This liberal political order, of course, is not the same thing as “liberalism” in an American political context. A liberal political regime is characterized by an emphasis on the freedom and equality of the individual, and the individual’s rights; under the influence of the 18^th-century Enlightenment, by a belief in reason and the possibility of progress; and in the Anglo-American tradition particularly by a respect for the rule of law. What makes a society “liberal” has little to do with matters of the political right or left.

Though the extent of the Enlightenment’s influence on American constitutional order has been disputed (for example, by Russell Kirk in The Roots of American Order, 1974), it is truer to say that the influence is complex. In Peter Gay’s measured appraisal, the political system supported in The Federalist Papers was “constructed on distrust of human nature and hostile to utopian optimists,” yet at the same time the writers’ defense of that order was marked by “hopeful realism” (The Enlightenment: the Science of Freedom, 1967, p. 566). For Gay, the influence of the Enlightenment and the possibility of progress are undeniable.

For illiberal critics of the political order of the West, on both the right and left, the Enlightenment has provided a convenient target. Mark Lilla, in The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction (2016), briefly chronicles the history of Counter-Enlightenment thought, which turned a new page with Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue (1981). After Virtue posited a break with the earlier tradition of virtue ethics, as “the Enlightenment unwittingly prepared the way for acquisitive capitalism, Nietzscheanism, and the relativistic liberal emotivism we live with today” (p. 74). Lilla believes McIntyre’s assessment is overly simplistic, but he notes that it was “one of the most influential books of our time” (p. 74).

Isaiah Berlin reminds us that ideas have lives of their own, and like Frankenstein’s monster can take off in directions unforeseen by their originators (“Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Nationalism” in The Sense of Reality, 1996). There is not a direct path between McIntyre’s analysis and criticism of the liberal political order from the right; but the trend in intellectual history revealed in After Virtue seems now to have been hijacked by anxiety about society’s moral decline, criticism of “wokeism,” and economic populism now aimed at activist corporations. On the part of illiberals on the right there is now a new revolutionary willingness to run roughshod over the law and its procedural protections in pursuit of a more “virtuous” society, or even one that just confounds their enemies.

“Wokeism” brings us to Susan Neiman’s Left Is Not Woke (2023), a defense of the Enlightenment from its rising critics on the left. Neiman writes as a philosopher who sees “a commitment to universalism over tribalism, a firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibility of progress” (p. 2) as intrinsic to Enlightenment thought, and to left-wing political engagement. Yet these are the very principles threatened by woke intellectual trends. “It’s now an article of faith that universalism, like other Enlightenment ideas, is a sham that was invented to disguise Eurocentric views supporting colonialism” (p. 38-39). The tribalism of identity politics is a two-edged sword, with a legacy of grievance that ultimately disempowers. In the face of wrongs perpetrated against women, blacks, or LGBT communities, “for those who believe that only tribal interests are genuine, calls for other people’s outrage in the face of such crimes make no sense” (p. 33).

Neiman faults Michel Foucault as the intellectual force who popularized the notion that everything is about power, which squeezes out not only the idea of justice but other things as well. “The insistence that power is the only driving force goes hand in hand with contempt for reason (p. 75). As the possibility of progress is abandoned, “one thing is predictable with absolute certainty: if we succumb to the seduction of pessimism, the world as we know it is lost” (p. 121).

Both Lilla and Neiman cite the crossover influence of Carl Schmitt, the German political theorist and member of the Nazi Party, who has now become influential in “the academic far left” (Lilla, p. xix). For Neiman, both Schmitt and Foucault reject “the idea of universal humanity and the distinction between power and justice,” sharing “a deep skepticism toward any idea of progress” (p. 80). Neiman shows how Schmitt’s conviction that politics is essentially oppositional, depending on a clear distinction between friend and enemy, has become an idea broadly shared by both right and left: hence the oppositional politics of our day. Schmitt “unmasked” the hypocrisy of the colonialist West in opposing Hitler; now Vladimir Putin uses Western interventions in other places to justify his war on Ukraine. If you believe, as Schmitt did, that world history is dominated by violence, the concepts of right and wrong tend to disappear. Or, as Neiman ironically observes, in this calculus two wrongs will make a right.

There are good reasons for Christians to be concerned about these illiberal challenges to our existing political order. First, the liberal order’s very lack of ambition ought to commend it to its Christian supporters. It is a framework, not a program, much less a panacea. Tony Judt writes that liberalism “is necessarily indeterminate. It is not about some sort of liberal project for society; it is about a society in which the messiness and openness of politics precludes the application of large-scale projects, however rational and ideal — especially if they are rational and ideal” (Past Imperfect, 1992, p. 313). In other words, there is danger in the grandiose political project: witness Hitler’s “Thousand Year Reich” or Stalin’s “Worker’s Paradise.”

St. Augustine’s recognition of the inherent limitations of justice in a commonwealth is in keeping with the nature of the West’s political order. “But true justice is found only in that commonwealth whose founder and ruler is Christ … in that City of which the holy Scripture says, ‘Glorious things are said about you, City of God’ (The City of God, Bettenson trans., 2.21). Augustine’s diagnosis of the vaulting pride and sinful ambition that undergird the earthly city, manifest in every polity, may not find a cure in the liberal political order, but it might find some mitigation. “Thus pride is a perverted imitation of God. For pride hates a fellowship of equality under God, and seeks to impose its own dominion on fellow men, in place of God’s rule” (The City of God, 19.12). Humility and the forgiveness of sins, as Augustine identifies, are the way of salvation (City of God, 19.27): an enterprise that goes far beyond any merely earthly political exercise. Though a democratic polity is certainly capable of its imperial moments, the modesty of the liberal order, and its procedural focus on the rule of law, create windbreaks and speedbumps along the way.

Even more, the illiberal challenge constitutes both a theoretical and practical undermining of the earthly peace that St. Augustine valued for the sake of the heavenly city. If our polities and our politics are essentially oppositional, as Schmitt would have it, then we have gone a long way toward a state of constant conflict or even violence. His followers, on right and left, have advanced this program, struggling for the levers of power. Yet Augustine points to the pitfalls of the exercise of power. “Let mortals hold on to justice; power will be given them when they are immortal” (On the Trinity, Hill trans., 13.17). From Augustine’s perspective, even a people alienated from God seeks a peace of its own, even though far distant from the peace of the city of God. “It is important for us also that this people should possess this peace in this life, since so long as the two cities are intermingled, we also make use of the peace of Babylon — although the People of God is by faith set free from Babylon, so that in the meantime they are only pilgrims in the midst of her” (City of God, 19.26).

Christianity can mount a criticism of the liberal political order, especially when it abandons transcendence as an ultimate point of reference. As Oliver O’Donovan points out, “liberal society may deserve a reaction, because it is incapable of taking the spiritual capacities of its members seriously” (The Ways of Judgment, 2005, p. 77). Yet this illiberal moment in the West poses an undeniable danger of its own: not only to earthly peace, but to the humility and forgiveness that mark the Church’s authentic political stance.

Putin’s policies on the “Russification” of the occupied territories, including the deportation of children, and the annexation of Ukrainian territory and its resettlement by Russian nationals, lend credence to the seriousness of his intent. The Russian military continues to target civilian infrastructure, including residences and public facilities that are hard to construe as legitimate targets. These seem like direct attacks on Ukrainian society, the threat of which will not end until that society dissolves. The war is not a quibble about borders, but about identity and authority.

A war that challenges the legitimate authority of the Ukrainian government and its very basis foregrounds the importance of authority in Christian thinking about war. Thomas Aquinas, one important codifier of what later became just war theory, identified due authority as one of three markers of a just war (ST. II-II, q.40, a.1). Wars may not be waged by anyone, but only by those in authority: a requirement intended as a constraint of war-making power rather than a checklist for its implementation. As Oliver O’Donovan points out, bellum is not simply duellum: war is the projection of a public, not a private, authority, even when it ventures into the contested space between nations (The Just War Revisited, Cambridge: CUP, 2003, 22).

Augustine, one of the authorities drawn on by Aquinas, assumed that rulers may wage just wars. “A great deal depends on the causes for which men undertake wars, and on the authority they have for doing so; for the natural order which seeks the peace of mankind, ordains that the monarch should have the power of undertaking war if he thinks it advisable, and that the soldiers should perform their military duties in behalf of the peace and safety of the community” (Reply to Faustus the Manichaean, XXII.75; trans. NPNF). Notice that even in this early work, Augustine couches his discussion of war in the vocabulary of peace.

In his later work, The City of God, Augustine’s assumptions about just war sit uncertainly alongside his analysis of the unjust Roman commonwealth. In Book 2, Augustine repeats Cicero’s assertion, through the historical figure of Scipio, that a commonwealth is “an association united by a common sense of right (ius) and a community of interest” (2.21, trans. Bettenson). Cicero’s point is that the Roman republic has become corrupt and ceased to be a commonwealth. According to Augustine, however, the Roman commonwealth in fact never existed, as it never embodied authentic justice. Augustine adds that it was a commonwealth “to some degree … and it was better ruled by the Romans of antiquity than by their later successors. But true justice (iustitia) is found only in that commonwealth whose founder and ruler is Christ … in that City of which the holy Scripture says, ‘Glorious things are said about you, City of God’” (2.21).

Augustine picks up the thread of this discussion later in Book 19, when he returns to Scipio’s definition of a commonwealth. “Therefore, where there is no true justice (iustitia) there can be no ‘association of men united by a common sense of right’ (ius), and therefore no people answering to the definition of Scipio, or Cicero” (19.21). He repeats his contention, argued in the earlier books, of Roman corruption and their service of evil demons, rather than the true God. The wars waged by the Roman Empire are “grievous evils” (19.7).

Then he proposes another definition: “A people is the association of a multitude of rational beings united by a common agreement on the objects of their love” (19.24). These objects of love may be unworthy and despicable, but no matter what they are, those who share them are still a people. “And, obviously, the better the objects of this agreement, the better the people; the worse the objects of this love, the worse the people. By this definition of ours, the Roman people is a people and its estate is indubitably a commonwealth” (19.24). This is the case, not only with the Romans, but with all the other peoples who have established commonwealths or exercised imperial rule. There is no real justice “in the city of the impious” (19.24), the earthly city, in the absence of the worship of the true God.

Augustine’s proffered definition of a commonwealth undercuts the claims of all regimes, even “Christian” regimes, to embody true justice. As O’Donovan points out in his analysis of Book 19, Augustine gives very little away to the newly baptized Roman empire, modestly claiming for its Christian rulers the ability, at best, to exert a kind of justice in the exercise of its affairs (“The Political Thought of City of God 19” in Bonds of Imperfection, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004, 62-63). “We Christians call rulers happy, if they rule with justice … if, more than their earthly kingdom, they love that realm where they do not fear to share the kingship … It is Christian emperors of this kind whom we call happy; happy in hope, during this present life, and to be happy in reality hereafter, when what we wait for will have come to pass” (5.24). Even the form of justice exercised by Christian rulers bows before the justice of the heavenly city.

There are places where Augustine seems to concede a relative justice to earthly kingdoms. Augustine acknowledges that there were times when Rome was better ruled than at others (2.21). The reign of the good is markedly different from the reign of the wicked (4.3). But it is a backhanded compliment when Augustine writes, “Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale? What are criminal gangs but petty kingdoms?” (4.4). The key phrase, of course, is “remove justice”: that which distinguishes a kingdom from a crime syndicate. Is Augustine claiming that kingdoms are simply gangs of criminals, or that without relative justice they would more closely approximate them? As O’Donovan remarks, “But must we take away justice?” (62).

Yet even in the absence of justice, there are real goods present in the earthly city, the chief of which is peace. The earthly peace possessed by peoples now, which falls far short of the perfect peace of the heavenly city, is not to be rejected by the People of God, as Augustine observes:

We also make use of the peace of Babylon … so that in the meantime [the People of God] are only pilgrims in the midst of her. That is why the Apostle instructs the Church to pray for the kings of that city and those in high positions, adding these words “that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life with all devotion and love” (1 Tim. 2:2). And when the prophet Jeremiah predicted to the ancient People of God the coming captivity, and bade them, by God’s inspiration, to go obediently to Babylon … he added his own advice that prayers should be offered for Babylon, “because in her peace is your peace” (Jer. 29:7) — meaning, of course, the temporal peace of the meantime, which is shared by good and bad alike. (19.26)

This peace is used by the citizens of the heavenly city, who desire to enjoy peace forever in the Jerusalem that is above. That city, in Augustinian terms, is shaped by the righteousness (iustitia) that comes from the forgiveness of sins (19.27), and from the hope of the resurrection of the dead (15.17; 22.10).

In Augustine’s view, earthly authorities of every sort are shorn of their pretensions of absolute probity, at best possessing a relative justice. It might seem that only a just society, a true commonwealth in Cicero’s terms, could wage a just war. Yet the authorities of this world pursue a peace that is intrinsically good, and to this extent they are authorized to establish that peace. It is their legitimate concern. As Augustine says in an echo of the earlier discussion in Reply to Faustus the Manichaean, “Peace is the desired end of war. For every man is in quest of peace, even in waging war, whereas no one is in quest of war when making peace” (19.12). In this light, Putin’s war in Ukraine, an attack on Ukrainian identity and its legitimate authority, is nothing less than an attack on earthly peace.

The Epistle to the Hebrews frames Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross as priestly work. “But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, ‘he sat down at the right hand of God’” (Heb. 10:12, citing Ps. 110:1). “[W]e have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister in the sanctuary and the true tent that the Lord … has set up” (Heb. 8:1-2). Though his sacrifice is singular, his priesthood is enduring. “[H]e holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:24-25). Within Hebrews’ framework, intercession is priestly work, Jesus’ sacrificial mediation between God and humanity.

The priestly work of the church is connected to Christ’s priestly work, even though it cannot add to it or replace it. Rather, the church enters into the Lord’s work. First Peter puts it this way: “[L]ike living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 2:5). Part of that priestly ministry is a sharing in Jesus’ redemptive intercessory work: “First of all, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone” (1 Tim. 2:1). In the Revelation of John, the golden bowls of incense offered before the throne and the altar are the prayers of the saints (Rev. 5:8; 8:3).

Thomas Cranmer’s assignment of Hebrews 10:1-25 as the liturgical Epistle for Good Friday followed a sure theological instinct. Cranmer substituted the reading from Hebrews for the Roman rite’s use of Hosea 6:1-6 (a prophetic foreshadowing of Christ’s death and resurrection) and Exodus 12:1-11 (the account of the Passover), which were read before the Passion Gospel from John. Cranmer’s use of Hebrews foregrounded Jesus’ priestly ministry, and underscored the Reformation concern for upholding the unique sacrifice of Christ. The English Reformation insisted on “the one oblation of Christ finished upon the cross” (Article XXXI), and the error of “the sacrifices of Masses” in pretending to add anything to Christ’s sacrifice. “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified” (Heb. 10:14).

At the same time, by associating Hebrews’ reflection on Christ’s priestly ministry with the liturgical commemoration of his crucifixion and death, Cranmer’s liturgy did what all liturgies do: make the connection between what was done then and what is being done now. It is easy to see liturgical revolution, like that of the 16th century, as simply disruptive, but to miss its propensity (in the literal sense of the word revolution) to come full circle and return to the beginning. There are deeper continuities at work. Liturgy typically draws the events of salvation history and our time closer by bending the time and space between them. It makes those events present now. As Jesus said at the Last Supper, “Do this for the remembrance of me.” As Cranmer’s reading says at the end, we ought not to neglect to meet together but rather encourage one another (Heb. 10:25). Our gathering is significant because it signifies.

Cranmer also included in his revised liturgy three collects drawn from or modeled on the intercessory prayers that had been said at the Good Friday liturgy before 1549. This ancient form of the Prayers of the People, consisting of biddings followed by concluding collects, had survived in the Roman liturgy mainly in the Good Friday rite: an illustration of Anton Baumstark’s law that liturgy tends to be conservative in the more sacred seasons. Cranmer’s provision for additional collects on Good Friday, even without the retention of the intercessions traditionally used on Good Friday, represented liturgical continuity, coming full circle with the 1979 prayer book’s restoration of the “solemn collects.”

These prayers in the 1979 liturgy consist of an introduction, followed by a bidding to prayer for particular needs. Each set of biddings is followed by silence and a concluding collect. A deacon or other person may bid the prayers, and the people may be invited to stand or kneel in the course of the silence. The collects that punctuate the prayers are said by the celebrant. The ancient pattern for these prayers was also hierarchical and even hieratic, with the different orders of ministry sharing the roles in a similar way, with much of the action taking place at the altar: the priest bidding the prayers, the deacon and subdeacon inviting the people to kneel and then to stand, and the priest concluding each period of silence with a collect. In both ancient and modern forms of the intercessions, varied voices are heard, with ample time for silence.

The resulting form of prayer is unique to the Good Friday liturgy. The biddings to prayer constitute the church’s most wide-ranging act of intercession: prayers for the church throughout the world; for all nations and peoples, especially for governing authorities, and for peace; for all who suffer in body or mind; for those who have not received the gospel, and for those who persecute Christians or are persecuted by them; and for those who have died. The church’s intercession is Christ’s work. As Augustine reminded his parishioners about their prayer, “If he is the head, we are the body, one person. Whether the head speaks or the members, it is the one Christ who speaks. And it is proper for the head to speak through the members” (Sermons on the Psalms 140.3). In these prayers the church takes the whole world with her into the heart of the mystery of Christ’s dying and rising again.

Though the readings and prayers are at the heart of the liturgy, other actions are traditional on this day, and are provided as options in the current rite. The veneration of the cross dates back at least to the fourth century, as part of the Good Friday observance in Jerusalem, perhaps taken back by pilgrims to their communities. Holy Communion was also from an early time distributed from the sacrament consecrated at the celebration on Maundy Thursday. In some sense this liturgy of the evening before, which significantly has no formal conclusion, is Good Friday’s celebration of the Eucharist, and the distribution of Communion its extension.

The theological significance of intercession being placed at the center of the Good Friday liturgy brings us back to Jesus’ priestly work on the cross. He is the mediator between God and humanity, himself fully God and fully human, who makes intercession for us on the cross. It is precisely as a human being that he is able to pray and to offer sacrifice: mediating acts that are proper to a priest. In the “heavenly session” that begins when he sits at the right hand of God (Heb. 10:12), Christ continues to exercise his priestly office of mediation for the whole world. On Good Friday, we as a church “enter the sanctuary” (Heb. 10:19) with him, and through our intercessions join in Jesus’ priestly work.

IARCCUM practices what is sometimes called the Lund principle: churches are called to act together in all those areas where conviction does not require them to act separately. If there are things that we can do together, we should be doing them. The pilgrimage and summit were intended to offer a common witness of Christians, in the midst of deep divisions in our world and enormous difficulties facing the human family, and to challenge our churches to work more closely together in those areas where we are able to do so.

To understand the significance of this pilgrimage, it is necessary to look back at the origins of IARCCUM and the progress of ecumenical relations between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church over the last several decades. Following the signing of a historic common declaration by Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey in 1966, the two communions have engaged in theological dialogue through the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, now in its third iteration (ARCIC III). Even as theological dialogue began, and ARCIC began to produce agreed statements, there was consciousness (expressed in the 1968 Malta Report) of a need for a group of bishops to address practical issues of cooperation.

A gathering of bishops from the two communions in Mississauga, Canada, in 2000 advanced the 1996 call by Pope John Paul II and Archbishop George Carey for a consultation on the future progress of relations. Out of their shared prayer and conversation, the bishops issued a communiqué, “Communion in Mission,” that recognized the work of ARCIC and the “very impressive degree of agreement in faith” (CIM 4) existing between the churches, and called for establishing a “Joint Unity Commission.” The commission was to promote the reception of the ARCIC documents, and the practical consequences of the “fundamental communion of a common faith and a common baptism” (CIM 5) shared by the two communions. In 2002, the commission was endorsed by the Pope and the Archbishop, and became known as IARCCUM.

IARCCUM has no exact parallel in other bilateral ecumenical relationships between churches. First of all, it is a group of bishops, brought together not by their particular theological acumen or knowledge of ecumenism, but principally in their role as leaders. Second, it stands alongside ARCIC, and no other dialogue that the Roman Catholic Church or the Anglican Communion is engaged in has such an analogue. Though promotion of the work of the theological dialogue between the two communions is part of their charge, the focus of IARCCUM is on common mission, the call to work together in areas where the churches perceive a common call. Third, the paired bishops are drawn from across the world, which speaks of the global reach of the Church’s mission, and of the many places in the world where our churches are present.

In 2016 I participated in the first IARCCUM pilgrimage, which began in Canterbury and ended in Rome. Thirty-six bishops from 19 countries and regions participated. The occasion commemorated the founding of the Anglican Centre in Rome, and the 50th anniversary of the 1966 meeting that led to the beginning of ARCIC. As in Mississauga in 2000, the bishops joined in conversation and worship, and issued an agreed statement, in the form of an appeal to both of our communities. A high point was when we were commissioned by Archbishop Justin Welby and Pope Francis in a liturgy presided over by both in the Church of San Gregorio al Celio, the monastic community in Rome from which Pope Gregory the Great sent St. Augustine of Canterbury on his mission to evangelize the English. At the end of the liturgy, the bishops processed out of the church in witness to our common mission. It was a striking testimony to our common call to mission.

The 2024 pilgrimage and summit included more bishops, with a wider geographical reach. In contrast to the 2016 pilgrimage, we began in Rome and moved to Canterbury in the course of our week together, in some sense walking in the steps of St. Augustine of Canterbury himself. Once again, our meeting was presided over by Archbishop Donald Bolen and Bishop David Hamid, co-chairs of IARCCUM. The Rev. Martin Browne, OSB, from the Dicastery for Christian Unity, and Dr. Christopher Wells, Director of Unity, Faith, and Order for the Anglican Communion Office, acted as IARCCUM co-secretaries. As outlined by our co-chairs, the goals of this pilgrimage and summit were to build relationships between the bishops, both in the pairs but also across more broadly; to share in prayer and the experience of pilgrimage to these historic Christian sites; to explore the themes of justice, synodality, and safeguarding; and to be sent in mission together.

While in Rome, the bishops were lodged at the Casa Bonus Pastor, not far from the Vatican, which gave opportunity for them to share meals and conversation. In Canterbury, most of us were hosted at the Lodge on the cathedral close. I was paired with the Most Rev. John Michael Botean, bishop of the Eparchy of St. George, based in Canton, Ohio. Bishop John Michael leads the North American jurisdiction of the Romanian Byzantine Catholic Church, a church in full communion with the Holy See but with an ancient liturgy and traditions of its own that differ significantly from those of the Latin rite. The two of us have come to know each other over the last seven years of being co-chairs of the Anglican-Roman Catholic (ARC-USA) bilateral theological dialogue between the Episcopal Church and the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops. This was a chance for us to deepen our relationship, and find new ways to offer common witness.

Together, the bishops shared in significant liturgies. On the first evening of the summit in Rome, on Tuesday, the bishops gathered at St. Peter’s Basilica for Anglican Evensong, in the Chapel of the Choir, where the liturgy of the hours is normally celebrated at the basilica. The choirs and clergy of the two Anglican parishes in the city of Rome combined with a number of other friends and supporters to host this liturgy. The next morning, the bishops together attended Mass at S. Agnese in Agone, where the Catholic bishops concelebrated and the Anglican bishops came forward at Communion time for a blessing. This set a pattern for our celebrations of the Eucharist, respecting the discipline that does not yet allow Roman Catholics normally to invite Anglicans to receive Communion nor themselves to accept the eucharistic hospitality of Anglican churches.

On Thursday we were joined by Archbishop Justin and Caroline Welby, who were guests at a private audience with Pope Francis earlier in the morning. The Archbishop was presider and preacher at an Anglican Eucharist at the Basilica di San Bartolomeo all’Isola, not only the site of an ancient temple of Asclepius (the god of medicine) in pre-Christian times, and the resting place of the relics of St. Bartholomew, but also of a new memorial to modern martyrs of the 20th and 21st centuries. The martyrs include the seven members of the (Anglican) Melanesian Brotherhood murdered on Guadalcanal in 2003. Archbishop Justin reminded us in his sermon, “In a time of war and persecution, one Christian of another, service is the image of Christ.”

The bishops also spent time, both in Rome and Canterbury, educating themselves on issues of common concern. Cardinal Michael Czerny of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development spoke to the bishops on Tuesday on issues of justice and peace. In the course of the week, we were briefed by some of our bishop pairs on the challenging situations in their countries, including a valuable and timely briefing from Archbishop Hosam Naoum of Jerusalem and Rafic Nahra, Patriarchal Vicar for Israel.

On Wednesday, we were hosted at the Centro Pro Unione for presentations by the Rev. Professor Paul Avis, canon theologian of the Diocese of Exeter, and Sr. Nathalie Becquart, xmcj, of the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, on synodality. Thursday saw a visit to the Anglican Centre in Rome, where we were welcomed by the director, the Most Rev. Ian Ernest, for a discussion on creation and environment led by our paired bishops from Brazil, Marinez Bassotto, and Teodoro Mendes Tavares, CSSP. On Saturday, in Canterbury, we heard powerful presentations by Mandy Marshall of the Anglican Communion Office, and the Rev. Hans Zollner, SJ, of the Gregorian University on safeguarding issues in the churches.

Thursday was also the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, the final day of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, concluded with a major ecumenical service at the Basilica of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, the site of St. Paul’s martyrdom. Both Pope Francis and the Archbishop addressed the congregation, and at the conclusion of the liturgy the paired IARCCUM bishops were commissioned by the two leaders. Most notably, the pairs included two women, Bishop Bassotto from Brazil, and Bishop Sally Sue Hernandez from Mexico City. Once again, as it had been for those who participated in 2016, the liturgy of commissioning was a most significant articulation of substantial theological agreement and of a shared mission in the world. Pope Francis told the assembly, “For when Christians grow in the service of God and neighbor, they also grow in reciprocal understanding,” offering a kind of summation of the ecumenical methodology of IARCCUM. During the commissioning, Archbishop Justin reminded the bishops to “bear witness to the one hope of your calling.”

On Friday morning the bishops visited San Gregorio al Celio, the site of the earlier 2016 commissioning, and then headed to the airport for our flight to Britain. The Archbishop traveled with us back to Canterbury, and was most generous with his time with us while we were in residence. Many bishops took part in the candlelit tour of Canterbury Cathedral, led by the Archdeacon of Canterbury, the Ven. Will Adam, visiting the site of St. Thomas a Becket’s martyrdom. On Saturday night the paired bishops participated in Mass at St. Thomas Becket Parish in Canterbury, with the Anglican Bishop of Quebec, Bruce Myers, preaching. On Sunday morning, Cardinal Stephen Chow of Hong Kong preached at the Eucharist at which Archbishop Justin presided. The bishops returned later that day to process at Evensong at the Cathedral, and to join the Archbishop and Caroline Welby for dinner afterward at the Old Palace.

The bishops also issued Our Common Witness, Calling and Commitment. This call, addressed to the churches, touches on themes of friendship, synodality, and shared mission. The bishops appealed to St. Gregory’s words to St. Augustine, “we are seeking in Britain brothers [and sisters] we do not know,” pointing to the renewal of ties through ecumenism that are real but have been neglected. Synodality, walking together on the way, also puts relationship at the center of the Church’s life, referencing Pope Francis’ address at St. Paul’s: “First our brothers and sisters, then the structures.” The document concludes, “As we return to our own local churches after our pilgrimage in Rome and Canterbury, we pray that our ministry alongside one another as Catholics and Anglicans will be for the world a foretaste of the reconciling of all Christians in the one and only Church of Christ.”

Finally, some impressions from a busy and eventful week. First, the subject of synodality took a prominent place in the plenary sessions; this is obviously a major subject of discussion within the Roman Catholic Church, on multiple levels and with a good depth of political and theological nuance and context that it would be easy for an Anglican to miss. Synodality is also part of the current agenda of ARCIC, and its next agreed statement, the result of shared reflection between the two communions, will be of great interest. Anglicans tend to congratulate themselves on their practice of synodality on the diocesan and provincial levels, but the Roman Catholic experience of synodality in a global church is one that Anglicans will profit from, if they are willing to do so.

Second, I was honestly surprised to hear bishops from Africa and Asia talk about the rise of secularism in their contexts. It was a strong enough theme to warrant mention in the bishops’ document. In the 2016 pilgrimage, there was much more discussion among the bishops about the increasing influence of Islam. Secularism in those contexts no doubt takes a different shape from that in the Northern Hemisphere, yet its recognition in discussion and in the agreed document is significant of an identifiable global phenomenon.

Third, the value of symbolic action was reaffirmed by my experience on this pilgrimage. One thinks back to Pope Paul VI’s gift of his episcopal ring to Archbishop Michael Ramsey at their 1966 meeting, or Pope John Paul II and Archbishop Robert Runcie praying together in 1982 at the site of Becket’s murder in Canterbury Cathedral, or the gift of a replica of the crozier of Pope Gregory given by Pope Francis to Archbishop Justin in 2016. The symbolic action that stood out most in 2024 took place at the Vesper service in the Basilica of St. Paul’s. After the Pope preached, Archbishop Justin was invited to add his own words: not included in the bulletin, but an occasion that the Archbishop rose to gracefully. The centerpiece of the event was two Christian leaders addressing divided Christians together.

Please continue to pray for the IARCCUM bishops as they continue to offer witness to our two communions’ common mission in the world.

Previous sabbaticals had focused on study and travel out of the country. All good experiences, but circumstances indicated that this time something else would be required. A period of rest and renewal seemed in order: more stationary, with a less rigorous study focus. A change of scenery still seemed called for; time with family was also on the agenda.

My wife, Caroline, and I decided that we would stay in country and travel west, driving to California and the Pacific Northwest where we have family, and spending our time getting there and returning. The stationary portion of the sabbatical would be provided by four weeks in Sonoma County, California, and a similar period in the Puget Sound area. We had been to both places before, but only for brief visits.

It is fair to say that my upbringing and ministry have been Atlantic-facing. The biggest stretch I’ve made in parochial ministry has been a decade spent near the Gulf of Mexico, at some distance from Atlantic beaches. I was raised in South Carolina, educated in Ohio and New York. My ordained ministry began in New England, and then England itself. The balance of my time since graduate school has been spent in North Carolina, Louisiana, and (now) Tennessee. My undergraduate major was in European history, and my theological studies have been firmly anchored on the early church and the Mediterranean basin. For me, west of the Mississippi was exotic and largely uncharted territory.

The journey would not only be physical but also interior. Books have been an important part of previous sabbaticals: partly refreshment, partly mental stimulation, books are sources for me of renewal and new thinking. On other sabbaticals I’ve done more focused theological or pastoral study, but this time I decided to let topography and history provide the main theme. Of course, everything is fodder for the theological and pastoral project, as any preacher knows.

I could tell you about my first visit to Santa Fe; what it was like “standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona”; taking in the scope of the Grand Canyon or the monumental character of Yellowstone Park. I had never been to Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, or even Iowa before. There is no doubt my experience of the West broadened my understanding of my context, but my reading further colored the experience.

Before heading out, I read a few books to prepare. Rather than turning to broad histories of the region, I decided on a less systematic and more idiosyncratic approach. Ron Hansen’s novel The Kid (2016) tells the story of outlaw William Bonney, the eponymous “Billy the Kid.” I also read Oakley Hall’s classic novel Warlock (1958), about the gunfight at the OK Corral, the Johnson County War, and other episodes of western legend. Ballast was provided by Ian Frazier’s Great Plains (1989), a work of reportage based on several trips made by Frazier around the Plains states; then again by Empire of the Summer Moon (2011), S.C. Gwynne’s fine history of the decades-long war fought by the Commanche and the settlers over possession of the high plains.

Before departure, I’d picked up a copy of James Conaway’s The Kingdom in the Country (1993), another work of reportage told from the perspective of the dominant Federal presence in the West, through the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service. Conaway also wrote Napa (2002), about the fabled California wine country, which I read while staying in next-door Sonoma County. I also took along Robert Utley’s A Life Wild and Perilous (1998), an account of the “mountain men” who trapped, traded, and explored the American West in the decades after the Lewis and Clark expedition. Utley, a Park Service historian, includes a series of shaded relief maps created by Peter Dana that were an excellent introduction to the topography of the West.

Once on the road, one book led to another. A brief mention in Conoway’s bibliography, and a chance encounter with a copy in a used bookstore in Santa Rosa, was the occasion to read Bernard DeVoto’s The Year of Decision 1846 (1942). DeVoto’s colloquial style is unusual, with a whiff of Damon Runyon, but he takes a pivotal year in the history of “the pre-Civil War, Far Western frontier” (Preface) to trace the personal experience of many of the actors, the connections between them, and the larger connection to a national narrative.

The war with Mexico, the Mormon migration, the opening of the Oregon and California trails, all find a place, along with a chilling account of the fate of the Donner party. DeVoto shows the connections between Charles Fremont, Brigham Young, Francis Parkman, and other more obscure figures who played a role in the pivotal year. He places them at a point of time between an already vanishing Jacksonian America and the emerging conflict over slavery, arguing that the truly continental nation forged in 1846 had already sealed the fate of Southern secessionists a decade and a half later. In DeVoto’s assessment of that failed rebellion, “Yesterday lost out” (498).

Caroline likes the novels of Wallace Stegner, so the name was familiar when I picked up The Sound of Mountain Water (1969), his essays on environmental, literary, and historical subjects connected to the West. One of those essays, in another hypertext connection, turned out to be on DeVoto as a western writer. The Kingdom in the Country provided entrée to Edward Abbey, the controversial advocate of ecological sabotage, by including a brief interview. I started his novel, The Brave Cowboy (1956), set in New Mexico, before we left Santa Fe. By the time we got to Washington I had also discovered journalist Timothy Egan’s The Good Rain (1990), a fine profile of places and environmental challenge in the Pacific Northwest. As we traveled, the omni-competent John McPhee’s Assembling California (1993) provided clues to the topography all around us.

I was fortunate in my choice of poets to bring along on this trip. Denise Levertov’s Evening Train (1992), thrown into the bag at the last minute, providentially contained many poems written after her move to Seattle, reflecting on the new topography and her experiences of flora and fauna: a great accompaniment to our time on Puget Sound. A highlight of the trip was finding and visiting Levertov’s grave in Seattle (just up the hill from martial artist Bruce Lee’s). The poet Robert Hass is based in Berkley, so his Summer Snow (2020) turned out to contain a number of poems on places we visited in California. I discovered his poem “Abbott’s Lagoon: October,” about Hass’s experience on the Point Reyes peninsula, the day after our visit there.

Then there were the books read just for fun. Laila Lalami’s The Moor’s Account (2014), a fictional retelling of the 16th-century Narvaez expedition to Florida, from the perspective of a Moroccan slave who was one of the survivors, provided counterpoint to our wanderings through the Southwest. Somehow I emerged from the 1970s without reading Watership Down (1972), Richard Adams’s novel about the heroic migration of a rabbit colony across the English countryside. Now it was my turn; again, this novel segued well with the theme of journey, set in a very different topography. A reread of John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids (1951) provided goosebumps with its post-apocalyptic England. Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (2013), by historian Allen Guelzo, provided a fresh take on another crucial American turning point.

My sabbatical gave me a fresh perspective. It is a commonplace but nevertheless true that you cannot fully appreciate the nature of North America until you have hit the high plains and come into range of the Rockies and the Pacific. I suppose the inverse is true for westerners, who won’t really understand our continent until they’ve visited the well-watered and settled land east of the Mississippi and seen the sun rise out of the Atlantic. As a result of this sabbatical, I have a new sense of the continental scope (in DeVoto’s sense) of American life, and in a fractured time like ours a renewed appreciation of the unifying themes provided by our topography and history.