Address to the Church of Sweden General Assembly
Tuesday 14th September 2004
It is an enormous pleasure to bring to you greetings from the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and from the General Synod of the Church of England. I also bring greetings from my colleague the Bishop of Newcastle, Martin Wharton, who is the new Anglican Co-Chair of the Porvoo Contact Group, which represents not only the Church of England, but also the Church in Wales, the Church of Ireland, and the Scottish Episcopal Church, in their Porvoo relationships; Martin is enjoying working with Bishop Ragnar Persenius, who is the Lutheran Co-Chair.
In England, we have long valued our links with the Church of Sweden, which go back many years. In the past, there were regular exchanges between Church Leaders, for example, participation at Bishops’ consecrations from 1920; and between theologians, in the Anglo-Scandinavian Theological Conferences, which began in 1929, and which were appropriately re-named ‘Anglo-Nordic-Baltic’ after 1989. All this continues to be of vital importance. But since the signing of the Porvoo Common Declaration in 1996, the relations between our Churches have extended to many other different levels as well. We are able to exchange pastors; and the Church of England Porvoo Panel, which oversees all our links, has instigated some informal training, so that ‘Porvoo pastors’ coming to England are helped to understand what a strange animal the Church of England can be in parish life and ministry. There are, too, different forms of ‘twinning’, between cathedrals, and between individual parishes, often sealed by an official relationships between dioceses. For example, the Portsmouth-Stockholm link has grown over the past eight years, with strong friendships of many different kinds. Bishop Caroline’s visit to the Portsmouth Clergy Conference last September was a welcome experience for us all, and I look forward to my reciprocal visit to the Stockholm Conference next autumn. I value my friendship with Caroline greatly, and we in Portsmouth value her wisdom.
But new challenges inevitably face the Porvoo process. When I took part in the Consecration of the new Bishop of Lapua in Finland on Sunday, I was struck by Finland’s strategic role in relation to the Baltic nations, and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. Perhaps Porvoo has a future on new terrain. Then there are more controversial issues. In the Church of England, we have only had women pastors for ten years – you have experienced them for much longer. A recurring topic in some of the Porvoo encounters is the status of Lutheran pastors ordained by women bishops for Anglicans who have not agreed on this matter: in specific terms, this relates to the Church of England and the Church in Wales, but not the Church of Ireland, or the Episcopal Church in Scotland. I know that this is a pressing issue, which has been brought up in our continuing conversations with the Church of Denmark, who have had women pastors for even longer than you in Sweden, but who only in recent years elected their first woman bishop. Next February, our General Synod will be debating a report on Women and the Episcopate. It looks like being a lively experience, and it will probably lead to discussion of this matter in each of our diocesan synods. In this respect, direct experience of women bishops, is helpful, and that obviously relates to the Portsmouth-Stockholm link.
The area of sexuality I know is before you now. You may also be aware of a debate going on in England which has become polarised, and which has ramifications throughout the Anglican Communion as well. My own view is that we are going to have to learn to listen to each other far more carefully and patiently than we have done in the past, look again at our (sometimes very ambiguous) history, and find a way of accepting the role of conflict in the life of the Church, certainly not for the first time; and the role of the bishop as a shepherd of a flock of disciples, and not the manager of a group of consumers who have to have a manager with whom they must agree on absolutely everything. After all, the Acts of the Apostles may, on the one hand, be a narrative of the expansion of the Christian mission, but it is also, on the other hand, an account of how the Church nearly split apart on one area which the modern Christian finds altogether baffling – whether or not male Gentile converts should be circumcised.
Porvoo is fundamentally about our common mission – which is to hear as well as to proclaim the gospel where God has placed us. Europe still has a soul. Europe has a rich cultural history of new ideas, and fresh initiatives, in art, music, philosophy – and religion and theology as well. Europe is perhaps being challenged to face up to its rich past in new ways that are not, as in British history, about post-imperial guilt, nor indeed about a cultural imperialism that says, ‘oh well, you’ll all be like us in ten years’ time.’ Looking more widely at the question of mission, we might ponder the ways in which Europe’s ‘privatised’ expressions of religious belief increasingly burst out into the ‘public’ domain on special occasions, whether these are to do with family life, rites of passage, or national events, including national (and international) disasters. Ministry to and among different groups within society, rather than to the community as a whole, may echo the noticeable trend, at least in the United Kingdom, where young people are increasingly disenchanted with individual political parties and traditional organisations, but they care passionately about specific social and moral issues, such as international trade, global terrorism, and gays. All that is manifestly important, yet Church history has some warning signals about ‘one-issue Christians’.
Let me end on a personal note, and with a touch of characteristic Danish irony. When I have been with you before, I have flown the Dannebrog, if only metaphorically, as a gentle sign of the land of my mother, and my father’s mother, and generations of Lutheran pastors on both sides of the family. I have even spoken some Swedish with an accent that betrays that disease of the throat which is sometimes called the Danish language! Until recently I thought the clerical line began on my mother’s side in south Jutland in 1764. But I have learnt, from research into family-history, a really astonishing fact: the first clergyman was on my father’s mother’s side, and his name, along with that of his son, is to be found inscribed on the ‘Series Pastorum’ in the parish Church of Sidensjő, in the present diocese of Härnösand. His ministry began in 1595. So it would appear that I am really Swedish after all!
+ KENNETH PORTSMOUTH
