Historians examine the lasting global influence of the Anglican Congress of 1963 and its emphasis on “mutual responsibility and interdependence” (MRI) in the spring issue of Anglican & Episcopal History (AEH).

Eight papers by leading scholars consider legacies of MRI based on discussions from the ‘MRI at 60’ conference hosted in Toronto in 2024. These papers provide a timely complement to the 2024 Nairobi-Cairo Proposals slated for discussion during the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Belfast in June.

Bishop R. William Franklin introduces the spring issue of AEH by reminding readers that the 1963 Anglican Congress in Toronto included 1,000 lay and clergy representatives from 350 dioceses. The Congress’ first Eucharist welcomed 16,000 worshippers setting the tone for discussions about Anglican identity in a post-colonial world.

The eight studies in the issue are:

Transfiguring Presence: An Anglican Contribution to Interreligious Dialogue and the Life of the Church

Anglican theologian Clare Amos discusses ways we engage with other faiths and branches of Christianity. She draws on the work of Church Missionary Society leaders Max Warren and John V. Taylor along with Kenyan Anglican theologian Jesse Mugambi to explore the tension between particularity of context and universality as a core paradox of Anglican tradition.

Amos has taught in Jerusalem, Beirut, Cambridge, South London, and Kent. She has worked for the Anglican Communion Office and World Council of Churches.

Instruments and Instrumentality in koinonia: Competing Anglican Identities and the Future of Unity

Charlie Baczyk-Bell contends that 60 years after Anglican Congress of 1963 “the key hopes largely remain unresolved.” He writes that “Vestiges of the colonial age continue to blight the Communion’s ability to re-imagine itself, leading to ongoing disquiet about the role of the ‘Instruments of Communion’ and to the continued instrumentalization of LGBTQIA Christians as pawns in a wider debate about power, authority, identity, and colonial legacy.”

He invites “the possibility of a future Anglican Congress that is focused on listening, encounter, and worship, and takes an Anglican expression of relational unity in bishop-in-Synod as a starting point and not the creation of unity as a goal?”

Baczyk-Bell is a priest in the Church of England’s Diocese of Southwark, author of several books, and a fellow in medicine and public theology at Girton College, Cambridge.

A Tale of Two Anglican Congresses: London 1908 and Toronto 1963

Bishop Stephen Bayne’s role as architect of 1963 Anglican Congress and MRI leading to rebirth of the Anglican Communion and a repudiation of colonialism is the focus of Mark D. Chapman’s work.

Chapman writes that, “The Toronto Congress undeniably helped reorient the approach to mission across the Anglican Communion and helped forge many new relationships between churches.”

Chapman is Professor of the History of Modern Theology at the University of Oxford and Distinguished Fellow of Ripon College, Cuddesdon. He is a priest in the Church of England.

Theological and Missiological Implications of ‘MRI’ in the Digital Age: A Perspective from the Episcopal Church in Connecticut

Greg Farr, director of archives and records managements for the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, investigates major adjustments to communications and Anglican identity in the Episcopal Church of Connecticut as shaped by the 1954 and 1963 Anglican Congresses in Minneapolis and Toronto.

Farr writes that, “The Church’s messaging and communications, which must reckon continually with its historical legacies and its core beliefs in the context of present-day realities, naturally demand ethical reflection. Such moral concern is indicative of how authentic religious faith interacts with the world. The 1963 Anglican Congress held in Toronto stands as an example of this kind of deliberation in its articulation of both the hopes and the challenges to Anglican faith applied in that historical context– the central outcome being the advancement of a gospel centered mission outreach program rooted in global mutual interdependence.”

MRI in Australia. ‘Miracle’ or ‘More Ruddy Interference?’

MRI failed in Australia, according to Paul Mitchell, even though nearly 90% of Australian dioceses were represented by 55 delegates at the Toronto Congress in 1963.

Mitchell explores eight reasons for this failure, including resistance to a centrally, directed Anglican Communion; fear of change; finances; and theological differences – especially from the Diocese of Sydney.

Mitchell has served in various dioceses in Australia since ordination in the Diocese of Adelaide in 1989. He is currently rector of St. John the Baptist, Bulimba, in the Diocese of Brisbane

The Death of Death: A Linguistic Devolution in Anglican Self-Understanding

“Why have the structures of the Communion not really developed in any demonstrative way since the Toronto Congress? Why have the catholic tendencies never really come to fruition?” asks Matthew S.C. Olver.

Olver examines the reasons for limited change to Anglican Communion structures, including prioritization of “autonomy” and provincial individualism over mutuality and self-sacrifice.

Olver is, executive director and publisher of The Living Church Foundation and senior lecturer in liturgics at Nashotah House Theological Seminary in Wisconsin.

The Ten Principles of Partnership in the Anglican Communion: an Expression of Commitment to Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence

This study explores ways dioceses have transitioned from western missionary Christianity into being indigenous churches, a transformative shift from paternalism to partnership, using experiences from the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina and the Anglican Diocese of Botswana.

James N. Amanze and Leon P. Spencer describe the 1992 Ten Principles of Partnership in the Anglican Communion as “perhaps one of the most important but lesser-known documents emanating from the structures of the Anglican Communion.”

Amanze is canon theologian for the Diocese of Botswana and principal of St. Augustine Theological College.

Spencer has worked with companion links between the Dioceses of Alabama and Namibia in the 1980s and between the Diocese of North Carolina and Botswana since 2008. He is dean of studies at the Diocese of Nairobi’s theological college.

The Baas Boy Called Global South: A Misread of the Toronto Anglican Congress

James Tengatenga describes MRI and the 1963 Toronto Anglican Congress as envisioning the death of old ways and emergence of a new Anglican Communion “with no region exerting hegemonic control. In a word, it was the emergence of a decolonial Anglican Communion.”

The death of hegemony hasn’t quite happened, according to Tengatenga. He asserts that fragmentation within the Anglican Communion today is connected to an ironic situation in which new attempts to control have emerged from conservative American clergy attempting to make “Global South” leaders their mouthpiece. He describes the Global South within the Anglican Communion as a new theo-political grouping where “as much as there is a lot of South in it, the hegemony is Northern, and the tendency is schismatic.”

Tengatenga, a former Bishop of Southern Malawi, challenges the falsehood of a single voice in the Global South and describes ways that Africans who question conservative positions have “our African-ness questioned.”

Bishop James Tengatenga is the former diocesan leader of Southern Malawi and a distinguished professor of global Anglicanism at the School of Theology at the University of the South (Sewanee). He was a member of the Anglican Consultative Council from 2002-2016, where he served as chair from 2009.