"The authority of the Bible in Anglicanism is the authority to proclaim God's love ... A Bible that is not giving hope, a Bible whose leaves do not heal, has no authority at all."

So began the concluding presentation, by the Rev. L. William Countryman, of a week-long seminar and symposium Jan. 18-22, titled Healing Leaves: The Authority of the Bible for Anglicans Today. Fr. Countryman is professor of New Testament at Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CDSP), where the conference was held. Citing poets and other theologians of the 17th through the 20th centuries, Fr. Countryman was the moderator for a panel of international scholars present to deliver papers on scripture and Anglicanism.

Keynote address was by the Most Rev. Njongonkulu Ndungane, Archbishop of Cape Town and Primate of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa. Proclaiming, "Ideas must have legs!" Archbishop Ndungane announced to enthusiastic cheers that he would present the papers delivered at the symposium to the March meeting of the Primates of the Anglican Communion as a contribution to the discussions mandated at the 1998 Lambeth Conference on the authority of scripture in the Anglican Communion.

About 150 participants, including CDSP students, attended the full slate of offerings from the Center for Anglican Learning and Life (CALL) which included a two-day seminar and three-day symposium with workshops. The conference Eucharist celebrated the installation of Fr. Countryman as the seminary's first Sherman E. Johnson Professor in Biblical Studies. The chair is named for the late Sherman Johnson, who as dean of CDSP helped to create the present Graduate Theological Union. Archbishop Ndungane presided, while the Rev. J. Rebecca Lyman, CDSP professor of church history, asked in her sermon, "How does Word become fulfilled? ... How does the text on a scroll become a living thing" if not in the embodied life of a human?

Other speakers included the Rev. Ellen Davis, professor of Old Testament from Virginia Theological Seminary, who spoke on the concept of "good work" and "bad work" as revealed in Exodus, and Kelly Brown Douglas, professor of theology at Howard University, who proclaimed that the voice of the marginalized, the "voice from the underside," is the authentic voice privileged to interpret the message of "the God who entered the world through the manger."