I had a jolt of recognition of my own cultural captivity the other day. We have been provided with headsets for the purposes of listening to translations of the eight languages of the Conference. I have routinely left my headset in my room. I simply assume that most of what will be said on any given day will be in English. But, in one of our plenary sessions, I missed several speeches by bishops who spoke in their first language, not English.
I am struck by how that habit of thought may be seen as part of the problem: that we Americans think that the rest of the world is here to serve us; to speak our language; to do things our way; to conform to our norms and assumptions. I am afraid that this is the message that many in the Anglican Communion have also received from our Church.
I am told that we bishops of The Episcopal Church represent 22% of the bishops present at this Conference. I am glad and grateful that we are here and I hope and pray that our contributions have made a positive difference to this gathering. But our beloved Church is only two million out of the 70+ million member Communion. Can we speak softly and listen more carefully and act more respectfully than we are perceived to have acted in the past? Will we come away from Lambeth more deeply committed to that sturdy formula of “Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ”? I certainly hope so.
They’re starting to get it. Glory be to God on High. 😉
…I am struck by how that habit of thought may be seen as part of the problem: that we Americans think that the rest of the world is here to serve us; to speak our language; to do things our way; to conform to our norms and assumptions. I am afraid that this is the message that many in the Anglican Communion have also received from our Church…
How nice to see; a statement with some humility. Let us hope and pray for some more ‘great awakenings.’
Could we be seeing the first blade of grass breaking through the vast expanse of concrete that is TEC’s worldview?
Yes, “great awakening”–followed, even better, by great ACTING.
The statistics cited are indeed interesting to the point of being bizarre:
“I am told that we bishops of The Episcopal Church represent 22% of the bishops present at this Conference.”
ok
“But our beloved Church is only two million out of the 70+ million member Communion.”
He doesn’t do the math but I figure that that proportion (TEC bishops to others) would be 2.85%. So TEC is rep’d at almost 10x their actual size. Do Lambeth bishops or organizers ever get around to thinking about any real alternatives to representation or leadership? Something more representational in membership and something more democratic in leadership?
The archbishop of Canterbury could still be the archbishop of Canterbury, for example, and the “spiritual” head of the AC, but almost all of the actual authority could be vested in an elected primate. There are other church organizations–I think the WCC with its president may be one–in which some offices are more ceremonial and others more day-to-day operational with real line authority.
It just seems as if, notwithstanding the mechanisms for between-Lambeth continuity, very little thinking and planning get done except for (and maybe even not then) these three weeks. Like many readers who have run organizations or pieces of them, I’ve usually prepared my people well in advance so that we could hit the ground running at our actual sessions and do some good arguing and competent decision-making leading to actions. Waiting for great awakenings to the obvious is no way to run an airline or even a church conference.
“Yes, “great awakening”–followed, even better, by great ACTING.” Wouldn’t that be glorious! Still we must celebrate just this little ray of hope.
In other news, the Right Reverend George Councell reports that he smelled coffee in the morning…
Bishop Sutton’s reflection from Thursday is similar (“What this means for Episcopalians is that we really do need the Anglican Communion more than the AC needs us.”), though I am holding my breath for his next post, on being an inclusive church:
http://www.ang-md.org/lambeth/sutton.php
Two million is a vastly optimistic estimate of the number of active Episcopalians, surely? Though not as absurd as the Church of England’s claim to represent 27 million.
It is a rare and refreshing experience to read the thoughts of one of TEC’s “majority” leaders and find some honest humility instead of the usual complacency and self-confident smugness of modern “progressive” Americans. While I suspect this bishop’s views on the major controverted issues remain very different from mine, I cannot help but feel that he is on some level trying to follow Christ. Christian humility (and the deep obedience to the Mind of Christ that brings) alone will allow any of us to enter into fruitful discipleship and do the sort of questioning of motives and attitudes that Bp. Councell does here. While it may not the most penetrating and forceful recognition of how far our context has distorted things, it goes much further than most.
For many of us in N. America (and I certainly include myself), the comfort, wealth, power, and contentment felt each day has created a state of delusion that makes faithful discipleship nearly impossible. Only by humbling one’s self before God, and by loving the neighbor as one’s self, can this “spell” be broken.
Bp. Councell, like many of the leaders I have met over the years in TEC, seems to have a sincere belief in progressivism leading, naturally, to the “Reign of God.” However, that viewpoint requires believing that N. American progressivism is somehow above and beyond the effects of the Fall. It isn’t, of course, and thus it (like all other purely human projects) cannot bring about the desired end, no matter how much it is forced. In my conversations with various bishops and other leaders in TEC over the years, I have on many occasions realized that there is a willing naivete involved. They simply do not understand or cannot foresee what the trajectory of their actions and thoughts will lead to. This bishop, on some level, appears to have a certain sense that the destruction of the Communion will hurt us, diminish us. Indeed, it will lead us further down the road of being a kind of spiritual boutique — nice to visit when one is feeling daring and flush with extra cash, but no place to settle in when times become difficult.
In any event, I applaud his remarks. I pray that the Spirit will continue to work on his conscience, and the conscience of many in our Church, to see what all these years of delusion and wealth/power-inspired distortion have done to us. Unfortunately, History is not very well-stocked with stories of people in our situation “getting the message.” But, I refuse be bitter; I’ll praise God for His works of mercy wherever they show up. I know that in my own life, it has often taken some pretty painful knocks to realize how far off the mark I have gotten. The Body of Christ, though always holy, is all-too-often not the glorious, resurrected body; it is frequently the beaten, bleeding, and seemingly-forsaken body on the Cross.