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Anglican Primates Meet in Jerusalem to Share Common Concerns and Plan Lambeth Meeting

Episcopal News Service. April 3, 1997 [97-1722]

(ENS) The top leaders of the Anglican Communion gathered March 9 in the Holy City of Jerusalem, the city "where dreams collide," to share common concerns and to plan for next year's Lambeth Conference in England, expected to draw 800 Anglican bishops from around the world.

As they stepped onto land sacred to three world religions they were also stepping into a tense political situation -- and some of the most dangerous turf in the world.

The meeting came at a time when Israeli bulldozers were defiantly poised to begin a highly controversial housing settlement in traditionally Arab East Jerusalem, ignoring withering international criticism. Midway through the meeting the primates expressed that they were "shocked and horrified by the news that reached them of the shooting by a Jordanian soldier of innocent Israeli school girls on a trip to an observation post on the Jordan River."

Speaking to a packed congregation of church leaders and representatives of the diplomatic community at Evensong March 11 at St. George's Cathedral, Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey said that he and other "sympathetic outsiders" were keenly aware of the "justified longings of the two peoples of this land." He pointed to the sufferings of the Jewish peoples during their "long and terrible journey," and to the Palestinians "whose journey has also been one of suffering." Carey emphasized that "there can be no justice for one part of the human family without justice for another."

"In this small and historic stretch of land, a powerful clash of dreams is taking place," he said. "They are not simply dreams of having a legitimate home; they go much deeper than that, reaching into the further recesses of the soul."

A suffering Communion

During their week-long meeting, the bishops and archbishops not only shared their own stories of struggle and hope, but immersed themselves in their setting by walking the traditional Stations of the Cross in the nearby Old City. They also spent a day in the Gaza Strip meeting with Chairman Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian National Authority and visiting a refugee camp, as well as dedicating a chapel at Ahli Arab Hospital, run by the Diocese of Jerusalem.

"Even though the Holy Land was ever before us during this past week, we also heard stories from around our Communion of churches -- a suffering Communion," they said in a final statement March 16. During the meeting the primates shared some painful stories: a crisis of episcopal leadership in Rwanda in the wake of civil war; war in the Sudan that has forced 10 bishops into exile; the struggle for justice among the dalits or untouchables in Pakistan; oppression and persecution of the church in Myanmar (Burma); isolation in Bangladesh; sectarian violence in Ireland.

"Sharing these stories was the high point of the meeting for me because it brought us all together," said Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning. "It creates a whole new bond of affection every time we meet."

Third world debt emerges as key issue for Lambeth

The crippling third world debt, and related issues of poverty and economic justice, quickly emerged as the key issue for next summer's Lambeth Conference. Bishop Mark Dyer of the Episcopal Church in the USA, who participated in the meeting as co-chair of the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission, said that the issue is "not just debt but dehumanization," a contradiction of the belief that all people are children of God. He said that it would be "unfaithful" to watch the systematic destruction of brothers and sisters without making a strong statement at Lambeth.

"Like the campaign against slavery, this is a campaign that every Christian should support," added Richard Holloway, primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church.

Poverty is a "decisive issue for the church, a curse that provides one of the greatest threats to society," argued Archbishop Winston Ndugane, primate of the Church of Southern Africa who will chair the section dealing with the issue at Lambeth. He said that it is not a debate about money but about "rights and relationships, it's about powerlessness."

"This is the time to deal with this issue because just about everybody is focused on the debt," added Bishop James Ottley of the US, Anglican Observer at the United Nations. "Now is the time to develop a strategy."

Sexuality issues expose differences

If there was quick and unanimous agreement about economic justice issues, the discussion of sexuality issues exposed deep differences.

Presiding Bishop Maurice Sinclair of Argentina, primate of the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone, introduced the concerns emerging from the Second Anglican Encounter in the South, held last February in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on the theme of Scripture in the life and mission of the church in the 21st century.

In a statement on human sexuality issued as part of its final report, participants expressed concern that "the setting aside of biblical teaching in such actions as the ordination of practicing homosexuals and the blessing of same-sex unions calls into question the authority of the Holy Scriptures. This is totally unacceptable to us." It also calls into question the "mutual accountability and interdependence" that should be a hallmark of the Anglican Communion, instead of placing "serious strain on the internal unity of the Communion."

In a statement reflecting the concerns of his own province, Sinclair was even more blunt. The decision in the heresy trial of Bishop Walter Righter of the United States for ordaining a gay man to the diaconate represents an "apparent lack of awareness of implications for the Communion as a whole in the failure of the majority to identify and affirm church discipline in this area of sexual ethics." He called for a "doctrinal guide" as a way of holding the Communion together and building collegiality and to "affirm all that is essential and relevant in the doctrinal standards we already possess."

Why should "we perpetuate a provincial congregationalism?" he asked. "Surely it is a wholesome thing for provinces to be accountable to each other and free neither to innovate foolishly nor to stagnate lazily without the possibility of intervention from the wider Communion," he contended. "Some light-handed but wise-headed supervision of a collegial nature would do us all good. Authority in the Anglican Communion would continue to be a distributed authority but it would gain the necessary coherence."

Browning said that he was encouraged by the emphasis on economic issues and not surprised that "we are a long ways from agreeing on sexuality issues."

Several primates suggested that it may be necessary to consider a commission to deal with sexuality issues, similar to the Eames Commission that dealt with women in the episcopate. Carey said that he would consider the suggestion.

Primates clarify role of UN observer

Responding to a report from its standing committee, the primates "readily affirmed the work" of the Anglian Observer's office but discussed some problems in communication. They endorsed the recommendation that the office stay within a budget of $300,000 a year. "We recognize that we are still feeling our way so it is not easy to determine what it will take to make the office feasible," said Archbishop Robin Eames of Ireland, on behalf of the committee.

The Anglican Communion Office in London will review the staffing of the office in an effort to achieve "adequate responsibility, accountability and communication," Eames said. That will include "closer involvement" of the chair of the Anglican Consultative Council and the secretary general and an effort to alter the perception of "isolation" between the office and members of the Communion. The standing committee also called for wider representation on the office's advisory committee, "making it culturally and geographically more representative."

Eames said that the committee had dealt honestly with the broader questions of the value of the office to the Communion, realizing that they were still "feeling their way to see what the full potential for the office is in the life of the Communion."

Identity issues still loom large

Speaking for the design committee of the Lambeth Conference, Archbishop Keith Rayner of Australia said that it was clear from early responses that bishops were looking for a "deepening of communion, with God and with one another," some practical help in becoming better bishops, and an opportunity to address "some of the great questions of the church -- to say something to the church and the world."

"We will be pressed by the media about the meaning of Lambeth... It's an occasion when the church can speak with some relevance to the world," Rayner asserted. Trying to manage the individual concerns of 800 bishops and still say something "concrete and coherent" will be a definite challenge, he admitted, yet he hoped that it would be possible to limit the number of issues, "otherwise we are condemned to shallowness."

Eames and Dyer introduced the report of the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission, called the Virginia Report for short because it stems from a meeting at Virginia Seminary. As a "further step along the road of self-discovery," it is an attempt to "discover more about what it means to be an Anglican, and how we perceive the machinery, the Instruments of Unity, should inter-relate," Eames said.

The report is an intense theological examination of what it means to be a communion, an exploration of the unity and diversity. "I believe that the next Lambeth Conference will be the most defining Lambeth in history," Eames said. "It will determine what we are and where are going. It will stand or fall on our sense of unity and vision." The Virginia Report is intended to help in that theological self-definition.

"The critical concern is: How do we remain as one in God and as members of the one Body of Christ, at a time when independence is more valued than interdependence, when the independent decision of individual dioceses and provinces threaten the unity for which Jesus Christ prayed the night before he died," asked Dyer. He said that issues such as lay presidency at the Eucharist, the sacramental blessing of same sex unions, and the ordination of sexually active homosexuals "will test the truth of our unity."

Yet Dyer and others are convinced that the Virginia Report, heir to a process that held the Anglican Communion together when it became apparent that women would be elected to the episcopate, provides a model and theological underpinning for a Communion "held together in the creative tension of provincial autonomy and interdependence."