Dialogue is not optional, says Williams
By Pat Ashworth

CHRISTIANS were not called to win competitions or arguments in favour of their "product" in some religious marketplace, the Archbishop of Canterbury told the WCC Assembly in his opening address.

Speaking on "Religious Identity and Religious", Dr Williams reflected on what was essential to Christian identity. The claim of Christian belief was not that first and foremost it offered "the only accurate system of thought, as against all competitors", he suggested.

To be a Christian was not to lay claim to "absolute knowledge", but to lay claim to "a perspective that will transform our most deeply rooted hurts and fears, and so change the world at the most important level", he said. Such a claim could in one way be nothing except exclusive, but the exclusivism of a "system of ideas and conclusions that someone claims to be final and absolute" was impossible. The rest