Global Odyssey
Diocesan Press Service. August 12, 1963 [XII-15]
Four years ago Howard A. Johnson (not of the "host of the highway" family) embarked upon a journey to discover the Anglican Communion. For 730 days, over land and sea and in the air, often on foot, he travelled 200, 000 miles, crossed the equator six times. He slept in 294 beds in one of which the last occupant had been murdered. And there was the mud and the terrifying bridges in Borneo, to mention but a single adventure. But all these things and many more Canon Johnson faced with never a day of illness. And on his return to the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, New York, of which he is Canon Theologian, he faced perhaps an even greater adventure: reporting his discoveries to the Church at home. And this he has done with wit and humor and great understanding in Global Odyssey (New York, Harper and Row: $5.95), subtitled An Episcopalian's Encounter with the Anglican Communion in Eighty Countries.
Global Odyssey is not the usual missionary report nor is it a travelog with Christian overtones. Canon Johnson has a perceptive eye - witness his many superb photographs - and a retentive ear. As he recreates the 18 Anglican Churches he visited in the pages of Global Odyssey he brings alive the people he met, the people with whom he knelt in worship of our Lord, the men and women of every rank who welcomed him to their common acts of daily living. He witnessed - but perhaps more importantly - he understood - their failures, their successes, their difficulties and their mistakes, their joy in the simple things of daily living - even amid the complexities of a changing world. And out of it all emerges a picture of a Christian community - around the world - in 80 countries - that has the Bread of Life and is relevant to the problems of this world today. Such is the Anglican Communion that Howard Johnson discovered and has transmitted to the reader of Global Odyssey. (W. E. L.)