wfn.org | Anglican Primates meet in Jerusalem

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April 3, 1997
Episcopal News Service
Jim Solheim, Director
212-922-5385
ens@ecunet.org

97-1722
Anglican Primates meet in Jerusalem to share common concerns and plan
Lambeth meeting

by James Solheim
      (ENS) The top leaders of the Anglican Communion gathered
March 9 in the Holy City of Jerusalem, the city "where dreams collide,"
to share common concerns and to plan for next year's Lambeth
Conference in England, expected to draw 800 Anglican bishops from
around the world.
      As they stepped onto land sacred to three world religions they
were also stepping into a tense political situation--and some of the most
dangerous turf in the world.
      The meeting came at a time when Israeli bulldozers were defiantly
poised to begin a highly controversial housing settlement in traditionally
Arab East Jerusalem, ignoring withering international criticism. Midway
through the meeting the primates expressed that they were "shocked and
horrified by the news that reached them of the shooting by a Jordanian
soldier of innocent Israeli school girls on a trip to an observation post on
the Jordan River."
      Speaking to a packed congregation of church leaders and
representatives of the diplomatic community at Evensong March 11 at St.
George's Cathedral, Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey said that he
and other "sympathetic outsiders" were keenly aware of the "justified
longings of the two peoples of this land." He pointed to the sufferings of
the Jewish peoples during their "long and terrible journey," and to the
Palestinians "whose journey has also been one of suffering." Carey
emphasized that "there can be no justice for one part of the human family
without justice for another."
      "In this small and historic stretch of land, a powerful clash of
dreams is taking place," he said. "They are not simply dreams of having
a legitimate home; they go much deeper than that, reaching into the
further recesses of the soul."

A suffering Communion
      During their week-long meeting, the bishops and archbishops not
only shared their own stories of struggle and hope, but immersed
themselves in their setting by walking the traditional Stations of the Cross
in the nearby Old City. They also spent a day in the Gaza Strip meeting
with Chairman Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian National Authority and
visiting a refugee camp, as well as dedicating a chapel at Ahli Arab
Hospital, run by the Diocese of Jerusalem.
      "Even though the Holy Land was ever before us during this past
week, we also heard stories from around our Communion of churches--a
suffering Communion," they said in a final statement March 16. During
the meeting the primates shared some painful stories: a crisis of episcopal
leadership in Rwanda in the wake of civil war; war in the Sudan that has
forced 10 bishops into exile; the struggle for justice among the dalits or
untouchables in India; oppression and persecution of the church in
Myanmar (Burma) and Pakistan; isolation in Bangladesh; sectarian
violence in Ireland.
      "Sharing these stories was the high point of the meeting for me
because it brought us all together," said Presiding Bishop Edmond
Browning. "It creates a whole new bond of affection every time we
meet."

Third world debt emerges as key issue for Lambeth
      The crippling third world debt, and related issues of poverty and
economic justice, quickly emerged as the key issue for next summer's
Lambeth Conference. Bishop Mark Dyer of the Episcopal Church in the
USA, who participated in the meeting as co-chair of the Inter-Anglican
Theological and Doctrinal Commission, said that the issue is "not just
debt but dehumanization," a contradiction of the belief that all people are
children of God. He said that it would be "unfaithful" to watch the
systematic destruction of brothers and sisters without making a strong
statement at Lambeth. 
      "Like the campaign against slavery, this is a campaign that every
Christian should support," added Richard Holloway, primus of the
Scottish Episcopal Church.
      Poverty is a "decisive issue for the church, a curse that provides
one of the greatest threats to society," argued Archbishop Winston
Ndugane, primate of the Church of Southern Africa who will chair the
section dealing with the issue at Lambeth. He said that it is not a debate
about money but about "rights and relationships, it's about
powerlessness."
      "This is the time to deal with this issue because just about
everybody is focused on the debt," added Bishop James Ottley of the US,
Anglican Observer at the United Nations. "Now is the time to develop a
strategy."

Sexuality issues expose differences
      If there was quick and unanimous agreement about economic
justice issues, the discussion of sexuality issues exposed deep differences.
      Presiding Bishop Maurice Sinclair of Argentina, primate of the
Anglican Church of the Southern Cone, introduced the concerns
emerging from the Second Anglican Encounter in the South, held last
February in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on the theme of Scripture in the
life and mission of the church in the 21st century. 
      In a statement on human sexuality issued as part of its final
report, participants expressed concern that "the setting aside of biblical
teaching in such actions as the ordination of practicing homosexuals and
the blessing of same-sex unions calls into question the authority of the
Holy Scriptures. This is totally unacceptable to us." Such actions call into
question the "mutual accountability and interdependence" that should be a
hallmark of the Anglican Communion, instead of placing "serious strain
on the internal unity of the Communion." 
      In a statement reflecting the concerns of his own province,
Sinclair was even more blunt. The decision in the heresy trial of Bishop
Walter Righter of the United States for ordaining a gay man to the
diaconate represents an "apparent lack of awareness of implications for
the Communion as a whole in the failure of the majority to identify and
affirm church discipline in this area of sexual ethics." He called for a
"doctrinal guide" as a way of holding the Communion together and
building collegiality and to "affirm all that is essential and relevant in the
doctrinal standards we already possess." 
      Why should "we perpetuate a provincial congregationalism?" he
asked. "Surely it is a wholesome thing for provinces to be accountable to
each other and free neither to innovate foolishly nor to stagnate lazily
without the possibility of intervention from the wider Communion," he
contended. "Some light-handed but wise-headed supervision of a collegial
nature would do us all good. Authority in the Anglican Communion
would continue to be a distributed authority but it would gain the
necessary coherence."
      Browning said that he was encouraged by the emphasis on
economic issues and not surprised that "we are a long ways from
agreeing on sexuality issues."
      Several primates suggested that it may be necessary to consider a
commission to deal with sexuality issues, similar to the Eames
Commission that dealt with women in the episcopate. Carey said that he
would consider the suggestion.

Primates clarify role of UN observer
      Responding to a report from its standing committee, the primates
"readily affirmed the work" of the Anglian Observer's office but
discussed some problems in communication. They endorsed the
recommendation that the office stay within a budget of $300,000 a year.
"We recognize that we are still feeling our way so it is not easy to
determine what it will take to make the office feasible," said Archbishop
Robin Eames of Ireland, on behalf of the committee.
      The Anglican Communion Office in London will review the
staffing of the office in an effort to achieve "adequate responsibility,
accountability and communication," Eames said. That will include
"closer involvement" of the chair of the Anglican Consultative Council
and the secretary general and an effort to alter the perception of
"isolation" between the office and members of the Communion. The
standing committee also called for wider representation on the office's
advisory committee, "making it culturally and geographically more
representative."
      Eames said that the committee had dealt honestly with the broader
questions of the value of the office to the Communion, realizing that they
were still "feeling their way to see what the full potential for the office is
in the life of the Communion."

Identity issues still loom large
      Speaking for the design committee of the Lambeth Conference,
Archbishop Keith Rayner of Australia said that it was clear from early
responses that bishops were looking for a "deepening of communion,
with God and with one another," some practical help in becoming better
bishops, and an opportunity to address "some of the great questions of
the church--to say something to the church and the world."
      "We will be pressed by the media about the meaning of
Lambeth... It's an occasion when the church can speak with some
relevance to the world," Rayner asserted. Trying to manage the
individual concerns of 800 bishops and still say something "concrete and
coherent" will be a definite challenge, he admitted, yet he hoped that it
would be possible to limit the number of issues, "otherwise we are
condemned to shallowness."
      Eames and Dyer introduced the report of the Inter-Anglican
Theological and Doctrinal Commission, called the Virginia Report for
short because it stems from a meeting at Virginia Seminary. As a
"further step along the road of self-discovery," it is an attempt to
"discover more about what it means to be an Anglican, and how we
perceive the machinery, the Instruments of Unity, should inter-relate,"
Eames said. 
      The report is an intense theological examination of what it means
to be a communion, an exploration of the unity and diversity. "I believe
that the next Lambeth Conference will be the most defining Lambeth in
history," Eames said. "It will determine what we are and where are
going. It will stand or fall on our sense of unity and vision." The
Virginia Report is intended to help in that theological self-definition.
      "The critical concern is: How do we remain as one in God and as
members of the one Body of Christ, at a time when independence is
more valued than interdependence, when the independent decision of
individual dioceses and provinces threaten the unity for which Jesus
Christ prayed the night before he died," asked Dyer. He said that issues
such as lay presidency at the Eucharist, the sacramental blessing of same
sex unions, and the ordination of sexually active homosexuals "will test
the truth of our unity."
      Yet Dyer and others are convinced that the Virginia Report, heir
to a process that held the Anglican Communion together when it became
apparent that women would be elected to the episcopate, provides a
model and theological underpinning for a Communion "held together in
the creative tension of provincial autonomy and interdependence."

--James Solheim is director of news and information for the Episcopal
Church.