Asia Visit Finds Anglicans United in Reconciling Mission
Episcopal News Service. November 4, 2005 [110405-4-A]
Bob Williams
[Note to readers and editors: This 1,100-word wrap-up report of the Presiding Bishop’s 14-day visit to Asia will be followed later this month by ENS digital photo-audio releases and further coverage in Episcopal Life’s December issue.]
[ENS] Praying at Hiroshima’s Peace Park and along Korea’s Demilitarized Zone, at Nanjing’s massacre memorial and in Taiwan’s Episcopal cathedral, Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold joined in the reconciling mission of church leaders who welcomed him to Asia October 17-31.
“God’s healing love is at work as we seek to make common cause,” Griswold said along his seven-city itinerary, which included conferring in Seoul with South Korea’s President Roh Moo-hyun, and in Nanjing with China’s Bishop K. H. Ting.
Citing the “genius of Anglicanism” in bridging differences and uniting persons of divergent points of view, Griswold praised the work of three fellow Primates, or provincial archbishops, for aiding local and international peacemaking through the Anglican Church of Korea, Japan’s Nippon Sei Ko Kai, and the Anglican Church of Hong Kong.
In Korea, the Anglican Church’s contributions to Korean democratization and social services were praised by President Roh while meeting at his official Blue House residence October 25. Joined by Archbishop Matthew Chung and aides, Griswold reiterated his call upon the U.S. government to support peaceful reunification on the Korean peninsula by refraining from any preemptive military strike (see related ENS story at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_68809_ENG_HTM.htm).
In Japan, Anglican Archbishop Joseph Uno, accompanied by Griswold, on October 23 laid a wreath at the memorial to Korean victims of the Hiroshima atomic blast of 60 years ago. Uno voiced the continuing commitment of his church, the Nippon Sei Ko Kai, to fostering reconciliation with Koreans, thousands of whom were held involuntarily by Japan during World War II (see related ENS story from Hiroshima at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_68762_ENG_HTM.htm).
In Hong Kong, Archbishop Peter Kwong emphasized the friendships shared by Anglicans around the Pacific Rim. During lunch conversations with Griswold October 29, Kwong indicated his view that ongoing dialogue across the Anglican Communion will continue to ease tensions sparked by differing views. Kwong said his Anglican Province, the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui, is accustomed to diversity, having ordained the world’s first woman priest in 1944. (More about Hong Kong’s mission is online at http://www1.hkskh.org/.)
In Shanghai and Nanjing, leaders of the “post-denominational” China Christian Council and Three-Self Patriotic Movement briefed the Presiding Bishop on their continuing work for “theological reconstruction” that has unfolded since the Cultural Revolution. Bishop K. H. Ting, 91, who began his ordained ministry as an Anglican, reiterated the need for renewed education of clergy and laity. The visit included a tour of Shanghai’s former Anglican cathedral now slated for renovation (separate ENS stories will follow).
In Taipei, Bishop David Lai welcomed Griswold to the Diocese of Taiwan, part of the U.S.-based Episcopal Church. In his visitation as Primate of the 14-congregation diocese, Griswold preached in St. John’s Cathedral on the role of cross-cultural understanding and Christian humility (see ENS story at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_69009_ENG_HTM.htm).
Departing Taipei on October 31, Griswold commended Taiwan’s ministries as the “diocese in which the Episcopal Church begins each day” given the island’s location across the international date line some 12-13 hours ahead of the U.S. eastern time zone.
Asian contexts, gifts
Speaking in forum settings and one-to-one conversations, the Presiding Bishop praised the unique contributions of Asian Christians to global Anglicanism, noting the deep traditions of prayerful meditation and mutual respect, particularly for elders, within the region’s 5,000-year-old cultural history.
“Because Jesus enters into the fullness of human life and human struggle the gospel is always embodied locally,” Griswold told students at Taiwan’s St. John’s University, founded in 1879 in Shanghai by Episcopal Bishop Samuel Schereschewsky and continuing today with an emphasis on education in technology.
His remarks echoed similar comments at lectures at China’s Nanjing Theological Seminary, Japan’s Central Theological Seminary and Kiyosato Environmental Education Project (KEEP), and Tokyo’s Rikkyo University, which conferred an honorary doctorate upon the Presiding Bishop on October 20. Founded with five students in 1874 as St. Paul's School by Episcopal Bishop Channing Moore Williams, Rikkyo has an all-boys' enrollment of some 17,000 students in classes spanning from primary education through graduate programs.
Griswold pointed to the “specific ways in which a particular community lives the gospel” which are “determined in part by their context: their history, social context, cultural context and philosophical context. As an Anglican Archbishop once said to me: ‘The Holy Spirit can do different things in different places.’ … By being together we can teach each other and learn from one another such that the truth who is in Jesus can be more fully expressed.”
Phoebe Griswold, the Presiding Bishop’s wife, met with women in Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai and Taipei. In small groups and larger gatherings, she emphasized the importance of gender-equity in church councils and leadership bodies, and invited participation in Anglican Women’s Empowerment, a group that will next meet when the United Nations Committee on the Status of Women convenes in New York in March (a related ENS story will follow).
The Griswolds were accompanied in Asia by four senior staff members of the Episcopal Church Center, including Margaret Larom, director of Anglican and global relations, the Rev. Canon Brian Grieves, director of peace and justice ministries, and Barbara Braver, the Presiding Bishop’s assistant for communication.
The itinerary unfolded against the backdrop of notable international headlines: far-reaching protest of Japan’s Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, controversial for the memorial’s inclusion of war criminals; analysis of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s meetings in China on the subject of military development; and measures to address an anticipated avian influenza epidemic. A 6.5-magnitude earthquake also rocked Tokyo during the Griswolds’ stay there; no casualties were reported.
Clear international commitments to peacemaking were underscored as Griswold visited Hiroshima’s Peace Park memorializing the 200,000 killed in the U.S. atomic bomb blast of 60 years ago, a topic of his October 23 sermon in the city’s Resurrection Church (see full ENS report, http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_68761_ENG_HTM.htm).
Likewise in China, Griswold prayed and left a votive candle at the memorial to the 300,000 killed in the 1937-38 Nanjing Massacre waged by Japan. Griswold’s prayer asked that this and other similarly far-reaching acts of violence “never happen again.”
In Korea’s Demilitarized Zone, the power of prayer and reconciliation was affirmed by a military chaplain and South Korean laypersons who stood with tears brimming as the Presiding Bishop prayed that “paths forward be achieved.”
-- Canon Robert Williams is the Episcopal Church’s director of communication. As part of the Presiding Bishop’s delegation in Asia, Williams conferred with clergy and lay leaders on steps to strengthen communication between Anglican provinces.