Anderson's international guests reflect on uniqueness of convention
Episcopal News Service -- Anaheim, California. July 11, 2009 [071109-06]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
The legislative body, family reunion and marketplace of ideas that is General Convention can be bewildering, exhilarating and momentous, even for Episcopalians, much less visitors from overseas.
The six international Anglican guests invited by House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson reflected on the uniqueness of convention in a July 11 interview, and told Episcopalians to move forward without fear.
"As much the Episcopal Church needs us, we need the Episcopal Church to be able to move together," said the Very Rev. Victor Atta-Baffoe, dean of St. Nicholas Seminary, Cape Coast, Ghana.
"I think the word is 'learn'," said the Rev. Luiz Alberto Barbosa, president of the House of Clergy and Laity of the Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil. "Learn from each other, also sharing with each other … it's the term of this conference, ubuntu."
"You are a very open church," he said. "The way you decide, the way you think -- even your conflicts -- it's very open so we can all see and be a part."
Asked to name the most surprising thing about the process of decision-making at General Convention, the Very Rev. Rowan Smith, dean of St. George's Anglican Cathedral in Cape Town, South Africa replied "how very British you are."
"Very British and very bureaucratic," echoed Atta-Baffoe.
The way in which the Episcopal Church's polity operates is "formidable … but not in an oppressive sense; its attention to detail, precision, the formality of it is astonishing," said Jenny Te Paa, principal of Te Rau Kahikatea, College of St. John the Evangelist, Auckland, New Zealand. But also, she added, "laughter is permitted."
"Mascots are permitted," Smith suggested, referring to the decorations with which many deputies adorn their diocesan table standards.
Atta-Baffoe said convention for him is "quite strange … we don't have a House of Deputies; there's nobody like the president of the House of Deputies."
"The whole idea of the baptismal covenant is taken seriously here," he said. "The lay people are part of the structure, they are not left out … if you go to synod in the province, all you see on the platform is the purple colors."
Esther Mombo, academic dean of St. Paul's United Theological College in Limuru, Kenya, said she was impressed with the "sense of engagement" with which especially the House of Deputies approaches its work.
"There's no sense of you being told and you follow," she said, describing "the seriousness with which members bring issues to the table" and how the leadership ensures that it is moving forward "with the people."
Barbosa added that he is impressed with the way the convention's hearings help inform the bishops and deputies when it comes time to vote.
Mombo said "this engagement and the enthusiasm with which people have engaged … shows the seriousness of their baptismal vows and [their senses that] this is our church; it's not somebody else's."
Atta-Baffoe said that many ordained African Anglican leaders would like the church to run like "the Roman papacy."
At convention, "the true spirit of Anglicanism is somehow activated -- that authority of the spirit -- you need to agree to disagree, you need to disagree to agree," he said. "Nevertheless, we are moving on and at the end of the day the work of God must go on. And it's God's work, not our work."
Te Paa, who attended the 75th General Convention in 2006, said that in Anaheim she has been dismayed by a sense of vulnerability that she perceives among Episcopalians.
"I am a little surprised and saddened that too many Episcopalians are being affected by their sense of loss of face or vulnerability in belonging to the Anglican Communion," she said. "I am dismayed at the extent to which that seems to be prevalent."
As the others nodded in agreement, Te Paa said, "I don't believe that that is so … it is not how I perceive the rest of the communion regarding the Episcopal Church to be honest."
"What's been good about being here and what's good about being able to repeat the message, is to assure the convention that that is far from the reality of the perception of the rest of the communion," she said. She cited the Episcopal Church's communion-wide support of theological education, its networks that organize Anglicans around causes such as the environment and peacemaking, and outreach efforts such as the NetsforLife program.
"The communion treasures you," she concluded. "It can't do without you."
She said that she hoped to invited other Christian educators to help the members of the Anglican Communion understand the "sheer ecclesiastical nonsense" of recent claims of certain provinces declaring themselves to be "out of communion" with other provinces, and threats that have been leveled to kick certain provinces out of the communion.
"Any church can make a decision because of fear," Barbosa said. "Fear cannot be our counselor … don't be afraid of being excluded from the Anglican Communion because you are not alone. There are a lot of other provinces and people that support what you are doing."
Barbosa's comment echoed the guests' sentiments that some Anglicans in both the global south and global north perceive each other in stereotypical terms.
Mombo said that to suggest that "four or five voices" speak for all Anglicans in the southern hemisphere is "like saying all Episcopal Church talks about is sex -- which is untrue."
Still, Te Paa offered Episcopalians "a slight caution against being too single-issue oriented."
"There are so many other good and wonderful things that tend to be really diminished in terms of being raised as being real examples of the witness and mission of the Episcopal Church," she said, adding that such single-issue attention "tends to dull the cries of indigenous Episcopalians and those minority groups that are still struggling for voice and representation."