THE CHURCH'S WRONG FOUNDATION SIR,—Your leading article on August 21
dealt with the document 'Mutual Responsibility and Inter- dependence in the Body of Christ' and rightly des- cribed it as 'something of really shattering importance to the future of the Anglican Churches.' But you then bemoan the fact that the document has fallen into the hands of the ecclesiastical civil servants. Unlike his secular counterpart, the ecclesiastical civil servant is not inhibited from defending himself, so you will perhaps permit me to make a few comments on your article.
In the first place the document with the extremely cumbrous title was not the work of the civil servants. Its authors were the leaders, the archbishops and metropolitans, of the Anglican Communion. The bureaucrats have the task of interpreting and putting over the idea of MRI to the Churches. In England,. as you say, we are doing this by a 'Campaign.' This is probably the biggest single effort of this sort ever mounted in the Church of England and this week practically every clergyman in the Church of England will receive an Ad Clerum letter from the Arch- bishops commending MR1 in general and the Cam- paign in particular. Whether the Campaign will be the failure you predict remains to be seen.
What does need to be said is that the bureaucrats have already taken the main point of your article. A campaign of some sort is inevitable if you are going to get a lot of people thinking about the same thing at the same time. But the point of this campaign (and indeed of MR1 itself) is not to impose something with a dead hand from on top. It is to encourage the people and parishes of the Church of England to see in a fresh way that they are called to share their faith in Christ with their neighbours far and wide. The Church is a missionary Church and the mission begins on our doorstep; the doorstep extends to the ends of the world. If this message is to get across it means, in the words of our slogan for the Cam- paign 'No Small Change' for the Church of England. And that change, as you rightly say, begins in the • Christian heart. BARRY TILL Missionary and Ecumenical Council of the Church Assembly, Church House, SW!
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