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"This assembly seems to have reached more deeply and widely into Christian consciousness than any ecumenical meeting ever has. Right from the opening service, when thousands milled around the lawns, and the great "Festival of Faith" at Chicago's Soldier Field, when 30,000 had to be turned away, the huge crowds attracted by this assembly have surprised everyone. And for a religious meeting, the press coverage has been unique. Western Union is dazed—except for a few major political conventions, it has never seen so many words filed for so many days in so many directions. This assembly argues much more freely than earlier ecumenical meetings seem to have done. People know that the movement is not going to split now, so they don't tread on eggs the way they used to. While this assembly has not neglected theology, it has certainly shown a very practical viewpoint in discussion and in drafting. In the old 16th century English prayer-book phrase, its messages are much more "in a language understanded of the people" than those of previous assemblies, including Amsterdam. A good work for God and this world is being done here."
In the Middle. Evanston was aglitter with ecclesiastical brass. Like a familiar litany, the famous names of church leaders were heard: the U.S. Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam; Britain's Anglican Bishop Dr. G.K.A. Bell of Chichester; Reformed Church Pastor Dr. Marc Boegner, the grand old man of French Protestantism; Norway's doughty Lutheran Bishop Berggrav. Among such leaders moved a cheerful, twinkle-eyed churchman with a ringing, ancient title and an extraordinary ability to find common bonds between the leaders of different traditions. He was perhaps a living symbol of the ecumenical movement. The Most Reverend and Right Honorable Geoffrey Francis Fisher, 99th Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England, and Metropolitan, is titular head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, the exemplary ecumenical church.
Anglicanism stands on the Great Divide of Christianity, facing in both directions. The firmly Catholic Church of England claims the apostolic succession, that chain of bishop-consecrating bishops. But it is also a church that was separated from Rome in the Reformation. The Church of England's communicants run a gamut from High-Church Anglo-Catholicism, flickering with votive lights and aromatic with incense, to a Quaker-plain Low-Churchmanship that might make a Methodist uneasy. Archbishop Fisher himself reflects this elasticity. It is symbolized by the fact that he is a Freemason and yet feels sympathetic enough toward Rome to keep a picture of himself and Pope Pius XII prominently in his palace.
Says Fisher: "Perhaps we hold in our own fellowship more of the diverse elements . . . and live at closer quarters with them than is the case in any other communion in Christendom."