ABSTRACTS ACCEPTED FOR “MRI at 60” CONFERENCE, TORONTO, 12-13 APRIL 2024 as at 13 March
If you would find it easier to navigate this long list in a PDF document, please click here.
NOTE: Abstracts have been grouped into sections for discussion at the conference.
Session 1 – Friday 12 April, 11 am – 12.30 pm
THE CONGRESS
Paper 1: Max Warren at Toronto 1963, by the Rev’d Gerry Lynch, D.Phil. student in Theology, St. Stephen’s House, University of Oxford
Max Warren was General Secretary of the Church Mission Society [CMS] from 1942-63. He therefore held what Adrian Hastings described as “the most influential position in the Protestant missionary world” for more than two decades at the end of the missionary period, while Andrew Porter identifies Warren as having been ahead of the curve in predicting how quickly European colonial empires would unravel in Africa. Warren’s final public appearance as CMS Secretary General was to give the keynote speech at the first of the 1963 Anglican Congress’ “theme” plenary sessions, that “On the Religious Frontier”.
Warren’s speech at Toronto reflected the thought-world of a man whose perspective on Christianity had shifted dramatically over the previous decades. In the 1920s, Warren had gone as a missionary to northern Nigeria, his fantasies of converting the locals shattered inside a year along with his mental health. At Toronto, Warren challenged delegates to “be bold enough to insist that God was speaking in that cave in the hills outside Mecca” and “that bitter critic of nineteenth-century society, who once laboured in the British Museum … Karl Marx”. The shift in Warren’s worldview reflected that of many of his contemporaries.
This paper will explore the degree to which developments in Warren’s thought reflected wider shifts in Christian and especially Protestant thinking, and to what degree Warren’s speech was a product of what Hugh McLeod calls “The Religious Crisis of the 1960s”.
Paper 2: Transfiguring presence: an Anglican contribution to interreligious dialogue and the life of the Church by Dr. Clare Amos, Director of Lay Discipleship, Diocese in Europe.
The paper will take as its starting point a quote from Michael Ramsey’s sermon at the conference:
“Involved with the growing nations we shall be no less involved with the religions, acknowledging the light that lighteth every man present among them while we proclaim Christ as the unique Saviour, Light of Light.”
The theme of ‘presence’ hinted at in Ramsey’s words, and referred to obliquely or directly also in the contributions of Max Warren and Kenneth Cragg was influential in Anglican missionary theology of the 1950s and 1960s. There is a well known statement of it in ‘the Christian Presence series’, a series focused on non-Christian religions edited by Max Warren of this statement is as follows:
‘When we approach the man [sic] of another faith than our own it will be in a spirit of expectancy to find how God has been speaking to him and what new understandings of the grace and love of God we may ourselves discover in this encounter. …. We have, in a word, to be ‘present’ with them.’
My paper will explore ‘presence’ as a key motif in later Anglican reflection on interfaith concerns, including the 2008 text’ Generous Love: the Truth of the Gospel and the Call to Dialogue’ offered as a resource text for the Lambeth Conference that year. Particular attention will be given to the work of Kenneth Cragg, both in terms of his contribution to the 1963 congress, and his influence on later Anglican work in this area.
I will however note the missing word ‘transfiguring’, known to be a theme that Ramsey himself cherished, absent formally from his Toronto sermon, but is a motif which (in my view) underpins his contribution. How does the epithet ‘transfiguring’ affect our understanding of presence?
Paper 3: Decolonization and mission: the sublimation of discourse, by the Rev’d Dr. Alan L. Hayes, Wycliffe College, Toronto.
The Anglican Congress of 1963 took place in the middle of the post-war dismantling of the British Empire, and at the end of its most fraught and violent period. For the Anglican Communion, decolonization meant creating new self-governing ecclesiastical provinces, headed by bishops from the local population. This development disrupted England’s hegemonic position in Anglicanism. Accordingly, the program of the Congress focused on reconceiving the mission of the Anglican Communion.
Interestingly, in the published proceedings of the Congress, few speak directly of the end of colonialism. Those that do are either racialized clergy, or laypeople with third-world experience.
My suggestion is that the Congress “sublimated” decolonization into the discussion of mission. Sublimation, at least before Freud redefined the term, is the deflection of feelings and discourse that generate psychological and social conflict into culturally acceptable feelings and discourse. For many in England, decolonization was humiliating, and for many Africans and Asians, it was painfully incomplete. By contrast, “world mission” sounded constructive and hopeful. This sublimation was designed by the program committee, which was dominated by Canadian white male clergy.
In my paper I’ll argue that in order to catch a clear view of the purposes, interests, and power structures at work in the Anglican Congress of 1963, we need to interpret the discourse of “mission” as a coded way to deal with the threatening and disruptive fact of decolonization.
Session 2 – Friday 12 April, 1.40 am – 3.10 pm
MRI’S RECEPTION IN CANADA AND AUSTRALIA
Paper 4: MRI in Australia. ‘Miracle’ or ‘More Ruddy Interference’? by the Rev’d Canon Paul Mitchell, St Francis’ College (University of Divinity), Australia.
Nearly 90% of Australian Dioceses were represented at the Toronto Anglican Congress in 1963. The returning delegates brought mixed reactions. Archbishop Hugh Gough, Primate of the Church of England in Australia enthusiastically pursued the ‘Congress Message’ and established a national MRI Committee in 1964. Church newspapers debated MRI, diocesan committees were formed, study booklets were produced, and the delegates spoke to large and small gatherings across the country. Despite support at many levels in the hierarchy of the Church MRI was strongly opposed and ridiculed in some places. The main response, as happened elsewhere, descended into preparation of lists of projects to be funded by the Australian Dioceses.
Bishop Geoffrey Sambell, who chaired the national MRI Committee, returned from the Conference in Jerusalem in 1966 and declared how embarrassed he was with the Australian response up to that time. The most active diocesan committee, the ‘Toronto Follow-up Committee’ in the Diocese of Adelaide, seemed to operate at odds with the national committee. That committee ceased to exist abruptly in June 1966 without any reason being given in any extant records. The paper will explore the resistance MRI encountered in Australia.
Paper 5: The 1963 Anglican Congress and the Canadian Church’s Self-identity, by the Rev’d Dr. David L. Danner, Divinity Faculty, Trinity College, Toronto.
This paper addresses the significant impact that the 1963 Anglican Congress had on how the Anglican Church and particularly the Diocese of Toronto viewed itself. This Congress is chiefly remembered for its visionary document “Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ” (MRI). Although MRI fostered relationships which raised millions of dollars for global ministries, inspired programs such as Partners in Mission, and underlay the formation of the Anglican Consultative Council, the view of the church articulated in MRI has yet to find full expression. Indeed, missiologist Bill Danaher pronounced MRI a failure, going so far as to say it contributed to the decline of Anglicanism by its inability to generate an inspirational vision of the church which appealed to Canadian society.
Although the visionary model of the church adopted by the Congress may have had its shortcomings, the Congress itself had a profound effect on the church’s self-identity and especially on the host diocese of Toronto. Comprised of over one thousand delegates from seventeen independent churches, the gathering represented a multiplicity of ethnicities, tongues, and cultures. Delegates from primarily WASP countries such as Canada were awed by the rich diversity on display. Toronto Anglicans billeted most of the delegates making for an eye-opening interchange for local hosts otherwise accustomed to a staid, Anglo-centric view of Anglicanism. At least one delegate, a priest from the Diocese of Jerusalem, was so impressed by the experience that eleven years later he moved his family to Toronto where he became the incumbent of a parish and a leader in the diocese’s promotion of multiculturalism.
Paper 6: “Cutting edges” in competition: The Diocese of Niagara, the Toronto Congress and “Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence” (MRI), by the Rt. Rev’d Dr. Terry Brown, Christ’s Church Cathedral, Hamilton, Ontario.
The Diocese of Niagara participated fully in the 1963 Toronto Anglican Congress: in preparatory programs, the Congress itself, hospitality for Congress delegates, post-Congress visits and the implementation of the MRI Declaration in tandem with the national church’s new World Mission program. The diocese was led by Bishop Walter Bagnall, who also served as Chair of the Congress Finance Committee. The diocese was well known attracting gifted clergy and had multitudinous programs and activities, giving it the reputation as the “cutting edge” diocese of the Canadian church.
This paper will examine the Diocese of Niagara’s participation in the 1963 Toronto Anglican Congress and related activities, including implementation of the “cutting edge” MRI declaration. While in public announcements and programs the diocese and bishop fully supported MRI, there were also many tensions, as what were proudly regarded as well-run diocesan programs came under MRI scrutiny. Likewise, the bishop was very jealous for the clergy he had recruited and nurtured, and initially privately hostile to their interest in MRI appeals to work overseas. This paper will explore both the congruence and tension between the Diocese and MRI.
In the late sixties, other pressing national church concerns such as the revised marriage canon, church union and liturgical revision, as well as the beginning of a decline in diocesan numbers and finances, eclipsed MRI. But with time, and a new diocesan bishop, many MRI principles were implemented, resulting in an active diocesan Partners in Mission Committee. The paper will also briefly discuss this denouement. [in person presentation]
Session 3 – Friday 12 April, 3.30 – 5 pm
MRI’S RECEPTION IN NEWLY AUTONOMOUS CHURCHES
Paper 7: Worshipping God in an African Way: Liturgical Renewal in the Anglican Church of Kenya, by the Rt. Rev’d Dr. Joseph Wandera, Bishop of the Diocese of Mumias, Kenya, formerly Senior Lecturer at St Paul’s University, Limuru, Kenya.
In the words of the 1963 Toronto Anglican Conference, it was organized to “show case existing creative patterns of ministry across the communion’, in a ‘rapidly changing world’. It also proposed a ‘radical examination of inequalities across the Communion through mutual setting of priorities’. The conference envisioned a richer Anglican communion where resources are shared, deriving from a re- birth of new and mutually beneficial relationships. The vision around a richer and all-encompassing Anglican Communion was well conveyed in the diverse liturgies deployed during the Eucharistic Services at the congress. There were prayer books from Canada, England, India, Australia, America, Japan, South Africa, West Indies, Scotland and West Indies. The rich breadth and depth of the liturgies captured the mind of the congress, that of maintaining ‘dialogue’ among our contextual realities whilst remaining in contact with our catholic and reformed heritage.
An interesting development took place in the Anglican Church of Kenya in the area of liturgical renewal which led to the creation of a Kenyan liturgy that draws from indigenous resources and our rich Anglican traditions.
This paper will navigate around liturgical studies and enculturation theology attempting to draw the contours of the new Kenyan liturgy, as a gift to the Anglican family and showing how our liturgies can respect our rich Anglican liturgical tradition while drawing from our rich memories of our indigenous cultures.
In this way, local churches demonstrate self-determination both in terms of polity, theology and practice – in essence embodying the story of the incarnation, but also contributing immensely to the rich diversity in the Anglican Communion.
Paper 8: Beyond the Usual Categories of the “Haves” and the “Have Nots”: Examining the Participation of the then Philippine Episcopal Church (PEC) in the implementation of the principles of Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence (MRI), by the Rev’d Dr. Ben Ngaya-an, Church History Professor, St. Andrew’s Theological Seminary, Manila.
The concept of the Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence (MRI) within the worldwide Anglican Communion was meant to foster better ways of working together in God’s Mission in the postcolonial era. This was a result of a concerted effort to redefine mission in response to two closely related issues namely: the prevalence of dependency issues in most if not all the former parts of British and US empires and the growing clamor of “daughter” churches in the aforesaid places for self-governance. Unwittingly, however, the MRI have generally continued to maintain a divide between the former masters and their subjects. The former masters have ended up funding most MRI projects and therefore resulted in the apparent perpetuation of dependency on the part of those in the side of “receivers” of grants.
Despite the above general observation, there were cases wherein less financially endowed churches have played the role of “givers.” The PEC, for example, have sent missionaries to the then Diocese of Jesselton now the Diocese of Sabah. The missionaries that were sent to the said diocese included teachers. Also, the PEC have encouraged its educational institutions to open their doors to international students. This has eventually led to the enrollment of students from Asia and some parts of Oceania in the programs of St. Andrew’s Theological Seminary including its library internship program. Most of all, the MRI also challenged the Church in the Philippines to do something about its internal affairs. Particularly, the St. Andrew’s Theological Seminary aggressively campaigned for local supports of its operation. As a result, local dioceses in both the then Philippine Episcopal Church (PEC) and Philippine Independent Church (PIC) have committed to help raise fund for the said seminary.
Paper 9: Worshipping the false deity? A priest (Pakistani – Canadian) reflects on Mutual Respect and Interdependence, by the Rev’d Edmund Laldin, Incumbent of St. Saviour Anglican Church, Winnipeg.
This paper will explore to what extent Anglican Communion provinces and united churches in communion with the Anglican Communion are interdependent on one another by exploring the author’s own life story, missionary influences, and attitudes to the ‘Global South’. The author emigrated to Canada from Pakistan in 1991 to study theology and pursue ordained ministry in the Anglican Church in Canada (ACC); his father was a priest in the Church of Pakistan, and his mother was a teacher. This approach enables the author to reflect and observe on interdependence or lack thereof from the standpoint of both the Church of Pakistan and the ACC. The paper will further explore the influence of the Northern Hemisphere missionaries and missionary societies on the ministry and ethos of the Church of Pakistan. It will then explore the attitudes of the ACC towards the ‘Global South’ Provinces, to ascertain whether Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence operates.
Submitted by: The Rev’d Edmund Laldin, Incumbent of St. Saviour Anglican Church, Winnipeg
Session 4 – Saturday 13 April, 9.10 am – 10.10 am
PREPARATORY AND ECUMENISM
Paper 10: Mutual Responsibility: The “Huron cluster”, by Dr. William Acres, Professor of History, Huron University College.
This paper will examine the Huron Diocesan archival papers relating to the pre-Congress meeting.
“In every one of this unprecedented series of meetings— perhaps supremely in the Huron cluster—certain deep hopes, discontents, determinations, and insights kept welling up to the surface. By the end of the first week at Huron, it was clear that we were at a major turning point in Anglican life, what¬ ever direction it might take. By the end of the second week, the direction we must take had become sufficiently clear to be put into words. Those words, of course, are the words of the primary document itself. Those interested in source-criticism can trace the development of some of them in the other Huron documents and in many of the preparatory studies as well.”
Stephen F. Bayne, Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ, 1963, p. 10.
As Bayne says, the Huron meeting was an important, if not pivotal, aspect of the Congress on the document itself. These meetings took place, largely, in the Great Hall, and in Chapel, and environs. If effect, these deliberations also put Huron on the international stage and increased its stature as a theological college. Bishop George N. Luxton and Principal John Grant Morden were two of the main actors in organizing this meeting.
My paper will take up some of these themes in “source-criticism” by looking at the records of these meetings in the Huron Archives as well as Luxton’s preparatory materials and correspondence leading to the meeting.
Paper 11: The Ecumenical Reception of MRI in the 1960s: Mission, Church Unity, and Church-to-Church Relations, by the Rev’d Dr. Jesse Zink, Principal, Montreal Diocesan Theological College.
The focus of attention on MRI has often been on its consequence for the Anglican Communion. But MRI was written and publicized at a critical ecumenical moment. The International Missionary Council had recently become part of the World Council of Churches and there were several serious movements towards church reunion in countries around the world. In this context, MRI was greeted with worry by some ecumenical partners as representing an overly specific focus on one denomination. This paper examines the ecumenical reception of MRI, with particular reference to a 1964 meeting of the Council of Churches of South-East Asia in which MRI came under significant criticism as well as subsequent correspondence and meetings between Stephen Bayne and Lesslie Newbigin. In doing so, we see some of the deeper tensions at work in Protestant missiology in this period about the nature of mission, the role of church-to-church relations, and the connection of mission and ecumenism.
Session 5 – Saturday 13 April, 11 am – 12.30 pm
MRI AND MISSIOLOGY
Paper 12: Theological and Missiological Implications of ‘MRI’ for Christian Education in the Digital Age; A Perspective from the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, by Greg Farr, Archivist and Records Manager, Episcopal Church in Connecticut [TEC].
My proposed paper will investigate certain theological and missiological implications of the MRI Manifesto in relation to Christian education and the authenticity of disseminated information regarding Episcopal identity. This exploration will specifically consider, against the historical background of mission work in the Episcopal Church in Connecticut [ECCT], the connection of this concern to the dismantling of systemic injustice within the evolving context of global Anglicanism in the 21st century digital age. It is my contention that the 1963 Anglican Congress, despite early tensions that may have been emerging within the broader Anglican Communion, set forth a series of theological ‘marks’ of Episcopal identity – such as ‘unity’, ‘sanctity’, ‘apostolicity’, ‘mutual mission’, and ‘common prayer and worship’, etc. – that provided representational signifiers of Christian authenticity that might now be discerned as trait-like features in the various media products (educational or other) that characterize our present landscape of information flow. I also envision such ‘marks’ or ‘measures’, as conceived intentionally by the participants of the Anglican Congress in Toronto and later MRI mission efforts, to possess supplemental agency for uncovering, revealing, and contending against forms of systemic injustice while also serving as a means for their reconciliation. I see this topic as having significance for the Anglican Communion’s future as it continues to proclaim its message and its works amid new forms of digital communication, artificial intelligence, knowledge dissemination, and potential threats of misinformation.
Paper 13: “Ten Principles of Partnership in the Anglican Communion” as a Practical Critique of Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in Diocesan Companionship, by the Rev’d Dr. Leon Spencer, Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina, and Canon Professor James Amanze, Diocese of Botswana.
“The Ten Principles of Partnership in the Anglican Communion” (originally from the Mission Issues and Strategy Advisory Group II [MISAG II] in 1993) marked one more step in the ongoing struggle to express the mutual responsibility and interdependence (MRI) theme in the life of the Communion as envisioned at the Toronto Anglican Congress three decades before. Partners in Mission and companion diocesan links were easily identified as outcomes of MRI; the Ten Principles, much less so. Indeed, they remain far less well known.
Nevertheless, the Ten Principles revealed an important critique of how MRI was playing out in practical ways as dioceses across the Communion sought to be in deeper relationship with one another. The very fact that these principles began with a declaration that “the responsibility for mission in any place belongs primarily to the church in that place” (“Local initiatives”) and that “mutuality means sharing power” (“Mutuality”) signaled that many engaged in global mission within the Communion had failed to grasp the depth of meaning that MRI, and indeed partnership generally, conveyed.
This paper seeks to examine the specific issues the Ten Principles raised, notes the efforts by some to revise the Ten Principles (notably the Anglican Church of Canada), and offers assessments from the perspectives of a Western and African theologian active in companion relationships.
Paper 14: “Obedience in mission”: a reflection on the development of the Five Marks of Mission in the light of Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence, by the Rev’d Dr. Stephen Spencer, Adviser on Theological Education and Lambeth Conference Implementation, Anglican Communion Office.
A case study of ways in which Anglican provinces have engaged in what [1963] Toronto called ‘a radical study’ of their ‘obedience in mission’, ‘to test and evaluate every activity in [their] life by the test of mission and of service to others, in our following after Christ’ (the second and fourth points of it’s proposed ‘program for every church of the Anglican Communion’).
In particular, the paper will review the development of the Five Marks of Mission and how this definition of mission has become more and more embedded in the corporate life of the Anglican Communion over the last forty years. It will combine this with appreciative enquiry into the missiological adequacy of this way of understanding following Christ, assessing its strengths and weaknesses. It will address the question of how obedient are the churches of the Anglican Communion being to the way of Christ when they view and practice mission through the prism of the Five Marks of Mission? The review will start with the ACC’s development of the definition in the 1980’s and come as far as the ACC’s use of them as an organising framework for all its business at ACC18 in Ghana in Feb 2023.
Session 6 – Saturday 13 April, 1.30 – 3 pm
INTERDEPENDENCE AND COLONIALISM
Paper 15: Interdependence as an Ecclesial Calling and Challenge, by the Rev’d Dr. Christopher Craig Brittain, Dean of Divinity, Trinity College in the University of Toronto.
The statement generated by the primates and metropolitans gathered in Toronto for the 1963 Anglian Congress included the following assertion, “The time has fully come when this unity and interdependence must find a completely new level of expression and corporate obedience.” This paper will analyze this vision for the mission of the Anglican Communion from the perspective of Twenty-First century tensions between member provinces, and in a context of a wider sense of political polarization, changed ecclesial demographics, regional rivalries, and frustration over established institutions of governance. The discussion will focus on the contemporary challenges confronting the call to greater Anglican unity and interdependence, drawing from theories of interdependence, decolonial theory, and political governance theory. These same issues will then be addressed by engaging with the collected papers of the proceedings of the 1963 Anglican Congress and the theologies of Rowan Williams, Katherine Sonderegger, and Kathryn Tanner. The resulting discussion seeks to advance a contemporary appreciation of both the difficulties and promise of the 1963 Toronto Congress for the future of the Anglican Communion.
Paper 16: “It is all a case of priorities” – The Evolving Shape of Development and Relief Work, by Suzanne Rumsey, PWRDF’s Public Engagement Coordinator (The Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund).
Of the twenty-six speakers at the 1963 Anglican Congress, only two were women, one of whom was Janet Lacey, Director of Inter-Church Aid and Refugee Service of the British Council of Churches. After outlining a series of development challenges, she asked those assembled, “And what is the church going to do about it? What is it doing about it? And it seems to me that it is all a case of priorities.”
The Primate’s World Relief Fund (PWRF) of the Anglican Church of Canada was established at General Synod in 1959. A response to emergencies and refugee situations in Canada and the world, “development” (PWRDF) was only added to its name in 1969.
Written from the perspective of a life-long Anglican lay woman born in 1963 and engaged in the development and relief work for the church for the past 33 years, this paper will address the development context that shaped Ms. Lacey’s questions, together with the call of the Congress manifesto for “a radical change in our priorities.” It will explore how that context, those questions, and the manifesto impacted the evolution of the ACC’s and the Anglican Communion’s development and relief work in the period immediately following the Congress. It will also examine the priorities and the shape that work takes now as the Anglican Communion considers holding another Congress. Finally, it will address questions of gender – in particular the agency of women as leaders and beneficiaries in the shaping and priority setting of this expression of partnership.
Paper 17: An examination of the decolonial character of Anglicanism in light of the MRI agenda, by the Rev’d Rakgadi Khobo, Chaplain to St Mary’s School, Waverley, Johannesburg.
In his closing sermon at the 1963 congress, Archbishop Joost de Blank commented that the church is an agent of reconciliation. For the church to be effective in its task, it must reinterpret the gospel command to love one’s neighbour. When the nature of that relationship has been of “giver” and “receiver”, who view each other with suspicion. The Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence Congress in 1963 raised this as a concern. The current decolonial movement in Africa and Latin America raises questions like those raised by the MRI conference — power dynamics, coloniality of knowledge, and how people see each other. The decolonisation debate and the MRI conference also raise essential questions about the truth and nature of Anglicanism. I firmly believe that Anglicanism is inherently decolonial. To support this claim, I will examine the principles outlined in the Book of Common Prayer and the history of the Anglican Church in South Africa. Furthermore, Anglicanism is viewed through the lens of the Church of England’s historical self-understanding. Anglicanism’s self-understanding as the Catholic Church in England exemplifies its decolonial character. Notably, how the Anglican Church in South Africa transitioned from the church of the oppressor to the church of the oppressed is a critical point supporting our argument. The work of African and Latin American scholars informs the criteria for evaluating the decolonial nature of Anglicanism.
Session 7 – Saturday 13 April, 3.30 am – 5 pm
MRI AND ANGLICAN IDENTITY
Paper 18. Making sense of the Global South in the light of the Toronto Anglican Congress of 1963, by The Rt. Rev’d James Tengatenga, former Bishop of Malawi, now at the University of the South, Sewanee.
“In substance, what we are asking is the rebirth of the Anglican Communion, which means the death of many old things – but infinitely more – the birth of entirely new relationships. We regard this as the essential task before the Churches of the Anglican Communion now” ends the first Chapter of Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ. (p.8) What was envisaged was the death of old ways of being church and a new way of being for the Anglican Communion with no region exerting hegemonic control. It was suggestive of each region taking its rightful place and role in obedience to the mission of God. In some ways, it was a call to harness and deploy the newfound vigor in the newly independent states and Anglican Churches. It turns out that some have come to believe that it meant the death of the Communion through schism or a new hegemony from the “South.” In the wake of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, the south-to-south relationships morphed into the theo-political grouping known as the “Global South.” As much as there is a lot of South in it, the hegemony is Northern, and the tendency is schismatic. How that enhances the mission of God in which the Anglican Communion participates in, in the spirit of Toronto 1963, is lost to me. The sharing of resources suggested in the report was not one with affinity and conformity as requirements for access. It was a reimagined redistribution of the largesse God has bequeathed to the church. It is possible to read the Global South movement as living into the “blessed reflex” or “reverse mission,” but is it? Mission by everyone to everywhere is multi-directional. The direction is not North to South but from, to, and within each region and beyond. Intra-south relationships are encouraged; hence, in the “Partnership in Mission” discussions of the following decade, the language of the south-to-south gained currency. The Global South, as is, is a far cry from the call of the Anglican Congress of 1963
Paper 19: The Death of Death: A Linguistic Devolution in Anglican Self-Description, by Matthew S.C. Olver, Ph.D., Executive Director and Publisher, The Living Church Foundation.
The language of death and disappearance were powerful and operative features of some of the key theological work undertaken by the Lambeth Conferences and also by key theological voices. Stephen Neil famously ended his classic, Anglicanism, by saying that “Christian Churches, like Christian individuals, if they desire to follow their Master, must be prepared to die for his sake; but it may be incumbent on them, as on their Master, at certainly moments to say, ‘My time is not yet come.’” The language of “Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence” that marked certain periods of twentieth-century self-descriptions by the bourgeoning Anglican Communion properly described both an intra-Anglican goal as well as a goal of the Anglican Communion as a whole towards the other parts of the one Catholic Church. But just as the Anglican Communion’s need for structures and development to help hold it together in the face of new struggles, the language of mutuality, of self-sacrifice, and even of death has slowly receded, only to be replaced by such technically correct terms as “autonomous.” The meaning of that term in particular has moved well beyond the fact that each Province had their own canon law to an existential claim that often means, “I have no need of you.” This paper will give a reading of the Communion’s evolution through the lens of this linguistic transformation, and propose ways in which the recovery of this biblical language is essential for proper development in the wake of such significant internal struggles.
Paper 20: Instruments and Instrumentality in Koinonia: Competing Anglican Identities and the Future of Unity, by the Rev’d Dr Charlie Bell, John Marks Official Fellow, Director of Studies, College Assistant Professor in Medicine and Praelector, Girton College, Cambridge.
Sixty years on from the Anglican Congress of 1963, the key hopes addressed in that meeting largely remain unresolved. The most recent attempt to create a formal structure embodying ‘mutual responsibility and interdependence’, the Anglican Covenant, failed to convince the churches of the Communion of its particular vision of ‘corporate obedience’, and the Communion remains fractured and uneasy, expressing ‘unity’ less visibly and more problematically than in 1963. Vestiges of the colonial age continue to blight the Communion’s ability to re-imagine itself, leading to ongoing disquiet about the role of the ‘Instruments of Communion’ and to the continued instrumentalization of LGBTQIA Christians as pawns in a wider debate about power, authority, identity, and colonial legacy.
This paper argues that a failure to effectively attend to both the colonial legacy and the increasing lack of common Anglican identity remain the twin central problems at the heart of the Communion. These are fundamentally questions of theology and ecclesiology and are central to any hoped-for rebirth of a Communion that is both recognisable as Anglican, fit for the future, and able to express ‘unity’ in a relational way. Particular attention is paid to the Church of England’s continued role as ‘mother church’, the relevance of the Anglican polity of bishop-in-synod for Communion dynamics, and the complexity and continued relevance of a call to ‘forgo many desirable things’ in different cultures and contexts. Finally, this paper addressed the contested desirability and potential role of a future Congress, including its ecclesial composition, in such an enterprise.
PAPER TO BE SUBMITTED BUT NOT PRESENTED
Paper 21: On the Acceptance of the MRI Concept in the Anglican Church in Japan (NSKK), by the Rt. Revd. Dr Renta Nishihara, President of Rikkyo University and Bishop of the Diocese of Chubu (mid-Japan).
Sixty years have passed since MRI (Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ) manifesto was issued at the Anglican Congress in 1963, Toronto. It is important to examine how the MRI concept, which was issued at a time when the theological idea of the “Missio Dei” or Second Vatican Council was emerging, has been positioned in the mission of the Nippon Sei Ko Kai (NSKK), the Anglican Church in Japan, since then.
At the 28th (Regular) General Synod of NSKK in 1965, the term “MRI” appeared in the “Report of the NSKK Overseas Relations Committee,” which was about the submission of lists of various requests. In other words, the NSKK recognized MRI concept as merely lists.
At the same Synod, the “Mission Research Institute of the NSKK” was established, but there is nothing that seems to reflect the intention of the MRI concept other than the way the use of MRI funds for expenses. The central theme of that General Synod was not the “MRI” but only pensions. However, the resolution of the establishment of an “Industrial Mission Council,” was approved, and it was noteworthy as a full-fledged participation of the NSKK in the URM.
In the 1990s, an attempt was finally made to reinterpret the original intent of the MRI in the context of Japanese modern society, leading to the “NSKK Mission Declaration” at the Mission Conference in1995.
Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence 