Cultures and communion: Diversity and communality in the church and world

It is a privilege to be invited to present this Bishop Gray Memorial Lecture. In recent months I have been interested to read of the beginnings of the mission of the Anglican Church in South Africa and of Bishop Gray's arrival in Cape Town in 1848, followed by the years of his pioneering ministry. I could not help but note some parallels with early mission and ministry in my country, as well as many differences.

Although there was a considerable population of peoples native to North America when the first European settlers came, and some notable efforts were made to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to them, there is mostly a sad history of devastating diseases, the taking of lands and a consequent dwindling of Native American peoples. While I am grateful to report that a number of Native Americans are Christians today, there are yet considerable poverty and societal problems. This, together with the results of the myth that white settlers were moving into "empty country," and the smaller numbers of Native Americans, has meant that the history of the development of North America has, for the most part, largely excluded the land's original inhabitants.

The relationship of those early colonists from Europe and the succeeding generations with England was complicated. There was the often arduous and dangerous sea voyage that separated America from England, giving rise to difficulties with communications and understanding that eventually led to the War of Independence and a new country of thirteen states coming together as the United States of America. The fledging Church of England, strong particularly in the Middle Atlantic States from Connecticut through the Carolinas, found itself in difficult straits after the war. A number of the laity and more than half of the clergy had been loyal to England during the revolution. Quite a few of the clergy left for Canada when England lost the war. The weakened church was struggling for an identity. Who were they now that the political connection with the home country and its support was broken? Moreover, the church in the United States had no bishops. In the past, clergy had come from England or had gone there to be ordained before returning to minister in the new country. Were bishops even needed? And, it was asked, what kind of bishops would there be, since many Virginians and New Yorkers, among others, remembered or had been told about English bishops who were prelates linked with the upper class and indifferent to the needs of their flock. In the end, the episcopate came to the United States through the nonjuring bishops of the Episcopal Church in Scotland. Two results of this derivation were the church's name as the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America and the acceptance of the Scottish form for the celebration of the Holy Eucharist.

The unique history of this early development of an offshoot of the Church of England in the United States is, however, in its way typical for each of the thirty-eight member churches of the Anglican Communion throughout the world. Each of them has a different and special story because they began in different lands at somewhat different times and among different people and circumstances. These diversities of cultures and languages profoundly affected the ways in which the Christian faith of the Church of England come to be presented, interpreted, and practiced in many areas of the world.

As the eight hundred or so bishops of the Anglican Communion prepared to gather in Canterbury, England for the Lambeth Conference of 1998, the recognition of this pluralism influenced planning for one of the major discussions of the Conference, and I was asked to chair the Section entitled "Called to Be a Faithful Church in a Plural World." Diversity, we realized, is not only part of our history but is also of great significance in our contemporary churches and in the many countries and cultures of the Communion. Furthermore, the many different influences are playing themselves out in a world of rapid change and development. A number of these developments are also bringing with them countervailing pressures toward homogeneity. Transnational forces, carried by the growing influence of music, movies, radio, television, and the internet, are fueled by the advertising money of large corporations leading to what has been called the Disneyfying, the Cocacolization, and McDonaldization of the world. Billions of people know Mickey Mouse (from my Los Angeles) and now Michael Jordan and Michael Jackson and maybe even someone like the notorious Al Capone. When I was traveling in remote areas of the former Yugoslavia some years ago, and would tell people that I was born and raised in Chicago, they responded by setting their arms as though they were holding a submachine gun and making an ek-ek-ek-ek sound. They knew of the Chicago gangster from the movies they had seen.

On the cover of a book entitled Jihad and McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping the World (by Benjamin R. Barber), there is one of those pictures that says more than a thousand words. A Muslim woman, covered otherwise from head to toe in her black garments, peers out at the world with bright young eyes. In her hand she holds a can of Pepsi-Cola. In The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization Thomas L. Friedman tells story after story describing similar mixtures and interactions. Almost everywhere the commercial and technological forces penetrate-influencing the shoes and shirts that are worn, the music that is heard, changes in language and values. The forces are threatening to those concerned to preserve the values of their own cultures. In some regions a part of the response has been a religious-cultural fundamentalism, leading even to violence and terrorism. But wherever these forces penetrate, sometimes carrying with them a breath of freedom of choice and forms of democracy, they seem irresistible-especially to the young. Offering the possibility of the benefits of technological and informational development, the forces also bear with them materialistic values and the values of a consumerist individualism that more communal societies find suspect. To other societies the western exaltation of individual rights may seem to emphasize the right of individuals to assert their needs and wants over the values of the common good. It is, indeed, a complex movement and interaction of products and ideas.