Mrs. Chinnis Named to South African Visitation
Episcopal News Service. March 24, 1983 [83051]
LONDON, (MARCH 24) -- In response to an appeal from South African Anglican leaders, Archbishop Robert Runcie of Canterbury has sent a delegation of high-level Anglicans to Pretoria for the final days of a government inquiry into the affairs of the South African Council of Churches.
Mrs. Pamela C. Chinnis, a member of the Executive Council and an occasional delegate to meetings of the Anglican Consultative Council, represents the Episcopal Church and is carrying personal greetings from Presiding Bishop John M. Allin.
The South African Council of Churches -- whose general secretary is Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu -- is under the scrutiny of the Eloff Commission, a panel that is looking into the ecumenical group's funding and policies to determine if laws are needed to restrict its activities. Senior South African security officials have alleged during the hearings that the Council is being used to advance the cause of the banned African National Congress.
The Council and Tutu are seen throughout the world as one of the strongest voices raised against the apartheid policies of South Africa.
Tutu has been placed under travel restrictions and arrested at various times in the past. It was largely through prolonged negotiation and mediation by Allin that he was allowed to travel to the United States last fall where he was an electrifying witness at the Episcopal Church's General Convention.
The proposed action against the Council of Churches comes at the same time that the Pretoria government is suggesting constitutional changes that would open the legislative process to other races but not to blacks. This has earned the government a renewed burst of opprobrium for "entrenching white domination" and "unashamedly accepting ethnicity as an indespensible basis for doing politics in South Africa," as Dutch Reform Church minister Allan Boesak, who is colored, characterized the plan in a recent newspaper column.
The Presiding Bishop and other Anglican primates have followed this situation closely and the one-page letter from Allin assures Tutu that: "We, your brothers in Christ are keenly aware of the snares laid for the faithful. We understand the risks the servants of God must accept and the terrible human price exacted by the scornful."
Allin went on to tell Tutu that" we also know that we are all united in Christ. We bear each other's burdens. We stand as one in adversity, We are bound together in constant prayer. No distance, no wall, no device of human invention can destroy our fellowship."
In a brief statement issued from Anglican headquarters here, a spokesman for Runcie said that the delegation was sent in response to a direct request from Tutu, a request that was supported by the chief primate of the Anglican Church of the Province of South Africa, the Most Rev. P. R. Russell.
The delegation is led by the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Most Rev. A.I.M. Haggart, who is vice-chairman of the Anglican Consultative Council.
Other members of the delegation are: the Most Rev. Paul Reeves, primate of the Anglican Church in New Zealand; Mr. J.H.C. Harradence, an attorney and officer of the Anglican Church of Canada; and Mr. Terry Waite, Runcie's advisor on inter Anglican affairs.
In related developments, Allin has held recent conversations with Under Secretary of State Chester A. Crocker and with Pretoria's ambassador to the United States, Dr. B. G. Fourie, about Tutu and South African affairs in general.
These conversations were part of the dialogue that began last summer when Allin was working to win permission for Tutu to travel to the U.S. Allin vowed at that time to continue the dialogue as a way of assuring the Church and the governments of the Episcopal Church's interest in Tutu.