“We are in this together” – reflections on the hui ____________________________________

If church is a marriage, the recent theological hui was about taking time to rediscover what’s special about that relationship.

That’s how Don Tamihere, the Director for the Centre of Youth Ministry Studies, sees the significance of the three day-hui: Anglicans in Communion: Reality or Rhetoric? which was held at St John’s College from August 15 to August 18.

“It’s easy to get distracted by the daily grind,” says Don. “Having to pay the bills, having to get up and go to work. You can soon lose the intimacy or the purpose of that relationship, if you don’t bother to make an effort to come together, to talk, to find out about each other. To get to know what’s important, what the dreams are, what the aspirations are.

“This hui was an opportunity to get to know each other afresh. It was the kind of effort that the church needs to make for itself.”

Among the 108 folk who had the privilege of being at the hui, that was a common response – that occasions like this are all too rare, and there’d been no opportunity, until the hui, to gather and discuss what a three tikanga church theology might look like.

Several commented that the hui met a need that General Synod doesn’t touch.

“General Synod,” said Dr Jenny Te Paa, “is an occasion where we transact the business of the church. That tends to end up being the perfunctory stuff… the administrative and managerial needs of the church. Whereas this was an occasion to talk about deeper relational concerns.”

The keynote addresses given by the Archbishop of Capetown, The Most Rev Njongonkulu Ndungane, and the Bishop of Malaita, in the Solomon Islands, The Rt Revd Dr Terry Brown, were a springboard for diving into these discussions.

The title of Dr Brown’s two-part address: Communion and Personhood gives a hint of the territory that the delegates explored in plenary sessions, workshops and around dinner tables.

Bishop John Bluck says that the two speakers gave insights into key words. In the light of the hui, he says, “koinonia takes on a new edge. Communion is inadequate if it doesn’t involve a real sharing of personhood and resources.”

“When you allow yourself to go deep into the koinonia experience, you change, and your definition of ‘I’ changes as a result of a new understanding of ‘we’. As a result,” he says, “the whole issue of resource-sharing is back on the table.”

While many expected sexuality to dominate the debate, perhaps that was shaded by the desire to examine the quality of relationships in the church – in the broadest sense – and the Maori delegates made their presence felt on this theme.

And that in itself, says Archdeacon Hone Kaa, is a triumph. Before the three-tikanga constitution was put in place, he said, Maori wouldn’t have said: ‘boo’.

“What I marvel at,” he says, “was the number of Maori there who were not afraid to contribute.

“Maori have got past the idea that Tikanga Pakeha is a threat, or frightening to them. They found themselves the intellectual and spiritual equal of their Pakeha counterparts.

“We have a very clearly identified base, out of which we can arise. Whereas I got the impression that many in Tikanga Pakeha were still struggling with their identity. They don’t know how to name it, and claim it.”

The hui also got a guarded thumbs-up from Peter Carrell, the Director of Studies at Nelson’s Bishopdale College, a delegate who’s identified with the evangelical movement of the church.

He noted that the backdrop to the hui were the “very strong disagreements” about human sexuality that have led to the writing of the Windsor Report.

And where a General Synod has a “Parliamentary-type atmosphere” which tends to allow only “snatched conversations”, he noted that the hui gave space for people from all theological positions “to talk about our differences, to get to know one another and relate to each other.”

That, he said, was a “sign of hope.”

“As evangelicals, we were pleased to have the opportunity to be present, to participate and to be heard, and to hear others. We didn’t feel a sense of coercion.”

There was frequent exhortation during the hui to “keep talking” and to keep in communion.

For some evangelicals, says Peter, there’s suspicion about that kind of encouragement.

They’re anxious that this is “an intentional ploy… to wear us down so that we’ll eventually fall into step with the liberals on human sexuality.”

“I think the hui demonstrated that this encouragement to ‘keep talking’ is not necessarily about trying to wear down the other.

“It’s a genuine attempt to move forward. Perhaps the success of the hui is that we showed that neither side is expecting the other to change in the short term. Therefore, the issue is not how to convince the other that we are right, but whether we can we live with the other. The hui gave considerable hope that we can, providing we talk.”

That kind of “transcending” of positions was something that Jenny Te Paa took heart from, too.

“I think the big significance of the hui was that people ‘got over themselves!’

“People transcended the almost entrenched boundaries of tikanga, and found themselves easily able to engage in conversations about things of a theological nature – things that really matter.

“I can see that the quality of the conversations we’ve been having has been eroded in the last 10 years. This was an opportunity to say: ‘It’s OK. We can retrieve the situation’ – and get back to an engaged dialogue that lends itself far more to the original vision, as I see it, of the constitution of our Church, than where we were headed.”

There was some comment, during the hui, that Tikanga Polynesia were taking a low profile.

Amy Chambers, a Fijian priest who led one of the workshops, says the folk who made those assessments should have checked out her workshop.

But she acknowledges that Polynesian people can feel shy about speaking up when they’re in the presence of elders, or of people whom they feel have more authority than they do.

Like others, Amy felt the hui was long overdue. And she thinks that some may have needed assurance that the hui was “a safe place” for them.

Those fears, she says, would dissolve if people had a firmer conviction about the church as family.

“Some of us,” says Amy, “may have left from this place happy, some may feel a bit bruised, or lame, some will feel a sense of affirmation, or empowerment – but we are all in this together, because we are family.

“And family matter. And family need to bring up these things which may be painful, but which we need to talk about. The assurance for you and I is that we are family. We are in this together.”

“Sometimes we may be a bit further away, but still there’s that bond that binds you and I together. You are part of us. The ‘us’ bit is very, very important to me.”

Where to from here?

Partly, says Don Tamihere, that’ll depend on how well those who were there are able to share what went on during the three days.

And he’s afraid that because a number of the bishops and church leaders weren’t at the hui “they have yet to come on board” with what was advanced.

Even so, when Jenny Te Paa contemplates the future, she speaks for many who were at this event:

“My dream,” she says, “is that a national theological hui such as this one will be an embedded part of the church’s annual life.

“I was talking to some people who couldn’t remember doing this kind of thing for at least 20 years. That’s unacceptable, I think.”

The hui wound up its business by issuing a communiqué.

You can read this, plus Archbishop Ndungane’s keynote address, and his conference eucharist sermon – as well as Bishop Terry Brown’s two addresses, on the church website. Go to: //www.anglican.org.nz/news/Reflections.htm

ends
Lloyd Ashton
Media Officer for the Anglican Church
in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia
Phone: (09) 521-0192
Fax: (09) 528-2219
Mob: (021) 348-470
Email: mediaofficer@ang.org.nz