Contributions on interreligious dialogue
Lefebure's early scholarship focused on Wisdom Christology (interpreting Jesus Christ in light of personified Wisdom in the Jewish tradition). He ended his first book, based on his dissertation, with suggestions on how the biblical wisdom tradition could inform interreligious relations. To explore this hypothesis in relation to Mahayana Buddhism, he published a book of meditations on the Christian scriptures in dialogue with Buddhist perspectives: Life Transformed. He also traveled to Kyoto Japan, through a junior scholars grant funded by the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada. Masao Abe guided him into Buddhist-Christian dialogue, which led to his 1993 book, The Buddha and the Christ. [10] He then turned to the problem of religion and violence, studying the work of René Girard and publishing Revelation, the Religions, and Violence in 2000, which won the 2001 Pax Christi USA Book Award. [11] He later wrote a Christian commentary on the wisdom sayings of the Buddha in dialogue with the biblical and later Christian wisdom traditions: The Path of Wisdom: A Christian Commentary on the Dhammapada, co-authored with Peter Feldmeier. His more recent works deal with the hermeneutics of religious classics and the history of relationships between the Catholic Church and other religions in the U.S.
- Buddhist-Christian dialogue. In light of his publications on Buddhist-Christian dialogue, the Board of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue invited him to serve as an advisor; in that capacity he participated in the first Gethsemani Encounter in 1996. This involved the Dalai Lama and Buddhist and Catholic monastics from around the world at Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, home to Thomas Merton, and he is listed at this link as a participant. He also attended the second Gethsemani Encounter in 2002. He has also engaged important ideas on Buddhist-Catholic dialogue and climate change. [12]
- Jewish-Catholic dialogue. Lefebure grew up in an encouraging environment for such dialogue, meeting a Rabbi and visiting a synagogue in high school. He studied at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago with Professor Jon D. Levenson and the late Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf. He continued by engaging with the work of Daniel Boyarin, Rabbi Herman Schaalman, and many others. Lefebure co-chaired a Jewish-Catholic dialogue forum in Washington, DC, with the late Rabbi Joshua Haberman from 2005 until the Rabbi's death in 2017. [13]
- Muslim-Christian dialogue. In 1999 Lefebure became a member of the Dialogue of Catholics and Muslims in the Midwest, co-sponsored by the USCCB Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue and the Islamic Society of North America. He was a major contributor to the statement published by this dialogue in 2006: Revelation in Catholic and Muslim Perspectives. [14] After the attacks of 9/11/2001, he became more involved in dialogue with Muslims in the New York City area, including a conference on violence sponsored by the New Jersey Christian-Muslim Project and dialogue with members of the Mid-Hudson Islamic Association; he was a member of the Mid-Atlantic Dialogue of Catholics and Muslims from 2002 until 2005. Between 2006 and 2013 he participated in three international symposia in Istanbul sponsored by the Istanbul Foundation for Religion and Culture, where he presented papers discussing the theology of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi and various Christian leaders. In 2014 the Istanbul Foundation for Religion and Culture presented him its Award for Outstanding and Significant Contribution to Nursi Studies.
- Assyrian Church of the East-Catholic dialogue. His major involvement with Christian ecumenism has been with the Assyrian Church of the East. After Pope John Paul II and Mar Dinkha IV signed the Common Christological Declaration Between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East in 1994, Lefebure, as dean of the Ecclesiastical Faculty of Theology at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake, supervised the preparation of future bishops for the Church of the East. This prepared the way for theologians working toward full communion between the Assyrian Church of the East and the Roman Catholic Church to send the Common Statement on the Sacramental Life to Pope Francis in 2017. [15]
He is Trustee Emeritus, Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions. He served as president of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies from 2019 to 2021, and is the Society's current past president.
