Anglican Council Draws Cassocks of Many Colors

The ancient stones of Canterbury Cathedral have witnessed the coronations of kings, the murder of an archbishop and the concussion of Nazi bombs.

Now, they are silent observers to the remaking of the centuries-old Anglican Communion. As more than 700 bishops from Anglican churches worldwide--including the Episcopal Church in the United States--gather here for their once-a-decade Lambeth Conference, the scenes and sounds have been anything but those of an old boys school and polite talk of cricket.

As the conference opened in the historic cathedral where St. Thomas a Becket was martyred more than eight centuries ago when he was slain by four knights of King Henry II, the cassock-clad bishops--half of them from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Central and South America--paraded into the cathedral’s vaulted Gothic nave to the beat of African drums. One African prelate wore a miter, the twin-peaked ceremonial headdress worn by bishops, trimmed in animal fur.

The traditional liturgical greeting--”The Lord be with you. And also with you”--was pronounced in Swahili. The Gloria was done in Kikuyu by a Ugandan. The Epistle was read in Portuguese and the Gospel in Arabic.

Having finished two weeks of private prayer and meetings, the bishops today will begin a week of public deliberations.

Over the weekend, most bishops took a break from the conference, fanning out across the English countryside to visit and preach at parishes large and small. But key players, such as Los Angeles Episcopal Bishop Frederick H. Borsch, remained here, putting the final touches Sunday on a major report on the future of the church in a plural world.

That report is scheduled to be presented this week as bishops brace themselves for debates and resolutions over issues such as Third World debt that reflect the increasing importance of Asians and Africans in the church that once was run by their former colonial overlords.

It will be a “defining moment” for the church, Archbishop Robin H.A. Eames of Armagh, Northern Ireland, predicted earlier this year. “It will determine what we are and where we are going,” said Eames, who chaired the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission that recently completed an exhaustive examination of the communion’s future.

Diversity Matters Closely Watched

How issues of diversity and cultural pluralism, not to mention pressing social and political controversies, are resolved is of more than passing interest to other churches, many of which have sent official observers here.

There are 26 million Anglicans in Britain, where the Church of England remains the official church of the realm. The 3.1 million Anglicans in the U.S. and Canada are heavily outnumbered also outside the British Isles: There are 27.2 million Anglicans in Africa and 4.1 million in India, Asia and Southeast Asia, according to the 1998 Episcopal Church Annual. There also are 2.1 million Anglicans in the Caribbean and Central and South America.

The percentage of Anglicans living outside of England has grown steadily over the last decade. While the British population has remained relatively constant, the number of Anglicans in former British colonies--particularly in Asia and Africa--has grown rapidly.

Other Christian churches have experienced a similar growth in diversity. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, has many of its fastest-growing populations in Third World countries.

Indeed, the world’s Catholic population is more diverse than the Anglican Communion since no one country can claim as high a share of the world’s Catholics as Britain does of the globe’s Anglicans. But the shift has been more dramatic for the Anglican churches because they were for so long so firmly identified with the British ruling classes.

Not everything has changed. At the conference’s opening sessions, there were melodious English songs sung by choirs of men and cherubic English boys. Prince Charles, the future king and head of the Church of England, was present. Bishops and their spouses attended a garden party at Buckingham Palace with the queen. They even found time to compete in a cricket match in Canterbury.

But the prominent role of non-Western prelates and the decidedly non-English touches at the opening liturgy here are a visible sign of what Western bishops have long known--they are shepherds in a changing church that is both revitalized by the ascendancy and religious fervor of non-Western Christians and challenged by the worries, insights and moral views of the Third World.

Third World debt, the expanding chasm between haves and have-nots, and relations with Islam are high on the agenda.

Among the bishops present, 224 are from Africa; 95 from Asia; 56 from Australia, New Zealand and Oceania; 41 from Central and South America; four from the Middle East; and 177 from North America. There also are 139 from Britain and the rest of Europe.

The growing numerical strength of bishops from the south also is translating into new coalitions. Conservative bishops in the U.S. and Europe often find themselves outnumbered in their own countries on issues such as the ordination of gay men and lesbians to the priesthood. But within the worldwide church, those conservatives see an alliance with bishops from Africa, Asia and South America, who tend to reflect their societies’ adherence to traditional mores.

Even though Lambeth is not a legislative conference, and its resolutions are not binding on the individual churches within the Anglican communion, debates here have great resonance, and the discussion can shape the future of Anglicanism as Christianity approaches its third millennium.

The changes among Anglicans worldwide are mirrored by developments in the six-county Episcopal diocese of Los Angeles. Perhaps for that reason, Borsch chairs one of four major sections at Lambeth--the discussion of diversity within the church.

“Always there has been the danger that a particular cultural expression of Christianity will be assumed to be privileged and to enshrine beliefs and practices in ways they must be for others,” Borsch said in a paper presented to the conference.

“To the contrary, it has been said that Christianity, although it is never experienced apart from a culture, does not so much have a culture as it seeks cultures in which to be a living faith--a universal faith always seeking a unique expression,” Borsch wrote.

Despite such language embracing diversity and change, the shifts in the Anglican world already have caused some tensions among the bishops. Last week, for example, African bishops were in an uproar over a statement by a liberal American bishop that they believed slighted the intelligence of Africans.

The Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong of Newark, N.J., who favors the ordination of non-celibate gay men and lesbians to the priesthood and the blessing of same-gender unions, seemed to imply that African views about biblical morality were out of touch with modern scholarship and scientific theory. Spong later issued a public apology.

Bishop of Jerusalem Walks Out

In political terms, bishops from former colonies twice have bristled over what they see as a Western mind-set. Bishop Riah Abu Assal of Jerusalem walked out of one session to protest a dramatic play that he said slighted Palestinian interests in the Holy Land.

Several days later, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of Cape Town, South Africa--who succeeded retired Archbishop and Nobel laureate Desmond M. Tutu--decried the apathy of Western democracies over the burden of Third World debt.

Then late last week, Latino bishops from 20 dioceses called themselves “the invisible Anglicans” because they said the conference is dominated by African, North American and European priorities.

The changing complexion of the denomination has even led to questioning of some of the church’s most symbolic structures. Eames’ commission, for example, raised the questions in its much read “Virginia Report” of whether future archbishops of Canterbury necessarily have to be members of the Church of England and whether the primate of the Anglican Communion must be the archbishop of Canterbury.

The Most Rev. George L. Carey, archbishop of Canterbury, is unlikely to be succeeded by a non-Englishman any time soon. But the mere question is evidence of a profound rethinking by bishops and other leaders of what it means to be an Anglican Christian.

Anglicans have long cast themselves as following the via media, the middle way, in fashioning solutions to problems. They see their church, for example, as the “bridge” between Protestants and Catholics.

But it is not an easy road. Borsch and his vice chairman, Bishop Simon E. Chiwanga of Mpwapwa, Tanzania, framed the question confronting bishops at Lambeth:

“The particular circumstance of these times call us once again as a communion to wrestle with our differences as well as to celebrate what unites us.”

Or as Carey put it: “I have often said, jokingly of course, to those provinces influenced by the English church in the last century: ‘Be less English! Be more African or Asian or South American. Let your own traditions, music and ways of devotion enrich your life! . . . By empowering and celebrating the local, we enrich the whole.”