Runcie Receives a Chorus of Praise as He Steps Down as Archbishop of Canterbury
Episcopal News Service. February 28, 1991 [91062]
Rev. Robert Libby
The archbishop who drew the ire of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for not supporting war in the Falklands Islands in 1982 drew her praise as he prepared for his last General Synod meeting and final week in office. "Bob Runcie," she said, "always gentle but firm... his intense Christianity radiated from him."
In his last service at Canterbury Cathedral on January 27, Runcie made a plea for tolerance. "It is said that tolerance springs from weakness. That's not true. Only those who are confidently rooted in the Lord are free, not with the geniality of the sentimental or clubbable, but with the generosity of the Gospel and the compassion of the convinced disciple."
As Runcie prepared to step down as archbishop of Canterbury, a variety of voices joined in a chorus of praise and thanksgiving for his service to the Church of England and the Anglican Communion.
His friend and colleague, John S. Habgood, the archbishop of York, speaking at the conclusion of the Church of England synod, said that Runcie is "loved as a pastor, respected as a teacher, and enjoyed as a friend."
In contrast to Runcie's Falkland Islands stance, his statements on the Gulf War "have earned him a measure of popular approval that has largely eluded him during his time in office," according to an editorial in the Times (London). Runcie deplored the war but called it "justifiable."
When schism was threatened and storm clouds gathered over the issue of the ordination of women, Runcie paraphrased Winston Churchill and vowed that he did not "intend to preside over the abolition of diocesan episcopacy and the parochial system as the Church of England has known it from the time of my predecessor, Theodore of Tarsus."
Yet, Runcie shepherded the church through the divisive issue, and in the process pleaded for mutual respect on all sides of the controversy. Regarding his own view of women's ordination, Runcie moved in his position from traditionalist, "male-only," to his 1988 statement to General Synod: "I have come to a judgment that the ordination of women to the priesthood would actually be an enlargement of the catholic priesthood, an opening up of the priesthood rather than [an] overturning."
In the ecumenical field, Runcie made his mark. "No archbishop of Canterbury has met with a reigning pope as many times as Dr. Runcie, beginning in Accra, Ghana, just a few weeks after his enthronement (in 1980)," said a column in the Church of England Newspaper. "The two men found an almost instant rapport, despite the fact that the question of the ordination of women by some Anglican provinces casts a shadow over the whole ecumenical process." The African meeting led to the formal visit of Pope John Paul II to Canterbury in 1982.
On the Protestant side of ecumenism, the archbishop's last liturgical act was to preside at a Eucharist on January 29 in Westminster Abbey flanked by two leaders of the Evangelical Churches in Germany. Hours before, the synod had unanimously endorsed the Meissen Declaration committing the Church of England and the Evangelical Churches of Germany to "strive together for full visible unity."
Bishop D. Johannes Hempel of the German church commended "our good friend and father in Christ, Robert Runcie, for his ecumenical openness and support seeking each other."
Runcie's tenure has been praised for two documents, Faith in the City, which led to the establishment of the Urban Fund, and Faith in the Country. While the reports were first labeled too liberal or even Marxist, their application according to the evangelical Church of England Newspaper was quite conservative: "The great majority of projects funded by the Church Urban Fund are in the way of job-creating and aims to help individuals and communities to move toward economic self-sufficiency."
Runcie's term of office has not been without pain and suffering. Efforts to free the Western hostages in Lebanon through the mediation of Anglican envoy Terry Waite ended in Waite's own captivity.
Runcie's refusal to participate in a victory celebration in Westminster Abbey after the Falklands War also brought an avalanche of personal attacks. Stated the archbishop of York, "Finally, I don't need to remind the synod that it has been a primacy marked by suffering, a suffering in which Lindy Runcie [wife of the archbishop] has fully shared. There has been the four-year agony of Terry Waite's ordeal. A few people know how much time and energy and prayer this single tragedy has absorbed.
"Add to that the pain of trying to reconcile and lead a church which at times has seemed not to want to find a united way forward."
Runcie's humor has endeared him to more than one audience. Eve Keatley, his former press secretary, recalled a press conference that was put at ease with Runcie's recollection that one of his predecessors, Aelfsige, was done to death with mutton bones. "It looks as if it is my fate to be done to death by the media."
At the closing tribute at General Synod, the archbishop acknowledged the verbal accolades by recalling former President Lyndon B. Johnson's statement at a testimonial. "I wish my parents were here. My father would have enjoyed your remarks, and my mother would have believed them."
The Runcies have now retired to St. Albans, where he was once diocesan bishop. He left one final word on tolerance. "To recognize goodness and sometimes sanity in those with whom we are in frequent and fundamental disagreement, this is an Anglican grace which must not be lost."