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Archbishop Runcie Visits Nigeria

Episcopal News Service. May 13, 1982 [82122]

James B. Simnson, Editor, The Anglican Digest

LONDON (DPS, May 13) -- The Archbishop of Canterbury's Eastertide visit (April 15-29) to Nigeria is a significant milestone in the broadening dimensions of an archiepiscopate now entering its third year.

The latest in his wide-ranging travel, the 14-day, 1,500-mile tour of one of Africa's largest, richest and densely populated countries, was vastly different to the coast-to-coast American trip made a year ago by the Most Rev. Robert Runcie.

It was not a "theme tour," devoted to discussions of urban problems or world hunger, as was the U.S. excursion. Nor was it centered on special concerns as have been some of the forays to East Africa, Ireland, Burma, China, the Lowlands, or Switzerland -- journeys that are making Dr. Runcie the most traveled of the 102 occupants of the ancient office.

However, the Primate of All England did see Nigeria -- as he saw the U.S. -- in its cities and countryside, meeting civic and ecclesiastical leaders as well as the people in the pews and their clergy.

Archbishop Runcie left London in the midst of the Falklands crisis (he had spoken in the House of Lords only a day earlier) and has returned home to the shifting controversies surrounding the Papal visit May 28. Through it all he continues to grow as the most personally involved and informed prelates in the 1,385 years since St. Augustine, himself a traveler, arrived in Canterbury.

To an American observer, the most exciting aspect of the trip is the comparison between the infant Church of Nigeria (it became an independent Anglican province only four years ago) and the American Church's great growth of the nineteenth century. New parishes are constantly being established. The 19 new dioceses will increase to 23 by 1983. Communicants constitute record figures, too, for a country to which Christianity was introduced little more than 125 years ago. Each bishop annually confirms an average of 1,500 persons.

It is also apparent that Britain has maintained good relationships during colonization and in the 22 turbulent years that Nigeria has had self-government. Its leaders repeatedly stress the contributions of the Anglican Church in education, medicine, and other areas that are now nationalized.

Although one sees roadside poverty and clumsiness inherent in Nigeria's readily acknowledged role as an "emerging nation," church-goers appear well off -- and happier than one senses in Manchester or Miami, Blackpool or Boston.

"I want to see a Nigerian face, not an English face," Dr. Runcie said at the outset. He urged indigenous expression of worship in a Church whose liturgy is lar2elv traditional. Just under the surface, however, is Nigeria's desire to be "a sineine, dancing Church" -- or at least, a readiness to add its own rhythm as a postscript to liturgy. Its staid Anglicans can almost instantly become what Westerners might call "holy rollers." It is its Protestants who are on the higher side, at least in dress, as compared to Nigeria's bent for surplice and stole. The Nigerian Methodists, moreover, have preserved apostolic succession for their crimsonclad bishops who preside over their own dioceses.

Beginning with a talk with Nigeria's president (a Moslem, as are 45 percent of his constituents), Dr. Runcie went on to scores of courtesy calls. The most colorful were the visits with the Obas and the Emirs, the super-chiefs who have considerable influence and the life-styles of the maharajahs of old India.

The tour began in the port of Lagos -- a "crossroads of the world," which Dr. Runcie instantly likened to his home city of Liverpool.

It was at a state dinner in Lagos that he made the declaration that perhaps most endeared him to Nigerians, "Apartheid is an insult to God and to man whom he dignifies."

He traveled on to Ibadan whose two-million people make it twice the size of Lagos. Using it as a base, he ventured into tribal towns and the inner-courts of the Obas. He saw the landing sites of the early missionaries. "When the heat is oppressive and there are cockroaches in my bedroom, I am reminded that it not much when compared to all that's been endured for the faith," he said.

Accompanied by the Archbishop of Nigeria and several diocesans throughout his visit, Dr. Runcie went to such provincial towns as Ono, to a country cathedral in Asaba near the Niger River, and Onitsha's new Cathedral that greatly resembles Coventry. He participated in notable dedications -- a bust of Samuel Crowther, the slave boy who became his country's first bishop; the corner stone of Enugu's great new Cathedral of the Good Shepherd; the reredos of St. Michael's Cathedral, Jos; and the blessings of two new parish churches -- one near Enugu and the other at Kano.

The Archbishop also gave time to women's rallies and huge Anglican youth groups. It was, as Baptists might say, a "total immersion" in Nigeria.

Travel mainly by automobile enabled the Archbishop to see both the villages in their settings of sand or cleared jungle as well as the mountains of Enugu and the deserts around Kaduno. More comprehensive perspectives were offered by three helicopter lifts and two plane flights. While the majority of the trip was confined to southwest Nigeria, the last days took him into the nation's heartland (as far north as Jos) and finally to the City and Diocese of Kano. From there he departed at midnight for London.

There was no absence of hilarity. At the Enugu diocesan luncheon, for instance, the soup-course had just been served when a helicopter landed in the courtyard, sending clouds of red dust that instantly turned everyone into Cardinals. At the grandest state dinner of all the dinners, also in Enugu, torrents of rain drove guests to the shelter of the speakers platform; moments later its canopy collapsed, drenching everyone.

The first and last hymn he heard in Nigeria was "The Church's One Foundation" and it was sung more often than any other. (Another favorite with the Nigerians is "Jesus Shall Reign Where 'Ere the Sun.")

In summary, Dr. Runcie was present for Morning Prayer five times; Evening Prayer, eight; and was celebrant or concelebrant of the Eucharist at four altars. He preached from eleven pulpits, spoke at six luncheons, seven dinners, and three ecumenical services.

"I know of an old man who appeared in Heaven and said 'I am tired and want the fruits of the Spirit,'" the Archbishop remarked at Liberty Stadium, Lagos. "The angel who kept the counter replied, 'We do not have fruits, we only have seeds.' And so may you plant seeds of faith in Nigeria -- the fruits of the Spirit."

Remembering the battered, rusting wrecks of automobiles alongside the highways. the Archbishop's entourage looks back with thankfulness for their safety in a country that has few stop-lights and no enforced speed limits. If a philosophical Nigeria can apply some degree of disciplined restraint to the costly lessons of recklessness and restlessness -- as every country and individual must do -- it can go forward to the leadership in Christianity and world affairs that is its true, Godly destiny.