“Historical Responsibilities”

The Anglican representative to the Middle East Synod, Bishop Michael Langrish, told the gathering on Friday the Church of England is committed to helping the UK government, society and media “to more fully understand and face up to the consequences of foreign policy decisions of the past 100 years” The bishop, who travels regularly throughout the region, said during the second Iraq war, “both the Catholic and Church of England bishops were at the forefront of questioning, not only the morality of the war, …but also the ongoing impact.”

Speaking to us after his presentation, he said wherever he travels, people tell him, “Bishop, don’t present us and our story as a problem...we have a long and honourable tradition of presence in this land and our presence here is important for the Church worldwide” A further decline in the numbers of Christians, he continued, “would be disastrous for the world Church, losing touch with that very essence of Incarnation which is at the heart of our faith and the centuries old engagement with Islam, which we in the West are only faltering finding our way towards.”

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The complex nature of the region, he said, means that “in almost every situation, almost every community can with a certain justification see themselves as part of an oppressed minority”.
In the circolo minori he noted, discussion focused on “the conditions that make for what we called the ‘psychology of peace’,…you can only go so far with political initiatives, but unless you’re working with the socio-cultural heritage that forms the psychology of individuals and communities and begin to address the deep fears, as well as the aspirations that shape that psychology, you won’t get that far”.
Bishop Michael praised the work of the St Egidio community which has “a very real grasp of this psychological dimension of peace making – the way in which they try and draw people together in attentive listening to each other, so that they began to hear what is being said behind the overt words that reflect this deep psychology. One of the things which encourages me about this synod is that, hopefully, it will encourage the same kind of attentive listening to one another among the various people who are gathered here.”

Asked about his meeting with Pope Benedict, the bishop replied “Its actually the 3^rd time in a month I’ve had the privilege of meeting with him…he holds within himself the kind of attentive listening I was talking about…..He and the Archbishop (of Canterbury) had a good personal conversation about the Middle East and we’ve just touched on that now. I’m full of hope that Lambeth and the Vatican together might work towards a new and rather different initiative to see ways in which we can engage in this ‘raising of the profile’ but particularly from the historic responsibilities of a country like the UK.