Roman Catholic ecumenism received definitions and momentum at the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II; 1962–65), under the ministries of Popes John XXIII and Paul VI, and through the ecumenical diplomacy of Augustin Cardinal Bea, the first president of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. The church gave the ecumenical movement new hope and language in the “Decree on Ecumenism” (1964), one of the classic ecumenical teaching documents. Another result of Vatican II was the establishment of a wide variety of international theological dialogues, commonly known as bilateral conversations. These included Roman Catholic bilaterals with Lutherans (1965), Eastern Orthodox (1967), Anglicans (1967), Methodists (1967), Reformed (1970), and Disciples of Christ (1977). Topics identified for reconciling discussions included baptism, the Eucharist, episcopacy and papacy, authority in the church, and mixed marriage. Conversations were also held with the Oriental Orthodox churches and the Assyrian Church of the East, resulting in joint statements (1992 with the Oriental Orthodox; 1994 with the Assyrian Church of the East) that resolved many of the ancient Christological disputes, although they did not result in full communion.
Critical to modern ecumenism is the birth of united churches, which have reconciled formerly divided churches in a given place. In Asia the first united churches were organized in China (1927), Thailand (1934), Japan (1941), and the Philippines (1944). The most-heralded examples of this ecumenism are the United Church of Canada (1925), the Church of South India (1947), and the Church of North India (1970). Statistics of other united churches are revealing. Between 1948 and 1965, 23 churches were formed. In the period from 1965 to 1970, unions involving two or more churches occurred in the West Indies (in Jamaica and Grand Cayman), Ecuador, Zambia, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Pakistan, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Belgium. Strategic union conversations were undertaken in the United States by the nine-church Consultation on Church Union (1960) and by such uniting churches as the United Church of Christ (1957), the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (1983), and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (1988). In Europe the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (2004) was formed from the merger of the three largest Dutch churches.
Spiritual disciplines play a key role in ecumenism, a movement steeped in prayer for unity. During the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, celebrated every year (January 18–25), Christians from many traditions engage in prayer, Bible study, worship, and fellowship in anticipation of the unity that Christ wills. Paul A. Crow The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Christianity and world religions
The global spread of Christianity through the activity of European and American churches in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries brought it into contact with all other existing religions. Meanwhile, since the beginning of the 19th century, the close connection between Christian world missions and political, economic, technical, and cultural expansion was, at the same time, loosened. Meanwhile, as the study of religion emerged as an academic discipline, scholarship on non-Christian and non-Western religious traditions developed. Philosophers and writers in both Europe and the United States (particularly the New England Transcendentalists) drew from an increasing body of scholarly and missionary writing on Indian and Chinese traditions, incorporating some Eastern ideas—or at least their interpretations of them—into their own idiosyncratic religious visions of a reformed or reinvigorated Christianity. The World Parliament of Religions, held at the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893, increased the visibility in the West of traditions from South and East Asia in particular.
After World War II the former mission churches were transformed into independent churches in the newly autonomous Asian and African states. The concern for responsible cooperation between the members of Christian minority churches and their non-Christian fellow citizens became more urgent with a renaissance of the Asian higher religions in numerous Asian states.
Missionaries of Asian world religions moved into Europe, the Americas, and Australia. Numerous Vedanta centres were established to introduce Hindu teachings within the framework of the Ramakrishna and Vivekananda missions. In the United States the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 dramatically increased the number of legal immigrants from East, Southeast, and South Asia, the vast majority of whom were not Christians. In that year the Hare Krishna movement (formally the International Society for Krishna Consciousness [ISKCON]) was founded in the United States, attracting followers to its version of Vaishnavism, one of the main branches of Hinduism. Followers of South Asian Theravada Buddhism; Mahayana Buddhism, particularly that of Japan (largely Pure Land, Nichiren [especially Sōka-gakkai], and Zen); and Tibetan Vajrayana (Tantric) Buddhism founded temples (some of which were called “churches”), meditation centres, community centres, and other spiritual retreats. This influence penetrated Europe and North America on several fronts, whether in the form of a spontaneously received flow of religious ideas and methods of meditation through literature and philosophy, through developments in psychology and psychotherapy, or through institutions within which individuals could develop a personal practice of meditation and participate in the life of the sangha (community). As a result, Christianity in the latter part of the 20th century found itself forced to enter into a factual discussion with non-Christian religions.
There has also been a general transformation of religious consciousness in the West since the middle of the 19th century. Until about 1900, intimate knowledge of non-Western world religions was still the privilege of a few specialists. During the 20th century, however, a wide range of people studied translations of source materials from the non-Christian religions. The dissemination of the religious art of India and East Asia through touring exhibitions and the prominence of the 14th Dalai Lama as a political and religious figure have created a new attitude toward the other religions in the broad public of Europe and North America. In recognition of this fact, numerous Christian institutions for the study of non-Christian religions were founded: e.g., in Bengaluru (Bangalore), India; in Yangon, Myanmar (Rangoon, Burma); in Bangkok, Thailand; in Kyōto, Japan; and in Hong Kong, China.
The readiness of encounter or even cooperation of Christianity with non-Christian religions is a phenomenon of modern times. Until the 18th century, Christians showed little inclination to engage in a serious study of other religions. Even though contacts with Islam had existed since its founding, the first translation of the Qurʾān (the Islamic holy book) was issued only in 1141 in Toledo by Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny. Four hundred years later, in 1542/43, Theodor Bibliander, a theologian and successor of the Swiss reformer Zwingli, edited the translation of the Qurʾān by Peter the Venerable. He was subsequently arrested, and he and his publisher could be freed only through the intervention of Luther.
Christian exposure to Asian religions also was delayed. Although the name Buddha is mentioned for the first time in Christian literature—and there only once—by St. Clement of Alexandria about 200 ce, it did not appear again for some 1,300 years. Pali, the language of the Theravada Buddhist canon (see also Pali literature), remained unknown in the West until the early 19th century, when the modern Western study of Buddhism began.
The reasons for such reticence toward contact with foreign religions were twofold: (1) The ancient church was significantly influenced by the Jewish attitude toward contemporary pagan religions. Like Judaism, it viewed the pagan gods as “nothings” next to the true God; they were offsprings of human error that were considered to be identical with the wooden, stone, or bronze images that were made by humans. (2) Beside this, there was the tendency to identify the pagan gods as evil demonic forces engaged in combat with the true God. The conclusion of the history of salvation, according to the Christian understanding, was to be a final struggle between Christ and his church on one side and Antichrist and his minions on the other, culminating with the victory of Christ. Conflicting Christian attitudes