Faith: Man from Asia -- hope for church?

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- If any denomination can serve as a paradigm for the Christian Church's need of renewal, the Anglican Communion doubtless fits the bill.

George Carey, 103rd archbishop of Canterbury and primate of all England, announced Tuesday that he will retire at the end of October. It may take up to nine months to find a successor for this prelate whose office ranks second only to the royal family in protocol.

British pundits and London bookmakers believe that one of the frontrunners is Pakistani-born Michael Nazir-Ali, bishop of Rochester and as such a member of the House of Lords.

If chosen, he would also become the president of the worldwide Anglican Communion, whose provinces in 164 countries claim a total membership of 70 million.

As a rule of the thumb, Anglican churches -- like their Lutheran and Reformed counterparts -- are vibrant in Asia and Africa but often in a sorry state in the West where mushy theologies have undermined their credibility.

The Church of England has lost one-third of its members in the last 20 years; less than 1 million attend Sunday services regularly. Its U.S. counterpart, the Episcopal Church, has slipped from 3.2 million members in 1960 to about 2.4 million today.

In Third World countries, on the other hand, theologically healthy churches are being persecuted by some of the most militant strands of Islam. This is especially true in Nigeria and the Sudan.

The new archbishop of Canterbury would therefore step into a tumultuous religious scene. It is obvious that Prime Minister Tony Blair, upon whose advice the queen will appoint the new prelate, will face a very difficult choice.

Will it help, for example, to have a former Muslim ascend to the See of Canterbury, a convert who nevertheless understands Islam well and still has great affections for its traditions?

"The way in which Muslims worship is very evocative and shames Christians on many occasions," he once told an interviewer of the Australian newspaper, The Age. He said he had come to know Jesus partly through the Koran.

But then strict Muslims don't take kindly to what they regard as apostates. This is why a ranking London-based Islamic scholar, speaking on condition of anonymity, told United Press International on Wednesday, "Nazir-Ali's appointment would not be appreciated well."

On the other hand, reform-minded Muslim leaders, such as Sayyid Sayeed, secretary-general of the Islamic Society of North America, would welcome a connoisseur of their faith at the top of the Anglican Communion.

"He did follow in his father's footsteps when he became a Christian, didn't he? In other words, he inherited Christianity from his father. Well, in that case, there would not be so much of a problem," Sayeed suggested with a laugh.

Nazir-Ali was born into a fundamentalist Shi'ite family in Karachi 52 years ago. At age 19, he became a Christian. Five years later, in 1974, he was ordained as an Anglican priest.

Eleven years later he was consecrated bishop of Raiwind in Pakistan. In 1986, Nazir-Ali moved to England as the assistant to the archbishop of Canterbury.

Another potential for conflict or opportunity for renewal -- depending on one's point of view -- rests in Nazir Ali's clear theology and strict views on ethics.

As an evangelical, he favors the ordination of women, including their consecration as bishops. On this topic, he differs from the traditionalist Anglo-Catholic wing of Anglicanism.

But he has also made it clear that he opposes abortion, the ordination of active homosexuals and the blessing of same-sex unions. And he is not one for mincing words when he attacks the me-first mentality of this era.

In his diocesan newspaper, the Rochester Link, he condemned married couples, who chose not to have children, as "self-indulgent." Married couples, he insisted, have a duty to have children. Nazir-Ali and his wife have two grown sons.

To aficionados of spirited theological debates, it would be interesting to have a tough Pakistani-born head of the Anglican Communion pitted against some of America's off-the-wall prelates such as John Spong, the former bishop of Newark, N.J., who now writes for ThePosition.com, a smutty Internet publication.

In a style reminiscent of the feisty 16th-century polemics, Nazir-Ali recently shot down Spong's 12 theses, in which the American repudiated all of Christianity's basic tenets -- the Creation, the incarnation of God in Christ, Jesus' miracles, and the Resurrection.

It would be fun to posit Nazir-Ali's 13-point paper -- he added that he wasn't superstitious -- against Spong's 12 suggestions. Alas, this would take up too much space. But here are a few samples:

Spong: "Theism, as a way defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk today is meaningless."

Nazir-Ali: "God's continuing work in creation and redemption must be communicated to people in a language they can understand."

Spong: "Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of a theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt."

Nazir-Ali: "The Incarnation reveals the God who suffers in and with us but who also has to power to transform us."

Spong: "The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed."

Nazir-Ali: "Christ's death on the Cross, in faithfulness to the mission he had come to accomplish, is sacrificial because in his obedience he undoes what our sin has done and which we cannot, of ourselves undo. He stands in our place and opens up the possibility for our own obedience through him."

Spong: "Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history."

Nazir-Ali: "The Church would have never got started without the Resurrection, and without the empty tomb the resurrection stories would have never got off the ground."

Spong: "Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way."

Nazir-Ali: "Worship is integral to human beings and, within it, intercessory prayer recognizes that God is able to act in ways that are beyond our own capacities, even though we too can act in such a way that a difference is made in the world."

For several years now, confessional Christians in the West have been saying that their churches' only hope was a reverse missionary endeavor coming from parts of the world their ancestors had once evangelized.

Increasingly, Asian and African theologians visit Europe and America, imploring their wayward brethren there to return to the traditional faith.

Now it seems that one luminary among them has his foot in the door to the highest office of one of the world's most troubled churches. Nazir-Ali counts the prince of Wales among his admirers and evidently also Prime Minister Blair. So his chances are good.

Thus the Church of England and world Anglicanism -- and therefore Christianity as a whole -- are set to commence the most fascinating nine months in their history.