What does the Mutual Responsibility Proposal Mean?
Diocesan Press Service. October 10, 1963 [XIV-6]
Stephen F. Bayne, Jr., Executive Officer, Anglican Communion
What will the "Mutual Responsibility" proposal mean in the life of the Episcopal Church? What should it mean? My first impulse is to say that if anybody thought he knew the answers to those questions he would be wrong. This is not an attempt to be witty. What the proposal asks of us, as it does of every Anglican church, is to study our obedience to mission, examine our priorities, seek the way to receive as well as give, test our activities. Every one of those verbs means an exploration of the unknown, opening our minds and hearts to new ideas and new ways of responding to our mission. Preconceived ideas and pat answers are no good, if we really mean business in this. Honest self-study and a new willingness to listen to what God is trying to teach us, and to follow His lead, is what is called for. And nobody now could know the answers in advance.
But the steps we are asked to take are clear enough. First, we are asked to take our place in an immediate blood-transfusion -- to increase by 30% the support we now give, in people and money, to the Church's work overseas. This is -- and I repeat the word -- an immediate task, a "crash" program, to make it possible for some of our churches even to survive. The next 10 years will be absolutely critical for the church in Africa, for example. If the churches in new nations cannot find the trained leadership, clergy and lay alike, which independence requires, they cannot go on. If they cannot organize themselves for independent life, they will die. Therefore, where doors are still open and while they are, we are called to greater support of our brother churches, to help provide facilities and manpower for training, funds to match what they can give for new buildings, and at least a minimum tool kit to set them free from beggary and start them off on their own.
There is a long story to be told about this, sometime -- about the heroism of missionaries and the faithfulness of first-generation Christians in a hostile society, and about the way we Anglicans have so often sent a boy to do a man's work. Support that was barely adequate 30 years ago doesn't count for much now, at a time when the needs of new nations are sky-rocketing, and the Church ought to be giving its best to them. And how easy it has been for us in America to let the Church of England carry the bulk of the load, while we were free to spend most of our energy on ourselves. Now the time has come for us to look at the whole range of Anglican life everywhere in the world, and take our place in it. The 30% increase is only an immediate start on this.
But this modest strengthening of our existing commitments is only what I call an "emergency blood-transfusion". The document goes on to ask much longer-range things of us. First, that we study our own obedience to God's mission. This means examining our structures, our form of government, our budget-making procedures, to see that the mission of God and His Church in the world is in fact the most important thing to us. It means taking a fresh look at our seminaries, our confirmation classes, our program of Christian education, again asking whether mission is central in these things. It means examining our priorities, asking "whether in fact we are not putting secondary needs of our own ahead of essential needs of our brothers". Who would dare say where such a study will lead us? About 97% of our money and, what is equally painful to say, about 98% of our manpower, now is devoted to our own needs in the United States. What should those figures be? Nobody outside ourselves can tell us; this is on us to answer.
Second, we are asked to "seek the way to receive as well as give". This is a rough one for a church like ours, which for so long has stood on its own feet and tried to find ways to increase our "generosity" toward others. But if the brotherhood of Christians means anything, it means receiving as well as giving. Not necessarily the same things -- the skills that an American priest or layman learns, for example, from living in a highly industrialised urban society may be very valuable gifts which another church does not have. But what do we need to receive in exchange? What could a group of African laymen teach us about how people can live through racial tension as Christians ? What could a Japanese teacher teach us about how one bears Christian witness in a secular community? To ask what we need to receive calls for study, but it also calls for modesty and humility -- it calls for exactly the "death and rebirth" the document speaks of.
Third, we are asked to test "every activity in our life by the test of mission and service .......... the Church is not a club". This has a bite to it, for us, because in fact we have often teetered on the brink of acting like a club, and we know it. How hard it is for a very small minority group not to become self-enclosed, like-minded, and devote its main energies to perpetuating itself. We tend to build our missionary strategy not on the needs of a community but on the prospects of establishing a successful branch of our outfit. We do not ask of a town what we can give it, but whether there are enough of an Episcopalian type to warrant our building a roof over their heads. We look on the ecumenical task as a threat to our own ways rather than as a meeting of friends to exchange gifts.
We know these things about ourselves, and we detest them. The documents asks that we evaluate everything we do, carefully and devotedly, by the standard of mission and service to others. What difference will such a test make in our own planning?
Fourth, we are summoned to "deep and deliberate involvement in one another's affairs and life". The "they" and "we" must disappear in Anglican life -- it is all "we". We stand or fall together, across the world. The work of God is one; the Church is one, everywhere. This does not mean Anglicans alone. It means that we shall take seriously the unity God has given, in making of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the whole earth. It means looking with great earnestness at what we mean when we say "the Church is the Body of which Jesus Christ is the Head, and all baptised people are the members". Saint Paul knew what he meant when he spoke of being members of one body -- he was thinking that a man's arm gets sick when his stomach gets sick, that a man can't walk very well when his eyes are closed. If the relationships between people in this world are as close as that, because we are baptised into one Body, then what do we do, how do we organize ourselves across the boundaries of race and tongue and nation, so that mutual interdependence can be expressed?
Those are all the questions. I began with the question "What will Mutual Responsibility mean in the life of the Episcopal Church?" There is no pat answer to that. Only as we will take this thing seriously and ask ourselves (and one another, and God) the questions, will we find the answers. They may be quite explosive answers, as anyone can see if he tries the questions on for size.
Finally, what can be said about procedure? The Presiding Bishop has now officially received the proposal, and he has said that it will be presented to the House of Bishops and the National Council at their next meetings. Of course, the General Convention alone can give an official response to it, in behalf of our church. But it may well be that national and diocesan departments can, in the months before General Convention, study the proposal and the related papers, make a preliminary exploration of how the great questions can be studied and answered, and propose an appropriate program of study to the Convention. That would help greatly in framing the response our church will want ultimately to make. It would be a mistake to think of "Mutual Responsibility" as something for the Overseas Department alone. It is a summons to every department and every part of our life, overseas and at home. For as the document itself says, "Mission is not the kindness of the lucky to the unlucky; it is mutual, united obedience to the one God Whose mission it is. The form of the Church must reflect that." Therefore everything we do, at home and abroad, is involved in our response. And, most of all, the response cannot be made by anybody except ourselves. No central Anglican authority can decide what the Episcopal Church's answers should be. No General Convention can decide what a diocese should answer. No diocese can supply the answers for its clergy and people. This is all on us, as Christian people trying obediently to follow Him Who made us and loves us and means to bring us all to Himself, together.