wfn.org | [ENS] Japan's Anglican leaders welcome Presiding Bishop

["Matthew Davies" <mdavies@episcopalchurch.org>]

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Japan's Anglican leaders welcome Presiding Bishop for visit affirming
shared 'journey of reconciliation'

Prayers offered at Hiroshima; delegation proceeds to Seoul, Shanghai,
Hong Kong, Taipei

By Bob Williams

ENS102305-02

[Episcopal News Service, Hiroshima] Traditional customs of respectful
dialogue and graceful hospitality -- and a clear spirit of mutual
appreciation and renewed friendship -- were central as Japan's Anglican
leaders welcomed Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold in a five-day visit
affirming peacemaking 60 years after the end of World War II.

"Our two churches, here in Japan and the United States, are on a journey
of reconciliation," Griswold said in a sermon October 23 at Hiroshima's
Resurrection Church, where he preached just after visiting the nearby
Peace Park memorializing the more than 200,000 lives lost when the United
States dropped the atomic bomb there August 6, 1945.

"Words are inadequate to express the depth of remorse and sadness,
even desolation, I experience in seeing the devastation caused by this
horrific event," Griswold told the congregation, sharing in services
with Japan's Anglican Primate James Toru Uno. "Surely, the message must
be that such a human disaster must never happen again."

Pausing briefly as emotion stilled his voice, the Presiding Bishop
expressed his "own profound sorrow, regret and repentance for the
suffering the citizens of this city bore . . . and those in Nagasaki
on August 9th."  [Full text of Griswold's sermon is posted at
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_68761_ENG_HTM.htm ].

Visiting Asia at the invitation of Uno and other Anglican-Christian
leaders, Griswold praised the Uno's August 15 "Message of Peace" in
which the Nippon Sei Ko Kai (Anglican Church in Japan) reiterates its
"determined desire for world peace" and notes the church "lacked the
courage to stand up in opposition to the war."

Griswold said Bishop Uno's statement "pointed out that U.S. policy in the
world today is pushing Japan towards a more militaristic posture, even
to being encouraged by my government to move from being a country under a
'Peace Constitution' "into a nation once again capable of making war.

"I commend Bishop Uno for his prophetic warnings. And I join him by once
again reminding my own government that the United States must exercise
leadership that heals and reconciles, and avoid policies that foment
violence and revenge."

Griswold also told the congregation that "Perhaps the single most
disappointing moment for me as primate of the American Church is the
decision by my government to wage war against Iraq."

Griswold further underscored the morning's Gospel reading, in which "Jesus
makes clear that the core of our faith lived out in the world is our call
to love both our creator and our neighbor. The bombing of Hiroshima does
a terrible dishonor to both. The memorial invites us never to forget. And
as we in the Christian community are reminded of Christ's commandment
of love, we are called to proclaim to the world there is another way."

While at the Peace Park memorial, Griswold and Uno joined in prayers
and the placing of flowers, remembering particularly more than 20,000
Koreans who died in the Hiroshima blast, many of whom were held as forced
laborers during wartime. The two Primates affirmed continuing efforts
to overcome the effects of that oppression and to achieve reconciliation.

At the close of Sunday's services, Uno thanked the Presiding Bishop for
his visit and for their collaboration in peacemaking.

A visit with the Anglican Church in Korea was Griswold's next destination
as he departed Hiroshima together with his wife, Phoebe, and four senior
staff members of the Episcopal Church Center in New York.

While in Japan, the Presiding Bishop's delegation was accompanied
throughout the itinerary by Rikkyo University Chancellor Joseph Nobuhisa
Matsudaira and by the university's staff officer for international
relations, Herbert Donovan (whose father is an Episcopal bishop of the
same name).

Rikkyo leaders conferred an honorary doctorate upon the Presiding Bishop
during his October 20 visit to the campus, which was founded in 1874 as
St.  Paul's School by Episcopal Bishop Channing Moore Williams. Beginning
with five students, the all-boys' enrollment has grown to include --
in its 131st year -- some 17,000 with classes spanning from primary
education through graduate programs. The affiliated St. Margaret's School
serves an all-girls' enrollment. (Note: A future ENS report will outline
the work of Rikkyo University.)

Rikkyo Chaplain Ajuko Ueda - who is one of five women priests among
the Nippon Sei Ko Kai's 200 clergy nationwide -- assisted in hosting
the delegation and a women's roundtable discussion with Phoebe Griswold
during which topics included the Anglican Consultative Council's recent
resolution calling for gender-equity in ministry and leadership, and
the work of the United Nations Committee on the Status of Women. (Note:
Related ENS coverage of the roundtable will follow in a separate story.)

Shared commitments to environmental protection were underscored
during the delegation's October 21-22 visit the Kiyosato Education
Experiment Project (KEEP), where some 1 million visitors annually share
in programs of nature conservancy, farming education, and spiritual
renewal. KEEP's large mountainside campus, established in 1940s by
the late U.S. Episcopalian Paul Rusch, includes St. Andrew's Anglican
Church, built to meld traditional Japanese and New England architectural
styles. KEEP Chairman Akiyoshi Kato and executive director Minoru Masaki
joined in welcoming the Presiding Bishop's delegation to the KEEP lodge,
where dinner featured the same menu of bento-box delicacies served earlier
this year when Japan's Emperor and Empress visited the compound. (Note:
A separate ENS story will follow on KEEP.)

The Brotherhood of St. Andrew hosted the Presiding Bishop for an October
22 forum at KEEP, where leader John Y. Teranchi proclaimed Griswold an
honorary member. The Presiding Bishop praised the work of the Brotherhood,
noting that it had been founded in the cathedral chapel in Chicago,
where he served as bishop from 1985 to 1997.

The Brotherhood of St. Andrew is among the active institutions in the
Nippon Sei Ko Kai, which -- in addition to its several schools -- also
operates St.  Luke's International Hospital, now marking its 85th year of
service to the Tokyo community. The Presiding Bishop visited the hospital
October 21 and placed flowers on the chapel altar in a prayer service
remembering the more than 108,000 who were killed in fire-bombings of
Tokyo on March 10, 1945.

Based in Tokyo, the Nippon Sei Ko Kai includes more than 20,000 members
in 11 dioceses: Hokkaido, Tohoku, Kita-Kanto, Tokyo, Yokohama, Chubu,
Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Kyushu, and Okinawa.

These dioceses' bishops, who comprise the Nippon Sei Ko Kai's House of
Bishops, met with Griswold October 20 at Tokyo's St. Andrew's Church,
which serves as a cathedral for the diocese. The bishops told Griswold
of recent initiatives, including their study of the Anglican Communion's
Windsor Report, and echoed their conclusion that the world's Anglicans
can move forward productively amid differences and diversity.

In dialogue with the bishops -- and with a group of seminarians October
21 at Tokyo's Central Theological Seminary -- Griswold addressed issues
currently confronted by Anglicans worldwide, including support for
a two-state solution to conflict in Israel-Palestine, and continuing
dialogue about the ministries of homosexual persons in the church.

"Though we in the Episcopal Church live with strains and tensions, as do
other provinces of the Communion as well, they are not anywhere near as
severe as news reports might suggest," Griswold told the seminary forum
moderated by the school's dean, the Rev. Barnabas Seki.

"The overwhelming reality of the Episcopal Church is what I call the
'diverse center,' men and women of differing points of view, including
bishops, who see the mission of the church, and its ministry of
reconciliation, as their primary focus," Griswold said.

"True reconciliation has very little to do with whether we agree or
disagree," he added. "It has everything to do with whether we truly wish
to discern the presence of Christ in one another beyond our divisions
and varying opinions."

Citing the example of Christ's dual humanity and divinity, Griswold
said that Anglican orthodoxy has historically been "able to contain the
paradox of two apparently contradictory things being true at once."

Griswold said the church's "willingness to live difficult and demanding
questions in an open and mutually respectful way is a characteristic of
Anglicanism at its best."

[Note to ENS readers: Continuing coverage of the Presiding Bishop's
visit to Asia will feature a full complement of photographs and digital
audio-photo reports from each country on the itinerary. The digital
reports will be completed in early November.]

-- Canon Robert Williams is the Episcopal Church's director of
communication. Also traveling with the Presiding Bishop and Mrs.
Griswold are Barbara Braver, assistant to the Presiding Bishop for
communication; the Rev. Canon Brian Grieves, the Episcopal Church's
director of peace and justice ministries, and Margaret Larom, the
Episcopal Church's director of Anglican and Global Relations.

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