Anglican Congress 1963
Diocesan Press Service. September 3, 1963 [XIII-2]
TORONTO - "The church that lives to itself will die by itself." With this warning from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rt. Hon. and Most Rev. Michael Ramsey, the second Anglican Congress opened Aug. 13 with 995 registered delegates. Some 358 persons represented the Episcopal Church at the Congress.
Ten days later, at the end of the Congress, Bishop Bayne, Anglican executive officer, saw "a profound change. " In the past, he said, "we have looked like a North Atlantic church. I think that impression is gone. Compared to the first Congress in Minneapolis in 1954, there has been a greater buoyancy and bounce. We've looked at ourselves with a new depth and frankness."
A five-point Congress Message was approved by the delegates, with the suggestion that it be read in all parishes. The message says that God has called us to be a serving church, a listening church, one church, to affirm the unity of the human race, and that God has called us all, clergy and laity together.
In a document called "Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ" a new era in the common life of the Anglican Communion is sought. It will be an era in which talk of "giving" and "receiving" churches will be silenced and the keynote of worldwide Anglican work will be equal partnership in the Gospel. This document originated at a pre-Congress meeting of the Advisory Council of Missionary Strategy and a subsequent meeting of all primates and metropolitans of the Communion's 18 churches.
Following the presentation of the document to the Congress, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that it "aims at generating the sharing of common responsibility by all our churches with one another, so that one picture gives place to another picture. The picture that must go is: there is our church and here are its priorities and, of course, we have always had an obligation and a priority to be looking after and helping this or that somewhere else in the world.
"This is the picture that must disappear for two reasons: partly because the idea of looking after things in a haphazard, piecemeal way means really stagnation; but partly because this concept of looking after people and areas is a concept that has to go. And the latter is as important a part of the document as the former. "
The document calls for each church to ask itself about its resources and its needs, and where it was called by God to share in major partnership with other Christians. The primates asked each church to join now in an immediate commitment to increased financial support, amounting to at least $15 million in the next five years, over and above existing budgets to meet already known needs.
Commitment of the lives of men and women to fulfilling Christ's ministry to the world was also called for. The continuation and extension of inter-Anglican consultation is requested with the appointment of regional officers to further the process of planning, communication and consultation. Such regional officers are proposed for North America, Latin America, Africa, British Isles, India, Pakistan and the Middle East, the South Pacific and South East Asia.
In commenting on the increased financial support, Bishop Bayne said that it had nothing to do with future planning. It was the amount needed now to maintain and consolidate existing work. Nor was it an appeal. To appeal for money for the church's mission was degradation of God and ourselves. "God has no need. If the mission is God's, then we do not ask for help to give God a boost; therefore, we do not appeal for funds. We allow people to take a share in God's work and this is a very different thing. "
In the first of six theme speeches, the Rev. Canon Max Warren, general secretary of the Church Missionary Society, said Anglicans should beware of claiming a monopoly on God. We should be bold to see God at work in that bitter critic of the nineteenth century society, Karl Marx, and humbly thank God for His grace at work in Freud, Canon Warren said introducing the theme, the Church's Mission to the World on the Religious Frontier.
"God meets me everywhere, or I never meet him. If I think I meet Him only in Bible and Sacrament, and in the Christian fellowship, then I do not know whom it is I meet. For He speaks to me in my newspaper, as well as in the Bible. He seeks me out in the theatre, in the novel, in art as well as in the Holy Communion," said the speaker.
The second theme, the Church's Mission on the Political Frontier, was presented by the Rt. Rev. J. W. Sadiq, Bishop of Nagpur, India. He said nothing could influence world politics more than a church united across national boundaries and unshaken by national and international power politics. Therefore, he said, the church with its international existence and outreach should press forward with a sense of urgency towards the goal of visible unity.
English layman John Lawrence said that city lights and all that goes with them may in the long run prove a matter of greater concern to the church than all the attacks of open opponents. He was the theme speaker on the Church's Mission on the Cultural Frontier.
Ever since the industrial revolution, continued Mr. Lawrence, the working class of the great cities had ceased to practice whatever religion they had before the great industrial cities grew up. From the ground level it looked as if the culture of the modern city was much the strongest influence on modern man.
A ministry where laymen would conduct the Eucharist, baptisms, marriages and burials, and priests would concentrate on teaching and preaching and training the People of God for action in the world was outlined by the principal of Christchurch College in New Zealand, the Rev. Canon F. C. Synge. Canon Synge was theme speaker for the Challenge of the Frontiers: Training for Action.
Canon Synge invited consideration of the thesis that there are only two orders of ministers in Christ's Church - bishops and laity. He suggested that the bishop was once the only celebrant of the Eucharist and the only baptizer and that the priest acted as a delegate of the bishop.
The fourth theme, Organizing for Action, was presented by Bishop Bayne. He outlined the necessary conditions for action. He said "Whatever organization we will ever have must be true to that cardinal principle of the free association of regional and national churches. The second great condition of Anglican action is that we shall travel light, that we shall remember that we are pilgrim people, and that a pilgrim carries with him only those things that are essential for his life."
According to Bishop Bayne, the third condition is that the Anglican Communion is not an end in itself. The end of Anglican missionary strategy is not that there shall be more Anglicans, but that the Church of Jesus Christ shall be planted in every place. Bishop Bayne says "First, we must continue to develop and strengthen our interchurch relationships. The second thing we must do is to organize ourselves around our mission, at home as well as abroad."
In order to organize for action, Bishop Bayne asked the church (1) Does its decision-making processes reflect the common will of the church in a nation; (2) Is the financial structure such as to encourage imagination as well as duty; (3) Does our current theological education program prepare men for ministry in this modern world, does it provide adequate theological training of the laity; (4) Is any study and planning directed to the world and mission or towards strengthening our own position; (5) Is our interior discipline demanding enough of ourselves in preparation for discipleship; (6) Are our inter-church relationships such as to involve us directly and irrevocably in the life and fortune of other churches; (7) Is our life so organized that the unity of the Church in Christ and in baptism is the underlying assumption of all we do ?
"It would be folly to talk about the vocation of Anglicanism without first taking into account the likelihood that our days are numbered, " the Rev. Canon Howard Johnson of New York declared in the sixth and final theme address. In commenting on his Anglican world junket, Canon Johnson said "The main thing I have to report is this: the Christian Church -- in spite of ineptitude here and there, in spite of bungling and beggarly performances all too often -- has made a world of difference in this world of ours. It has been like a shaft of light."
"Getting down to business, " Canon Johnson said means that the quality of preaching and teaching must be improved; the skills, energies and insights of the laity must be given scope as never before; and every effort must be made to restore the church to visible unity.
In pointing out the vocation of Anglicanism, he described the relationship of the Episcopal Church with the Philippine Independent Church and the need to bring the church to the thousands of unchurched in Latin America.
He also contended that the Anglican comprehensiveness of High, Low and Broad was desirable for the church. Christianity, he said, needs not uniformity but a "mutual conversation" in which "brethren mutually correct each other, mutually enrich each other."
Panel speakers from all of Anglicanism followed the theme address each day and the delegates were divided into discussion groups which met for six afternoons. It was in these that individuals could thresh out what they had been hearing. A report of findings from these 35 groups indicated that a wide variety of subjects, including the population problem, other religious and moral issues, had been discussed.