If Russia Gives a Lead
As war engulfed Europe, an Anglican bishop called on Russia to unite the world’s Christians around their veneration for the Bible.
1915
King George V 1910-1936
As war engulfed Europe, an Anglican bishop called on Russia to unite the world’s Christians around their veneration for the Bible.
1915
King George V 1910-1936
The reign of Edward VII (1901-1910) brought a thaw in relations between Britain and Russia, and when the Great War broke out in 1914, the two nations were allies on the battlefield. A year later, Bishop Bury (who had recently visited Russia) urged his fellow Anglicans to look to Moscow as their most natural ecumenical partner too.
ONE of my great reasons for looking to the Orthodox Church of Russia to give us our first opportunity, in seeking to promote the larger unity of Christendom, is, as I had occasion to say at a large public meeting in London last year, that, like ourselves, they wish to have the New Testament sense of the presence of Christ. I cannot use any other phrase to express my meaning. It is to me the whole spirit of their worship, not only at the Holy Communion, where one would expect it, but at all the other services as well. Litanies form a very important part of their worship, and as one hears that softly repeated “Lord, have mercy” (Gospodi pomilui) again and again from the choir, it is as if they were all conscious of speaking straight to their Lord with the feeling that He is there Himself to grant their prayer. No other refrain that I have ever heard has the same appealing note of real and moving faith.
This “New Testament sense of the presence of Christ,” as I have called it, is no doubt promoted by the extraordinary veneration given to the Gospels, both in their external and internal form.