Mission Forum Marks Seabury Bicentennial
Episcopal News Service. May 10, 1984 [84100]
HARTFORD, Conn. (DPS, May 10) -- The Rt. Rev. Arthur E. Walmsley, Bishop of Connecticut, has announced that a major event in the bicentennial celebration of the consecration of Samuel Seabury will be an international symposium on Anglican mission here in September.
Seabury was the first American bishop and first bishop of Connecticut. His consecration in 1784 and the subsequent organization of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A. marked the beginning of the Anglican Communion as an international family of autonomous churches. Walmsley, who chairs the national Seabury Bicentennial Committee, said it is appropriate not only to commemorate these beginnings but to take a fresh look at the mission of the Anglican Communion today.
The Hartford meeting will be restricted to a limited number of invited participants, but publication of the results is intended to begin a wider discussion of the theology and mission of Anglicans in different cultural settings and to contribute to the agenda of the Lambeth Conference in 1988.
The major issue to be addressed is whether a common understanding of the mission of the Church exists among the twenty-seven independent branches of the Anglican Communion throughout the world. Many of them developed under the British Empire and have now entered a post-colonial era even as the Episcopal Church did two hundred years ago. Others are moving from the stage of being either senders of missionaries or the object of the mission of others to new relationships as partners in mission. As autonomy has grown, so has the diversity of language, culture, theology and liturgical usage throughout the Anglican world.
Prominent Anglican church leaders from different regions have been invited to prepare papers for presentation at the symposium and an equal number have been chosen to participate in the discussions as "responders." The papers may then be rewritten in the light of comments received at the meeting and the results published in an appropriate way for further study at the parish and provincial level.
Each paper will address four questions:
- What is the mission of Christ's Church?
- How is the Church in the particular setting about which you are writing related to the social order?
- How might the common life of the Church in your area be formed so as more effectively to carry out its mission?
- From the perspective of the Church in your area (nation, region, culture) in what ways are the Anglican heritage and the Anglican Communion a help or a hindrance to mission?
Among those who have agreed to take part in the Seabury symposium are Archbishop Paul Reeves of New Zealand; Archbishop Edward Scott of Canada; Bishops A. Theodore Eastman of Maryland, Adrian D. Caceres of Ecuador and David M. Gitari of Mount Kenya East; Prof. Marianne Micks of the Virginia Seminary; Dr. Jack Maraschin of Brazil; Dr. Kortright David of Barbados (now on the faculty of Howard University); Lady Helen Oppenheimer and Principal Colin Buchanon of England; the Rev. P. B. Santram, general secretary of the Church of North India; Prof. Alan Chan of Hong Kong; the Rev. Clement Janda, general secretary of the Sudan Council of Churches and Prof. John Pobee of the University of Ghana.
Prof. Philip Turner of the General Theological Seminary is serving as organizing secretary for the symposium, which is sponsored not only by the Diocese of Connecticut, but by the Standing Commission on World Mission of the Episcopal Church, with the endorsement of the General Convention and the Anglican Consultative Council. The Episcopal Church of Scotland has also participated in the planning of the symposium.