Resolved, That the following resolution which was prepared and presented by Bishop Righter and considered by the EFMM standing Committee, be adopted:
Once, with a twinkle in his eyes, Edward Rochie Hardy, Jr. described anything written down after the 14th century A.D. as "sheer journalism". With a sense of humor and humility symbolized by those words he devoted his adult life to teaching history and training priests. He began his teaching as an instructor at General Theological Seminary in 1929, continued by moving to Berkeley Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut in 1945, and ended as a Fellow and Dean of Jesus College, Cambridge University, England. He was one of the Anglican Communion's greatest and most versatile scholars.
Born in New York City in 1908, by the time he was twenty-six he had three degrees from Columbia University, two from General Theological Seminary, and one from Union Theological Seminary. Legends about his intellectual ability and perception began in those years and will remain through the Christian world for a long time.
Edward Rochie Hardy, Jr.'s life embraced two world wars and several regional wars that were distressing to the entire world. He began teaching in a year that saw economic upheaval, creating 25% unemployment in the United States alone. While he taught history he also led people through and beyond the vagaries of history to the transcendent. His book "The Militant on Earth" described God's army, the church, moving through the centuries, seeking to hold up a way of life that is in many different ways, at different times, redemptive. He described it in his book. He lived it in his life. He not only taught history, he helped to make it.
With students he was more than a teacher of history. He could describe God as "closer than a breath" and let his students glimpse not only the mystic in him but the mysticism of Christian devotion.
Because he understood both history and mysticism he was able to participate and lead in the occasionally turbulent but always rich discussions between the Anglican and Orthodox Churches. He served as a member of the Joint Commission on the Anglican and Eastern Orthodox Churches for eighteen years as a member of the Joint Anglican and Orthodox Doctrinal Discussion for twelve years. Yet he never forgot the personal and the particular. His brilliance permitted him to understand and use the Coptic language and he enjoyed corresponding with the Archbishop of Canterbury by post cards written in Coptic. His ecumenical interests were thoroughly directed toward Eastern Orthodoxy but he assisted students in finding and keeping alive a newspaper about Anglican-Orthodox relationships. A member of the Ecumenical Relations Commission for twelve years, of the Theological Commission of the World Council of Churches for eight years, and of the Commission on Faithand Order of the World Council of Churches for fifteen years, his life and thoughts embraced, in the church, as wide a span of concern as his span of years embraced in the history of modern times.
He served also in the pastoral ministry as an Assistant in Astoria, New York, for three years and then frequently while he was a teacher, when small churches needed occasional help in the absence of their priest. Those who knew his pastoral touch knew it to be kind, gentle, firm and illuminating. Many of his students sought his presence at their ordination because of his caring for them during seminary. People all over the world who worked with him as he sought to be part of the militant on earth, remember with approval and delight their experience with him.
One of Edward Rochie Hardy's many literary accomplishments was the editing of a book containing Records of Early Christian Martyrs. He called it "Faithful Witnesses." He now joins them in the greater life with God. And so it is we now who call him a "Faithful Witness" in our time, a former member of the militant on earth, now a member of the triumphant in heaven; Therefore be it
Resolved, That the Executive Council assembled in Seabury House at Greenwich, Connecticut, record its gratitude to God for the life and witness of Edward Rochie Hardy, Jr. in the Anglican Communion and beyond; and be it further
Resolved, That copies of this resolution and its preface be sent to his widow Marian and son Stephen.
