Lambeth panel explores questions of Anglican identity, postcolonialism
Episcopal News Service, Canterbury. July 21, 2008 [072108-04]
Pat McCaughan, Correspondent for Episcopal Life Media in Province VIII
Colonialism's legacy is apparent, from the current controversy within the Anglican Communion, to global hotspots like Zimbabwe, and in the "very clear, very haunting ruins of Anglican churches in nearly every western Ireland town" which document its history of British rule, experts said during a July 21 Lambeth Conference panel discussion.
A postcolonial conversation, a critique of colonialism involving patient listening and that includes everyone equally, is long overdue, yet most Anglicans tend to avoid the discussion, said the Rev. Joe Duggan, an Episcopal priest from the Diocese of Los Angeles and a doctoral researcher at the University of Manchester's Lincoln Theological Institute (LTI).
LTI, along with the Journal of Anglican Studies, co-sponsored the panel discussion, "Anglican Identities and the Postcolonial," a Lambeth Conference "fringe event" held at the University of Kent's Darwin Hall. Featured speakers included: Robert Young, author and a professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University; Bishop James Tengatenga of Southern Malawi; Bishop Mano Rumalshah of Pakistan; and Bishop Assistant Stephen Pickard of Adelaide in the Anglican Province of Australia.
Duggan said the panel discussion was planned for Monday, the day bishops would be addressing Anglican identity and mission. "We wanted to initiate a global conversation about what is the postcolonial in a way…not caught up in polarization with controversy in the debate, but a patient listening. Our hope is that you'll take these questions back to your dioceses.
"There's never been a Lambeth Conference that's looked at what is the theology and ecclesiology after the colonial period," Duggan told the gathering of about 75. "If you look at Anglican theologians around the world, the space given to colonialism is very brief and very short. So it's not surprising we're in the situation we are. We are trying to step back and provide resources…to begin asking the questions."
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, at his first news conference since the every-decade Lambeth Conference began July 16, said one vision of the Anglican Communion -- "unity by consent, not coercion" -- is "a vision worth working for."
He said the background to today's theme was set by "a work party on theological education set up by the primates a few years ago." He said theological education was "one of my priorities" when he became Archbishop of Canterbury (in 2002) and wanted to "deliver real excellence world wide, not just depend on northern and western institutions."
When asked if the Anglican Communion is headed for schism, he replied that "if this is the end of the Anglican Communion, I don't think anyone's told the people here."
Postcolonialism: the world turned upside down
Young, who most recently authored "The Idea of English Ethnicity (2008), traced the history of colonialism to 1492. "By 1914, the beginning of World War I, European powers or European-derived powers, colonial powers, controlled or occupied nearly eight- or nine-tenths of the globe with no space left literally for territorial expansion," Young said.
The Anglican Church's role in aiding imperialism is "complicated" with missionaries sometimes serving as the vanguard for governments. What is needed now, he said, is for Westerners to think outside their normal assumptions.
Postcolonialism starts from the premise that "those in the West…should relinquish their monopoly on knowledge and take other knowledges, other perspectives as seriously as their own. It represents a general name for new, insurgent knowledges that seek to change the tones and values under which we all live.
"It doesn't say you have to abandon them, but to think about them, to be aware of what those assumptions are. At one level the theory is very simple, the only qualification you need really to start is to make sure you're thinking or looking not from above but below, not from the North but the South, not from the inside, but the outside, and not from the center but the margin. It's the world turned upside down."
Inclusive theology, finding space for everyone's voice
Born in 1958, Bishop James Tengatenga of Southern Malawi called himself "totally postcolonial…formed in those things as one who acted against them and one who embodied them. The only thing I ever wanted to be when I was growing up, was white. Why wasn't I born white? Maybe that's why I'm an Anglican. It sounds tongue-in-cheek, but it's a very interesting thing to figure out why people choose the Anglican Church over against another."
Commenting on how colonialism permeates the culture, he added that "the movement to new independent African churches is not seen as real because it is not white enough."
Postcolonialism asks the question: "Why is one form or one visual form the real one over against the other? Who wields the power, and whose form of religious institutions is the true form ? Or, are there forms at all necessary or do we have to think outside the box. When you say, outside the box it assumes there is one box," he said.
Bishops attending the indaba groups characterized the conversations as positive. "We have learned a lot about understanding and practices in other parts of the communion where we have been misinformed," said Bishop Neil Alexander of Atlanta. "We are talking with each other and explaining the realities and contexts of our lives and the ways we do ministry in all parts of the world."
Bishop Cate Waynick of Indianapolis said the Anglican identity discussions in her indaba groups centered on the role of bishops and beginning "to discuss a variety of understandings about what it means to be Anglican. Until we share all of those, it is hard to move forward."
For panelist Bishop Mano Rumalshah of Pakistan, the essence of postcolonialism is flexibility and contextualization.
"In my diocese we are 100,000 in a population of 16 million. We are on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the home of the Taliban, Al Qaeda. You name it, they're all there."
He said that the future of the Anglican Church "or any church, especially in Islamic lands where the church is marginalized, lies in being a collegial church, a united church, a church which in spite of all its traditions comes together to face the challenges of life in those situations. Our relationship with the Anglican Communion as a mother church has not broken. We are fully part of it and yet in Pakistan we don't call ourselves the Anglican Church, we call ourselves the Church of Pakistan. That's fundamentally necessary in an Islamic situation."
Postcolonialism means, for the Church in Pakistan, "that we have to be ourselves. We have to wear our own clothes and eat our own food, our music, our liturgy, above all, our theology. The way of thinking has to be locally contextual rather than what we have again imported from elsewhere. What we import is to help and guide us in some ways because we have essentially the same faith. But, it does not define how I function in that situation."