wfn.org | 'The life of the church has never been separate from the life of the world'

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2002-112

'The life of the church has never
been separate from the life of the
world' 

Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold reflects on
recent meeting of primates of the Anglican
Communion

by Jan Nunley
jnunley@episcopalchurch.org

The spiritual leaders of 35 of the 38 provinces of the
Anglican Communion met from April 10-17 at the
new International Study Centre adjacent to
Canterbury Cathedral in England. On his return to
the U.S., Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold
reflected on the latest Primates' Meeting in a
conversation with Episcopal News Service. 

ENS: The primates have met more frequently in recent
years. What has that meant to you--individually and as a
group? 

Griswold: This was my third Primates' Meeting and what
I certainly was aware of was the deepening sense of
communion and fraternal understanding that has
developed over the last three years. A question was
raised early on--'should we meet every year?'--looking at
the expense of it all--and the conclusion was yes, we
really do need to do this annually. [Professor] David Ford
made a comment at the first meeting [in Oporto]. He said
that the very fact of electronic communication means that
you must meet face-to-face more frequently. Otherwise,
if you rely on electronic communication your sense of one
another is going to be warped. 

ENS: You've held meetings in Oporto in Portugal, at
Kanuga in the United States, and now in Canterbury. 

Griswold: I think it made a tremendous difference to
have a meeting literally in the shadow of Canterbury
Cathedral. The new International Studies Centre is so
designed that every room looks at the cathedral. And for
us to have our daily liturgy in the Norman crypt, the
original site of Thomas Becket's tomb, and to attend
cathedral evensong every afternoon, meant that a sense of
continuity, a sense of the church through the ages, put
some of our own immediate concerns into a larger
perspective. You realize that the life of the church has
never been separate from the life of the world around it
and has often had to sustain drastic historical
moments--so why should it be any different now? 

Part of the Primates' Meeting consisted each day of a set
number of primates describing to the whole group some
of the struggles and tensions--and opportunities for
ministry--in their own churches. Listening to stories from
the Sudan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, in the really drastic
situations in which people are ministering, and the clarity
and heroism of these bishops and their people and clergy,
made me realize that our own local struggles are nothing
compared to these life-and-death issues that they
confront all the time. 

ENS: The primates issued a call for continuing a
Communion-wide strategy on HIV/AIDS. 

Griswold: We spent a fair amount of time on the AIDS
pandemic in Africa. One primate--I think it's the primate
of Kenya--has decreed that funerals cannot last longer
than two hours, because a funeral in that culture is an
all-day affair that involves incredible expense for the
family who have to supply a kind of feast that goes with it,
and the clergy simply couldn't bury the number of people
who needed burial given the culture. So everything's had
to be compressed because of the AIDS deaths. There
are directives now about what you shouldn't do if you are
a Christian with respect to burial customs. 

That's just one instance of realizing how drastic the
situations of so many people have been. 

Along with that, what's happened is I think the primates in
a very genuine and sympathetic way have entered into
one another's realities. There really is a sense of, no
matter where we're from, no matter how different our
situations may be, we really do need to 'bear one
another's burdens.' Relationship, mutual
responsibility--one thing we all recognize is that none of
us can assume that what happens in our province is
disconnected from the larger reality of the Anglican
Communion, and we have to be ready for whatever
happens in one place having all kinds of ramifications
elsewhere, both in positive and negative ways. 

In some of the countries in which there is a very strong
and militant Islam, it is impossible to have interfaith
conversations, because the antipathies are so strong and
often accompanied by violence. And so it strikes me that
a country such as ours, a church such as ours, has to have
these interfaith conversations, not just for our own sake
but for the sake of the Communion. How can some of
what we can discover as common ground among the
Abrahamic siblings here be of help in other places? Or
when someone says 'there's no common ground between
the Islamic community and the Christian community,'
others could say, 'well, we have found some ways of
talking.' 

ENS: This was Archbishop George Carey's final meeting
in that capacity. What is his legacy to the primates, and
what role is he likely to play in retirement? 

Griswold: The fruitfulness of the meeting, the tone of the
meeting has had a lot to do with his own efforts to be a
man serving the whole Communion and taking seriously
every voice and honoring every concern--being clear
about his own perspective on any number of things but at
the same time possessing a kind of generosity of spirit, a
pastoral wisdom that I think made everyone feel this man
cares about us no matter what is going on in our province.

He has so many international contacts now that I think he
sees himself pursuing some of them. By virtue of his
experience as archbishop I think it would be a terrible
waste if there weren't ways in which all that he has
experienced and learned can be put to the service of the
Communion in the days ahead, beyond the formal
moment of his retirement. 

ENS: The primates issued a strong statement on the crisis
in the Middle East. 

Griswold: We had a letter from Bishop Riah in the
context of the meeting, asking for support, and so the
statement was a direct response to Bishop Riah's request.
Since the Primates' Meeting is not a legislative meeting,
there are no formal votes of any kind. But there certainly
was no one who said 'wait a minute, I don't want to be
identified with this.' The consensus was, yes, we are in
support of this. 

ENS: You also received a report from Consultation of
Anglican Communion Legal Advisors, a group of
Anglican advisors on canon law, who identified a list of
44 principles of canon law common to the whole
Communion. 

Griswold: I think what's happened is that with
communication being all that it is these days and with
various realities being lived in different parts of the
Communion, the question gets asked again and again: so
what is the glue? What are the commonalities? For
instance, in the legal advisors' report, one of the questions
they'd asked the provinces was 'where is your province
with respect to the seal of the confessional?' And a
number of provinces had nothing on that topic. Those that
did varied from 'it's absolute and inviolate' to 'it's to be
maintained except in certain cases.' I don't think the idea
is to write a common canon law, but to see how much the
provinces have developed a common body of experience
and to what extent do they borrow from one another.
One province--I think Brazil--said 'we've just taken the
canons of the Episcopal Church in the United States,
because we were formerly part of the Episcopal Church
and so we simply modified them.' 

ENS: Was this an attempt to begin to establish some
kind of code of Anglican canon law, or just to discern an
Anglican 'common law'? 

Griswold: Just the principles, [such as] the discrepancy
in the role of the bishop in various places. I got a letter
from a Nigerian priest in the United States who said 'help
me--I'm looking for a parish position but in your church,
the parish makes the decision. I come from a church
where the bishop simply places you. Can't you intervene?'
Here are two quite different ways of exercising episkope.

Since 1856, the Episcopal Church has required bishops
to visit [parishes] within the space of three years. Most
provinces don't have [that requirement], and some have a
five-year span, but most of them you only visit at the
invitation of the parish. 

ENS: The primates also issued a statement about the
Anglican 'doctrine of God.' What motivated that
statement--why that, why now? 

Griswold: Robin Eames [Archbishop of Ireland] said
'I'm having a heresy trial and it would be good to have
some sense of the basic doctrine of God.' So that's why
that came out. But the bishops are constantly being told
'you are the guardians of the faith, the teachers, and the
church expects you to speak.' And in many provinces
that's precisely the role bishops and primates play. 

And I think with our various discussions with the Roman
Catholic and the Orthodox churches, some of them
question how we know what's normative within the
Anglican tradition--who's representing Anglicanism? And
some of it has been George Carey's concern, though I
think he has no desire to have the role of archbishop
become analogous to that of the Pope in any way. One of
his gifts is that he is able to think in pretty clear categories
and would just as soon have things stated clearly and
definitively. 

ENS: With the election of a new archbishop of
Canterbury coming up, you must have shared some
thoughts with each other about the kind of person needed
to fill that role. What's your vision for the next archbishop
of Canterbury? 

Griswold: Obviously the archbishop of Canterbury has
to be someone who can deal with complexity and
paradox and is capable of entering sympathetically into
the vast array of contexts that constitute the life of the
Anglican Communion, and can serve as a minister of
interpretation and relationship--can articulate not only his
own faith clearly, but the life of one province to another in
ways that foster understanding. Clearly the archbishop of
Canterbury is first and foremost the Primate of All
England. So before you begin to talk about other roles,
there's that role. 

--The Rev. Jan Nunley is deputy director of
Episcopal News Service.