An Address by the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion

It is a distinct pleasure and honour for me to address the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada, and to be able to spend a few days with Canadian Anglicans here at the heart of the decision making body of your Church. If the collective memory in my office serves me well, it has not been a frequent occurrence for a Secretary General of the Anglican Communion to address the Canadian General Synod. This is a privilege indeed. May my first words be of greeting, extending to you from the 75,000,000 Anglican Christians around the world a warm and loving greeting, and the assurance of their prayers.

I wish to say a word about this most auspicious time in the ecumenical vocation of your Church.

The Waterloo Declaration, that your Synod has just voted on and which we have just celebrated is a significant sign of your obedience to our Lord's will for the Church, that it may one, that the world may believe. Such signs of hope, such signs of progress in ecumenical relations, contradict those who are skeptical about ecumenical dialogue and conversation. The Waterloo Declaration should today be hailed throughout Christ's Church as a noteworthy achievement, guided by God's Holy Spirit, directed at helping to heal our unhappy divisions, and pointing to the full visible unity of the Church which is our Lord's will.

The new phase of life together between the Anglican Church of Canada and the ELCIC means much more than co-operation. It is about a partnership in the Gospel, a companionship in the Gospel, a solidarity in the Gospel. I know that this is something that comes quite naturally to Canadians and to Canadian Anglicans pin particular. This is one of your great gifts to the world Church. Companionship, accompaniment, solidarity, partnership. In my travels around the Communion, from the Middle East to Brazil, from Rwanda to the Philippines, I have heard constant reference to the significant ways the Canadian Church seeks to accompany and be a faithful partner in the Gospel with brothers and sisters around the world. Your engagement throughout the Communion enriches and strengthens our Anglican Communion. One thing that I must underline in my address to you this afternoon, is the grateful thanks for this engagement, a thanks which comes from Anglicans from every continent.

Permit me a few words about your engagement and partnership, or to use the phrase of Archbishop Michael in his Presidential Address, "to be a friend."

There are three aspects of your engagement that I would like to highlight.

• It is a friendship grounded in a passion for the justice of God's Reign
• It is a friendship characterized by openness, dialogue, and transparency.
• And it is a friendship which is willing to identify and walk with others, along the way of the Cross.

The Anglican Church of Canada has for decades been a world leader in promoting the Christian values of justice, peace and reconciliation. It is hard to find a World Council of Churches report on a situation in, say Central America, or Rwanda or Sri Lanka, and not be aware that Canadian Anglicans have been involved as partners, companions, seeking truth, defending the rights of the people of God, and working for reconciliation.

The role of your former Primate Ted Scott will never be forgotten by the peoples of South Africa who know the part he played in working for their freedom. The staff and committees of your international partnerships programme under Dr. Ellie Johnson and of your Primates World Development and Relief Fund, under Andrew Ignatieff are well known throughout the world Church and are considered to be respected partners who are honest, trusted, committed, keen to listen and learn, and quick to respond.

The Anglican Church of Canada is known throughout the world as a friend who has a passion for justice for the poor. Your Church will contribute to the liberation of the people of God. And you do this because of your style of companionship, acknowledging that we all belong around the one table, that we all share and all receive, within the graciousness of our God.

One of the 10 principles of partnership, which the Mission Commission of the Anglican Communion has agreed, is transparency. Indeed, I believe that this is a principle we have actually learnt from the Canadian Church. This has been one of your gifts to us: understanding the need to share fully information with partners, to be fully trusting in mutual relationships, aware that to withold information is a way of dominance and control.

And thirdly, your friendship is marked by solidarity, walking with others even when that road is painful. Communion, or koinonia means participating in the life of God, God the blessed Trinity. If we are in communion with God the Holy Trinity, this entails participation in the life of the crucified one. The body of Christ is marked by wounds, signs of suffering. And as one Body, when one part hurts, the entire body suffers. Your friendship is truly Eucharistic: for in that sacred meal we share the Body broken and the Blood outpoured. You made a kind of solidarity and companionship in the Gospel, which is willing to be emptied, to be outpoured, even to risk being broken.

Just one example of that is the official apology given by your Primate Archbishop Michael Peers at the key meeting of aboriginal people at the second National Native Convocation in 1993. Such profound words of apology from a Church leader are rare in Christendom and in Christian history. They show that you seek to be a Church with is ready to acknowledge its failures before God and before the world. And then to seek God's guidance in making amends. The willingness to admit one's failures and one's weaknesses, to acknowledge one's woundedness and admit to the ways we have wounded others is a sign of a Church seeking to be truly Holy, to embrace the way of the crucified and to trust in God's forgiveness. May I say how your journey these last few years, and the pain felt by so many, has profoundly moved the Churches of the Communion, and in a way is calling Anglicans beyond the borders of Canada to examine our lives, our history, our woundedness. You remind us that our faith journey is often difficult, a Via Dolorosa, but a journey that ultimately leads to transformation and resurrection.

I wish to close with a mention of your Church's generosity. If you examine the accounts of the Communion, you would see that the Anglican Church of Canada contributes about 7% of the budget. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Your contribution is much more extensive than financial. The list of Canadians who contribute to the life of our Communion, as staff, as members on councils, commissions and committees is impressive. And it has always been that way.

I think of extraordinary individuals who have contributed to the life of the Communion in the recent past, Bishop Ralph Dean, Bishop Henry Hill, Professor Eugene Fairweather, Dr. Patricia Bays, Dr. Patricia Kirkpatrick, Dr. Diane Maybee, John Rye, and Dr. Donald Anderson. I have already mentioned Archbishop Ted Scott. But even in the present, I want you to know some of the names of those who give of their time and expertise and share in the life, governance, and work of the Communion at the world level: Professor John McNab, Professor John Gibaut, Dr. Eileen Scully, Canon Alyson Barnett-Cowan, Dr. Ellie Johnson, Dr. Bruce Matthews, Canon Harold Nahabedian, Bishop Michael Ingham, Archdeacon Barbara Clay, Professor Stephen Toope. Archbishop Peers, at moments when the Communion's finances are being discussed at meetings of the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates and the ACC, often quips that "the Canadian Church may be short on money, but it is long on talent!" Let me say Amen to this, and add how grateful we are for the gifted and dedicated staff you have shared with us and continue to share with us in David Hamid, Paul Gibson and Eric Beresford.

In so many ways my words this afternoon describe your Church as we around the Communion experience her. But also, these words describe your leadership, particularly the leadership of your Primate Archbishop Michael Peers. Michael is now one of the "sages" of the Communion, one of those whose memory is long and whose experience and wisdom seems boundless. His career and involvement in Anglican Communion affairs began with his attendance at ACC-e in Trinidad in 1976 (along with a young Dean of Johannesburg named Desmond Tutu).

From that moment there has rarely been an event in world Anglicanism which has not benefited from Michael's presence and his thoughtful contribution. He has the skill, in the midst of sometimes fraught and tense moments of ecclesiastical politics to remind us of our history, our theological principles and our true calling. Not everyone in the Communion agrees 100% with him, (a fact that I am sure comes as no surprise to any of you), but everyone respects you, Michael, and know you to be a leader of utmost integrity, of great wisdom, one with tremendous patience and restraint (a master of understatement), skilled in diplomacy, acute in analysis, faithful in prayer and constant in companionship. May I thank you, Michael on behalf of the Anglican Communion and offer you our love and esteem.

May I thank you Michael for being a friend.

From the hearts of Anglicans everywhere, thank you Canada for being a friend. Please accept Michael a small gift being given to you now by David Hamid and Jim Rosenthall.

John L. Peterson
8 July 2001

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