Colloquy of the Faiths of the Federation
| Date | 19 to 21.I.1759 AN |
|---|---|
| Duration | Three days |
| Venue | Round table in the Culture District |
| Location | Cárdenas, Nouvelle Alexandrie |
| Also known as | Colloquy of the Faiths |
| Type | Interfaith colloquy |
| Participants |
The Colloquy of the Faiths of the Federation, also called the Colloquy of the Faiths, was an interfaith gathering held in Cárdenas, Nouvelle Alexandrie, from 19 to 21.I.1759 AN. Over three days, senior clergy of the Faith of Inti, the Wakara Yukiyu Atabey, the Dozan Bovic Church, and the Melusinian Faith met around a single round table in the city's Culture District. Its conveners billed it as the first occasion to seat those four traditions together. The colloquy did not seek doctrinal agreement; its aim was to identify the beliefs the faiths held in common and the points on which they differed.[1]
The colloquy was convened separately from the Interfaith Dialogue Council, the Federation's standing interfaith body, and seated two traditions absent from the Council's roster at the time.[1] The Council admitted Yukiyu Atabey on 15.III.1761 AN.[2]
Background
Nouvelle Alexandrie counts adherents of many traditions, none of which claims the Federation as a whole. Interfaith contact had long been organized through the standing Interfaith Dialogue Council, founded in 1697 AN and seated in Cárdenas, whose roster did not include the Wakara Yukiyu Atabey or the Bovic Church. The colloquy's organizers built the meeting around those two traditions, seating them beside faiths the Council already carried. Of the Federation's three major religions, the Faith of Inti and the Melusinian Faith sent clergy. The third, the Autocephalous Nazarene Church of Alexandria, the largest religious movement in Alduria, did not attend.[1]
Proceedings
The colloquy set out to identify shared doctrine rather than to reconcile the faiths. Its organizers pointed to the long-paired theologies of its two oldest traditions: clergy of the Faith of Inti and of Yukiyu Atabey have for generations set the Intian principle of yanantin, the balance of complementary opposites, beside the Wakara union of Yukiyu, the male god of the yuca and the sea, and Atabey, the female goddess of fresh water. Both peoples name themselves children of the sun, and some Wakara identify their sun-father with Inti. A delegate speaking for the Yukiyu Atabey mission, which was sent from the faith's central sanctuary at the Yukiyu Atabey Temple in Guánica, described the exercise as noticing that the two traditions "were written in the same hand."[1]
The Bovic and Melusinian clergy came as the newer neighbors at the table, the former a church of Natopian origin seated at the Grand Dozan in Cárdenas, the latter a diaspora faith whose Matriarch, Séraphine de la Mer, keeps her see in exile at St. Melusine in New Caputia. As a precedent for shared observance the organizers cited the 1750 AN wedding of Crown Princess Sayari and Prince Janus of Neridia, which was carried out over two days in two rites, an Intian ceremony at the Temple of the Sun and a Bovic one in Cárdenas.[1]
Not all of the participants sought common cause. A senior paqo from the highlands warned that the colloquy should not mistake resemblance between the traditions for sameness. "A shared word for the sun is not a shared creed," he said. Its organizers said the caution was recorded rather than answered, and that the colloquy would reconvene.[1]
