WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Christians "can learn better how to understand other religious believers if we learn better how to understand unbelievers," the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury said in a March 29 talk at Georgetown University in Washington.

          Both dialogue with atheists and conversations with Jewish and Muslim adherents can lead Christians to an improved knowledge of their own beliefs, Archbishop Rowan Williams said in his address on "Analyzing Atheism: Unbelief and the World of Faiths."

          "We should certainly not be looking for a common core of belief between believer and atheist, but for a language in which to acknowledge and understand the difference," he said. "And in interfaith conversation, we continue to make the claims we make out of conviction of the truth, but seek to break through the assumption that everything can be reduced to whether people say yes or no to a set of simple propositions.

          "Only in the wake of such a move can true dialogue proceed," the Anglican leader said. "To allow atheistic schemes to be examined as more than just the elaboration of a single denial, and to allow religious faiths to be examined as more than a map of mutual exclusions and incompatibilities are closely connected.

          "If both enterprises lead us back to an enhanced appreciation of the resource and complexity which our own faith both offers us and demands of us, so that we are more and not less confident in dialogue, we shall not have wasted our time," he added.

          Commenting on the "slippery character of the word 'atheism,'" Archbishop Williams said atheism is not "a self-contained system" of beliefs but rather is made up of certain disbeliefs that have varied over time and in different groups.

          "This is why the recent proposal in the United Kingdom that religious education in schools should give attention to 'atheism and humanism' as 'nonfaith belief systems' alongside the traditional religions was based on some serious conceptual confusions and category mistakes," he said.

          He also criticized schools in the United Kingdom for providing education in world religions that "tends to describe the positions of faith communities as finished systems for which questions have been answered rather than ... 'continuities of conflict,' in which the moral, spiritual and intellectual tensions constantly press believers toward a fuller, more comprehensive statement of their commitments."

          Before Archbishop Williams' talk, John J. DeGioia, Georgetown president, presented him with the university's President's Medal for the archbishop's distinguished service to the Church of England and for his work to promote interfaith understanding and dialogue with other religions around the world.

          DeGioia said Archbishop Williams' life "has been embodied by a commitment to fostering interreligious understanding and dialogue."

          Confirmed as the 104th archbishop of Canterbury on Dec. 2, 2002, Archbishop Williams has brought together Christian and Muslim scholars throughout the world for his "Building Bridges" seminars, which previously took place in London in 2002 and Qatar in 2003.

          The third "Building Bridges" seminar took place March 30-April 1 on the Georgetown campus in Washington.