Canadian Unity—In and out of Church

Under the skilled leadership of Primate H. H. Clark, son of a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman and onetime insurance salesman, the biennial synod of the Anglican Church of Canada met in late August in the capital of Ottawa for the second time in the church’s history.

The urgent problems of Canadian unity were clearly on the minds of both the Primate and Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson on opening day. Said Clark, “We must catch a vision of what Canada can be—a land with two founding peoples, French and English.” In like vein, Pearson urged “full recognition by all Canadians that the culture, language, and tradition of the French-speaking minority are essential—a distinctive and equal element of our national life.”

In obvious reference to French President DeGaulle’s recent sally into the Canadian political scene, he added that “all Canadians repudiate interference in our affairs by those who mistakenly believe that we are not Canadian Frenchmen, Canadian Americans, Canadian Englishmen, or Canadian something else.” Clark was even more pointed in his reference to the deep rupture DeGaulle created with his famous cry of “Vive Quebec Libre” in Montreal: “The visit of General De-Gaulle to Canada showed us that a problem we thought solved, or at least hidden under the carpet, is still with us.”

The 300 Anglican delegates from twenty-eight dioceses met at Roman Catholic St. Paul University. The synod’s upper house of bishops has veto power over the lower, composed of clerical and lay delegates elected by dioceses, but winds of change are blowing. Even the primate urged abolition of the upper house. Gordon Baker, retiring editor of the denomination’s Canadian Churchman, added his support by remarking, “Up to heaven or down to earth, any change in the upper house will be an improvement.”

Broadening of the grounds for legalized abortion is to be urged on the Canadian Parliament by the church, and remarriage of divorced persons in Anglican churches will now be possible under a canon ratified overwhelmingly. Till now, most divorced Anglicans have remarried in the United Church of Canada and then returned to the Anglican fold, where normally they have been granted the sacrament once more. The professed aim of this canon is the strengthening of marriage, but it is not difficult to see the strong public pressure behind it. Criticism of the new measure, though limited, was incisive. Noteworthy was the fact that the two Eskimo delegates spoke vehemently against ratification. It was clearly with much heart-searching that the synod made this historic departure from Lambeth.

After a high-caliber debate that a capital reporter said equaled anything in Parliament on the subject, the synod urged the United States to stop bombing North Viet Nam and both North and South to move to the negotiating table.

Membership in the church declined by 67,000 last year, continuing the trend begun in 1963. Parish rolls indicate 1,292, 762 persons registered, but of these scarcely 500,000 partook of Easter communion this year. In quest of solutions, the synod veered strongly toward radical policies. Public relations and communications by radio and television will henceforth be handled jointly by teams from the Anglican, Roman Catholic, and United Churches, under the direction of broadcaster Roy Bonisteel. Big-business streamlining of headquarters under an efficiency plan from Price-Waterhouse will update the secretariat of Church House.

Evangelism—apparently the Cinderella of the synod’s operations, since many left when its report was introduced—lifted the remaining delegates to a new dimension of debate. With humor and deep concern, the report called for the training of seminary students on how to lead a soul to Christ. The Metropolitan of Ontario cited this debate as a great highlight of the synod, and the report was received with applause that seemed unending.

Clearly there is still an evangelical voice among Canadian Anglicans. Equally clearly, in the sacred cause of Anglican unity, this group is silent on ecumenical issues. Be it the mystique or the genius of Anglicanism, its successful unification of extreme Anglo-Catholics and ultra-evangelicals continues to be one of the mysteries of our ecumenical age.

At the synod, ecumenical relations was an interweaving theme in every issue, and in the eyes of most Anglican leaders the trends are clearly God-ordained. As a report put it, “With a distraught and divided world badly needing a demonstration of charity and good-will, and a clearer understanding of the common destiny of all mankind as brothers in one family and sons of one Father, the Church cannot evade the supreme task of restoring its visible unity.”

No less than four committees are operating in this field: Christian unity, the Church universal, ecumenical affairs, and Roman Catholic relations. The assurance with which the guidance of the Holy Spirit was claimed hallmarked every report on ecumenical themes. One could scarcely help reflecting on words both cynical and penetrating: “Le bon Dieu, c’est moi.”

Union with the United Church of Canada moved a step nearer as the synod, in response to UCC requests, approved a fifth joint commission on “The Church and the World.” Principles of Union has already been passed, and other commissions are at work on constitutional, legal, doctrinal, and liturgical matters. UCC Moderator Wilfred Lockhart received a conqueror’s welcome. Both he and Clark later admitted they see no great grass-roots movement in support of the union. And leading layman Derek Bedson served notice that one Anglican group does not regard Principles as “a sufficient statement of the faith of our church.”

Union in our time seems sure, but how soon, no one will predict. And whether the ultimate union will carry all Anglicans with it is open to doubt also. Clark pleaded for temperate and wise teaching of all the people at the parish and diocesan levels and spoke of Christ as “the great Divider as well as the great Uniter.” Not so Moderator Lockhart. Calling himself a frustrated ecumenical, he said he can scarcely wait for the final consummation. And under him the decision will be at the council level, not congregation-by-congregation as in 1925, when the United Church was formed.

It is certain that the union of the two Canadian churches will presage the shape of things to come elsewhere. In the opaque world of ecumenical politics so vividly described by Ian Henderson in Power Without Glory, Canada obviously has a role to play that far transcends her geography or her population.

For the Christian not so confident that the Holy Spirit is guiding him into these ecumenical expressways, the words of Jesus seem particularly apt in Ottawa and elsewhere: “What I say unto you I say unto all: watch.”

WILLIAM FITCH

Making Non-Pacifism Official

In the year the world fell apart, various Pentecostal churches came together to form what in fifty-three years has become the largest Pentecostal church. Although its leadership has long denied the church’s commitment to pacifism, the biennial General Council of the Assemblies of God put ground under the denial by repudiating its constitution’s Article 22 on military service.

This article appeals to such biblical passages as “resist not evil” and “love your enemies” and declares, “These and other scriptures have always been accepted and interpreted by our churches as prohibiting Christians from shedding blood, or taking human life; therefore, we, as a body of Christians” are “constrained to declare we cannot conscientiously participate in war … since this is contrary to our view of the clear teachings of the inspired Word of God.”

Meeting in the arena of Long Beach, California, the council’s 2,880 voting delegates decided to adopt a new Article 22, which declares, “As a movement we affirm our loyalty to the government of the United States in war or peace. We shall continue to insist, as we have historically, on the right of each member to choose for himself whether to declare his position as a combatant, a non-combatant, or a conscientious objector.”

True pacifism among Pentecostals has never been strong. The Assemblies are aggressive in grooming chaplains and help prepare military chapel lessons.

Because “some difficulty and embarrassment have been reported by various District Councils,” the council also rewrote Section 1 of Article 23. The new formulation retains the church’s rejection of “the unconditional eternal security position which holds ‘once saved, always saved,’ ” but indicates its basis for this rejection by asserting that in biblical teaching, “the security of the believer depends on a living relationship with Christ” and on the “Bible’s call to a life of holiness.”

The new formulation also retained disapproval of Seventh-day Adventist teaching but omitted the earlier article’s citation of Titus 3:10, which exhorts avoidance of the “heretic” or “factious man.” Many delegates movingly proclaimed their rejection of “once saved, always saved” but expressed embarrassment by the quote from Titus, which clearly suggests that others with whom the Assemblies work and are affiliated are heretics. The Assemblies belong to the National Association of Evangelicals, the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America, and the Pentecostal World Conference.

The newly proposed and adopted article cites Romans 16:17, which exhorts turning away from those who cause division by teaching “contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned.” (Verse 18 goes on to declare that such people do not serve Christ “but their own belly.”) But by amendment, the Titus reference was also reinserted. The heading of the article was changed from “Heresies Disapproved” to “Doctrine Disapproved.”

By an overwhelming vote, the council then adopted a motion of the Rev. Wesley P. Steelberg of Long Beach to appoint a committee to study Article 23 in its entirety “for further possible amplification and change.”

Thomas F. Zimmerman, the church’s general superintendent, announced plans for a Five-Year Program of Advance for the fast-growing denomination, whose U. S. membership is well over half a million, whose foreign membership is well over a million and a half, whose publishing house prints more than eleven tons of literature daily, and whose denominational budget for the past two years was $29 million.

JAMES DAANE

Everybody And Brother

If magazine formats were open to lawsuits for plagiarism, Newsweek would have a good case against Acts, a new bimonthly reporting news of the interdenominational charismatic movement. Though it might feel complimented by having a look-alike, Newsweek might also blanch at typographical errors, including one in a headline on the cover.

Smoother and infinitely broader in ideological scope is a Canadian entry in the religious magazine field, Ferment ’67, which is the ultimate in journalistic ecumenism. Contributors and staff include liberals, conservatives, and fundamentalists with such widely varying affiliations as Pentecostalist, Anglican, Roman Catholic, Unitarian, Jewish, Buddhist, and Muslim.

Editor John Burbidge, a liberal pastor in the United Church of Canada, says the magazine “is to act as a catalyst; out of the interplay and clash of opinion within its pages will emerge the choice open to reasonable men …”

The Rev. Leslie Tarr, a staunch evangelical writer who is business administrator of Toronto’s Central Baptist Seminary, is an associate editor, along with Roman Catholic Paul Harris. Along with the liberals and humanists on the advisory board stand the Rev. J. Harry Faught, president of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, and the Rev. Paul Smith of the well-known Peoples Church in Toronto. Smith sees Ferment as “a good opportunity to expose the liberals, and other religions, to the evangelical position” and doesn’t view his participation as an ecumenical venture.

The lead item in the first issue is a debate on conversion. Burbage contends that evangelism is “unchristian” and “just another means of manipulation.” But Mennonite psychology professor Frank C. Peters of Waterloo Lutheran University says, “Evangelism that does not make Christ and his salvation central, that does not invite conversion and definite decision, has fallen short of its purpose. Evangelism without commitment is no evangelism at all but only a kind of religious activity.”

Ferment’s publisher and initiator is A. C. Forrest, editor of the United Church Observer. Free copies of the first edition went to 25,000 Canadians, mostly clergymen, and staffers are confident that there will be a Ferment ’68.

Acts is put out by a group of Los Angeles Pentecostalists, most notably David DuPlessis. The ad-less forty-eight-page first edition covers charismatic events around the world and includes a major survey of Brazil, site of this summer’s Pentecostal World Conference. No fewer than twenty-three columns go to doings at a single Baptist church in Mobile, Alabama. A report on charismata at Wheaton (Illinois) College is explicit, but specifics are missing in a roundup from denominational seminaries. The final article is a description of “baptism in the Holy Spirit” by Harold Horton that avoids mention of charismatic distinctives and contends that the experience is meant for “every child of God.”

Integrating The Power Structure

Negro Methodists and Disciples took steps last month to phase out their racially segregated power structures. But both denominations still are a long way from a completely integrated hierarchy.

The Central (Negro) Jurisdiction of The Methodist Church, created in a 1939 merger as “a rank concession to prejudice,” as one Negro Methodist leader puts it, will pass out of existence next April when Methodists merge with the Evangelical United Brethren Church. The Negro Methodists held their last jurisdictional conference in Nashville and elected as their last bishop the Rev. L. Scott Allen, editor of the Central Christian Advocate. Future Negro bishops must be elected by regional jurisdictions, at least two of which will continue segregated annual conferences into the indefinite future.

Negro Disciples have thus far been concentrated in the National Christian Missionary Convention, which held its fifty-first annual assembly in Indianapolis and adopted in principle a plan for merger within the racially inclusive but predominantly white International Convention of Christian Churches. The plan provides, however, for a continuing Negro organization that, according to a Disciples spokesman, would meet “primarily for fellowship.”

The Curia’S New Day

Come New Year’s Day things will be different at the Curia, the 400-year-old organization of Vatican agencies berated by church liberals for its traditional views.

In the long run, the most important change initiated in Pope Paul’s VI’s 11,000-word reorganization decree last month is a five-year limit on Curia terms. Staff members can be returned for additional terms by the pope. Till now, Curia work had been considered a lifelong vocation. As in the U. S. Cabinet, agency heads will resign when a new pope is elected so he can choose his own “cabinet” members if he wishes.

The decree strengthens the Secretary of State as the pope’s closest administrator. The office became virtually the only channel to Pope Pius XII in his later years. Its functions have been ill-defined, and it has tended to assume authority. The Vatican reorganization may actually restrict its power. Speculation is increasing that the current secretary, 84-year-old Cardinal Cicognani, will soon step down.

A new Economic Affairs Office headed by three cardinals will undertake central administration of the sprawling Vatican holdings, estimated at a minimum of $5.6 billion in securities alone. Worldwide administration will also be tightened up through an informationgathering Central Statistics Office. Nothing was said about what statistics would be revealed to church members.

This second major reorganization in the Curia’s history (the other was in 1908) was proposed by Vatican II and promised by Paul four years ago. Vatican rumors had said it would be announced on Pentecost, but the final date was the feast of Mary’s Assumption. Insiders blamed the delay on rivalries that had to be ironed out between leading Vatican personalities.

To ease the pain, Paul’s decree said that the Curia is absolutely essential and that its basic structure and its closeness to the pontiff must be retained. After the document was released, the Pope said the reorganization confirms the Curia’s “necessity and excellence.” But this will be scant comfort to what the St. Louis Review describes as “dozens of clerics between forty and sixty” who are “too young to retire and too old to adapt. Many are fearful about the future, depressed about the present, bitter about the recent past. Pope Paul has somehow to move them away from the levers of power, yet at the same time keep them useful and sustain their morale.”

Previously, Paul reoriented the “Holy Office,” now the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, toward a less authoritarian handling of discipline and scholarship. He has appointed several non-Italians and younger clerics to Curia positions, including little-noticed, middle-echelon posts. Just before the reorganization was announced, he ordered that diocesan bishops be made full members of the “Congregations” (the major Vatican agencies) while retaining their dioceses, by attendance at annual meetings at the Vatican.

Besides closer coordination of the bishops throughout the world and the Curia, regular “cabinet” meetings and processes for resolving disputes will promote collaboration among the various Curia agencies.

These points were made at a press conference by Monsignor Giovanni M. Pinna, judge on a Vatican court, who turned out to be secretary of the top-secret commission of cardinals on Curia reform. Pinna said merit—not seniority—will now be the key to promotions.

The Pope himself will no longer head three of the Curia departments but will place them under cardinals. Instead of twelve, there are now nine Congregations for:

DOCTRINE OF FAITH—Safeguards the doctrine and morals of Catholicism; examines new opinions and writings.

DISCIPLINE OF THE SACRAMENTS—Handles matters connected with the seven sacraments that do not come under other agencies; its work has ecumenical implications in handling sacramental discipline, for instance in mixed marriages.

RITES—Handles all aspects of worship not relating to doctrine or juridical discipline; besides the liturgical section, a second section handles beatification, canonization, relics, and recognition of miracles.

ORIENTAL CHURCHES—Administers Eastern churches in communion with the Vatican; consults with other offices concerning other Eastern Christians and Muslims.

BISHOPS—Organizes geographical divisions, names bishops and other administrators, surveys work and personal affairs of bishops and national and regional episcopal conferences.

CLERGY—Administers all clergy and property not under the orders, including assignment, discipline, duties, education, pay and fringe benefits.

RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR INSTITUTES—Does the same for all the orders.

CATHOLIC EDUCATION—Holds responsibility for seminaries and universities as well as parochial and diocesan schools.

EVANGELIZATION OF THE NATIONS (OR PROPAGATION OF THE FAITH)—Handles all missionary work.

Three Secretariats are formally absorbed into the Curia: For Promoting Christian Unity (ecumenical relations with non-Catholic Christians, and with Jews); For Non-Christians (study and dialogue with adherents of other major faiths, including a special office on Islam); For Non-Believers (study and dialogue with atheists).

Two new agencies established in January are put in the Curia on a trial basis: the Council for the Laity and the Study Commission on Justice and Peace.

The three tribunals are the Apostolic Signatura (decisions on canon law and administrative disputes); the Sacred Roman Rota (all matters on annulments except doctrine); and the Apostolic Penitentiary (indulgences, absolutions, dispensations, commutations, graces, and condonations).

Besides a series of offices for administering the Vatican, there are the two new offices: Economic Affairs and Central Statistics.

The decree reminds the prelates that “no serious and extraordinary business may be conducted before the appropriate heads have notified the Supreme Pontiff. Furthermore, all decisions require the Pope’s approval.…”

Art Ebb

Mankind faces one of its worst periods in the history of art and architecture, contends architect-woodworker George Nakashima. “It is a sad statement of our civilization when art styles are obsolete in five years and the buildings themselves in twenty years,” he told last month’s Catholic Art Association meeting.

Nakashima is a noted designer of furniture and has built churches in Japan and India. A recent work was the Christ of the Desert chapel in Abiquiu, New Mexico.

Nakashima says church architecture is no better than the rest, though “it should be.” “There is a basic immorality, I think, in spending $100,000 for a church bell tower which is built on status symbolism,” he said. “Simplicity and poverty in church architecture is a question of the spirit. It is basically a humble and aspiring spirit resolved into a method and a high technology.”

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