Introductory remarks

I want to say a few introductory remarks to help set the stage for our discussion tonight and tomorrow of "Hermeneutics in a Global Communion."

I am Ian Douglas, the Convenor of the Planning Group of the Episcopal Church Foundation Fellows Forum. From 1986 to 1989, I was supported by the Foundation with a fellowship for my doctoral studies and for the last decade I have been on the faculty at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Before I introduce the Presiding Bishop, I would like to describe briefly how this conversation came to be. In particular, I want to note a few items related to the nature or context of this gathering, on the one hand, and the topic of our consultation, on the other.

This event marks the emergence of a new network within the Church known as the Episcopal Church Foundation Fellows Forum. The Forum was originally conceived in the early 1990s by Harold Whiteman, a trustee of the Episcopal Church Foundation and chair of its Education Committee. Mr. Whiteman believed that the many Fellows who had been supported by the Foundation in their doctoral studies over the past three decades could and should be organized as "lively advocates for the life of the mind for the Episcopal Church."

Approximately five years ago, Mr. William Andersen, the Executive Director of the Episcopal Church Foundation, and I began to have serious conversations about how we could more formally organize the Fellows into a dynamic and contributing body of thought and discourse in the Episcopal Church. In May of 1997, he and I called together a handful of Fellows who might be interested in helping to launch what we envisioned as a network to foster collegiality, communication and support among the Fellows.

At that inaugural planning meeting of the network, five Fellows, Ellen Davis, Cynthia Kittredge, Harold Lewis, George Summer and I developed a purpose statement for the nascent Forum. I think it is useful to read the purpose statement that we came up with for it helps set the tone for our consultation. The purpose statement reads: "A Foundation Fellows Forum will foster a climate in which reasoned, theological discourse becomes a means for members of the Episcopal Church to reach across divisions that impede the ministry of reconciliation to which the Church is called." Note that since the inception of the Forum, we Fellows have believed that "reasoned theological discourse" can be a means of reconciliation and unity for the Church and the world.

The topic of this consultation is "Tradition and Innovation in Anglicanism: Hermeneutics in a Global Communion." It is important to note the "s" in hermeneutics. Those of us who have planned this gathering do not believe that there is only one hermeneutical method in Anglicanism today. Rather, we believe that there is a plurality of ways of knowing, understanding, and participating in our vocation as Anglican Christians. The need to reflect on the variety of hermeneutics in the Anglican Communion has become quite timely. When the Planning Group decided on our topic over a year ago, we wondered, "hermeneutics in a global communion-how many folk can we really get together in one room for that?" But ongoing events in the Anglican Communion, no less than the recent irregular consecrations in Singapore of two "missionary bishops" to the Episcopal Church, USA, have given questions of identity and authority in the Anglican Communion a new sense of urgency. The Anglican Communion, as Harold Lewis noted in his sermon at our opening worship, is undeniably undergoing a time of change and transition as never before known or experienced. The movement from being a Church primarily identified with the industrialized West to that of a truly global family of churches is the ground on which we all walk, whether we know it or care to acknowledge it or not. As a result, the key questions before us are: How do we understand ourselves as Anglicans when the twin constructs of western colonialism and Enlightenment thought, on which the Communion has rested for so long, have begun to give way to postcolonial and postmodern realities? What are the cultural, biblical, and historical dynamics of this change? How do we make sense of the radical changes occurring in the body of Christ in the world today? These are important questions, hard questions, exciting questions, good questions; questions that are at the heart of the hermeneutical issue that is our agenda for this consultation. I thank God that we have the opportunity to wrestle with these questions from a variety of perspectives and disciplines.

So I want to thank all of our presenters and respondents for contributing to this gathering and I want to thank all of you who have come from near and far to be here. I also want to thank, in particular, the Anglican Theological Review for agreeing to publish our proceedings in an upcoming issue. I believe that the papers presented, our conversations that will ensue, and the publication that will follow, will indeed fulfill the purpose of the Episcopal Church Foundation Fellows Forum; namely, to foster a climate in which reasoned, theological discourse becomes a means for the Episcopal Church (and, I would argue, for the whole Anglican Communion) to reach across the divisions that impede the Church's ministry of reconciliation. In these times of increasing tensions, combined with what I would submit is a rising anti-intellectualism in the Church and in the broader society, what we do here these few days is very important. What better contribution can the Fellows Forum make to the Episcopal Church, to the Anglican Communion, and to the wider world, than to foster such listening, such conversation, such learning, and such dialogue that serves to build up the body of Christ?