Ecumenical Lecture

Sunday, March 21
Ecumenical Lecture
Details (PDF)
Offered in Cooperation with Toledo Area Ministries a
nd the Diocesan Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs Commission
"How Baptists Receive the Gifts of Catholics and Other Christians"
3 p.m.
Franciscan Center
Information: 419-824-3819

Some older approaches to ecumenism created resistance to the quest for Christian unity by giving the impression that the price of visible unity would be the surrender of some of the things held most dear by each church. A newer approach to ecumenical engagement, however, is gaining traction in the international ecumenical community. “Receptive ecumenism” is an approach to ecumenical dialogue according to which the communions in conversation with one another seek to identify the distinctive gifts that each tradition has to offer the other and which each could receive from the other with integrity. Yet as an international conference on receptive ecumenism held at Durham University (UK) in 2006 defined the enterprise, “the primary emphasis is on learning rather than teaching....each tradition takes responsibility for its own potential learning from others and is, in turn, willing to facilitate the learning of others as requested but without dictating terms and without making others’ learning a precondition to attending to ones’ own.” Dr. Harmon’s lecture will explore the ways in which Baptist reception of the gifts of Catholics and other Christians serves the unity of the church.

Speaker: Steven R. Harmon, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Divinity
B.A., Howard Payne University
M.Div., Ph.D., Southwestern Theological Seminary

Steve Harmon joined the Beeson Divinity School faculty in 2008 and teaches church history and doctrine and Christian ethics. A specialist in patristics and ecumenical theology, he is the author of Towards Baptist Catholicity: Essays on Tradition and the Baptist Vision; Every Knee Should Bow: Biblical Rationales for Universal Salvation in Early Christian Thought; several articles and book chapters; and the forthcoming volume on 1 and 2 Peter, 1–3 John, and Jude in the Reformation Commentary on Scripture series. Harmon previously served as associate professor of Christian Theology at Campbell University Divinity School, visiting professor at Duke Divinity School, and as an adjunct professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Howard Payne University. He has been pastor and interim pastor of Baptist congregations in Texas and North Carolina. He and his wife Kheresa have a son.