciples of Christ and all churches or families of churches that confess Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour”.
“The ecumenical dialogues are both a dialogue of truth and a dialogue of love,” he said.
Tveit noted that it is relationships which lie at the heart of “intra-Christian” interactions.
“This is more than a diplomatic truism,” he said. “The basis of our faith is God’s relationship to the world through Jesus Christ and his sanctifying presence through the Holy Spirit.”
Noting that the history between Christian churches “has often been marked by prejudice, divisions, and even violence”, Tveit said that the past decades had seen churches grow together in faith “through a myriad of conversations that have lead to common affirmations and shared witness”.
The Pentecostal World Fellowship was founded in the late 1940s, around the same time as the founding of the WCC. A joint consultative group involving both groups was established in 2000 and both bodies are part of the Global Christian Forum which also includes the World Evangelical Alliance and Roman Catholic Church.
The Pentecostal World Conference ran from 27th to 30th August and was held in the Canadian city of Calgary.
