Press Releases21 May 04

Archbishop Eames calls for new awareness of Anglican challenges

ARCHBISHOP EAMES CALLS FOR NEW AWARENESS OF ANGLICAN CHALLENGES

The Chairman of the Lambeth Commission, Archbishop Robin Eames, has challenged Anglicans to face up ?to the facts of life? in the new world order.

In an address to the Church Club of New York where he was honored in the Harvard Club for his work for the Anglican Communion, Dr Eames has warned that the Christian Church in the west is in danger of failing to understand the dramatic changes taking place in the Global South.

He challenged the conviction still prevalent in parts of the west that scientific progress in Europe and the Americas meant evangelism and civilization were inter-related. Too often the western Church seemed to believe that the former third world would always accept western liberalism as the only alternative to the collapse of communism. The expansion of western ideologies has ended and the revolt against the west has begun. Opposition to the secular values of the west was a potent influence ? but only one ? on current attitudes within Anglicanism. Modernity in the north and west still seemed to believe that modernization brings such benefits that the Global South will eventually want to embrace it. The explosion of numbers and influence of Christians in the southern hemisphere compels the Anglican Communion to challenge many traditional concepts.

A new dynamic theology for the twenty-first century is emerging in Africa, Latin America and Asia to challenge and find independence from the Enlightenment.

It is essential as we face widening divisions in the north-south divide not alone in the Anglican Communion but in world Christianity that we learn new ways of listening to each other. Too many in the Global South believe with justification that their voice is not being heard or understood, he claimed.
Predicted population trends tell their own story. Given current patterns it is widely believed the twenty-first century could see 150 million Anglicans of whom the vast majority would be in the southern hemisphere with some 20 million in Nigeria alone. Recent reports spoke of 100 million Christians in China while a steady decrease of population would mean that only 10% of the world?s population would inhabit the northern regions. The contrast to that figure is that figure is that by 2050 it is thought that India and China will be the most populated countries on earth.