We Belong To Big Church: Caribbean Soundings and Stories in Anglicania

By Kortright Davis

What does it mean to be Black, Anglican and West Indian all at the same time? Does it require any cultural or emotional adjustments to become a full-fledged member of the worldwide Anglican communion? This book seeks to answer these questions in a number of ways from experiences and presentations throughout the Caribbean and North America. Caribbean Anglicanism is presented as a vibrant tapestry of enriching engagement. Kortright Davis has given his readers a comprehensive collection of stories and insights that portray some multicultural, inter-cultural, and pluralistic challenges encountered by people of color, whether at home or on foreign soils.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Mar 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9780228851158

Kortright Davis

Kortright Davis is an Anglican priest who is also Professor of Theology at Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, DC. He has served in many capacities throughout his ministry, having been trained at Codrington College in Barbados. He was born in Antigua, West Indies, and ordained for the Diocese of Antigua (now known as the Diocese of North Eastern Caribbean & Aruba). He was one of the founding executive members of the Caribbean Conference of Churches (CCC), and was the principal coordinator of its inaugural assembly in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1973. He holds degrees from the Universities of London, UWI, and Sussex, as well as honorary degrees from the General Theological Seminary, the Virginia Theological Seminary, and the University of the West Indies. He is a former member of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCICII), and the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission (IATDC). He is the author of several books, including the widely acclaimed "Emancipation Still Comin'." He is the Rector Emeritus of the Church of the Holy Comforter in the Diocese of Washington, where he served from1986 to 2013. He and his wife Joan reside in Kensington, Maryland, USA.

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We Belong to Big Church

Caribbean Soundings and Stories in Anglicania

Kortright Davis

We Belong to Big Church

Copyright © 2021 by Kortright Davis

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-5116-5 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-5114-1 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-5115-8 (eBook)

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all those faithful Anglicans throughout the Caribbean and North America who have journeyed with me along this pilgrimage of worship, witness, exploration, and proclamation, and who have in so many and various ways brought vision, value, and vitality to what we are called to become as followers of Jesus Christ, and warriors in the fight for freedom, justice and full humanity.

Contents

Preface

Section One: Don’t Be Late For Church

Section Two: Brother Cleibert’s Pilgrimage

Section Three: Soundings in Caribbean Anglicania

Section Four: The Romney Moseley Inaugural Lectures

Conclusion

Endnotes

About the Author

Preface

Whenever I left my home on Bishopgate Street in St. John’s Antigua, to go to church, I would turn right on Popeshead Street, and then turn left on to Newgate Street. As soon as I turned on that street, there would be that majestic view of St. John’s Anglican Cathedral, my church, ahead of me on the hill. It had a commanding view of the city of St. John’s, with its two towering steeples, its large clock, and its loud melodious peel of bells There was also the view of its steeply rising steps leading through two huge pillars on to further graded steps towards the large west doors. This Cathedral was built in 1848 – a double structure – with stone on the exterior and wood in the interior. We grew up calling it Big Church. For quite a long time it was the largest edifice on the Island of Antigua. It remains the Mother Church in the Diocese of the North Eastern Caribbean and Aruba (NECA), formerly known as the Diocese of Antigua.

This is the church where I was baptized and confirmed, and where I grew up through the ranks of acolytes (or servers as we were called), and the boys’ choir. Later, as a student in training for the priesthood I would occasionally perform the duties as Sub-deacon as well. It was on the steps leading into the Sanctuary of the High Altar where I was ordained to the Diaconate in December 1965. There was always a very vibrant and lively community of boys and girls, men and women, who lived in and around the City, and whose social and cultural matrix was in large measure influenced by the fact that we all belonged to Big Church.

Of course, there were other churches in the City – Ebenezer Methodist, Spring Gardens Moravian, St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic, St. John’s Seventh Day Adventist (just outside the west walls of the Cathedral), the Pilgrim Holiness Church (on Bishopgate Street, opposite my home), and the Salvation Army. Each denomination had its own climate, culture, and customs; but the one thing that we all had in common was that we referred to the Cathedral as Big Church, whether we were members or not. Big Church rang out the hours from its huge clock, just as Big Ben would do in London, England; and after the chimes were added, a rich variety of hymn tunes would fill the air with sounds of joy and inspiration. It was always a local cultural treat to listen to Big Ben chiming the hours via the BBC radio broadcast while Big Church was chiming the hour on the hour almost at the same time, with a four hour difference by Greenwich Mean Time.

Big Church was therefore a sacred sanctuary for hundreds of members, as well as an architectural symbol of the majesty of God, and the source of global solidarity with the rest of the Anglican Communion. Although the genre of Anglicanism subsists in churches being in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, as the primus inter pares (first among equals), the texture of Anglicanism is as varied as the broad cultural and contextual realities of each Anglican province throughout the world. This means that, apart from the universal adherence to the So-called Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral (Bible, Creeds, Sacraments of Baptism and Communion, and Historic Episcopate), local varieties obtain throughout this world-wide big church fellowship.

The Anglican Communion is the third largest grouping of Christians after the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox. So, Big Church for us is the source and seed of membership and affiliation in the Bigger Church. This book is therefore about a range of stories and soundings relating to Anglicanism in the Caribbean, from the Caribbean, and in the Caribbean Diaspora in North America. The Anglican Church in the USA is called the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA (PECUSA), while the Anglican Church of Canada is self-explanatory (ACC), and the Church in the Province of the West Indies (CPWI) also speaks for itself.

We Belong To Big Church is a compendium of writings, stories, and presentations that are all focused on a range of aspects and dimensions that attempt to depict a kaleidoscope of Anglicanism in general, and Afro-Anglicanism in particular. Some of the text is written in a fictional narrative style, with a strong backdrop of religious, liturgical, and ecclesiastical cultures in the Caribbean and North America. The book comprises of four sections.

The First Section is a fictional narrative depicting a woman who had migrated from an Island in the Caribbean in the late 1970’s or early 1980’s, having left behind one world of church life and culture. She is faced with the challenge that most immigrants from the Caribbean encounter when they have to make determined efforts to settle into a new way of life, and a faster pace here in America. The formative years of her early upbringing are a basic backdrop for her attempts to settle in with all the necessary mental, emotional, social and cultural adjustments that America demands of her. She finds a sort of new home-base, a home away from home, in the church environment, and this provides for her both solace and solidarity, proximate continuity with her native land, as well as a sphere safe enough to raise her two children in the fear and nurture of the Lord.

The American brand of Anglicanism poses its own challenges for her, having been brought up in Caribbean Anglicanism. Nevertheless, she is determined to make as many adjustments as are necessary, for she is well aware that "when in Rome, you have to do what the Romans do!" The story revolves around her earnest efforts and desire to be on time for the church service one Sunday morning; hence the title of this Section is: Don’t Be Late For Church. The narrative is written in an anonymizing idiom, which means that the main characters of the plot are deliberately left nameless, in the hope that readers might find it coincidental to be identified in some way with any one of them.

I had in mind the literary device that is used in the Fourth Gospel in the New Testament, where the writer of that sacred text refers quite often to the disciple whom Jesus loved, without giving him a name. I really have no argument with those who insist that his name was John. I simply affirm that the Gospel text does not actually say so, even though the John 21:24 attribution of authorship comes fairly close to lifting the anonymity! The lady and her whole family shall remain nameless, just as much as the Island where she was born and grew up before coming to America. She is an Afro-Anglican in the Episcopal Church here in America and she simply yearns to be early for church on this special Sunday.

The Second Section is also a fictional narrative, and this time most of the characters are given names. The script is entitled "Cleibert Bynoe’s Pilgrimage". The plot is an informational tour of various Afro-Anglican congregations in the Episcopal Church alongside some of the specific ministries, programs and institutional structures that relate to the membership of Blacks in a predominantly White Church. Cleibert Bynoe is a Barbadian Anglican who has grown up in the church, with a lively participation in almost every aspect of ministry in that religious community. In spite of the historical legacies of plantation slavery, racism, classism, and colonialism (both ecclesiastical and governmental), Anglicanism in Barbados has been mainly a Black religious social and cultural expression.

Cleibert Bynoe was birthed, baptized, confirmed, and reared in the full crucibles of the Black Anglican experience, allied with some steady linkages and legacies of things originally British, whether it was in music, ritual, liturgy or church order. The historical connections between the Church of England and its missionary societies reach back into the seventeenth century. The Bishop of London was responsible for the churches in Barbados until 1824 when the Diocese of Barbados was established along with the Diocese of Jamaica. Church architecture, place names, and some public monuments all give meaning to the reason why Barbados has been traditionally nicknamed Little England. Barbadian Anglicanism has managed to retain some of these historical and cultural vestiges, while it forges a novel path towards authentic indigenization and contextual efficacy.

Barbadians have been migrating to America for several generations now, and they have been able to establish themselves in many areas of professional, educational, political, industrial, and religious endeavor. Just as our African ancestors had brought their religious endowments with them across the Middle Passage, so had Barbadians taken their ecclesial cultural habits with them across the Atlantic as they settled in America. For the most part, they would have joined themselves to some established religious denominations, or else they would have founded their own congregations over time to guarantee their own religious and institutional autonomy. Generations of them, however, would strive to remain Anglican in America, making strenuous efforts to find ecclesiastical accommodation and relative comfort in the strangely lukewarm climate of the Episcopal Church.

Barbadians therefore have always formed a significant section of the mosaic of Afro-Anglicanism in the Episcopal Church, with several clergymen migrating as well to find greener pastures, and some lay-persons eventually being ordained into the priesthood. It is not without merit to record that the first Barbadian to be consecrated a Bishop in the Episcopal Church has been Bishop Deon Johnson of Missouri. He was recently enthroned in the summer of 2020. Indeed, the cultural and historical linkages between Anglicanism in Barbados and Afro-Anglicanism in America are so strong that when the Planning Committee for the first Afro-Anglican Conference was setting its plans in order, the only location considered for this historic event was Barbados.

The evolution of the Planning Committee and its proceedings are a historic narrative, especially as it involved the active participation of representatives from all sectors of Afro-Anglicanism throughout the Communion. More particularly, however, the historical significance of Codrington College in Barbados was a major drawing card, since the history of the College and the legacy surrounding its establishment provided an important backdrop for what the Conference was being designed to explore and promote. What does it mean to be Black and Anglican at the same time? What are the distinguishing characteristics of Black Anglicanism? How would the Anglican Communion reconfigure itself to take into full account the global demographics of its total membership? How would the historical vestiges of British imperialism be systematically and theologically expunged from the modern face of Anglicanism? These and other pertinent and pressing questions would engage the assembly of Anglicans from around the world for a week of deliberations and celebrations.

The original decision was to name the conference the Conference of Black Episcopalians. This was mainly since the idea of the meeting was generated by a group of Black Episcopalians in America, who were always very conscious of the fact that they were a minority sector in a predominantly White Church. Accordingly, they were mainly active in acquiring a greater level of participation and in the decision-making and leadership councils of the church. At the same time, they were conscious of the fact that the global Anglican Communion was predominantly non-White. The issue then revolved around the naming of the Inaugural Conference with a designation (Black Episcopalians) that did not make much sense in Barbados, where Anglicanism was essentially a Black cultural and religious social expression. The Planners therefore agreed to accept my suggestion that the term Afro-Anglican should be introduced and promulgated.

Thus, in 1985, the First Afro-Anglican Conference was convened in Barbados, at which broad definitional and descriptive approaches to the inter-cultural and contextual realities of Afro-Anglicanism were widely discussed. The historic document known as The Codrington Consensus emerged as an initial defining agreement on what would be projected and promulgated as major themes and fresh ways of Anglican engagement by people of color, as members of the world-wide Anglican Communion. The Codrington Consensus took on a life of its own after the Barbados assembly, and it formed the basis for further Afro-Anglican collaboration at Cambridge University in a Pre-Lambeth gathering which produced the historic Cambridge Declaration in 1988. It is important that this year was the ten-year meeting for all Bishops in the entire Anglican Communion, and most of these bishops were people of color. Both documents eventually contributed to some aspects of debate among the bishops at the 1988 Lambeth Conference, where some determinations clearly indicated that Afro-Anglicanism had already become a vital force to be recognized and acknowledged throughout the Anglican Communion.

All of this had its formative origins in Barbados from where our character Cleibert Bynoe would set out on his pilgrimage to explore and experience some of the life and character of Black participation in the Episcopal Church here in America. This would become for Cleibert Bynoe an exciting and illuminating survey of what it meant to be a member of Big Church. As he travelled among the various congregations, observing their ways and interacting with their leaders, it would impress on him even more profoundly what he meant whenever he said to himself, "We Belong To Big Church". This Second Section then, is an imaginative excursion amongst various types of congregations and churches that are mainly comprised of Afro-Anglicans, whether native or immigrant. The encounters which Cleibert is made to engage in throughout his visits will have provided him with a lively and comprehensive assessment of Anglicanism both at home (Barbados) and abroad (America).

The Third Section is entitled "Soundings In Caribbean Anglicania". It is comprised of a series of sermons and presentations which I was privileged to be invited to deliver in various Diocesan gatherings throughout the CPWI. These invitations always meant a lot to me, if for no other reason that it afforded me many opportunities to make some small contributions to the theological and pastoral life of the Church in the region from which I had come. I have always been mindful of the enormous debt of gratitude for so much of my early formation as a priest and scholar. This sense of indebtedness has been matched by a strong sense of obligation to continue my active participation in the growth and development of opportunities for ministry and witness throughout the Caribbean Church. That Church has poured so much into my own journey of priestly vocation and theological career both at Codrington College (as student and teacher), and at Howard University School of Divinity as a member of its faculty. Traversing the CPWI Dioceses, then, except the Dioceses of Belize and Guyana, has undoubtedly enriched my own sense of Belonging To Big Church. It has afforded me some invaluable experiences of ecclesial fellowship and missional solidarity, all in the joy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Fourth Section chronicles the texts of two historic lectures in the Anglican Church of Canada, where the challenges of dealing with Racism, Multiculturalism, and inclusion of First Nation Christians have been present for generations. The efforts of Trinity College, Toronto to address these issues have historically taken many forms. The Romney Moseley Lecture series was inaugurated to serve as one such effort. They were named in honor of The Reverend Dr. Romney Moseley who was a Professor of Ethics at Trinity College, a Barbadian scholar who was also an Anglican priest. He died suddenly in Toronto while celebrating the Eucharist at a downtown church one Sunday morning. His efforts to deal with the racial and cultural challenges were highly thought of, and his legacy was quite pivotal in some of the programs that followed his demise. Chief among them has been the Black Anglicans Of Canada, an organization that may well be regarded as the Canadian counterpart to the Union Of Black Episcopalians (UBE) in the Episcopal Church.

It is my fervent hope that this volume will serve to stimulate some further conversations in Ecclesia Anglicana both in North America and the Caribbean, especially with respect to the cross-cultural, inter-cultural, and multicultural obligations and ministries within the wider church. In the final analysis, the core of the Anglican Communion subsists in its ability to promote and sustain a high level of what are known as the Bonds Of Affection, as well as the implications and imperatives that are inherent in the Anglican ethos of MRI, that is, Mutual Respect and Interdependence.

Kortright Davis

Kensington, Maryland, November 2020

Section One

Don’t Be Late For Church

I

She was hoping to be early for church this Sunday morning, for it was to be some special festival day. Her church was always having some festival of one kind or another. Church people had a way of wanting to celebrate their favorite seasons. These could be Harvest, Independence celebrations for many nationalities, Fathers’ day, Mothers’ day, Education Sunday, Homecoming, or even the Rector’s anniversary. Sometimes the different church organizations wanted to hold some special Sunday events in order to invite their friends and relatives who were not members of the church. This would always give them an opportunity to dress up, stand up, speak up, and show off.

But since they did not have any other place in the community for them to be seen, and heard, and taken seriously, church provided a good space for most of the members. And, since they worked so hard in the kitchen Sunday after Sunday, and in the church garden when called upon to help, there was every reason why they should have their turn in church to be on prominent display.

There was going to be some church festival this Sunday, but she could not remember which one it was, or what exactly it was to be all about. She had not seen a church bulletin for last Sunday because she was absent from church. Many members had a way of leaving the bulletins behind in the pews after the service, and therefore they could not remember from one Sunday to the other what was due to happen during the coming week. The preacher had always urged them to count their blessings; to name them one by one; and that it would surprise them what the Lord had done.

They always wanted to take that advice a little further by insisting on counting their surprises as well, and to name them two by two. That was why they preferred to afford themselves a certain element of surprise in going to church without knowing what to expect. It was different, of course, when they had to be involved in some special part of the worship service, or with some duties in the kitchen and fellowship hall downstairs. They would read the bulletin while the minister was in the pulpit preaching his head off, and sometimes his heart out. They would check on some of the advertisements and notices that filled up so much space in the bulletins. Advertisements were an important section of their bulletins because they helped to increase the revenue for the church finances.

Of course, not every kind of business could be advertised in church; even though, as far as she was concerned, some of those advertisements really crossed the line. Political meetings, Saturday night dances sponsored by restaurant owners, trips to gambling casinos, or shop sales, all seemed to her to be unacceptable. After all, in church literature that was promoting the Word of God, and inspiring people to live decent and holy lives by the Worship of God, there should be no place for such worldly endeavors. But the church needed the money to maintain its mission and to promote the Work of God. They had often heard preachers suggest that, in the mission of the church, Word, Worship, and Work went together, and that money was essential for such ministries.

Most of the members seemed to hold to the view that even money donated to the church from questionable sources could become useful, as long as it was blessed before being used. Some even argued that not all the money dropped in the collection bags had come from clean sources, but as long as it was to be used for the work of the Lord, and in the house of the Lord, God would not only understand, but God would also forgive whatever sins