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Disestablishment. The reforms that scholarly Michael Ramsey wants most are in Anglican worship and in the church's control over its own affairs. Early in his primacy, Ramsey set up a committee to suggest a new method of choosing bishops, who for four centuries have been appointed by the King, traditionally on the recommendation of the Prime Minister. He has also ordered reform in the Book of Common Prayer, unchanged since 1662. By introducing the prayer book revisions experimentally and in stages, Ramsey hopes to avoid a direct conflict with Parliament, which flatly turned down a prayer book revision in 1928. Yet the Archbishop leaves little doubt about his willingness to leave the convenient embrace of the state if necessary: "I think we can get the reforms we need without that. But I would choose disestablishment rather than have those reforms made impossible."
Ramsey also applies this pragmatism to the ecumenical movement. He is one of the six presidents of the World Council of Churches, has continued his longtime scholarly interest in the Orthodox Church with the first visit to the Soviet Union by an Archbishop of Canterbury, and last spring ordered the revival of ecumenical conversations with the Church of Scotland. He warns that unity is "not just togetherness with one another," but getting together with the Roman Catholic Church is simplified for High Churchman Ramsey by the feeling that he never left it. An old Ramsey epigram: "When an Anglican is asked, 'Where was your church before the Reformation?', his best answer is to put the counterquestion, 'Where was your face before you washed it?''
Although the Archbishop believes that administration is "something to be got on with and not deified,'' he finds that more and more time must be spent in his Lambeth Palace study bending over his oldfashioned lapboard on details of running "All England." But he spends a greater proportion of his time at Canterbury than did his predecessor—brisk Organization Man Geoffrey Fisher—and hopes to remain more of a spiritual leader than a church administrator.
On his U.S. visit. Ramsey will strengthen ties between Anglicans and Episcopalians, will receive four honorary degrees. He plans to deliver at least six lectures, a dozen sermons. Says an administrative bishop: "He wants to lecture and to meet theologians and theological students—that's his main reason for coming."