To open the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Duke Divinity School, the Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition, and the Methodist House of Studies will hold a public lecture, “Ecumenism, Geoffrey Wainwright, and the Oxford Handbook,” by Monsignor Paul McPartlan. The lecture is virtual and registration is required to receive the Zoom link.

The Rev. Dr. Geoffrey Wainwright, a British Methodist theologian and leading ecumenist, died in March 2020 after teaching at Duke Divinity School for almost three decades. The Oxford Handbook of Ecumenical Studies, which he co-edited Msgr Paul McPartlan, was published in 2021.

Msgr Paul McPartlan is a priest of the diocese of Westminster (UK) and Carl J. Peter Professor of Systematic Theology and Ecumenism at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He taught systematic theology at Heythrop College in the University of London before joining Catholic University. He served two five-year terms on the Catholic Church's International Theological Commission (2004-2014) and he has been a member of the international Roman Catholic-Orthodox theological dialogue since 2005. He was a member of the international Methodist-Roman Catholic dialogue from 2002-2012 and has also participated in national and international Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue.

Msgr. McPartlan is the author of The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue (1993; 2006), Sacrament of Salvation: An Introduction to Eucharistic Ecclesiology (1995), A Service of Love: Papal Primacy, the Eucharist and Church Unity (2013; 2016), and many articles on ecclesiology and ecumenism. He also edited John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness (2006), and co-edited with Geoffrey Wainwright The Oxford Handbook of Ecumenical Studies (2021).