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Seminar 2:
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A stone's throw from St Basil's Cathedral, just outside the Moscow Kremlin, stands the old 'English Embassy', the residence of Elizabeth I's emissaries to Ivan the Terrible, and the base for 16th and 17th century English traders along the Moscow River. It is concrete testimony that Anglicans and Orthodox have been talking to each other for more than 400 years, and not just about trade and diplomacy. In more recent times, there has been a serious and intentional dialogue between the Anglican and Orthodox churches since the 1930s, and especially since the 1962 meeting between Archbishop Michael Ramsey of Canterbury and the Ecumenical Patriarch, Athenagoras I. These conversations, frosty at times and more optimistic at others, but always direct and open, have produced two major agreed statements, the Moscow Statement (1976) and the Dublin Statement (1984). In mid-2006 a further agreed statement will be released at Lambeth, the outcome of solid theological discussion and debate over the last 20 years. Duncan Reid has been an Australian member of the official dialogue, the International Commission for Anglican-Orthodox Theological Dialogue, since 2001. After a breif historical overview, he will offer some pointers to what we can expect to find in the forthcoming 2006 statement.
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