What Goes Around

As I write the Bishops of the Anglican Communion gather for their decenniel Lambeth conference. These are the leaders of the world's 78 million Anglicans, of which the Episcopal Church is the U. S. representative. Folks have been deeply divided over the ordination of the Bishop of New Hampshire, the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, a homosexual living in a partnered relationship. The howl that has come particularly from former missionary territories in Africa, the Carribbean and to some degree, South America has been as deafening as it is deafened. I want to remind folks that these intolerant and, to some degree, mean, responses may well be the fruit of a missionary strategy of the past two centuries. Two elements of that strategy are coming back to bite us. First, we were imperialists. The church went along with the methods and attitudes of the British and American empires. This led us to a faulty strategy which told the world's poorer nations, "come and be like us." Rather than listening to these worlds, we "told" them. Worse than that, we sent our second string team into the fray. The first string got all of the prestigious cures in the first world. So, we got theologies that resemble some of the worst of our own worlds thinking. So now, we have breakaway provinces who are busy exhibiting some of the most unanglican theology who hold sway in parts of the communion.

Listening is a first step for the first world. What are these folks trying to tell us? How can we hear an ecclesiology that is steeped in hierarchy and conformity? These are the same challenging questions we face in our nation with the evangelical and fundamental community. It might be good to start listening here, even as we set our sights on hearing our own brothers and sisters from across the globe. But listening is not abandonment of our own identity. It is finding common ground from which a church can be renewed. Like the exasperated grandmother said to parents of the errant child, "That kid needs a good listening to!"

I think that rebelling bishops will tell us about the failures of our world missionary strategy. Then perhaps, we might begin to make a new start. I have in mind a chapter in Ivan Illich's book, The Church Change and Development, entitled "Letter to an American Missionary." There Illich develops a missionary stance based on affirming the good sense and integrity of native forms, that seeks to live into a different way of life without constant one upping, talking too much rather than "hearing" with the deepest ear. I am not surprised that third world Anglicans cannot listen when we say that God is doing a new thing with us. Listening is not what we taught when we communicated the faith.

Think about it.