BISHOPS OF THE WORLD
By THE BISHOP OF BRISTOL
ON July ist the bishops of the Anglican Communion will assemble for the five-weeks session of the eighth Lambeth Conference. In the public mind the event will probably attract less attention than the Olympic Games which will be taking place a few weeks later. The casual observer may be struck by an unusual number of those curiously habited figures in the neighbour- hood of Dean's Yard. He may occasionally witness a rather rambling procession to the Abbey or St. Paul's. But he will probably dismiss the whole affair as one mote of those archaic survivals which are so characteristic of the life of the Church. It would be unrealistic to ignore the fact, or the significance of this popular verdict. But it is merely superficial to accept it at its face value. No one who seriously considers the threat which hangs over human civilisation will expect to see it dispelled by the magic influence of episcopal pronouncements. But no one who recognises the desperate moral need, of which that threat is the symptom, can fail to hope that there may be given to the leaders of the Church the spiritual insight to understand, and the practical courage to face, that need.
Lambeth is not the meeting of an ecclesiastical legislature. Its findings do not bind the Church in these islands, or the provinces and dioceses of the Anglican Communion overseas. Its function is consultative and deliberative. The value of its decisions derives, under God, from the kind of authority which attaches to those who make them. That authority springs in part from the responsibilities of the office which they bear, and the discipline of judgement and temper learned in the exercise of it. But it springs also from the range of experience and knowledge present in such a gathering. The Anglican episcopate represents a first-hand insight into the problems, political, social and cultural, as well as ecclesiastical, of America, the Dominions, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. It can see the Church's problems at this particular moment of history in terms of the post- war aspirations of the African, the resurgent nationalism of India and the Middle East, the growing hold of Communist influence on the younger generation, disillusioned and embittered by the failures alike of Christian and of democratic pretensions. Men who have lived through the last ten years in China, Japan, India, Indonesia, the Moslem world, should at least be able to speak with a realistic understanding of the issues at stake.
As bishops, men charged with the pastoral and administrative oversight of the Church, the delegates will naturally bring with them a number of urgent practical problems on which they will seek the advice and guidance of their colleagues. This is, of course, particularly true at a moment when there has been no opportunity for such united consultation for eighteen years. It needs little imagination to realise the situation of the Church in countries which have suffered the worst ravages of the war, and arc still in many cases beset with acute political tension and economic dislocation. But it is not, of course, only questions of restoration and rehabilita- tion that will need to be considered. During these past eighteen years the work of the Church has not stood still. There have been • remarkable developments of indigenous growth in spiritual respon- sibility and administrative control which need to be adjusted to the life and thought of the home Church.
There is the acute shortage of man-power due partly to the drying up of the supply of recruits from this country during the war, partly to the shutting-down of _all training institutions in enemy-occupied countries. This will call for immediate consideration, not least with regard to the type of men and women needed to supplement the leadership which the indigenous churches are increasingly producing. The old distinction between " sending " and " receiving " churches is now largely out of date. It has to be replaced by a new con- ception of " partnership," in which the distinctive gifts of experience and local knowledge have to be blended in a new way. Upon a wise combination . of tradition and maturity with experimentalism and initiative the future growth of the Church in Asia and Africa largely ' depends.
Most urgent of all these problems of adjustment is the ever more find more insistent demand of the younger churches for a definite
move to end the scandal of Christian division and to free the Christianity of Asia and Africa from what appear to them as historical shackles which have little meaning or relevance in face of their present needs. The action already taken by the churches which have united to form the South India Church is, clearly, the outstanding instance of this determination. And it is likely that the very fact of decisive action having been taken will speed up the demand for further ventures. It is, of course, a matter 'of common knowledge that the South India scheme is regarded with widely different feelings by various sections of the Church. That very fact adds a peculiar urgency alike to the decisions taken upon the attitude of the Anglican Communion as a whole to the new Church. and to the discussion of any further proposals for negotiation.
But it is not only matters of ecclesiastical concern that will be considered. The Church is an institution, and as such it is con- cerned with the regulation of its own internal affairs. But if it thinks of itself solely in these terms it has ceased to be what its Founder intended it to be. The Church in the mind of Christ is the instrument for the extension of the Kingdom of God. And that means, of course, that its concern is with every aspect of human affairs, with every influence, cultural, ideological and moral, which shapes the course of human life. It is the regular custom that the Lambeth Conference should take for consideration at each gathering one great aspect of the Christian faith as it bears on human life. And it is almost inevitable in the light of the present confusion and distress that the subject of 1948 should be the Christian doctrine of man. No serious observer of the present predicament can fail to see that at the root of the sickness of society there lies the fact that man has lost the sense of certainty as to his own destiny. He is unsure of himself, in the deep sense that he is unsure of the true interpretation of his own nature and needs.
Most of the political and ideological experiments of our time are an attempt to supply an answer. The supreme question for the Church is whether it can vindicate and rehabilitate the Christian answer, which sees human life as created, ordered and redeemed by God, as a reputable intellectual option for the contemporary mind. It is to that issue, and to the urgent ethical implications which follow from it, that a considerable part of the discussion will be devoted. If, by the mercy of God, there should be given to the Church fresh light which could really break in upon our present darkness, the journeys of these delegates from the ends of the earth will not have been unnecessary.
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