So, yesterday at about four o’clock I received a somewhat cryptic e-mail from the curate of our church asking if I had gotten the invitation to “dinner with Bishop Wright.” I hadn’t received any such thing and, intrigued, I gave him a call. And it turned out, yes, he meant that Bishop Wright, the Bishop of Durham, famed NT scholar and churchman. The good bish is in town giving a series of lectures at Harvard Memorial Church and had graciously agreed to have dinner with a group of folks from the Advent.

Naturally I was very excited at the opportunity and hopped on the T after work to meet up with everyone at the John Harvard Brew House in Harvard Square. Bishop Wright and his wife were there along with about twenty of us from the Church of the Advent. He entertained questions about everything from the state of the Episcopal Church and the broader Anglican communion, to pacifism and the idea of a global peacekeeping force, to the polarization of American politics. Obviously a really brilliant guy and also very engaging and humble.

I got the chance to ask him about how he thought Christians should put forth a political agenda in a pluralistic society, in light of some of the fears of “theocracy” that have been bandied about. He was very dismissive of such talk and basically said that you have to put all the cards on the table, including those relating to God. He also spoke of the need to de-couple what he called a “right-of-center theology” (by which I take it he meant robustly realistic and traditional views of the Resurrection, Atonement, person of Christ, etc.) from an automatic pairing with right-wing politics. In his view there are good elements in the agendas of both the Right and the Left and Christians shouldn’t automatically line up behind one or the other. He also spoke extremely well of Rowan Williams as someone in the UK who has been able to cross political lines in a way that enables him to speak to those in power from a truly independent standpoint.

Even though I can’t claim to be a great devotee of his work in that I’ve only read (I think) one of Bishop Wright’s books (though I’ve liked what I read), it was still a fantastic opportunity to meet him and a lot of fun to boot.