Episcopal Press and News
New Anglican Image Seen at Peace & Justice Conference
Episcopal News Service. October 23, 1986 [86232]
Richard Harries, Dean of Kings College, London from the Church Times of London
LONDON (DPS, Oct. 23) -- I imagined Anglicanism in South America to be of that terribly dull Low Church kind: Evangelism with the fizz gone out, as flat as a bottle of soda-water with the top left off two days, ministering to genteel expatriate congregations clustered round our embassies. That stereotype was rapidly shown the front door by Luiz Prado, an Anglican priest working in the south of Brazil, with whom I recently spent a week in Jerusalem as part of the Anglican Peace and Justice network.
Luiz shocked us with his figures. Brazil is the eighth richest country in the world in terms of gross national product, yet has no fewer than thirty-five million destitute and virtually abandoned children. Brazil's economy has grown ten times during the last forty years, but the minimum wage, which was eighty-five dollars per month in 1941, has dropped to fifty-eight dollars today.
Luiz works in a slum parish and is totally committed to the poor who swarm there. One remark of his will always be with me. No intellectual slouch himself, having done research on Tellhard de Chardin in France, he said to me: "We do not need books. The riches and treasure of our theology is in our people."
He really believed in the people he was serving and their dignity; educating them, helping them to stand on their own feet so that they could better help one another in the local community and claim their fair share of the earth's resources. A passion and an authenticity came through his broken English that touched us all.
I did not even know that there was an Anglican Church in the Philippines. But there is, and the bishop of its northern diocese, Bob Longid, was with us. President Marcos was his godfather and had been an official witness at his wedding: but the bishop had spent his life fighting the President.
The troops of the New People's Army are in his diocese. He knows them and understands their cause. Deeply suspected by Government security forces, he takes his life in his hands when he goes outside. He watches the new regime with wary hope.
Anglicans appear to be as committed to the struggle for social Justice as the Roman Catholics about whom we read so much. That was the first healthy shock. The second concerned the repository of wisdom. We tend to pride ourselves in the Church of England that, though we may not be very heroic or saintly, we are at least "sound"; or judgements are balanced; we are mature.
But in Jerusalem it was above all the African bishops who seemed to bring the charisma of wisdom to our group: Jonathan Onyemelukwe, the Bishop of the Niger, and Peter Hatendi, a bishop from Zimbabwe. Their sagacity, balance and fairness, their maturity and fore-sightedness were the very model of episcopal guardianship.
The week brought home to us how many terrible conflicts there are in the world today, but also how involved Anglicans are in the work of reconciliation.
Bishop Andrew Mumarge explained to us the background of the wretched killings in Sri Lanka between Tamils and Singhales. Bishop Charles Albertyn brought us up-to-date on South Africa, as did others for Kenya and Tanzania. Lest those from Britain felt superior, David Bleakley kept the reality of Ireland before us. We understood something of the work going on for Maoris in New Zealand and for Aborigines in Australia, and of the struggle to prevent Pacific Island peoples' suffering from nuclear testing.
We heard from Wales and Scotland and Canada, all with their problems. Above all, being in Jerusalem, we could not forget the plight of the Palestinians, who feel let down and forgotten by their fellow-Christians in other parts of the world. There is the double wickedness, in their eyes, of a Europe that killed the Jews and then forced the Palestinians to suffer for our guilt.
The whole world cheers, they said, when Scharansky leaves his home in Russia to come and live in Israel. "But we who have lived in the city for 1,000 years, and fly a banner in the Holy Sepulchre to prove it, have had difficulty in bringing our son to his home."
Then there is the Episcopal Church in the USA, about which the Church of England sometimes feels superior. "Oh yes, they are generous, but they are so rich they can afford to be."
Nothing could be further from the truth. The Episcopal Church has got its act together in a way that might put us to shame. Their generosity (and their are generous) is an expression of their commitment to the job in hand, as is their efficient organization and business-like way of doing things.
The Anglican Peace and Justice Network exists to keep those who are working in this field in touch with what is happening and to help prepare some of the ground for the Lambeth Conference of 1988. I came away with an overwhelming sense that the Anglican Church has some very good people doing an excellent job in crucial, sometimes dangerous, situations. If this is a measure of Anglicanism today, it is in good heart and bodes well for Lambeth.