Brazilian Anglicans commemorate long history, deep roots within Episcopal Church
Episcopal News Service -- Embu Guacu, Brazil. June 7, 2010 [060710-03]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
Episcopal Church House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson helped the Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil (IEAB) bring its historic 31st General Synod to a close June 6 by preaching during the gathering's final Eucharist.
"I am reminded of the long and strong relationship between the Episcopal Church in Brazil and the Episcopal Church," Anderson said from the pulpit of St. Paul's, the Anglican cathedral in Sao Paulo. "I give great thanks for that relationship. Your prophetic witness to justice, your creative and inspired worship, music and song is an inspiration to us."
The 31st synod, held June 3-6 at Recanto Betania retreat center just outside Sao Paulo, honored 200 years of an Anglican presence in Brazil; 120 years of the IEAB, which has deep roots in the U.S.-based Episcopal Church and the 25th anniversary of the ordination of women in the province.
During its final session, the synod voted by acclamation to tell the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada that the IEAB supports those provinces' full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people in the life of the church.
"The love of God has no boundaries," Brazilian Archbishop Maurício José Araújo de Andrade said to loud applause.
The decision came in response to Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori's June 2 pastoral letter to the Episcopal Church, in which she refers to the Pentecost letter from Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.
In his May 28 letter, Williams proposed that representatives currently serving on some of the Anglican Communion's ecumenical dialogues should resign their membership if they are from a province that has not complied with moratoria on same-gender blessings, cross-border interventions and the ordination of gay and lesbian people to the episcopate.
On June 7, Anglican Communion Secretary General Kenneth Kearon said he sent letters on June 3 to Episcopal Church members of the Inter Anglican ecumenical dialogues informing them that their membership has been discontinued.
Canadian Archbishop Fred Hiltz said June 4 in his address to that province's General Synod that he supports Jefferts Schori's position.
Andrade told a joint gathering of the House of Bishops and the House of Clergy and Laity June 6 that Williams' letter said little about cross-provincial incursions by bishops and primates. He singled out Archbishop Gregory Veneables of the neighboring Anglican Province of the Southern Cone, whom Andrade said continues to intervene in the provinces of Brazil, Canada and the Episcopal Church.
A letter indicating the province's support was to go to the leaders of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada on June 6 or the next day, and that a pastoral letter to the entire Anglican Communion would soon follow, Andrade said.
When asked by a synod member later on June 6 outside of the meeting about her reaction to the Brazilians' show of support, Anderson said that "I pray that these disagreements [in the Anglican Communion] do not encourage us to take sides, but instead to deliberate in partnership, always watching for how God is acting in our lives."
"We have a call to serve the least of these," she continued. "We must always keep our eyes and hearts on that call. Together, and with God's help, we can bring about God's reconciled world."
"Because we are a church who welcomes all the people of God into the full life of God's church, we may be excluded from the communion's ecumenical dialogues, but nothing can separate us from the love of Christ," she added.
Earlier in the synod, delegates and provincial bishops elected Andrade by acclamation to a second term as primate, or leader of the province. Andrade was first elected in 2006 and was due to stand for re-election in 2009 but the General Synod was postponed a year due to financial difficulties in the province.
Selma Almeida Rosa, a lay delegate from the Diocese of Curitiba, was elected to head the province's 48 member House of Clergy and Laity, becoming the first lay woman to hold that post.
The Rev. Canon Francisco de Assis da Silva was re-elected as provincial secretary.
Luiz Alberto Barbosa, Rosa's predecessor, was Anderson's guest at the 76th General Convention and addressed the House of Deputies. He and Andrade, who also attended the convention, invited Anderson to attend the synod and preach at the closing service.
During her sermon at the closing Eucharist, Anderson addressed concern expressed during the synod about province's declining membership. Many parts of the Christian church having an aging membership, she said. Young people are not joining the church in part, Anderson said, "because many of them want to make a difference in this world and our church is still bickering about who can be full members."
"Our young people … care about relationship. They care about service. They want to worship God in meaningful ways, to be empowered in service to be in relationships that affirm and encourage them in their life," Anderson said. "They want to be a part of a community that practices what it preaches, to truly love our neighbors as ourselves in a life of service and relationship."
In his report to the synod, Andrade said that the province is bringing its finances in order and now "can look forward, knowing we can continue to grow and we can discern what kind of church we want to be in the future."
The province was hit hard by the recent economic downturn, prompting the postponement of the 31st synod from 2009 to 2010 and forcing the province office to layoff six of its 10 employees. Some dioceses have had trouble making their contributions to the wider church.
However, da Silva, provincial secretary, told the synod that "the problem of our church is not funding; the problem of our church is a lack of responsibility for funding and for using our gifts."
The IEAB, da Silva said, is well-known throughout the Anglican Communion for its inclusivity, its innovative liturgy and music, and for its theological work. He said that, though small, the church is a visible presence in the country and promotes social justice.
Anderson was one of four Episcopal Church representatives who attended the synod. They included Robert Radtke, Episcopal Relief & Development president, the Rev. Glenda McQueen, the church's partnership officer for Brazil as well as the Anglican Church of Mexico and Iglesia Anglicana de la Region Central de America and the Rev. Canon Bruce Woodcock, manager of international relations for the Church Pension Fund.
Their presence at the synod symbolized the long history between the two provinces. While expatriate Anglican chaplaincies were established in Brazil in 1810, it wasn't until after the separation of church and state that the country was fully opened to non-Roman Catholic missionaries. Among them were Lucien Lee Kinsolving and James Watson Morris who came to Brazil in 1890 from the Virginia Theological Seminary. In 1907 Kinsolving became bishop of the Brazilian missionary district of the Episcopal Church.
The district became an autonomous Anglican Communion province in 1965 and now has 120,000 Anglicans in nine dioceses and one missionary district covering the entire country.
When the Episcopal Church concluded its financial obligations to the IEAB in 1975 and the province became self-sustaining in 1980, there was no formal agreement for a continuing close relationship. However, in 1990, at the celebration of the centennial of the church in Brazil, the presiding bishops of the Episcopal Church and the IEAB agreed to try to reconnect the two provinces.
The result came at the 76th General Convention in July 2009, when the Episcopal Church agreed (via Resolution A130) to enter into a new covenant titled "Commitment to be Companions in Christ." The covenant calls for the provinces to pray for each other's life and faith, commit to develop and support diocesan companion relationships, and "discern and support other initiatives that will mutually enrich the ministry and mission of both provinces."
Calling the two provinces "sister churches," Diocese of South Western Brazil Bishop Jubal Pereira Neves told ENS that his province is "a Brazilian church with our way of being, with our culture, with our hopes and with some goals: how to be Anglicans in this land, among these people."
"We believe we are ready to help your church in your ministry among your people," said Neves, the Brazilian episcopal representative on the Bilateral Standing Committee that will help the provinces live into the new agreement. "It's time to … produce something new together."
Anderson agreed, telling ENS that "we can all understand and take courage from the voices of witness that come out of this amazing province."
McQueen said that the "passion for mission" that inspired Episcopalians to come to Brazil 120 years ago is still alive in the IEAB.
"The Brazilian church today, with their autonomy as a church and with their cultural heritage that they have integrated into their liturgy and their theology, has something that they can offer to the Episcopal Church, and not only the Episcopal Church but the Anglican Communion," she said. "We have much to learn of their spirit of being a church, of their spirit of mission and how it is with very few financial resources, they are able to do wonders. We have a lot to share one to another."
Resolution A130's explanation suggested that "this agreement may also serve as a model for covenant with other provinces as they become more financially independent but seek to maintain a close relationship."
More information about the two provinces' relationship and history is here.
Episcopal Relief & Development is partnering with the Diocese of Rio de Janeiro to provide health care and mental health services and to improve job skills through a community center in Cidade de Deus ("City of God"), a sprawling favela (shantytown) of 37,000 inhabitants on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Some 80% of the population has been affected by gun violence. Many young people lack the skills needed to obtain decent-paying jobs. The clinic concentrates on providing psychotherapy, serving mostly women with post-traumatic stress and anxiety disorders.
The agency also works with the province through Servico Anglicano de Desenvolvimento which helps trains people in the processes and methodology for strategic planning of development processes.
Radtke told ENS that the relationship between Episcopal Relief & Development and the province of Brazil is a mutual one because of Brazil's support for the agency's work elsewhere, most recently in donating to relief efforts in Haiti after the Jan. 12 earthquake.
Episcopal Relief & Development has found that Brazil "is very adept at running [social and development] programs and so we wanted to give them the opportunity to extend them," Radtke said.
More information on Episcopal Relief & Development's work in Brazil is available here.
In addition to the IEAB, the Epsicopal Church has "covenant partnerships" with four other Anglican provinces or dioceses: IARCA, Mexico, the Episcopal Church in the Philippines and the Episcopal Church of Liberia. The partnerships include in some cases promises of financial subsidies for certain amounts of time, as well as mutual ministry and interdependence.