wfn.org | Bishops call 'waging reconciliation' the answer to globalization, terrorism

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2001-277

Bishops call 'waging reconciliation' the answer to globalization, terrorism

by James Solheim and Jan Nunley

     (ENS) The bishops of the Episcopal Church pledged themselves on September 26 
to "wage reconciliation" by "reordering and transforming the patterns of our 
common life so they may reveal God's justness--not as an abstraction but in bread 
for the hungry and clothing for the naked," and asked the church to offer its 
gifts "for the carrying out of God's ongoing work of reconciliation."

     The statement by the 135 bishops, gathered in Burlington, Vermont, for their 
fall interim meeting, came after they spent a week considering various viewpoints 
on the theme "God's Mission in a Global Communion of Difference." The topic of 
globalization, with its impact on the world and its implications for the mission 
of the church, grew out of prayer and preparations for a private retreat with 
missiologists and theologians that Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold made in June, 
according to the Rev. Ian Douglas, an organizer of the conference. Douglas is 
associate professor of world mission and global Christianity at the Episcopal 
Divinity School (EDS) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

     Welcoming the bishops, many accompanied by their spouses, Griswold said that 
he couldn't think of a topic "more pertinent" than globalization. In the wake of 
the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon--two 
icons of the power of the United States in today's world--in the week before 
their meeting, it is time "to look at how our national interests are perceived in 
the rest of the world," he said. "Even some of our friends are questioning our 
commitment to the common good."

     The underlying issue is one of reconciliation, Griswold argued. "What does 
it mean to be reconcilers as a church and as a province of the Anglican 
Communion?" Joining the American bishops for the duration of the conference was 
the Most Rev. David Gitari, bishop of the Diocese of Nairobi and primate of the 
Anglican Church of Kenya.

A common wound

     Griswold thanked the bishops for making the difficult decision to attend the 
meeting. "It is terribly important that we gather as a community," he said, 
especially in "unusual and troubling circumstances." Part of the trauma, he 
added, is the loss of "our sense of immunity" and being forced to "face our 
vulnerability and fragility." Many people, he noted, are expressing "a need to be 
in sacred space. They are open in deeper ways to the mysteries of God." Bishops 
play a special role, Griswold said, in supporting their clergy and people in 
traumatic situations. 

     The bishops most directly affected by the terrorist attacks--Bishop Mark 
Sisk of New York and Bishop Jane Holmes Dixon of Washington, DC--spoke to the 
gathering about their experiences in the days following the attacks. When Sisk 
visited Ground Zero and the area near Trinity Church and St. Paul's Chapel the 
day after the attack, he said that he was stunned that it was so quiet. Stopping 
near the rubble of what had been the World Trade Center, "We realized we were 
standing at the grave of thousands of people."

     Because the Pentagon is quite isolated from the city, Dixon said, the 
experience in Washington was quite different. The city was filled with rumors, 
feeding into a sense of terror. But the trauma had fostered "one hope in this 
horror--people of different faiths are coming together in a new way. Since events 
on that Tuesday we have reached out to one another." For her personally, Dixon 
said that "the trauma is still with me and I haven't been able to cry yet," 
trying to deal with "much fear of the unknown."

Mission not about us, but God

     Dr. Valerie Batts, a clinical psychologist in Massachusetts, opened the 
exploration of the theme of globalization with a presentation on "Engaging the 
Experience of Difference." As the originator of a training model on racism and 
multiculturalism, she described ways to recognize and understand differences 
among groups in our society, identifying the ways used to oppress various "target 
groups." She asked the bishops and spouses to discuss in their small groups the 
actions they could take "in this time of world crisis to affect reconciliation 
and justice."

     In a presentation on the Bible and mission, Prof. Grant LeMarquand of 
Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Pennsylvania said that people's reading 
and understanding of Scripture is always done in a cultural context. And he 
argued that "mission is not a program of the church or a great new idea thought 
up by Victorian Christians to be the religious arm of colonialism, as much as it 
has looked that way sometimes. Nor is it an attempt to get more members to keep 
our buildings going." Mission begins with God and we "simply share in that 
mission," he added. "Certainly it is a mission into which human beings are 
recruited but in the end it is not about us but about God." 

Globalization not new

     The Rev. Leng Lim of Singapore, a recent graduate from Harvard Business 
School, introduced a session on the economics of globalization. He said that it 
was difficult to find economists who "see the larger historic and moral issues. 
It is important to see the whole story, not just the pieces." A survey of the 
bishops and their spouses at the meeting revealed ambivalence about the benefits 
of globalization, he reported.

     In his presentation, Prof. Richard Parker of Harvard said that the concept 
of globalization is "not a new phenomenon" but rather "the latest chapter in a 
fourth or fifth stage of globalization, a wave that began in Western Europe 500 
years ago." He argued that "the values, logic, technology, and the social, 
political and economic forms that are today remaking the world originated in 
Western Europe (or its North American child), not somewhere else." And that 
legacy "continues to define the current global era." Just a hundred years ago, 
over 70 percent of the world's populations and territories were controlled by 
half a dozen European states. "Today those political empires are gone, and there 
are more than 200 nation-states in their place," he noted.

      "Since those empires ended," he said, "global economic inequality has 
worsened" and the gap between rich and poor states has doubled, "leaving the 
richest states controlling more global income than they ever did back when they 
directly ran colonial empires." The lives of billions of people has not improved 
and that "should be profoundly troubling."

Social Gospel era

     It is crucial, Parker said, "to see how the systemic global connection of 
politics, economics and ideology born in that earlier age of Europe's global 
empires is still shaping the world's overall development even today." As a result 
of misguided economic policies, "the numbers of very poor during the 1990s grew 
by nearly 500,000,000."

     The "progressive era" of the late 19th and early 20th century "radically 
reordered power and wealth and reshaped the balance between public and private, 
as well as the weak and the strong," Parker said. It was a "glorious covenantal 
renewal, simply the Social Gospel era," an application of Mainline Protestant 
values to a new urban and industrial world. "The achievements of that Social 
Gospel movement has ever since defined American life."

      "It was a remarkable period, one in which the confidence of America's 
Mainline Protestant leaders led them to associate Christian moral teachings with 
scientific advance and social and political reform," and "Episcopalians were 
among the vanguards" of that movement, he said.

     Addressing the bishops of "a proud and powerful church," Parker said, "Your 
agenda is to weigh, in this new millennium, what this church owes not only the 
nation but the world." Reminding them that "the Episcopal Church has shown itself 
capable of leading reforms that have remade human history," he encouraged the 
bishops to make the coming decade "The Decade of the Globe," using religion's 
capacity to unite people and to move them to a long-term search for justice.

Ministering in a 'bleak immensity'

     After a Sunday of sabbath rest, the bishops returned on Monday to more 
thought-provoking presentations. Denise Ackermann, visiting professor of 
practical theology at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, challenged 
them to consider the "bleak immensity" of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan 
Africa as a paradigm for mission in the midst of suffering. "The reality of the 
suffering world is ours," she said. "We too are infected." Quoting African 
theologian Teresa Okure, she said the "viruses" of sexism and poverty are "more 
dangerous" than HIV "because they are carriers enabling this virus to spread so 
rapidly."

     "Imagine if you had to choose between a roof over your head and food for 
your children, and speaking out about HIV/AIDSIt's no choice at all," she told 
the bishops. Talk about abstinence avoids the moral and ethical issues raised by 
the pandemic as long as women are not full partners in the conversation, 
Ackermann said. "This message cannot be heard, understood or followed as long as 
it is communicated without a properly constructed debate on what constitutes a 
moral community." During a period of reflection on Ackermann's presentation, 
Gitari quoted a common saying in his diocese that, where HIV/AIDS is concerned, 
"everyone is either infected or affected."

Anglican presenter 'profiled' at airport

     Repercussions from the September 11 attacks reached the Burlington meeting 
in a tangible way. The Rev. Christopher Duraisingh of the Church of South India, 
professor of applied theology at EDS, was invited to present a paper on 
"Globalization and a World of Difference: The Plural World of a New Pentecost" at 
the meeting. But officials at Boston's Logan Airport confiscated his computer 
without explanation and detained him for almost an hour of questioning. According 
to Douglas, the Massachusetts Port Authority claimed that all personal computers 
were being confiscated, but Duraisingh observed fellow passengers using computers 
on the flight. "He was singled out--profiled--because of his name and 
appearance," said Douglas. "He had to reconstruct his paper from memory."

     Duraisingh's presentation addressed two "equally powerful processes" in the 
modern world: globalization, which is centripetal in nature, and fragmentation, 
which is centrifugal. Comparing the Genesis story of the tower of Babel with the 
account of the day of Pentecost in Acts, Duraisingh said the church is called to 
"dismantle claims to cultural dominance" symbolized by the monolithic tower and 
replace it with the cultural diversity illustrated at Pentecost. "Pentecost 
addresses and turns upside down" some typically American thought patterns in a 
time of crisis: the affirmation of self and nation as powerful and autonomous; 
the closing of boundaries; the silencing of voices--and replaces them with 
decentering, "border crossing," and a multiplicity of voices that "finds in God 
our true identity."

 From reaction to renewal

     Conference organizer Douglas guided the broader discussion down to the 
specifics of addressing globalization in the Anglican Communion. Anglicanism is 
no longer "Anglo," but radically multicultural, Douglas told the bishops--a fact 
amply illustrated by the Lambeth Conference in 1998. But the community of 38 
"equal and autocephalous churches" which make up the Anglican Communion faces two 
forces which work against the "mutual responsibility and interdependence" they 
have sought for nearly 40 years.

     One is the "ongoing legacy of colonialism," manifest in power plays by one 
region against another, whether it is money given or withheld by the wealthy 
West, or alternative structures promoted in the US by bishops from the global 
South. A second is the transition from the dualistic thinking of the 
Enlightenment to postmodern pluralism, which generates a backlash in the form of 
what Douglas calls a "new confessionalism" and a "new curialization." The "new 
confessionalism" demands the security of clear doctrinal statements, definitions 
and limits, while the "new curialization" seeks a central authority structure for 
Anglicanism, frequently in the form of enhanced responsibility for unity on the 
part of the primates and the archbishop of Canterbury.

     But Anglicans must instead move "from reaction in fear to renewal in 
mission," Douglas said. "In these changing times we must not put our hope in 
either tighter doctrinal definitions or a more centralized international 
authority structure," he told the bishops. "Instead a new commitment to God's 
project, a renewal in God's mission, is needed if we are to remain in communion 
across the colors and cultures, nations and nationalities that Anglicanism now 
embodies."

Walking towards difference

     The bishops' spouses met concurrently with the bishops for all but one day 
of the gathering. During a special program entitled "The World Among Us," held at 
the Shelburne Museum, the spouses reflected on their own mission to "walk towards 
difference." "Building bridges between difference is something we can do when we 
intentionally invite people to dinner," the spouses said in a statement released 
at the end of the day. "Friendships formed around dining room tables are the 
stuff of mission and reconciliation. Calls to join programs or to create 
conversations between various groups in our communities are a work of healing 
that we can do." 

     "We usually defer to our spouses," commented Kate Smith, whose spouse is 
Bishop Andrew Smith of the Diocese of Connecticut. "But here we were challenged: 
how can I make a difference?"

Critical and strategic distance

     Archbishop Gitari, commenting on the conference, said that he was surprised 
by two things: first, that American bishops are not "preoccupied with [the] 
agenda of human sexuality" as many African bishops had concluded at Lambeth in 
1998. But, he said, "the globalization of computers and e-mails has not helped to 
change our attitude" as African bishops are bombarded with messages from partisan 
commentators. 

     He was also surprised, he said,  to find that evangelical Episcopalians were 
not as marginalized today as they had been on his first encounter with the 
American church nearly 25 years ago. He delivered a message from some of the 
African primates saying that they are "convinced that the Episcopal Church is 
capable of solving its problems" and therefore would not accept the consecration 
of American priests by bishops of  Rwanda and Southeast Asia to serve as part of 
the Anglican Mission in America. 

     Gitari also encouraged the bishops to "exercise their prophetic ministry" in 
a time of world crisis. "We do not have to agree with the powers that be," he 
said, citing a statement by President George W. Bush that "either you are with us 
or you are with terrorists." There is another category of people, said Gitari, 
who "are neutral. They cannot support terrorism, neither are they convinced you 
can defeat evil with evilWe should keep a critical and strategic distance so 
that we can praise our political leaders when they do what is just and true 
before God and criticized them fearlessly whatever the cost when they depart from 
justice, which God requires."

Faithful--and patriotic?

     In a post-conference press conversation, many bishops reported plans for 
interfaith conversations and outreach. Some said they were prepared to shift to a 
more public leadership style. "We need to step out of the safety of our 
cathedrals," said Bishop Bill Gregg of Eastern Oregon. "We must try to understand 
that there's a deep logic to what happened, from where violent acts come. Bishop 
Vincent Warner of the Diocese of Olympia added that the critical question of the hour
 must be "What does it mean to be both faithful and patriotic?"

     The bishops acknowledged that "waging reconciliation" won't be easy, but might 
be a source of relief from the rhetoric of war. "There are a sizeable number of retired 
military in my diocese," observed bishop suffragan Bob Hibbs of the Diocese of West 
Texas. "The people who were being devoured by their rage were grateful for words 
of balance and reason. People given to vengeance were relieved to find that the church 
still spoke of the absolute demands of justice and the countervailing demands of mercy."

--Jim Solheim is director and the Rev. Jan Nunley is deputy director of Episcopal 
News Service.