Talk and tea at Adderbury Quaker Meeting House

Local Quakers hosted their annual public talk at the historic Adderbury Meeting House on Sunday 16 June at 3pm, this year the talk was given by Elaine Green on the subject of “Receptive Ecumenism: learning from other people’s experience of the Light”.

Elaine Green is Clerk to the Quaker Committee for Christian and Interfaith Relations (QCCIR). She is the Quaker representative for Churches Together in England and a member of Ipswich and Diss Quaker Area Meeting. Drawing on her work on interfaith relations, Elaine explored the concept of ‘Receptive Ecumenism’, a religious practice concept originally developed by the Centre for Catholic Studies at Durham University. Churches Together in England defines the concept in this way*:

Receptive Ecumenism is both a way of thinking and a process that enables unity to be built by receiving gifts from others. It challenges us to not think of what others might benefit from receiving from us, but instead invites us to recognise our needs and to put ourselves in the place of being a recipient.

Quotation from Churches Together in England website: https://cte.org.uk/about/ecumenism-explained/receptive-ecumenism/

Elaine speaks from experience of navigating the sometimes difficult terrain of inter-church and inter-faith relations. She describes how Quakers in Britain, and QCCIR in particular, are adapting their ways of working so as to continue to respond to the turbulence in pursuit of their peace mission.

Previous Addebury Gathering talks included:

•     Positive Money – how money works in the economy
•     A celebration of Quaker Music, Poetry and Prose
•     The Simple Future Beyond Oil
•     Ramallah and Brummanna: Quaker Schools in the Middle East
•     The anti-slavery movement
•     The Quaker UN office in Geneva
•     Circles of Support and Accountability
•     The local Katherine House hospice & the hospice movement
•     Eye-Witness stories from the West Bank and Israel
•     Reparations for historical injustices? A Quaker take.
•     Climate seems to be the hardest word
•     Experts by experience
•     Spiritual Ecology
•     Peace and Islam
•     Riding the Climate Storm: the Climate Crisis and Survival of Being