U.S. CHURCHMAN ON TWO-YEAR TRIP

Press, Volume C, Issue 29421, 25 January 1961, Page 12

U.S. CHURCHMAN ON TWO-YEAR TRIP

Ask the Rev. Canon Howard A. Johnson, visiting United States churchman, to show his passport and he will bring out a document that, when it is open, looks more like an accordion than an ordinary passport. Tumbling out from between the' regulation green-covered U.S. passport come four big accordion-pleated pages each carrying 12 ordinary passportsize pages. Canon Johnson, Canon Theologian of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, in New York city, is on a round-the-world trip lasting two years, and he needs the extra passport pages for his visas. He is on leave of absence from the Cathedral and is making his journey to visit every province of the Anglican Communion. When he was planning his trip he tried to insure himself against accident and sickness, but the insurance companies felt his chances of completing his two-year, round-the-world trip without some mishap were too great.

His travel itinerary was prepared by one of New York’s biggest travel When they completed it they told him it had presente 1 them with one of their biggest challenges. Writing a Book In his Christchurch hotel last evening he said: “The purpose of my trip is, inevitably, to write a book. It will be the kind of book that will be of interest to the armchair traveller. He hopes the book will have a general appeal. It will also carry the theme of Anglican work throughout the world that will be the theme of the international Anglican Congress planned for Toronto in 1963. Canon Johnson’s trip is so extensive that he has started listing only the number of countries he has visited; “Since I left New York 15 months ago, New Zealand is my eighty-fifth country and the aircraft that brought me to Christchurch was No. 118. “That does not mention an uncountable number of ships, river boats, canoes, rowboats, utility vehicles—almost anything that can convey a man.” Canon Johnson said: “The bed that I will be thankfully subsiding in tonight will be the 181 th of my journey.” He left the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine on October 24, 1959. and expects to get back there on October 24 this year—“ 24 months to the day.” “This is an unprecedented journey—nobody has ever been rash enough to attempt to visit every Anglican province. “I’m the fall guy. My orders read: note and see every province in which the Church of England and sister churches work.” Report His task is to report on the chief problems and the chief potentialities. Canon Johnson describes his trip as "a private venture with official approbation.” He explained: “That means that everyone knows I am coming. “I’m a kind of self-appointed snooper trying to see what fellow Anglicans throughout the world are doing.” During his trip he has visited about 90 political divisions—“islands, protectorates and so on.”

He sa;d it had been established that he was a bona fide tourist and not a teacher or missionary. His presiding Bishop has forbidden him to preach or lecture on his journey. "This is because I am not going around the world trying to teach, but am trying to be taught. This is a -grievous injunction to be borne, but it frees me for the task of listening ” Canon Johnson, who was born in lowa in 1915, does not recommend his trip as a rest cure. There are constant changes of diet, climate, water, customs, languages and many other things. He admitted that what he calls “my adventures in Anglicanism” required a certain nimbleness of mind. "In a letter to my parents I called it a long, lovely, laborious lark,” he said Canon Johnson is in New Zealand for 16 days and then he will go on with the trip that is scheduled to get him back to New York in October.