Today begins the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, during which Christians of all denominations pray to erase the boundaries that separate them. It began as a Catholic observance, but more and more denominations joined their voices to the prayers, until today it has become a celebration of the rainbow spectrum of Christian sects with utterly incompatible theologies. Depending on how we look at the matter, therefore, we might describe the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity as a stunning success or as a public acknowledgment of abject failure.