Asking for a Rebirth

“… What we are really asking for is the rebirth of the Anglican Communion.…”

Out of Toronto last month came a 6,500 word manifesto making bold suggestions to the Anglican communion. Aim: to strengthen relationships among the world’s eighteen autonomous Anglican churches and to achieve a more unified approach to pressing issues.

The plan, which seemed to strike a largely responsive chord among the 1,500 clergy and lay delegates to the third world Anglican Congress, had been conceived at a much more private meeting of bishops 100 miles away—in London, Ontario—a few days prior to the Toronto meeting.

The manifesto said that “we must undertake a comprehensive study of needs and resources throughout our communion, to give us up-to-date, tested data on actual work now going on, resources in manpower (clerical and lay), training facilities, financial resources and their distribution, and the unevangelized areas which still confront the church.”

The message quickly added, however, that “we cannot wait for the results of such long-range studies. We ask each church to join now in an immediate commitment to increased financial support, amounting to at least $15,000,000 in the next five years, over and above our existing budgets and engagements …”

Appointment of eight “regional officers” to assist the communion’s chief executive officer, Bishop Stephen Bayne, also was urged. Bayne denied that this was a move towards “a new central curial power.” They will be the very opposite,” he said. “They will serve the churches in their area as the executive officer serves them, multiplying him … and making local initiative possible … of each church in each region.”

The specific suggestions in the document, entitled “Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ,” now go to the Anglican churches for study. The only Anglican meeting empowered to pass legislation of worldwide scope is the Lambeth Conference (next scheduled for 1968).

Wording of the manifesto left the impression that drastic ecclesiastical adjustments are necessary:

“We are aware that such a program as we propose, if it is seen in its true size and accepted, will mean the death of much that is familiar about our churches now. It will mean radical change in our priorities—even leading us to share with others at least as much as we spend on ourselves. It means the death of old isolations and inherited attitudes. It means a willingness to forego many desirable things, in every church.

“In substance, what we are really asking for is the rebirth of the Anglican Communion, which means the death of many old things but—infinitely more—the birth of entirely new relationships. We regard this as the essential task before the churches of the Anglican Communion now.”

Challenge And Response

Christians had to look to their laurels at the Mount Allison University Summer Institute held in Sackville, New Brunswick, last month. The institute usually deals with contemporary economic, social, and political problems. But this year, under the direction of Professor I. L. Campbell of the university’s extension department, it turned attention to contemporary Christianity.

The program showed the influence of Arnold Toynbee in that its pattern consisted largely of “challenge and response.” Protestants and Roman Catholics had dialogues with each other, then in turn had to face the challenge of agnosticism, Judaism, and other religions such as Islam. Genuine efforts were made to provide an understanding of the new position in which Christianity finds itself vis a vis these revitalized opponents.

Among those who criticized Christians vigorously for their unwillingness to deal with intellectual problems of the day were Dr. Paul Goodman of the Institute for Policy Study in Washington, a sociologist and a professed anarchist, and Professor Gordin Kaplin, a biologist from Dalhousie University and an agnostic. Philosophy Professor Emil Fackenheim of the University of Toronto showed, on the other hand, more sympathy with Christians, although he held that Christianity faced serious difficulties in its failure to come to terms with modern science, in its particularistic interest in the individual, and in its exclusive claims to the true knowledge of God.

To these attacks the Christians provided no united resistance. Roman Catholics stated a clear position, but seemed at times so anxious to show themselves tolerant that some felt they did not quite state their true views.

Theologians Donald Mathers and John B. Hardie of the United Church of Canada held to a rather mediating position in most discussions.

Two Presbyterians, Dr. Andrew Thakur Das of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. and Professor W. Stanford Reid of McGill University, stressed the Reformed position, insisting that only through man’s personal self-commitment to Jesus Christ as revealed in and through the Scriptures could Christianity meet the challenge of this present world.

W.S.R.

TARNISHED ANGEL

Another crisis brewed in England last month when the Rev. Frank Trundley, vicar of Braintree, forty-five miles from London, saw a new sign adorning the outside of The Angel, a local pub. The sign depicted a white angel holding a pint of bitter—with the halo over the beer. Finding it was no slip of the brush, the vicar lodged an immediate protest, exclaiming: “One has only to look at the poor wrecks of humanity seeking rest at night in our churchyard to realize they are in that position because they have placed a halo above their beer.”

The publican, Mr. Bill Cave, mildly suggested that the local citizenry might not appreciate that crack about the churchyard being full of drunks. It turned out, however, that he had his own misgivings. “The angel’s got long black hair,” he said. “I never came across an angel that looked like that.” Mr. Cave admitted that the Salvation Army had taken the whole thing badly.

Nor did the artist, 43-year-old Len Ragon, administer soothing balm when he suggested that through the ages the church and the inn have always been together. Quoted one man darkly: “They who drink beer will think beer.” If Washington Irving was right in this, the efficacy of being on the side of the angels is now anything but clear. Altogether, the issue bristles with theological pitfalls.

J.D.D.

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