Solzhenitsyn's "Prophetic Warning" still speaks clearly to current Episcopal Church/Anglican Communion Crisis, says Windsor Bishop

BB NOTE: Here is an excerpt from the Convocation Address of The Rt. Rev'd Jeffrey Steenson, Bishop of the Diocese of Rio Grande. He brings in remarkable insight by recalling the rather prophetic (and difficult to hear) words of the Russian writer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (then living in exile in the United States) when he addressed Harvard on June 8, 1978, Solzhenitsyn's warning remains as clear today as when he gave that speech twenty-eight years ago. To read the full text of the Solzhenitsyn speech, go here: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html.

To read the entire address by Bishop Steenson, click on the headline above.

From The Rt. Rev'd Jeffrey Steenson, Bishop of the Diocese of Rio Granda

On June 8, 1978, the exiled Russian writer Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn gave the commencement address at Harvard University: it had the foreboding title, "A World Split Apart." I was there that day, graduating from the divinity school, and I distinctly remember that Solzhenitsyn’s speech went down in Harvard Yard like a lead balloon. This, I thought, must be what it was like for the prophets when they interrupted the reveries of ancient Israel with the call to repentance. Solzhenitsyn said to us that morning: "But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours."

The West, Solzhenitsyn argued, has sold its great cultural heritage for a bowl of porridge, that its materialism was all-encompassing, and in its present state of spiritual exhaustion had little to offer the rest of the world. "The Western way of life is less and less likely to become the leading model... Western thinking has become conservative: the world situation should stay as it is at any cost; there should be no changes. This debilitating dream of a status quo is the symptom of a society which has come to the end of its development."

The memory of that morning 28 years ago comes back to me these days as I reflect on the place the Episcopal Church finds itself with respect to the wider Anglican Communion. It is so similar! Episcopalians are stunned by the response of so many in the Communion to the last two General Conventions, which, we have been assured, are completely in accord with a reasonable and responsible reading of the Gospel. Why then would people of good will everywhere not want to applaud and embrace the Episcopal Church? I wonder if we have not found ourselves in a similar place of self-deception that Solzhenitsyn warned about: telling ourselves that our achievements should be selfevident and above criticism and that there is something wrong with those who fail to appreciate our greatness!

For a long time the Episcopal Church has identified itself with H. Richard Niebuhr’s category, the Christ of culture: it sees itself as America’s cultural elite at prayer. Whether we think of ourselves as progressives or traditionalists, we bring American values and behavior patterns with us. But it doesn’t always sit well with the rest of our Anglican Communion family. We all have to learn this lesson and hear the call from the family for a real measure of humility and patience. The Anglican Communion is undergoing a remarkable transformation, and I cannot help but think that so many of the attitudes and behaviors we take for granted in the American context will not be welcomed in the new communion discipline.