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It is significant that the Windsor Report of 2004, in seeking to provide the Anglican Communion with ecclesiological foundations for addressing the current crisis, also adopted an ecclesiology of koinonia. I found this to be helpful and encouraging, and in response to a letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury inviting an ecumenical reaction to the Windsor Report, I noted that “(n)otwithstanding the substantial ecclesiological issues still dividing us which will continue to need our attention, this approach is fundamentally in line with the communion ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council. The consequences which the Report draws from this ecclesiological base are also constructive, especially the interpretation of provincial autonomy in terms of interdependence, thus ”˜subject to limits generated by the commitments of communion’ (Windsor n.79). Related to this is the Report’s thrust towards strengthening the supra-provincial authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury (nn.109-110) and the proposal of an Anglican Covenant which would ”˜make explicit and forceful the loyalty and bonds of affection which govern the relationships between the churches of the Communion’ (n.118).”

The one weakness pertaining to ecclesiology that I noted was that “(w)hile the Report stresses that Anglican provinces have a responsibility towards each other and towards the maintenance of communion, a communion rooted in the Scriptures, considerably little attention is given to the importance of being in communion with the faith of the Church through the ages.” In our dialogue, we have jointly affirmed that the decisions of a local or regional church must not only foster communion in the present context, but must also be in agreement with the Church of the past, and in a particular way, with the apostolic Church as witnessed in the Scriptures, the early councils and the patristic tradition. This diachronic dimension of apostolicity “has important ecumenical ramifications, since we share a common tradition of one and a half millennia. This common patrimony ”“ what Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey called our ”˜ancient common traditions’ ”“ is worth being appealed to and preserved.”

In light of this analysis of episcopal ministry as set forward in ARCIC and the koinonia ecclesiology found in The Windsor Report, it has been particularly disheartening to have witnessed the increasing tensions within the Anglican Communion. In several contexts, bishops are not in communion with other bishops; in some instances, Anglican provinces are no longer in full communion with each other. While the Windsor process continues, and the ecclesiology set forth in the Windsor Report has been welcomed in principle by the majority of Anglican provinces, it is difficult from our perspective to see how that has translated into the desired internal strengthening of the Anglican Communion and its instruments of unity. It also seems to us that the Anglican commitment to being ”˜episcopally led and synodically governed’ has not always functioned in such a way as to maintain the apostolicity of the faith, and that synodical government misunderstood as a kind of parliamentary process has at times blocked the sort of episcopal leadership envisaged by Cyprian and articulated in ARCIC.

I know that many of you are troubled, some deeply so, by the threat of fragmentation within the Anglican Communion. We feel profound solidarity with you, for we too are troubled and saddened when we ask: In such a scenario, what shape might the Anglican Communion of tomorrow take, and who will our dialogue partner be? Should we, and how can we, appropriately and honestly engage in conversations also with those who share Catholic perspectives on the points currently in dispute, and who disagree with some developments within the Anglican Communion or particular Anglican provinces? What do you expect in this situation from the Church of Rome, which in the words of Ignatius of Antioch is to preside over the Church in love? How might ARCIC’s work on the episcopate, the unity of the Church, and the need for an exercise of primacy at the universal level be able to serve the Anglican Communion at the present time?

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Check it out.

When it came my turn to speak, I remembered the following story, told me by members of our African refugee congregation in Rennes, Brittany, France:

During the height of the genocide in Rwanda, a Hutu militia patrol stopped at a village, populated mostly by Hutus but with several Tutsi families as well. “Bring out your Tutsis,” said the militia commander. “We know from others that you have Tutsis living among you.” The Hutu villagers refused. “If you do not give them up, you will die with them.” “How can we give them up?” they asked. “We are one in Christ.”

You can imagine what happened next.

As I told this story, I finished by saying, “There are many here who say, ”˜I am Tutsi, you are Hutu,’ ”˜I am for gays, you are against gays.’ But we must first be one with those martyred sisters and brothers, one in Christ first, or we cannot be his disciples.

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What bishops should be more concerned about is her insinuation that a non-white culture leads to domestic violence and that white, western culture is too civilised and too advanced to allow such atrocities to occur. Roskam fails to recognise that domestic violence affects people regardless of their class, ethnicity, religion, gender or geography.

But perhaps bishops should not be surprised by her attitude, which has echoes in an incident from the previous Lambeth conference in 1998, when another American bishop claimed African Christians had only just developed from believing that rocks and trees have spirits and did not understand modern science. This rhetoric, and the underlying assertion of superiority, plays into the hands of conservative evangelicals who are fed up with colonialist attitudes, but also of people who argue that religion, its followers and leaders are backwards and irrelevant.

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The Roman Catholic Church has finally ended all hope that Anglican priestly orders will ever be recognised as valid.

In an address to the Lambeth Conference of 670 Anglican bishops from around the world, the cardinal who heads the Council for Christian Unity said the dialogue between Anglicans and Catholics would be irrevocably “changed” as a result of the ordination of women and the recent vote to go ahead with consecrating women bishops.

Cardinal Walter Kasper also reiterated the Vatican’s stance that homosexuality is a “disordered” condition.

In a well-attended closed session at the conference at the University of Kent University, Canterbury, Cardinal Kasper said relations between the two churches are now deeply compromised. He urged bishops to consider their shared inheritance, which he said was “worthy of being consulted and protected.”

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Basically the indaba groups, for those who do not know, are made up of 40 bishops, 5 groups of eight. Sometimes they separate into 8 person bible study groups and then come together again. The aim is to enable listening and understanding in relationship to the impact that the Anglican Communion’s engagement with same sex issues has had on our participation in God’s mission.

It is important in stressing that aim; that it is not designed to be a conversation revisiting .Lambeth 1.10. It is not a conversation about anthropology or moral and ethical understandings of same sex sexuality, the focus is on how has the way the Anglican Communion has engaged in these conversations been consistent with participation in God’s mission.

The specific question given to the bishops in indaba group is: How have the same-sex initiates impacted my diocese’ part in God’s mission?

The indaba will see a short 10 minute video of faces of people around the communion speaking to that question. The point is that it is good for the bishops to be together but let’s not forget the wider body of Christ and how these conversations effect their lives in the Church

The bishops it is then suggested will move to the bible study groups where they can begin to answer this question for themselves”¦this is what this initiative has meant in my diocese.

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The Lambeth conference of Anglican bishops discusses “human sexuality”, the subject which divides traditionalists and liberals. The Archbishop of Canterbury hopes to draft a statement that can hold the worldwide Anglican Communion together on this issue. Clive Hanford, the person in charge of drafting this statement, says it can be done but they have to be ‘cautious’.

Listen to it all.

Note carefully the comments of Bishop Stacy Sauls of Lexington (see city Lexington, Kentucky) which once again misses the central fact that there are different kinds of differences. The Elizabethan settlement was about allowing for difference within a community with a certain bedrock underneath on which difference was not possible (the statement [never said by Augustine] of Meldenius–“In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity”– is sometimes cited in this regard). It is precisely the issue of what kind of a difference this is which is currently at issue, and moving to an Elizabeth settlement on it settles the debate about the nature of this difference in practice before the theological debate about it is settled. This is what the Windsor Report was trying to get at, and Rowan Williams just made the same argument again in his second Presidential address to this Lambeth, and TEC has still not fully reckoned with that argument–KSH.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, quite simply put, is so insulated from the people he is supposed to help guide and represent that he can no longer be taken to be “a part” of us.

While Williams, whose intellect has been woefully inadequate to the realities of his current office and whose quite obvious and destructive prejudice against America, represented by TEC, is in the archepiscopacy of Canterbury, there can be no reconciliation. Either America will be thrown out to make way for a volume business in Third World souls (and never mind the quality of the Christian), or TEC will be “allowed” to remain, without the possibility of ever having any trust in the Archbishop of Canterbury until Williams is out of the office.

He is, quite simply, untrustworthy. I believe that he – Williams – is also exceptionally power-hungry and selfish, as this grab for centralized power coming out of a Windsor Continuation Group entirely devoid of liberals demonstrates.

Read it all.

I will consider posting comments on this article submitted first by email to Kendall’s E-mail: KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

The church in Africa has often said that it conceives its mission in terms of service rather than power. It preaches to political leaders and leaders in other fields to use their position in service to humankind, especially the vulnerable. That means, in fact, that the church is concerned about the question of power.

It cannot avoid engaging the critical question of the manifestations of the use or abuse of power, which often lie at the heart of ethnic war and conflict in countries like Uganda where Church growth is phenomenal. And it is not just a matter of the bishops or the church challenging society about the proper use of power and position.

They too need to engage critically with the way they exercise their power over clergy and laity alike. It is inevitable to comment about the absence of the bishops at Canterbury of the Church of Uganda.

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Regarding the observations put forward by the Windsor Continuation Group, he said they were covering ground the Primates had already looked at.

“Since the Primates haven’t been able to move it along some of us don’t have much hope it will take us anywhere.

“Dar-es-Salaam put forward the idea of a pastoral council and the House of Bishops in the States didn’t want it. They want their autonomy.

“The North Americans have said they’re not going to move back and those who have left their national churches are unlikely to go back.

“Unless we talk about the real reasons why we are divided there’s little hope of putting it back together again.”

Read it all.

Now of course the point of all that is not simply an interesting set of skirmishes about different ideas. The point is that these ideas had legs, and went about in the ancient world making things happen. They altered the way you saw things, the way you did things, the goals you set yourself and the ways you ordered your world and society. From the beginning no serious Christian has been able to say ”˜this is my culture, so I must adapt the gospel to fit within it’, just as no serious Christian has been able to say ”˜this is my surrounding culture, so I must oppose it tooth and nail’. Christians are neither chameleons, changing colour to suit their surroundings, nor rhinoceroses, ready to charge at anything in sight. There is no straightforward transference between any item of ordinary culture and the gospel, since all has been distorted by evil; but likewise there is nothing so twisted that it cannot be redeemed, and nothing evil in itself. The Christian is thus committed, precisely as a careful reader of scripture, to a nuanced reading of culture and a nuanced understanding of the response of the gospel to different elements of culture. You can see this in Philippians, where Paul is clear that as a Christian you must live your public life in a manner worthy of the gospel, and that whatever is pure, lovely and of good report must be celebrated ”“ but also that Jesus is Lord while Caesar isn’t, and that we are commanded to shine like lights in a dark world. There are no short cuts here, no easy answers. Prayer, scripture and complex negotiation are the order of the day.

There is of course a very particular Anglican spin to some of this. Many parts of the older Anglican world, not least here in England itself, have become very used to going with the flow of the culture, on the older assumption that basically England was a Christian country so that the Church would not be compromised if it reflected the local social and cultural mores. That strand of Anglicanism has always been in danger of simply acting as Chaplain to whatever happened to be going on at the time, whether it was blessing bombs and bullets in the first world war or going to tea at Buckingham Palace. Within that world, the Bible has often been quietly truncated. We don’t like the bits about judgment, so we miss them out. We are embarrassed by the bits about sex, so we miss them out too ”“ and then we wonder why, in a world full of hell and sex, people imagine the Bible is irrelevant! The Bible is a kind of spiritual Rorschach test: if you find you’re cutting bits out, or adding bits in, it may be a sign that you’re capitulating to cultural pressure. Equally, of course, there are many parts of the Anglican world where nothing but confrontation has been possible for a long time, and there people may have to learn the difficult lesson that actually the world is still charged with the grandeur of God, and that the biblical Christian must learn to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, no matter who they are, what they believe or how they behave. It is crucial to our vocation, and to our particular vocation granted our particular histories, that we rediscover the art, which itself is rooted in scripture, of discriminating (as Paul says) between things that differ, and of affirming what can and must be affirmed and opposing what can and must be opposed. Those of us who are involved in the business of politics and government know that this is a difficult and often thankless task, but it must be undertaken.

Read it all.

Read it carefully and read it all.

“I know that many of you are worried, some deeply worried, by the threat of fragmentation at the heart of the Anglican Communion,” the cardinal said. “We are profoundly in solidarity with you.

“Our great desire is that the Anglican Communion be united, rooted in this historical faith, which our dialogue and relationships, over the course of four decades, have brought us to believe is widely shared.”

Cardinal Kasper directly addressed the two issues that are causing conflict within the Anglican Communion, and which brought some leaders to boycott the Lambeth Conference altogether: the ordination of homosexuals and the blessing of same-sex marriages, and the ordination of women.

He assured his listeners that the Catholic Church believes its position on both issues is deeply rooted in sacred Scripture.

“In light of the tensions of past years in regard [to questions on human sexuality], a clear declaration from the Anglican Communion would offer us greater possibilities to provide a common testimony on human sexuality and matrimony, a testimony painfully necessary for the world of today,” Cardinal Kasper suggested.

Read it all.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The 14th Lambeth Conference seems to have begun shifting its attention, as of the Archbishop’s Second Presidential Address last night. We are increasingly focused on the question of what this Conference will say to the churches of the Communion, to the wider ecumenical community, and to the world at large.

Perhaps that in itself is a problem! Perhaps the attempt to address all of these constituencies simultaneously is a mistake.

As of this point, we have seen two preliminary drafts of a Statement from the Conference. The first was in the form of “bullet points” derived from the Indaba group discussions. The second, distributed today, is already a thirteen page single-spaced document that reflects, almost like the minutes of a much-too- long-meeting, virtually everything we have discussed and done – even with four more days to go!

If that is what we end up issuing, of course, no one will read it! My plea to those on the “Reflections Committee” today was: give us a one page Statement that the whole world will read!

We have had what (I think) have been a couple of downright silly exercises! Today, for instance, in our Indaba groups we were each asked to prepare a sermon outline of any Biblical passage of our choosing, no longer than 300 words in length. Several people in our group were then asked to summarize orally (no longer than three minutes) what their sermon would be about, and how they would present it. So far so good.

Then we were asked to identify the “particularly Anglican” elements of approach, style and content!

As if there is any such thing!

In our Bible Study today, on John 11:1-44 (“I am the resurrection and the life”) we were asked almost the identical question: “Having heard each other’s interpretations of this text, what would we as a group say is Anglican about these interpretations?” (Our group unanimously agreed this was the “dumbest” question in the prepared materials, so far.)

Nevertheless, I think that for nearly everyone the best part of the Conference has been, precisely, the Bible Studies. The groups of eight have gotten to know each other, have learned from each other, have shared a bit about our families, ministries, very different social and cultural situations, prayed with and for each other. For instance, one of the Bishops in my group, from North India, is Vinod Malaviya, from the Diocese of Gujarat, where the series of bombings took place yesterday. Twenty-five people killed and 175 injured. It was incredibly poignant and moving to have him lead our noon-day prayers today.

This afternoon we had another meeting of the Communion Partners Bishops, and one of the concerns we plan to share in the closing days of the Conference is the absolute necessity of having ratification of the Anglican Covenant take place at the DIOCESAN level, and not (just) the Provincial level.

We plan to remind our fellow Bishops of what the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote to me last October:

“I would repeat what I’ve said several times before – that any diocese compliant with Windsor remains clearly in communion with Canterbury and the mainstream of the Communion, whatever may be the longer-term result for others in TEC. The organ of union with the wider Church is the bishop and the diocese rather than the Provincial structure as such….

“I should feel a great deal happier, I must say, if those who are most eloquent for a traditionalist view in the US showed a fuller understanding of the need to regard the bishop and the diocese as the primary locus of ecclesial identity rather than the abstract reality of the ‘national church.'”

Please pray for those who are charged with trying to pull together the strands of the Conference and make a coherent Statement regarding it. And pray that all of us will be sensitive to the promptings of the Holy Spirit as we move into the final phase of our time together.

With warmest regards to all of you,

–(The Right Rev.) John W. Howe is Bishop of Central Florida

Acknowledging that varying and often-clashing biblical interpretations about homosexuality have led to deep divisions, the world’s Anglican bishops on Wednesday began to look deeply at how they use the Bible in the hope of finding “a high common ground” on the way they approach scriptures.

Some people “find it hard to understand why there’s so much division in the Anglican Communion,” said Archbishop Phillip Aspinall, primate of the Anglican Church of Australia and official spokesperson of the conference. “A lot of it has to do with the Bible.”

It was the first time that Anglican bishops discussed the question of “how do we use the Bible?” said Archbishop David Moxon, co-presiding bishop in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, and bishop of Waikato.

He said that the bishops’ discussions around the theme “Living Under Scripture: The Bishop and the Bible in Mission” tried to seek responses around such questions as “What is (the Bible’s) value to us? Where does consensus lie?” He said that discussions would continue in the months ahead.

Read it all.

Tomorrow is sex day here at Canterbury, so tonight I’m missing any number of receptions being hosted by groups wanting to get the last word to bishops in advance. Meanwhile the work on the “conference document”, whatever that will turn out to be, continues apace; the listeners draft texts which we then meet each afternoon to critique. Today’s session was remarkable only for the fact that hardly any USA bishops spoke, otherwise we made the usual range of strengthening and clarifying amendments that 600 articulate adults are always going to be able to provide. We’re being told that a number of people have responded to Rowan’s question last night about what they might offer in generosity to those of an opposing view. There’ll be more discussion on that tomorrow.

Read it all.

I would like to do a little reflecting on [what Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said], to put it in our context and how I heard it. I think we will continue to hear more in it as we share it this week, but this is a near first-impression.

In our work on the “Windsor process” and the development of a possible covenant for the Anglican Communion, much of the attitudes and the work drafted thus far is very legal in its foundation and seems to be based in fear and formed by politics. Whether apologies from TEC have not been heard elsewhere, or whether they have been diminished by someone’s dismissively saying, “They did not really mean it,” or “That’s not enough” (both have been said repeatedly)””for whichever of those reasons, the reaction of a good many is still anger and sometimes hostility. It is understandable, given that we have really upset the Communion, some because our actions go against profound beliefs, and some because the response to those actions has severely impaired our ability to engage in mission partnerships around the world. I have sympathy for both of those reactions. But reactions are feelings and responses are actions and behaviors which, especially in a conflicted situation, need to be helpful for healing and reconciling the body, not causing more harm. The response of many is to want to punish us, to make sure that we have suffered “enough,” and that drives the wish to make a covenant for the Communion that will identify clear behaviors that are acceptable and others that are unacceptable, and clear consequences if anyone transgresses or deviates from the acceptable behaviors.

What I hear in Rabbi Sacks’ address is 1) a profound emphasis on unity based in the “faith covenant”””the many shared sufferings in our past and present; 2) the need to forgive each other in order to redeem the past; 3) the need to respect the dignity of each other so that we can come together to share, to be in relationship, to find our emerging identity in Christ, and to be transformed. On that basis, and only then, will we be able to build a “faith covenant,” full of shared dreams, aspirations and hope in order to make commitments for mission. This is where I come back to what I was writing the other day about a covenant which is about invitation, persistently inviting back to the table those who would isolate themselves or ostracize others.

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Cardinal Kasper told the bishops, “It is a strength of Anglicanism that even in the midst of difficult circumstances, you have sought the views and perspectives of your ecumenical partners, even when you have not always particularly rejoiced in what we have said.”

He said even as the Roman Catholic Church prays that Anglicans will find ways to strengthen their communion the bishops must remember that what is at stake “is nothing other than our faithfulness to Christ himself.”

The Catholic Church is convinced that its teaching that homosexual activity is sinful “is well-founded in the Old and in the New Testament” as well as in the tradition of Christianity, he said.

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The conversation at Lambeth has been focused on Covenant. I am concerned that covenant is how we legislate when we don’t have the desire for constancy and faithfulness. We have decided that prescribing a written remedy is better than finding a way to be constant in our love and care for one another. We maybe haven’t fed each other enough, we haven’t depended upon each other enough, we haven’t wanted the companionship enough to evoke constancy and faithfulness. Have we spent enough time listening to each other, both in demands and in purring, in light and in darkness? Have we held each other close as the world closed in around us? Constancy and faithfulness don’t need a covenant, they need a loving desire for the presence of others. I want this day to be imbued with the desire for the companionship of others – no matter how we disagree. I pray that God will infuse me with love so deep that I want to follow other bishops and Anglicans around, sit in their office and enjoy their presence in my life. I pray that we all might have a persistent, insistent love for one another, so that we might move beyond legislation to community. Beyond contract to family. Jesus reminds us that love -constancy and faithfulness- are the signs of our discipleship, not a covenant. Just love. “I give you a new commandment that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
(John 13:34-35) May love take hold where contract cannot.

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Bishop K.D. Daniel of East Kerala in the Church of South India (United) never wavered in his determination to the Lambeth Conference, but that does not mean he is happy with the situation in the Anglican Communion.

“The problem we are basically facing is a problem of America,” he said. “They want to push their problems on to other nations.”

Bishop Daniel was one of 16 nominated to serve indaba group listeners on July 25. This is the group that will prepare the conference “Reflections” paper.

Issues of human sexuality do not predominate in East Kerala, said Bishop Daniel. His diocese is about 360 miles long, but averages less than 50 miles in width. It was created about 25 years ago by dividing the Indian state of Kerala in half. Western Kerala has a prosperous and growing service-sector economy, including tourism, public administration, banking and finance, transportation, and communications. East Kerala is much less developed with large tropical rain forests and agriculture as the primary source of employment. Unemployment is high in East Kerala, Bishop Daniel said.

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The moral and spiritual authority of Rowan is obvious. When people criticise him for lack of leadership, they need to realise what he is doing here. In the light of the Scriptures and faithful to Christian history he seeks to enable Christians of diverse backgrounds and perspectives to recognise the call of Christ to a ministry of reconciliation for the sake of the world. He refuses to let us off the hook by allowing us to indulge in politics without being reminded of the challenging and costly vocation to carry a cross and lay down our life (and our rights). His call to different wings of the Church to offer a ‘generous love’ to those on other sides is not the appeal of a weak man. In true Christian – and cruciform – style, he stands between people and, arms outstretched – holds them together even though in doing so he is pulled apart. To call this ‘weak leadership’ is to call the Cross a pointless gesture.

Rowan did something risky but powerful. He tried to articulate – give voice to – the thinking and feelings of people on different sides of our current divides. I think he demonstrated his real ability to understand and express what different people are thinking and saying. He gave generous expression to their point of view and enabled us to see what it feels like to think the way ‘the other’ does. In so doing, he also exposed the dark sides of passionately felt theological and ecclesiological positions. This was a brutally honest expression.

The problem might be, however, that the only people to hear it might be those who are able to hear anyway. Those who are already entrenched in their prejudiced positions will probably prove unable to hear and respond to Rowan’s call for the generosity commanded by Jesus. In fact, he said: ‘We can only do this [sacrifice for the sake of others] if we are first captured by the true centre – the generosity of God [who laid down his life for us in the first place].’ His statement that ‘we seem to be threatening death to each other, not offering life’ is simply and unarguably true. ‘We need to speak life to each other’, he said – and the need is obvious.

The questions remain….

Read it all (the entry timestamp is Wednesday 30 July 2008 – 12:01am).

Here is some of the thought of Bishop Mouneer Anis of Eygpt, Primate of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East:

I find that many of our North American friends blame us and criticise us for bringing in the issues of sexuality and homosexuality but in fact they are the ones who are bringing these issues in. Here at Lambeth, you come across many advertisements for events organised by gay and Lesbian activists which are sponsored by the North American Church. If you visit the marketplace at the conference, you will notice that almost half the events promoted on the noticeboard promote homosexuality and are sponsored by the North Americans. And in the end, we, the people who remain loyal to the original teaching of the Anglican Communion, which we received from the Apostles, are blamed. They say that we talk a lot about sexuality and that we need to talk more about poverty, about AIDs, and injustice. They are the ones who are bringing sexuality into this conference. It’s not us. We want to talk about the heart of the issues which divide us, not only sexuality. That is just a symptom of a deeper problem.

They talk about the slavery and say that 200 years ago Christians were opposed to the freedom of slaves and they compare us to those Christians for our attitude to gay and lesbian practises. To be honest, I think this is inviting us to another kind of slavery, slavery of the flesh, to go and do whatever our lusts dictate. Sometimes, I think that maybe because of the pressure in Western culture to push the practise of homosexuality, our friends in the West are pushing these issues. But, on the other hand, I see many who live in the West and still want to preserve the faith and the tradition of the Church. Should we allow culture to pressure the Church or should the Church be distinctive, light and salt to the world? Cardinal Ivan Dias said that we didn’t bring the Gospel to the culture we could end up suffering from spiritual Alzheimers.”

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PH: What are your personal thoughts on the Conference?

BKC: There are two words to convey my experience of Lambeth: privilege and pain. The longer I’m here the greater the sense of privilege. This is my first Lambeth Conference, so I have nothing to compare it to ”“ some bishops I’ve spoken to have three Lambeths under their belts!

I do feel privileged to meet with men and women of faith whose stories and experiences are humbling. The contexts of people’s ministries are so varied. One bishop from Sudan has had to literally run for his life once and has been attacked several times. Another bishop is surviving on an income of just $30 per month. The story from Ethiopia and Somalia is that six million people are seriously hungry, close to starving, and this seems likely to rise to 15 million by the end of the year. The impact of these personal testimonies is deep. I do have a strong sense of the amazing family which is the Anglican Communion. It is made up of a huge variety of people working in different contexts, engaged in mission and trying to honour the Lord.

As for the pain, I’m conscious of the profound pain that many bishops are ”“ so evidently ”“ not here. They represent a majority of Anglicans. We are praying for and remembering them every day. I also find it painful that there is division among us. I would say that we are having frank, honest and robust exchanges of views. At this time we face a huge challenge. Our listening must be genuine with an end purpose. There is an understanding of various viewpoints but many I have listened to are convinced that we must move towards some kind of resolution. It is increasingly clear that at the heart of the tension there are those who see developments on human sexuality as that ”“ development, while others see it as a departure from what has been accepted for two thousand years. There is uncertainty about the future. For me it is a deeply painful to see the church I love experiencing such a foundational fissure. The heart of Anglicanism is experiencing a ”˜cardiac arrest’!

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There is another subtle subtext to this message. The Archbishop has implicitly described the dispute as a North vs South dispute. The imaginary conversation sounds like a conversation between TEC and the African churches. There is an implication that Africans and others in the global South are in a pre-critical cultural context and that those in the global North are dealing with the complexity of a post-critical situation with a more enlightened and nuanced understanding of homosexuality. This is inaccurate and an oversimplification. Among other things it misses the massive disagreement and division in North America and fails to register the sophistication of the scientific and theological objections to the homosexual agenda in the church that cuts across the global North-South divide. The Archbishop’s statement sadly implies that all who resist the homosexual agenda in the church have not engaged seriously the cultural and scientific issues.

A final disappointment is the Archbishop’s failure to grasp the degree to which in North America and among North Americans the dispute is far deeper than over the proper response to homosexuality. The uniqueness and divinity of Christ are very much at play in our setting. The Archbishop is right that it is easy to judge too sweepingly and too harshly but his statement does not really register the worry that many traditionalists have in North America about fidelity to basic Christian doctrine on the part of the leaders of their churches. It is not the case that traditionalists are making judgments on the basis of the homosexual question alone. Statements by key leaders in the Episcopal Church contradict the most basic teachings of the faith including the divinity and resurrection of Jesus Christ. What is even more worrying is the use of the traditional language of faith with a very different intention and meaning by many of our leaders. I think traditionalists in North America would like this concern to be truly heard by the Archbishop and the Lambeth meeting and not implicitly dismissed as prejudiced or over-reaction.

Read it all.

The Bishop of Alabama, the Rt Revd Henry Parsley, described the Continuation Group’s suggestion of a pastoral forum or “holding bay” for disaffected groups within the Communion, as “interesting”.

“My sense is it would bring people together face to face to talk about these things, I think that will be a tremendous step forward so we’re not sending communiqués across the ocean, so we don’t really talk about things in person.

“Secondly I think it’s all about forgiveness, we’ve all heard each other in some ways and we need to move forward and heal.

“I’ve great hope for this Communion, I spoke in the hearing on the third session on the Continuation Group’s proposals, and spoke of the formula truth plus forgiveness equals reconciliation, and that’s true and is Christ’s message. Not that it’s easy but I’ve hope.”

Read it all.

Archbishop Williams also reiterated his support for an Anglican Covenant “that recognizes the need to grow towards each other (and also recognizes that not all may choose that way),” saying he saw no other way forward “that would avoid further disintegration” of the Anglican Communion, that has been at odds over the place of homosexuals in the life of the church.

He again underscored his proposal for a council saying the Communion needs “a bit more of a structure in our international affairs to be able to give clear guidance on what would and would not be a grave and lasting divisive course of action by a local church.” He said that such a body would be useful not just for addressing the issue of sexual ethics, but other differences.

“It could just as well be pressure for a new baptismal formula or the abandonment of formal reference to the Nicene Creed in a local church’s formulations; it could be a degree of variance in sacramental practice ”“ about the elements of the eucharist or lay presidency; it could be the regular incorporation into liturgy of non-scriptural or even non-Christian material,” he said.

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This Conference is a wonderful venue and program for each of the bishops and spouses to draw nearer to God and to our neighbor. We are attempting to move along those lines that bring us closer to God and to each other as we worship and pray together; study the Scriptures and exchange viewpoints and experiences from our different contexts in Bible studies, Indaba groups and various programs.

This is by no means easy. There are serious disagreements among us. There is frustration with aspects of the Indaba group process. There are moments of dismay and discouragement. But we are here for God and for one another and, by God’s grace, we shall continue to listen to God and to each other, for the sake of Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.

—Bishop George Councell of New Jersey in one of his thoughts on the current Lambeth Conference

That it is advisable that a consultative body should be formed to which resort may be had, if desired, by the national Churches, provinces, and extra-provincial dioceses of the Anglican Communion either for information or for advice, and that the Archbishop of Canterbury be requested to take such steps as he may think most desirable for the creation of this consultative body.

–Resolution 5 of the Lambeth Conference of 1897