Canterbury Scholars Build Friendships in the Global Communion

By Leigh Edwards

The Archbishop of Canterbury sat down with three dozen Anglican leaders, given but an hour to explore with them the Anglican Communion and his role as the primus inter pares among primates. The quiet buzz of whispers, the not-so-subtle cameras and the fixated stares in the room made clear that there was a lot of expectation riding on the encounter. In this meeting with the Canterbury Scholars, Class of 2010, at Lambeth Palace, Archbishop Rowan Williams could not but address current fractures in the Anglican Communion, yet his tone was prudently hopeful. In his opening remarks, the archbishop spoke of the final judgment:

At the end of time, when we stand before God’s judgment seat, God will ask us, “Where is your brother or sister?” And if we say, “I didn’t recognize that person as my brother or sister,” God will say to us, “Sorry, I gave them to you as a brother or a sister.”

In two sentences the archbishop captured the essence of why we had gathered for two weeks in the precincts of Anglicanism’s mother church. We were there to practice recognizing each other as siblings.

Canterbury Cathedral launched the Seminarian’s Program, a conference for seminarians and clergy in the early years of ordained ministry, in 2001 and has run the program every year since except for 2008, when the Lambeth Conference met. The program came under the Canterbury Scholars banner by 2005, after Canterbury Cathedral began a similar program for recently consecrated bishops in the Communion. Our 2010 class, 36 recently ordained Anglican priests and ordinands, gathered in this ninth year of the program for learning, fellowship, worship and rest.

Assembling priests and seminarians from around a worldwide communion is not simple. The composition of our group, especially against the reality of Anglican demographics, reflected some of the cultural and practical difficulties within the Anglican Communion. Only five of us were neither Africans nor white. Ten of us were from the United States. Four of us, all from the United States, were women. About nine intended participants could not travel to Canterbury. A couple of priests from Africa arrived days late, thankful that they had finally cleared visa and travel problems.

The seminars we attended principally focused on mission. The Rev. Canon Edward Condry, head of the program, presented the Anglican Communion’s five marks of mission:

To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom;
To teach, baptize and nurture new believers;
To respond to human need by loving service;
To seek to transform unjust structures of society;
To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation
and sustain and renew the life of the earth.

Our open discussion focused on the last two marks. Some voiced profound skepticism and others voiced hesitant confirmation, neither voice falling predictably along the geographic lines of the group. The marks of mission at first glance may seem to function as a telescope (the first requiring the second and so on);  if this is so, the legitimacy of pursuing one mark in its own right becomes more complex. With that said, our classes in the first week did focus on one of the more debated marks, namely, a proper theology of creation care. We began with theory: Can the last mark of mission, though necessarily dependent on the others, “stand alone” in any meaningful sense as a work of Christian mission? That led to a more specific question: Does it count as mission if a Christian, out of commitment to serve others, works to rehabilitate a forest?

Our understandings of mission varied widely according to our differing contexts and formation, even as other, more specific influences dispelled the sense that all disagreements could be drawn along facilely discernible lines. In some contexts, the more formal, liturgical church is a welcome relief from a too-careless pattern of worship. In other places, the predominance of nondenominational churches means speaking that “language” in order to connect with, or gain a sense of legitimacy from, other Christians.

Archbishop Josiah Idowu–Fearon of Kaduna, Nigeria, a self-identified evangelical, taught most of our small seminars in the second week. The archbishop is an advocate of interfaith dialogue as an essential part of Christian mission. He spent one session teaching solely on Islam, and another talking about Nigeria’s conflicts from his Christian context. For many, Archbishop Idowu-Fearon’s words were uncomfortable. Some, for instance, were skeptical of the propriety of befriending Muslims without the primary purpose of converting them.

Recognizing the discomfort here, Archbishop Idowu–Fearon  stressed that the witness of love and friendship does not leave interfaith conversation evangelically impotent. On the contrary, he expressed stern frustration and even discouragement with many Westerners who do not speak about their Christian faith, even as others, including some among our own number, risk their lives for the sake of the gospel. Interfaith dialogue itself need not diminish Christian witness, therefore, unless it is joined to denying or downplaying Christian conviction.

At this point an English seminarian raised his hand and observed that frustration here can cut two ways, since in England many cite what they see as angry, aggressive proselytism as a reason to spurn Christianity. The discussion that followed elucidated some of the skepticisms we had about different ideas of evangelism and mission. Some of us were frustrated that “proclaiming the gospel” often looks more like anxious polemic than gracious love. On the other hand, that talking about our Christian convictions could be thought unimportant is itself discouraging.

In moments like these we can see why God gives us one another as brothers and sisters: we need each other.

In Canterbury we encountered some of the key questions facing the Anglican Communion today. How much, and what kind of, diversity can we faithfully manage? And, at what point do we become unrecognizable to one another? Invoking our shared roots in The Book of Common Prayer is easy, but the plethora of translations, and editions expressing different theologies, reveals it as too easy. The very possibility of a common Christian language thus becomes a question mark.

On the last day of the conference we were asked to approach a large piece of paper and write a one-word description of the Anglican Communion. Some suggested “challenging” or “scrappy,” but most had something to do with hope. To be sure, we left Canterbury more aware of the differences between us. At the same time, we began friendships with one another — amid shared food, stories, laughter, and above all prayer — that require honesty about where we disagree; friendships therefore based not on the absence of pain but on shared virtues of faith, hope and love: seeing one another as brother and sister in Christ.

Throughout our two-week stay at Canterbury Cathedral, each morning began with the Office and a short Eucharist in the crypt. The Eucharist obligates us as Christians to recognize in one another the body of Christ, inaugurated by baptism. In the Eucharist, therefore, we know Jesus as the basis for our relationship as brothers and sisters; just as we come thereby to know and share most deeply in the passion of God’s love for the world. In this perspective, we may confidently say with St. Paul that our call is not to articulate a purportedly human unity, parlayed in “plausible words of wisdom” (1 Cor. 2:4). Rather, in learning to offer love and mercy to one another from, through and to Christ (Rom. 11:36), we will be formed in the visible unity that is friendship with the Triune God.

Leigh Edwards, a theology student at Duke Divinity School, is a Junior Fellow at The Living Church.