International Workshops/ FETE 

The Boston Theological Institute has supported a program of Focused Ecumenical Theological Education (FETE) over the years. This program has drawn attention to issues of ecumenism, the challenge religion and conflict transformation and work of the reconciliation of Peoples, in the Community, with the Earth and in the Marketplace.  

These workshops have been oriented toward drawing attention to or recovering the identity of the churches with the work of reconciliation. Lesslie Newbigin writes in The Household of God, 1954 (Kerr Lectures): “It is surely a fact of inexhaustible significance that what our Lord left behind Him was not a book, not a creed, nor a system of thought, nor a rule of life, but a visible community…. He committed the entire work of salvation to that community. It was not that a community gathered around an idea, so that the idea was primary and the community secondary. It was that a community called together by the deliberate choice of the Lord Himself, and re-created in Him, gradually sought – and is seeking – to make explicit who He is and what He has done. The actual community is primary; the understanding of what it is comes second.”

This work calls to mind three tasks:

Great Commandment: “You shall love the Lord you God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the law and prophets.” Matt 22:37-40

Great Commission: 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20

Ecumenical Imperative: 20 “I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou has sent me.” John 17:20-21
Toward these ends, at the end of the academic year the BTI works with a cluster of churches and other institutions in a given region of the world, asking what it means to be church in that region. Several of the seminar-workshops in the following list have pictures and/or reports attached to them which can be explored and downloaded. These seminar-workshops, or other short-term mission projects, are seen as integral to those pursuing both the BTI Certificate in International Mission and Ecumenism and Religion and Conflict Transformation.

The following is a list of workshops since 1991. Reports and pictures exist in the BTI office archives for each of the workshops undertaken. Occasional books and other materials have been generated by these workshops.

• 1991-1992 Protestantism and the Ecumenical Movement (Switzerland)
• 1992-1993 Roman Catholicism and Ecumenism (The Vatican, Italy and Switzerland)
• 1993-1994 Orthodoxy and the Ecumenical Movement (Greece and Turkey)
• 1994-1995 Ecclesiology from a Non-Western Perspective (India)
• 1995-1996 The Struggle for Protestant Identity (Central Europe)
• 1996-1997 Reconciliation: Roman Catholic and Ecumenical Witness (Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland)
• 1997-1998 Reconciliation: Orthodox and Ecumenical Witness (Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Greece and Turkey)
• 1998-1999 Reconciliation: South Africa, Ghana and Racial Reconciliation in Western Culture (South Africa and Ghana)
• 1999-2000 Reconciliation: Identity, Instrumentality, and Inter-Faith Relations (Israel, Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza)
• 2000-2001 Reconciliation: Culture, Identity and Religion in the Caribbean (Jamaica and Cuba)
• 2001-2002 The Transformation of Russia: Issues of History, Religion and Identity in Russian Orthodoxy (Russia)
• 2002-2003 Restorative Justice for Community (USA)
• 2003-2004 Religion and Modernity in Egypt: Coptic Revival, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Complexities of Religious Practice (Egypt)
• 2004-2005 “Lebanon: A Test of Multicultural Pluralism – Religious Identity and National Recovery” (Download report from Lebanon's "The Daily Star" newspaper of June 7, 2005!)
• 2005-2006 India Consultation and Workshop
• 2007-2008 Korea Consultation: “Religions, Religious Peacebuilding and Reconciliation”
• 2008-2009 “Educating Christian, Jewish and Muslim Leaders in an Age of Religious Diversity”; and with participation in the Parliament of World’s Religions (Melbourne, Australia, December 2009)
• 2009-2010 Colombia: “Practicing Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Difficult Settings,” with the Fundacion para la Reconciliation (Bogotá). (download program here!)