The Anglican and Eastern Churches
Association (AECA) organised its annual Constantinople Lecture on Thursday 21st
November 2013 at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Divine Wisdom, Moscow
Road, London. The night began with Vespers, followed by the lecture, which was
given by The Rt Revd Andrew Proud (Bishop of Reading). The title of the talk was
“Fully alive: good news for our time”. Fr William Taylor, Chairman of the AECA
introduced the speaker, giving some biographical facts.
The speaker reflected on St
Irenaeu’s most famous aphorism, which he believes offers the good news our time
so desperately needs to hear. He pointed out that our society is more secular
now. Despite being more atomised and fragmented it seems that we are currently
also more connected, via this new movement of social media networks.


The Bishop of Reading explained
that he has a loved, valued and respected Christian Orthodoxy for years. He
first encountered it as a young ordinand of 20, working in a bank in
Colchester, when he was taken to the Stavropegic Monastery of St John the
Baptist, in Essex, early one Saturday morning for the Divine Liturgy. There he
had the opportunity to speak with Fr. Sophrony over breakfast. He claimed that
he looks oftern to the treasures of Orthodoxy often, for inspiration in shaping
his own discipleship and informing his own theological thinking and preaching.
Orthodoxy, for the speaker, offers something the west desperately needs to hear
in our era, which is what it really means to be human, to be made in the image
and likeness of God.


The Bishop then gave an
interesting statistic that in the Church of England, there will be a loss of
40% of ordained clergy over the next ten years, due to retirement. Despite new
candidates becoming priests, the final net loss will be something around 25%.
Therefore, the Church of England will have to think of different ways of
providing ministry and more imaginative ways of engaging in mission as a
Church. It is crucial to have beautiful churches, which currently the Church of
England has. But it is imperative to cultivate the communities. The problem
with the current practice is that the Christians today, between Monday and
Saturday, are basically functional atheists. So, we have an issue of
discipleship. How do the priests disciple people to live their faith, and to be
good news in their Monday-Saturday lives.


Bishop Andrew Proud also examined
the Fall, found in Genesis. He explained that it is still a thing of such
power. It is something we experience as human beings in virtually every moment
of our lives. Separation from God and alienation from one another and from our
very selves still happens. Which is why the world is the way it is. However, he
later claimed that the Fall is proof of our freedom, because without it we
would never know that true love exists.
It is crucial that the
Christianity makes holiness attractive again. In order to do this we need to
promote the idea of love, which will help withstand the storms of life.
Therefore, everyone will have hope in their hearts, since their hearts and
their gaze are fixed on Christ. The speaker is convinced that the Anglicans
need to recover a proper sense of sacred time. It’s all there in the tradition,
but such is the nature of the present time that they need to do that pointing
elsewhere. This is something Orthodoxy is very good at.
The Bishop of Reading believes
that times needs to be spent with the communities, outside Sunday worship,
teaching them, knitting them together, building them up, nurturing them and
equipping them to cope with Monday-Saturday. To do this, the priests need to
take the spiritual and theological formation of the faithful seriously. Many of
them have not progressed much beyond a Sunday School level grasp of their
faith.
The evening continued with a
small announcement by Fr. Stephen Stavrou who spoke about the AECA Travel
Award. Later, after thanking the speaker, all the participant moved to the
crypt of St Sophia, where refreshments were given, allowing for further
communication between Orthodox and Anglicans.