Cross current
Last month saw the G20 finance ministers meeting in Melbourne. It was a time of rowdy and even violent protests outside the Grand Hyatt Hotel, and interstate observers watching news film and reading newspapers may have gained the impression that it was simply just that - a succession of violent outbursts by protestors outside the meeting place, alongside occasional media appearances by the Victorian Police Chief and Treasurer Peter Costello.
However there were more events, organized by Christian leaders that were umbrella events beside the G20 meetings. There were no protests there, only speeches and comment from an informed biblical perspective on issues of global poverty, the eradication of developing world debt, aid and development, and trade.
The Christian gatherings were organized by Micah Challenge and the Make Poverty History Campaign, backed by Tear Fund, World Vision and Anglicord (Anglicans Co-operating in Overseas Relief and Development). They held a Make Poverty History Forum, a Concert, a Festival and a Church service in St Paul's Cathedral. It was all very different from the protestors challenging police that we saw on our TV screens.
I am always gratified when I visit the Micah Challenge website to see that the Diocese of Sydney is well represented in that forum. Bishop Glenn Davies, Ray Minnecon from the Redfern Crossways Community, and Dr Brian Rosner are all members of the Panel of Reference, and the Diocese of Sydney is one of the 30 groups endorsing the Micah Challenge, as are CMS and ABM.
A special guest for Anglicord was the Archbishop of Cape Town, the Most Rev Njongonkulu Ndungane who is a well-known and respected international Anglican leader on issues such as developing nations debt, poverty and HIV/Aids.
I met Njongo Ndungane at the Anglican Consultative Council in Wales in 1990, when he chaired one of the sectional discussions (on peace and justice) and I was his section secretary and writer. Later I was to be his communicator in Section 1 discussions on developing world debt at the 1998 Lambeth Conference. Since I was in Melbourne on the week of his visit, attending the General Synod Ecumenical Commission I was pleased to be ablke to meet up with him again.
Archbishop Ndungane is the son and grandson of clergy. While a student in the 1960s at the University of Cape Town his interests in the politics of his nation developed. Eventually he was arrested under the apartheid law and was a prisoner from August 1963 to August 1966 on Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was also imprisoned. He told his audience at Melbourne's Trinity College that they gathered together each evening and prayed and sang, and that while on the Island he felt God's hand upon him. He entered Anglican ministry after his release. In 1996 he succeeded Desmond Tutu as Archbishop of Cape Town and Primate of Southern Africa.
He has gone on to become prominent in Anglican Communion affairs, though now he is regarded as more liberal in his views than the majority of his fellow African Primates. This resulted in him releasing an extensive statement in which he distanced himself from many of the statements of the Kigali Communique issued by the Global South Anglican leaders after their meeting a few months ago.
While he was supportive of the statements on Economic Empowerment, Archbishop Ndungane dissented from Section 10 of the Communique where the Global South Primates noted that some US dioceses had asked for alternative Episcopal oversight after the decisions of the recent Episcopal Convention; where the Global South leaders agreed to arrange a meeting with their representatives; where they noted some of them would not be able to sit with the newly elected Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori so they requested the attendance of another US bishop as well for the February 2007 Primates' Meeting; and where they agreed the time had arrived for a separate ecclesial structure to emerge in the US for those dioceses unable to remain in membership of the Episcopal Church.
At Trinity College last month, Archbishop Ndungane presented a paper “Finding the Heartlands of Anglicanism”. He said Anglican strength is found in the enrichment coming from a legitimate diversity arising from the matrix of Scripture, Tradition and Reason, remembering also "that Jesus is the touchstone" for Anglicanism.
In the present Anglican tensions the Archbishop said "The fundamental question is this. Do we recognize one another, for all our differences, as those who bear the marks of Christ? Alas, from the tone of some utterances it might be easy to deduce otherwise. Yet there is too much at stake, to act as though we consider separation and division inevitable, and that all we are now doing is arguing about how it is to be codified."
Arguing that he had some misgivings about the Windsor Report suggestions of an Anglican Covenant, he said "we must not be railroaded into a quick fix that merely meets the vociferous concerns of one part of our constituency. We can afford to take time over this and ensure we get it right " even ten years is a very short time in the two millennia of Christian history."
The Archbishop said that because he would be retiring in January 2008 he could speak radically. His next suggestion will find an echo in the minds of many Anglicans whatever their theology. "If I were in the shoes of the Archbishop of Canterbury " and I thank the Lord every day that I am not " if I were in Rowan Williams' shoes, I would say that what we most need now is not yet another gathering of Bishops, in the form of the Lambeth Conference. We have a far greater need for a coming together of a much larger and much more representative gathering of Anglicans from around the world.
"I do not mean another Anglican Consultative Council. The ACC is good, and plays an important role within our structures. But it is also constrained by the procedures and agendas with which we have saddled it. I would rather see a much larger gathering, with a better balance between Bishops, clergy and laity, including women and young people; in which participants can freely speak their own minds. I would like to see a very flexible and open agenda that concentrates on informal encounter and the sharing of faith. We need to listen to one another and our faith journeys, and recognize the mark of Christ in one another.
"Perhaps if all of us had a better understanding of the lives of Christians in other provinces, we would not have come to the situation we now face."
Whatever the reasons behind the Archbishop's suggestion - and they may have a lot to do with a proposal endorsed by the ACC in Hong Kong that there be an Anglican gathering of bishops, clergy and laity alongside the next Lambeth Conference though it was torpedoed by lack of financial resources - one can suppose that many Sydney Anglicans might agree with the idea of bishops, and representative clergy and laity meeting rather than just bishops.
And even more with Archbishop Ndungane's final paragraphs "The task of the Church is not self-preservation. In my understanding the task of the Church is to build up God's people for God's mission and ministry within God's world. We desire to be a Church in which abundant, God-given, Christ-shaped life can flourish, and this life can be shared with the world for the building of God's kingdom, and for his glory. And the pursuit of such a way of being Church is a task of the whole Church together.
"My greatest regret is that so much of our time and energies are being taken up by these internal quarrels, when we should be bringing Jesus' gospel good news to all who need it."
