An Invitation to Ephraim Radner and the ACI to discuss and reflect together

Shake us, O   God
Shake us   with the storm of the Pentecost,
For over a   century we have remained silent
Unable to   speak a word.

Give us   speech, O God,
Command the   tongues of fire to descend on us,
Why do we   remain dumb
before our   compatriots?

***
I beg you,  Siloam,
remove the   mud from my eyes
with the   gentle ridges in your pool.
Enable me to   see mother earth
and the   smiling faces of children
lit up by   sun-rays in early Spring.

(Wang Weifan, 1956, translation   mine)

I am very   grateful to Dr Ephraim Radner of the Anglican Communion Institute for responding  to my earlier invitation to conversation.  I appreciate his generous and   friendly comments.  In what follows I hope to map out areas for further   engagement. In doing so, I hope also to take up ECUSA’s challenge at GC2006 to   explore “the deeper levels of communion and interdependence across the Anglican   Communion.”

Wang Weifan’s   two poems written in 1956 when he was still at the young age of twenty-nine   provides a convenient starting point. Wang is one of the leading Christian   scholar and poet in China, little known in the West because he writes   exclusively in Chinese.  After all his theological formation took place in the   post-denominational era in China.   Wang penned these two poems at the height of   radical theological reconstruction in the late 1950s.

Why does Wang   see the church remained silent and unable to offer a word to the Chinese people   despite over a century of intensive Protestant mission? What prevents Chinese   Christians from sharing the plight of their compatriots?  When will children’s   faces in the war-ravaged nation light up with smiles again?

Wang stands   in line with some of the most reflective Chinese Christians – the Rev. Zhao   Zichen included – in the last century who tried to wrestle with the legacy of   Protestant mission in China.  Christianity has become alienating and alienated   from the wider society.  The Christian message is implicated with imperialist   aggression.  Do Chinese Christians have anything to say to the wider society?   Do they have the strength to proclaim the message in the new nation?

It is not   obvious that one can enter “deeper levels of communion and interdependence” with   our hurting compatriots. It would be easier if all that involves is for us to   launch rescue missions to the isolated crisis here and atomised individuals   there in a globalized world.  But that would be far from “the communion of   saints” Jesus envisaged. Jesus asked his eager disciples: “You don’t know what   you are asking.  Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I   am baptized with? (Mark 10: 38).”  Only God can bring this about. Wang asked God   to shake him with “the storm of the Pentecost”.  In God’s gracious providence,  Wang and his fellow Christians did drink the cup of suffering to the full during   the Cultural Revolution.  It was a time of cleansing and rebirth for the Chinese   church.  Through experiences of suffering and alienation, the church began to   gain the credibility to speak to the wider communities

This China   detour is relevant to our present discussion in the Anglican Communion.  A   central issue is what churches in Asia, Africa and Latin America stand for?   I   find that Dr Radner and many Christians in North America and Britain continue to   misunderstand the Global South.  Is the Global South simply power hungry?   Are   they reducing the Communion into a fellowship between like-minded Christians?  I   take this to be the heart of Dr Radner’s challenge.  Behind such   questions is an attitude to interpret Global South actions in terms of their   impact on churches in the West.  This may explain why the issue of “Alternative   Primatial Oversight” became an overriding concern to Global South critics. Will   they intrude into the internal affairs of North American churches?

I shall touch   on the issue of “Alternative Primatial Oversight” briefly later in this   response. My immediate task is to invite Dr Radner to explore the present-day   Anglican world together. We can only understand churches in Latin America,  Africa and Asia in their own terms.  No interest group in Britain and America   can claim to represent Global South interests.  Nor Global South churches are   interested in giving blank endorsement to the particular political agenda of any   Western ecclesiastical grouping.  To know the world, we need to walk its full   breath.  I look forward to his discerning observations as we embark this   journey, that we may together see the world whole.

Global South   churches face an acute missiological hurdle: Are Christians an antisocial and   destabilising element in the emerging nation-states in the 21st   century?  How can Christians live in deeper levels of communion and   interdependence with their suffering compatriots and the wider world?  These are   my key concerns.  I tried to reflect on these issues in a recent article “Till   they have Homes”.  [1] Elsewhere I also noted nation building processes in the sixty years make young   churches literalist in understanding their faith.  [2]  I ask:  Is the present Communion ethos able to help Global South churches to   become mature and face their particular mission challenges?  Do the present   Communion instruments provide an effective structure for churches to enter   deeper Communion with one another and the wider world?  My response is “No”.   This explains the reasons behind my struggle.

What is the   point in the present debate in the Communion?  I am not defending Anglicanism   and the status quo.  Anglicans around the world cannot afford to live simply as   “Anglicans”, if we take that to mean a denominational manifestation in the   narrow sense of the word.  There is something more basic: We live as   Christians.  How should Christians live responsibly in today’s world?  Is   historic Christianity able to survive our generation? Are churches able to   remain as strong and viable communities around the world?  These are not simply   Anglican issues. Our Anglican upbringing provides the context of our decisions.  Indeed, our historic ties offer us particular sets of opportunities to work for   God’s Kingdom. But we see, deliberate and act as Christians. We need to connect   our discussion on Communion matters with this underlying Christian foundation.

Let me   outline three convictions to invite further discussion.

First, the   Suffering Servant provides a better model for interpreting Christian oversight   in the 21st century.  [3]  “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrow, and familiar with   suffering.  Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we   esteemed him not. . . . For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for   the transgressors (Isaiah 53: 3, 12).”  Saint Paul drew out its implication for   his apostolic ministry in 2 Corinthians and Colossians. “Praise be to the God   and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all   comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in   any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. . . . . Now I   rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still   lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is   the church. (2 Corinthians 1:3-4, Colossians 1:24).”  Bishops today are called   to drink the cup of suffering with Jesus.  The martyr’s blood remains to be the   seed of the church and the soul of the world. We labour for the day when   children yet to be born are able to smile in the good earth God gives us.

Primates’ Meetings provide opportunities   for mutual consolation in the midst of deep suffering.  The purple cloth is   stained with the blood of martyrdom.  That should be the norm. They gain the   credibility to speak and govern their churches only when they are able to enter   the deeper levels of communion with their suffering Christians.  Canterbury   leads by entering into the suffering of his fellow Primates. This is why I   believe the Primates’ Meeting should take up a central role in the Anglican   Communion.  This does not mean we give up the Roman understanding of episcopate   from the fifth century. It only means the jurisdictional and administrative   understandings we inherit from the Latin churches are not the only models the   Scripture and historic Christianity authorize.  The call to suffering, martyrdom   and closer union with our neighbours demands a different way of guarding the   faith together in the universal church.

Second, churches in the Global South   need to develop their own suitable ways of being Christian communities in their   own geopolitical conditions. Christianity might have provided the evangelical   inspiration for the emergence of democracy in the world.  [4]     The liberal ideals that Western churches and societies today adopt however do   not necessarily represent the full spectrum of the Christian faith. [5]

This is why I am critical of the   informal and formal Communion instruments the Anglican Communion fabricated in   the past two decades.  They make the Communion completely in the mercy of those   who can bankroll the sprawling Anglican Communion Office.  Imagine if the   Communion’s “Platinum club” Compass Rose Society were to withdraw funding the   Communion Office because ECUSA is in impaired relation with the rest of the   Communion.  I imagine the Secretary General would face immediate personnel   crisis; his staff would make sure the media instruments that are at their   disposal would carry ECUSA’s views.  Read the Trinitytide 2006 issue of the Anglican World and note the coverage on GC2006 and ECUSA.  Responsible   journalism would give a more balanced coverage.

The Anglican Communion Office from   Carey’s time has all along been making appointments with little regard for the   rest of the Communion.  For years, British mission societies and the Communion   Office have been sharing the same building and resources in Partnership House,  London.  I suspect this promoted an illusion that they have the whole world in   their hands.  They act with their best intent. However, the Secretary General   and some Anglican leaders – both left and right wing – should let go of their   patronising attitude.  They are not racist. Far from it, they are clever in   putting ethnic Christians under their employ to propagate their agenda   worldwide.  The West does not know best. They should stop using Africa, Latin   America and Asia as a battle field to further their own interests.  This is why   I am puzzled with Dr Radner’s criticism that I pay little regard for “mutual   subjection of individual communities”.  This is how ECUSA and the Communion   Office have been behaving.  After all, who has not been Windsor-compliant?

Third, Global South churches need to   underpin their life and witness with a more coherent theological foundation.   The world-order is undergoing radical restructuring. We live in an explosive   and violent age.  Conventional wisdom from the evangelical and liberal wings can   no longer serve our present purposes.  We need to understand and engage historic   Christianity in its full breath and depth, in order to illumine our present   situation and connect it with our Christian experience.   Professor Oliver   O’Donovan observes in a web sermon on Fulcrum that churches in the Global South   adopt a patristic-Calvinist outlook.  [6]   I take that as a compliment. The early patristic age and Calvin’s reform in   Geneva were formative periods in the church.  Global South churches would not go   horribly wrong if they take that as starting points for building their church   life.  Would Dr Radner and the Anglican Communion Institute join us in this   common task?  We need one another.  Professor Oliver O’Donovan’s recent series   of web sermons on Fulcrum is an exemplary model for such endeavour.

Just in passing, I return to the   question of “Alternative Primatial Oversight”. The Kigali Communiqué reflects an   ecclesiology that is far from being congregational and pietist.  It is moderate   and yet decisive.  The Primates renew their commitment to work with Canterbury.   They have not derailed Lambeth 2008; nor are they rejecting the incoming ECUSA   Presiding Bishop to attend the coming Primates’ Meeting in February 2007!  They   further take the important steps to resource one another in economic development   and theological formation.  They are working for the long-term welfare of the   Communion.

Dr Radner is right to point out we need   to pay closer attention to our ecclesiological suppositions.  Are we able to   broaden our catholic horizons beyond the administrative-committee-consensual   strictures with a more sacramental approach?  “The cup of blessing which we   bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? (1 Corinthians 10: 16)”  Let us venture to deeper levels of communion and interdependence as we sharing   in Christ’s suffering.   Let the Global South churches take equal place in the   Communion. They too bear the stigma of Christ (Galatians 6:17).

I end by thanking Dr Radner again for   his charitable comments.  I offer him as a token of friendship the following   poem by Xie Fuya (N Z Zia), another contemporary Chinese Christian.  I hope   Xie’s vision would be our common goal as we continue to learn and grow together   across the continents, to edify the universal church and to bring glory to God.  Let us do all we can to support Canterbury and his fellow Primates as they care   for the churches. They are men of sorrow and acquainted with grief; and we laid   on them the sins of us all.

In quest of   truth unwavering Through days   and months we’ve sought, Intense in   thought, discerning well, To   strengthen life and thought. With wisdom   and with reason taught, With   Christian faith instilled, We aim to   take our place in life With   Christlike purpose filled. Mankind,  like trees, take years to grow, As vessels,  slow to mould, Bright days   will dawn, serve then with zeal, And be   Christ’s soldiers bold, God calls us   all to fragrant deeds O’er bitter   seas to gleam: The world   awaits a helping hand To show a   guiding beam.

(Translated by   Ivy Balchin, slightly modified.)