Timeless challenge from an archbishop
Lloyd Ashton
| 27 May 2010
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The Rev Dr George Armstrong pays tribute to his father in law, Archbishop Allen Johnston, at General Synod. Allen's daughter, Jocelyn, looks on.
“The major issue we face,” says the Archbishop, “is the survival of human beings as persons who are fit to live with – and the survival of the earth as a place which is fit for persons to live in.”
If you guessed that’s a recent quote from Rowan Williams – you’d be dead wrong.
Because the speaker was Allen Johnston, and he said that in 1979.
It’s a quote from his presidential address to that year’s Waikato Diocesan Synod.
And it’s one of 52 excerpts from Archbishop Johnston’s addresses which have been gathered in a new anthology called: Responsibly Christian in Church and Society Today (subtitled: Challenges from a Christian Leader.)
Allen Johnston served the Anglican Church of New Zealand as a bishop for 28 years, and was its Archbishop from 1972 until 1980.
He was a leader of the church in turbulent times – from the optimism of the post war years, through the grim shadows cast by the Cold War and the threat of a nuclear holocaust, apartheid and, on the domestic front, during Robert Muldoon’s rise to power and early years as Prime Minister.
Archbishop Johnston acted prophetically, too – guiding the Province to the adoption of the Bishopric of Aotearoa in 1978; encouraging both the ordination of women priests, and the formation of a genuinely indigenous Province of Melanesia; and acting in a far-seeing way to launch the Anglican Church Pension Fund (which, while it may not rank as his most exciting achievement, has been an immense pastoral benefit to generations of clergy).
He was recognised as a leader by the nation as a whole, too, chosen to give the eulogy at Norman Kirk’s funeral, and serving (after his retirement as Archbishop) on two important commissions – one to review the Arthur Alan Thomas conviction, the other to investigate the practices of the Department of Social Welfare.
The driving force behind Responsibly Christian is Doug Tennant, a layman in the Waikato diocese and law lecturer at the University of Waikato. He inspired the project, and he selected the extracts – each of which is accompanied by a passage of Scripture and brief reflection by Jocelyn and George Armstrong, the daughter and son-in-law of the late Archbishop.
“Our hope,” says Jocelyn, “is that these user-friendly readings will provide challenge and inspiration for the person wanting to address today’s issues in the light of the Christian tradition.”
Rod Oram – journalist, economist and Anglican layman – has written an introduction to the Responsibly Christian. In that he describes Allen Johnston’s words as a gift: “They give us courage to take up Christ’s call to better the world; they give us hope we will succeed. Our task, though, is no optional extra, no easy add-on to personal salvation. Christ demands our engagement with the world, as individuals and as a church.”
Responsibly Christian is available from the General Synod Office, PO Box 87-188, Meadowbank, Auckland 1742. It’s priced at $14.99 plus $2.50 p&p.
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