Travelers at Home

The spiritual road to Canterbury is a meandering one, winding through far country to encompass a multitude of views. Those who travel it are widely diverse pilgrims who come to the Anglican Communion in search of widely diverse qualities. In Modern Canterbury Pilgrims (Morehouse-Gorham; $3.85), published this week, 22 converts to Anglicanism--from former Roman Catholics to former Jews--tell why they became Anglicans, and describe what they discovered. Some of their views:

P: The Very Rev. James A. Pike, dean of New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine, onetime Roman Catholic (and editor of Modern Canterbury Pilgrims): "We are Catholic in that we hold entire 'the Faith once for all delivered to the Saints' in unbroken continuity, in faith and in order, with the early Church . . . In the case of almost every significant difference between us [and Roman Catholics], in faith or in practice, we are teaching it or doing it the earlier way . . . We are 'oldfashioned' Catholics."

P: John H. Hallowell of Duke University, political scientist, onetime agnostic: "Based upon the Bible, reason and tradition, the doctrinal position of the Anglican Church avoids both the intellectual obscurantism of 'fundamentalism' and the doctrinal laxity of 'liberalism.' Although it insists upon no official doctrinal interpretation, it clearly affirms the Christian faith as expressed in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds."

P: William.H. Baar of the University of Chicago, Episcopal priest-teacher, onetime Lutheran: "The fact that the Anglican Church is right in the middle of the whole Christian tradition is the key to the Anglican way of looking at things . . . With Protestant, Roman and Orthodox Churchmen alike, Anglicans share the full joy and the full sorrow at the picture of the Church as she has made her way through history. But we do not depend upon any age for our inspiration; we do not believe that at any time the essential message of the Church was ever totally obscured, and we look to the future with as much veneration as others look to the past."

P: Eduard Heimann of New York City, economist, of Jewish parentage: "The Episcopal Church and her mother Church have been uniquely blessed in not having at their origin an overpowering religious genius of the Aquinas or Luther or Calvin types. Without their creativity the Episcopal Church would certainly not be what she is, but under their absolute claims she could never have developed her own sense of humility, moderation, and balance . . . The reverse side of our blessing clearly is that eclecticism is not a constructive principle, much less a prophetic quality."

P: Enrico C. S. Molnar of Compton, Calif., Episcopal priest, onetime Methodist : "To my mind our Communion most fully expresses the marks of being the 'extension of the Incarnation . . .' None of [my books] need be relegated to a hidden shelf, just because I am an Episcopalian. There is no Index! For in the Anglican Communion there is most fully expressed the basic Christian belief that God reveals Himself, not in esoteric abstract speculation, but in history, 'in events through which we event,' in a St. Francis, in a St. John Hus, in the Celtic Saints."

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