'Witnessing to Christ Today': Presiding bishop, Southern Africa primate address USPG conference
Episcopal News Service. June 10, 2010 [061010-02]
Matthew Davies
"Show up, pay attention, tell the truth and leave the results to God." This was the charge that Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori delivered June 9 to some 200 participants attending the USPG-Anglicans in World Mission conference, noting that the Franciscan summary is an "excellent model" for the mission work to which the church is called.
"We have to show up everywhere with an attitude of radical openness," Jefferts Schori said. "Mission means healing and restoring all creation toward the common weal of God … living in justice with dignity, and all people and creation living together in peace."
Jefferts Schori and Archbishop of Cape Town Thabo Makgoba were keynote speakers at the USPG (United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel) annual conference in Swanwick, England, addressing the theme, "Witnessing to Christ Today."
Bishop Michael Doe, general secretary of USPG, told ENS that the agency was delighted to welcome the two Anglican leaders and that their presence had attracted more participants to the conference this year than ever before.
The U.K.-based USPG is one of the world's oldest missionary societies, dating back to 1701. Today, it works in partnership with Anglican churches in more than 50 countries in areas such as health care, education, leadership training and action for social justice.
A range of Anglican Communion issues and budgetary concerns is being assessed at the conference, said Doe, noting that the organization is currently restructuring and exploring ways it can operate more efficiently and effectively.
Reflecting on the origins of the Episcopal Church, Jefferts Schori said in her address that the U.S.-based province began through the Church of England's missionary work, some of which was funded by the SPG, the precursor to USPG.
"At the time of the [American] Revolution SPG was providing support to 77 persons in the American colonies," she said. "As the church developed, lay leadership became essential and vital and women took significant leadership roles … That history of lay leadership and the development of a democratic national and ecclesial polity has continued to shape the Episcopal Church."
The presiding bishop recounted the story of Samuel Seabury, the first bishop in the Episcopal Church, who was consecrated in 1784 by the Scottish Episcopal Church's bishops in the Diocese of Aberdeen and Orkney. Seabury had first turned to the Church of England for consecration but declined when its bishops had required that he swear allegiance to the King of England.
The Scottish bishops laid hands on Seabury "with the understanding that our new prayer book would be shaped by their Eucharistic theology. That act effectively began the Anglican Communion."
The presiding bishop will address the Scottish Episcopal Church's General Synod on June 11 in Edinburgh and she will preach at Southwark Cathedral in London on Sunday, June 13.
In her USPG address, Jefferts Schori offered an overview of the mission work in which the Episcopal Church is engaged, throughout the Anglican Communion and as a province that has a presence in the United States and 16 other countries in Central and South America, Asia and Europe.
She noted that the baptismal covenant that the Episcopal Church "has prayed for the last 30 years has increasingly roused us into mission. That baptismal covenant isn't shared with most of the rest of the communion ... What we have prayed over these decades has shaped our theology and it has a great deal to do with dignity and respect for the image of God in all our neighbors."
The Episcopal Church's mission in the world is shaped by the United Nations Millennium Development Goals "as a proximate vision of the reign of God," she said. "In our U.S. context we are two years into a mission initiative that focuses on domestic poverty, primarily in Native American communities."
Global peacemaking, Jefferts Schori added, "needs us all, particularly around the inhuman conditions of poverty, injustice and war across this planet. God's mission needs our willingness to partner with any who share that vision of a healed world. We cannot disdain partnership with any who share even part of that vision.
"If we understand our beautiful vocation to be building a just and peaceful society, we'll also understand the need to be able to work with others who share that goal, whatever their religious affiliation or politics."
A video stream of the presiding bishop's address is available here.
Makgoba, who is primate (senior bishop) of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, addressed the USPG conference June 10 on the theme "Mission Realities for Southern African Anglicans – and their wider implications."
He described the Anglican Church of Southern Africa -- which covers Angola, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland -- as a "global microcosm" of the Anglican Communion.
He spoke about some of the challenges the local church faces concerning issues of HIV/AIDS, malaria, child mortality, polygamy and the grim legacy of apartheid.
Speaking about the current tensions in the communion, Makgoba said the Anglican Church of Southern Africa represents the "whole range of views on human sexuality."
However, he said that human sexuality "is not and cannot be a church-dividing issue … Surely we can never give up on each other – for God never gives up on any of us. Differences of opinion are inevitable; schism is not."
When Anglicans in Southern Africa meet "we feel sharp pain and great distress" concerning sexuality issues, "yet none of us feels called to turn to another and say ‘I no longer consider you a Christian, a member of the body of Christ – I am no longer in communion with you," he said. Rather "sharing our pain has left us feeling more closely bound to one another – it is as if we see the marks of the living Christ, the suffering Christ, in one another, in our common life, as we await together the power of the resurrection within our painful circumstances."
Of the Episcopal Church, Makgoba said that there is a perception that there has not been enough listening and that the U.S.-based province has "acted in ways that communicated a lack of care about the consequences of their actions." The continuing dominance of debate on human sexuality "undermines our witness and dissipates energies that should be spent on mission," he said.
He also acknowledged that cross-border interventions have caused pain and undermined the integrity and mission of the Episcopal Church.
Makgoba concluded his address by noting the similarities between Scripture and Indaba, a Zulu word that means purposeful conversation and which formed the basis for the bishops' study groups during the 2008 Lambeth Conference.
"Appropriately baptized Indaba" could help Anglicans "reconnect with more Gospel-shaped approaches that better reflect theologies of the work of the Spirit and the body of Christ," said Makgoba, who served as a member of the Lambeth Conference Design Group.
A video stream of Makgoba's address is available here.
On the evening of June 9, Makgoba and Jefferts Schori joined the Rev. Canon Mark Oxbrow, international director of the Faith2Share network, for a panel discussion that focused on issues of local and global mission, Anglican identity, human sexuality, and environmental concerns. A video stream of the discussion is available here.
Speaking about the effect of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Jefferts Schori said that the fisheries in the region are going to be impacted for years, and that "many other systems that depend on the fertility of that environment -- in estuaries and marshes along the coast as well as the open sea -- are going to be affected for decades to come."
She said that the dispersants that British Petroleum and others are applying to the oil "are exceedingly toxic and we don't know a great deal about the long-term chemistry of those products …
"They'll have health effects on non-human creatures, as well as eventually on human creatures. My favorite shorthand for this is that we're all connected, and when we begin to look at the particulars of a system like that we begin to see how we're all connected and how the sin in one place has consequences for all of the rest of the system."
Among the aims of the USPG conference, which concludes June 11, is "to draw more people into growing awareness of world mission issues." As well as attending plenary sessions and worship services, participants have been meeting in discussion groups to explore the theme and consider questions that have arisen from the keynote addresses.
The conference theme, "Witnessing to Christ Today," echoes that of the World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh June 2-6 that drew about 300 participants from many Christian traditions to mark the centenary of similar event in 1910. That earlier conference, also held in Edinburgh, is widely regarded as a major milestone in the modern ecumenical movement.
Several participants at the Edinburgh event are also attending the USPG conference.