Diocese of Rhode Island Bishop Geralyn Wolf said July 17 that “for those who like to be taken into a vision and work into that vision,” the retreat’s first day was “thrilling.”

“For those who like absolute answers and wish him to address the issues in the Communion, it was probably a disappointment,” she added.

Many of the bishops interviewed recalled the experience of singing and praying with 650 bishops in the historic space of Canterbury Cathedral, which has been the site for Christian worship and pilgrimage for about 1,400 years. Archbishop Phillip Aspinall of Brisbane, the primate of Australia, said the singing was “gentle and wonderful.”

“That’s an image to take forward into the conference,” he said during an interview July 19. “The harmonies we’ve experienced in worship”¦could well emerge in other ways.”

Aspinall added that he sensed “a strong desire to hang in together and remain in relationship as we try to discern the truth together.”

Williams challenged the bishops July 18 to seek out another bishop who made them fearful or anxious and ask that bishop to pray for them. Bishop Assistant Sergio Carranza of Los Angeles said he sought out African bishops.

Read it all.

From yours truly from here:

How then will any move forward toward reconciliation be possible? By taking the specific requests and language of the Windsor Report seriously and responding clearly and honestly, by saying as a province yes we will sacrifice and do these things or no we will not.

Very simply, we need to say that what we did was wrong in the sense the Windsor Report intends. The Anglican Communion has a mind on this issue. There is such a thing as Anglican teaching and practice in the area of human sexuality, namely the language of Lambeth 1998 Resolution 1.10. We went against this mind and did something which the large majority of the Anglican Communion believes is a departure from apostolic teaching and practice. We did it, despite the fact that we were repeatedly warned not to do so. As a result, we have torn the Anglican Communion at its deepest level.

We therefore need to say more than that we are sorry others are hurt by what we have done, we need to say that a life of interdependence in the communion matters to us and we are sorry that we went against the mind of the whole church in an area which we believe the whole church should decide on. It is what we have done and the consequences of what we have done which are it issue.

Next, we need to undertake the two specific requests to us with utmost seriousness. First, a moratorium needs to be placed on the election or consecration to the episcopate of any person living in a non-celibate same-gender relationship until and unless a new consensus emerges. Second, we need to place a moratorium on the blessing of non-celibate same-sex relationships in the same time frame.
All three of these requests””the statement of regret and the two moratoria–can be found in the language of the Windsor report.

This raises numerous questions such as, since the Episcopal Church didn’t do these things why are her bishops present at Lambeth? In particular, why are the many diocesan bishops who are in dioceses allowing for same sex blessings present since they are at present contradicting the mind and practice of the Communion? How can the Archbishop of Canterbury call bishops to mutual accountability when he has not modeled it himself in who is actually present at this Lambeth Conference?–KSH

Lambeth Conference originally included an Anglican Congress that would have drawn lay and ordained Anglicans [not just bishops] from across the world to meet and learn together. Those plans were changed but Lambeth still draws many people””some coming as volunteers, others as visitors. Integrity USA is delighted that Thinking Anglicans and Inclusive Church have joined forces to offer a program “Alongside Lambeth” for those who are not participating in the bishop’s conference.

Each morning at 11am there will be a brief devotional time near the Marketplace Café, followed by Bible studies in small groups. Many of the Bible studies will come from “Signs on the Way”””which focuses on St John’s Gospel and complements the Bible studies in which the bishops and their spouses will take part during the Lambeth Conference. This has been prepared by the Lambeth Planning Team as a way for Anglicans to be present in spirit with the bishops.

Read it all.

This weekend the talking starts in earnest at the Lambeth Conference, the global meeting of the Anglican church that takes place once every ten years.

This year’s event is being overshadowed by fears of a split in the church – between liberals who support the ordination of openly gay bishops and clergy, and more traditionalist leaders who say that homosexuality is fundamentally a sin.

Ed Butler examines the theological basis for the rift in the Anglican Communion.

Listen to it all (about 9 minutes).

The bishops are already involved in highly secretive meetings within Canterbury Cathedral, but yesterday The Independent spoke to a group which said “a new Pentecost” was emerging as fears of a damaging schism faded. Other sources confirmed that what was perceived as a slightly more conservative line being taken by Dr Williams with regards to women bishops and sexuality, was finding favour.

The Archbishop has made it clear to the gathering ”“ which will continue at Canterbury for the next two weeks ”“ that while he is listening to the concerns of all, he is keen to address other issues facing churches and communities around the globe.

Sources say he wants to focus the conference on issues such as the plight of persecuted minorities in Sudan.

Last night that approach appeared to be finding favour with bishops from Africa who have not joined a boycott.

Read it all.

The fourth address began by quoting an early Christian theologian who said, a single Christian is no Christian. Our need as bishops is to be in council with other bishops. We’re called to live in community and to live in communion.

The very challenging suggestion the archbishop made was to identify one other bishop about whom one feels nervous, and ask that person to pray with you. It was a very powerful challenge to us to work to restore wounded communion.

He also said the Gospel is only truthfully spread by those who are in communion.

This has been a spiritual feast and I think the right and proper grounding for the weeks ahead.

Read it all.

Ed Salmon, the former bishop of South Carolina who is either retired or on sabbatical, depending on which bit of the Church is doing the talking, was invited to the Lambeth Conference. He is 75 and he says he is retired. Nevertheless, he was delighted to be asked to come to Lambeth. The invites were sent out before he retired and he assumed this was because of the grey area surrounding his precise status at present. He booked his flights, hotels and so on. Just one week before he was due to come, he was told he wasn’t invited after all. So he came anyway and I met him in the little flat in Canterbury where Anglican Mainstream has its hq. He and Gene Robinson, both uninvited bishops at the conference, are both here still, preaching God’s word on the fringes.

Read it all and watch the whole video interview with Bishop Edward Salmon.

How deep is the ocean? How deep is this divide that we must confront in our church?

Last evening one of the bishop’s wives I have contact with expressed regret about her Bible Study group. The wife from another province, known for its approval of and promotion of same-sex blessings, ordinations and consecrations, referred to Jesus as she. The wife said, “I asked Jesus what she thought about it and she said”¦”¦”

The bishop’s wife I know is a devout person with an active prayer life and a great ministry and now has serious doubt about continuing in this assigned group.

How deep is the ocean? How deep is this divide that we must confront in our church?

This afternoon, we spoke with a bishop’s wife from Australia. When asked where she was from, she said, “between Sydney and Melbourne.”

Fr. Wetzel asked if she was more inclined towards Sydney or Melbourne spiritually, her reply was a sharp rebuke against Sydney as being some kind of fundamentalists who want to complete the Reformation. She has nothing to do with anyone from Sydney. It was a final and pointed dismissal.

How deep is the ocean? How deep is this divide that we must confront in our church?

Granted, the ocean is not very deep in some isolated locations. But, I now understand this divide in our Church to be world-wide. This is not an Episcopal Church phenomena. This is a world-wide epidemic, with the potential to be as devastating as the reputed outbreak of the Bird flu.

Read it all.

Last month, about 280 conservative bishops from Africa, Asia and North America met in Jerusalem and pledged to sideline Williams and the Episcopal Church by creating a powerful new council of archbishops and a new province in the United States. About 200 of the bishops, mainly from Africa, are boycotting Lambeth, saying they won’t meet with their liberal colleagues.

But this year’s Lambeth Conference has been designed to discourage resolutions that would discipline the United States and Canada. Small group discussions and a “mind of the communion” document at the conference’s conclusion Aug. 3 will replace plenary sessions and parliamentary debate.

The Rev. John Peterson, former general secretary of the Anglican Communion, who helped plan the 1998 Lambeth Conference, said a conference without resolutions “has been the desire of every archbishop of Canterbury, ever.”

But that desire has rarely been fulfilled, Peterson said.

Read it all

I first attended an Episcopal Church a little over 30 years ago. I joined the Episcopal Church 22 years ago, and I was ordained 19 years ago. Looking at the developments that have occurred over this period, someone might draw the analogy that I was a newly commissioned officer who sailed out in a fast speedboat to catch my ship that had already left port; and I took my place as a crew member on the Titanic just moments before it hit the iceberg….

Certainly, the Episcopal Church has been in a state of declining membership and increasing departures from historic, biblical Christianity for virtually the whole time I have been a member. But I always thought that the Anglican Communion would be the Episcopal Church’s salvation, not that the Episcopal Church would be the cause of the Anglican Communion’s destruction. I really never thought it would come to this.

Read it all.

The long foretold crack up of the Anglican Communion appears to be at hand, as political wrangling and media posturing mark the final days before the start of the 14th Lambeth Conference. Though the programme of the 20 day conference in Canterbury is designed to avoid position statements or divisive outcomes””the agendas brought to the conference by the 600 some bishops present will likely push the Communion farther apart, effectively ending the Anglican project.

While the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams has been able to salvage past pan-Anglican gatherings from collapse, the mechanics of the 2008 Lambeth Conference differ from the smaller Primates Meeting and Anglican Consultative Council gatherings. Dr. Williams’ efforts to keep the Communion flag flying will further be hindered by the absence of between a quarter and a third of the Communion’s bishops.

In past international gatherings, Dr. Williams has been able to avert a crack up by resorting to calls for forbearance to conservative leaders and personal pleas to honor the integrity of the Communion. The absence of most African bishops will change the focus of Dr. Williams’ diplomatic efforts, forcing him to turn his attention to the fissiparous American church and seek its pledge of good behavior.

However many of the American bishops, who will comprise 1 in 5 of the bishops at Lambeth, though Americans are only 1 in 40 of Anglicans worldwide””are not seeking preservation of the status quo but sanction for their church’s normalization of homosexuality and will push for approval for gay bishops and blessings.

Read it all.

[KIM] LAWTON: Many Anglican churches around the world, especially in Africa, Asia and South America, are strongly opposed to gay rights. The last Lambeth Conference in 1998 approved a resolution asserting that homosexual practice is “incompatible with Scripture.” International Anglican leaders had asked the U.S. Episcopal Church to exercise caution in moving ahead with gay issues. But Bacon says as a priest he must minister to the people in his pews.

Rev. [ED] BACON: By the authority of the Holy Spirit, and the state of California I pronounce that you are married.

So we have a responsibility here on the ground, at the grassroots level to move forward with justice, inclusion, love and compassion. And the bishops can talk about it, but we think the bishops will come around and see that we are exercising great pastoral responsibility.

LAWTON: All Saints also actively supports Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church. Robinson’s 2003 consecration in the Diocese of New Hampshire set off a firestorm of controversy across the global Communion. Because of the turmoil, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the spiritual head of the Communion, asked Robinson not to attend the Lambeth meeting. But Robinson has gone to Canterbury anyway to advocate for gay issues outside the official meeting.

Bishop GENE ROBINSON (Diocese of New Hampshire): I go with a greater sense of focus on gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender people around the world. In an odd sort of way, not being included in the official meetings gives me that greater opportunity to focus on that.

Read it all.

The world’s Anglican bishops turned Saturday to the enormous task at the heart of their once-a-decade summit: trying to keep the Anglican family from breaking apart over the Bible and homosexuality.

With its private prayer phase over, the Lambeth Conference gets down to business but is hobbled by a boycott: about one-quarter of the invited bishops — mostly theological conservatives from Africa — are not attending.

The 650 bishops who are here include a mix of traditionalists, moderates and liberals, all with divergent ideas about what Anglicans should believe and how their fellowship should operate.

The conference’s opening public worship is set for Sunday in Canterbury Cathedral. The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the Anglican spiritual leader, has led a three-day closed-door session this week focused on the role of the bishops as seen through the Gospel.

Williams designed the entire gathering without any votes or resolutions. Instead, starting Monday, the bishops will hold daily Bible study and small group discussions. They plan to release their collective “reflections” on the meeting when it ends Aug. 3.

Read it all.

And behind the scenes the Archbishop – who believes that God takes care of the results only if His people put in the footwork – is engineering a daring and complex plan. Canon lawyers are working on a canon law “blueprint”, an Anglican version of the Roman Catholic code that would provide a basis for legislative unity. It is likely to become a fifth “instrument of communion” to bind the Church, adding to the four that exist – the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council and the primates.

Dr Williams writes in the foreword of The Principles of Canon Law, which sets out the basis of the blueprint handed to bishops at the conference, that it will not solve the communion’s problems, but is a “unique resource for thinking more carefully about the sort of unity and coherence we should aspire to in our fellowship of churches”.

Moderate conservatives are also drawing up plans to allow overseas primates to function in the Episcopal Church of the USA as pastors for evangelical churches offended by the liberal direction. It is hoped that the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, might agree to this to allow the communion to hold together. She is understood to be “aware” of the discussions.

Read it all.

Check it out.

I finally have my computer up and running! No easy accomplishment! We are settled into our dorm rooms and we each (Mark and I that is) have private bathrooms. We are very fortunate. Actually it all evens out as those who have to share showers and toilets (8 rooms in total) are much closer to the happenings.

For me so far, the experience seems surreal! I am overwhelmed at the nationalties and languages, the customs and costumes. So many from all over…From Africa, India, The Phillipines, Hong Kong, The Middle East, Canada, New Zealand, The Solomon Islands, Brazil, Chile, Dubai….these are just a few whom I have already met in less than 24 hours.

I would say that there is an air of apprehensive hopefulness, that is to say many seem patently aware of the importance of this meeting of the Anglican Communion and the far reaching effect it may have on our common future.

On a lighter note I walked to the town of Canterbury today with some new Bishop wife friends. We looked around the shops then had a lovely Devon Cream Tea (approx. 100,000 calories!). Tonight The Archbishop of Canterbury’s wife, Dr.Jane Williams, is launching her new book! It should be fun…

That’s all the time I have for now. I think of “all y’all” often and am unspeakably grateful to be a part of our great diocese. I am equally grateful for your love and prayers.

Yours in Christ,

Allison

AND SO it begins. The 2008 Lambeth Conference starts, appropriately enough, with a three-day retreat in Canterbury, before the big opening service in the cathedral on Sunday morning. On the assumption that the bishops who registered (and have been paid for) have actually turned up, the organisers ought to be quietly pleased. They have collected together well over the quorum needed to claim still to be the voice of the episcopate of the Anglican Communion.

A key constituency, though, is the conservative one. The loss of so many Nigerians, Ugandans, and Rwandans is critical. Given that the Lambeth Conference is not a church council with the authority to legislate for the Communion, one of its most important functions is to enable bishops to inform themselves of other models of the Church. The gay debate of the past five years has suffered from too much niche internet activity, whereby each side has logged on merely to those sites with which they agree. As a consequence, the personal encounters that would formerly have taken place through letters or telephone conversations have been lacking. This has made a face-to-face meeting all the more desirable.

Read it all.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has expressed optimism about the Lambeth Conference saying that the three-day retreat for Anglican bishops that began on July 16, at the historic Canterbury Cathedral had been “a great start.”

Archbishop Williams made the remark during a very brief interview with the Anglican Journal at the reception last night for the book launch of Marriage, Mitres and Myself, authored by his wife, Jane, with contributions from other bishops’ spouses.

More than 600 bishops have been divided into Bible Study groups as part of the retreat and Canterbury Cathedral, which attracts thousands of pilgrims and tourists worldwide, has been closed to visitors during the three-day retreat to accommodate them.

Read the whole article.

The Archbishop of Canterbury will be told this week to stop conservative clergy leaving their national churches and becoming bishops in other countries.

Dr Rowan Williams is to be lobbied by liberals who are dominating the ten-yearly Lambeth Conference, because more than 200 traditionalist bishops have boycotted the gathering as a result of divisions on gay clergy and women bishops.

He will be told that the process of conservative American clergy opting out of their national body and becoming bishops in African and South American churches goes against tradition and must be stopped.

Dr Williams will also be urged to prevent orthodox Anglicans, who believe the Bible teaches that homosexuality is wrong, from setting up a new province in North America to rival the Episcopal Church of the USA, which triggered the current crisis by electing the first openly gay bishop in the worldwide Communion.

Read it all. So, let us get this straight. None of these transfers to other Provinces in the Anglican Communion would be occurring if the Episcopal Church had not done in 2003 what the Anglican Communion in many different ways asked the Episcopal Church not to do. And, of course, what they did was against tradition.

Also, during the 2003 debate, any outside urging or attempted persusasion, or, even more strongly, intervention by Anglican authorities was seen to be an inappropriate transgression of provincial “autonomy.”

Now, however, that something is happening that the Episcopal Church leadership does not like, what is said leadership doing? Appealing to tradition, and asking for outside influence and intervention from Anglican Communion authorities. Got it? Pot, please meet kettle–KSH.

Archbishop of the Province of the West Indies and Diocesan Bishop of The Bahamas, Drexel Gomez, has left The Bahamas to attend the 2008 Lambeth Conference, a once-a-decade summit of the world’s Anglican bishops which, will be a tense, closely watched family reunion in Canterbury, England.

During the conference, which got underway on Wednesday, July 16 with sessions through Sunday, August 3, the Anglican church’s future as it relates to homosexuality will be discussed.

The Anglican Communion has been splintering since 2003, when the Episcopal Church consecrated the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

However, to forestall conflict, the organizers of this year’s Lambeth Conference have planned for no resolutions and no votes. Instead, the bishops will meet in small groups, on the theory that they will overcome their divisions by building personal relationships.

The program at the Lambeth Conference has seen the topic moved off Robinson and toward repairing the frayed relationships among bishops. They will spend their days in small group Bible study and discussions on evangelism and the humanitarian work of Anglicans worldwide. Sexuality is the main topic on just one day of the summit.

No resolutions will, reportedly, be adopted as they were at Lambeth a decade ago, when bishops voted that gay relationships were incompatible with Scripture. Instead, the conference will issue “reflections” by the meeting’s end.

Read it all.

“I’m told by people in Africa that you don’t just do indaba groups for two hours, you stick with it for days, and we’ve got two hours each day on a different topic, and with 40 people in a group, two hours, how much is that? You do the maths.”

–The Rt. Rev. Dr. Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, in this morning’s Church of England Newspaper

John Chane charges the traditionalists with the crime of certainty. This is a commonplace. It is a corollary of the reigning intellectual culture among the intellectual elites of the West. It is a consequence of the dogmas of post-modernism. It is based on the conviction that there is very little that can be known with certainty, perhaps just a very few “facts” of science, perhaps not even them. The dogma at work here is the ironic post-modern dogma of the certainty of uncertainty. Consequently according to this post-modern dogma, to claim certainty in the area of beliefs and values is immoral and especially so given the huge variety of religious and philosophical options. The high dudgeon of the well educated university grad schooled in the dogmas of post-modernism is reserved for anyone who has the audacity to claim certainty in the area of religion, morals and beliefs. This is seen by people such as John Chane as an example of immorality and trying to force your beliefs on others. People who are morally and religiously certain create alarm. They are in Bishop Chane’s words, dangerous.

This protest against certainty claims the moral high ground and sounds on the surface as though it is based on a generous tolerance. This supposed moral protest in the name of tolerance needs to be unmasked as exactly the opposite, the dismissive and marginalizing rhetoric of the powerful who seek to protect their own agenda from critique on the grounds of any transcendent authority. It is precisely an attempt to force your beliefs on others before any argument is engaged by virtue of the way in which the rules of discussion are established. It is saying, in effect, ” before we talk you must agree that your beliefs and values are the sort of thing that I say they are and I say they can never be more than one opinion among others. If we are to talk, you must give up all your truth claims before you come to the table. With regard to the rules of the table, I will be the final referee.”

Read it all.

Dr Williams is careful to convey that he takes the concerns of those who attended GAFCON seriously. Our conversation is peppered with references to these “serious concerns”; but GAFCON’s Jerusalem Declaration, and its inherent attack on his authority, is clearly a significant source of his frustration.

And it may be this emotion that leads him to dwell on the potential for division within the GAFCON movement. “It is not as if it is a single-issue thing. There are motivations and perspectives even there, which pull in slightly different directions, and, I think, depend on different visions in the Church.

“Someone like the Archbishop of Sydney, whom I greatly respect as a theologian, has a very clearly worked out theology of the Church, which is much more federal and locally independent. I am not sure that would be exactly the theology you would find in some of the traditionalist American bishops. I will watch to see how some of the theological discussions evolve.”

He insists that, despite the Jerusalem Declaration, the Anglican Communion will still continue in some form, albeit weakened. “The kind of fellowship we will have may be different, less immediate. That is hard. That is a loss, and there will always be a sense of loss and not feeling all right. But the reality is: we are where we are. We may be less obviously at one for a few years, but that doesn’t let us off the obligation to keep listening to each other.,,,”

Read it all.

There are times when you’re not in the mood to see people – you’re having a fat day, you’re exhausted, upset or simply antisocial – but you have to.

However difficult it may be to drag your sorry self away from the house there are always more advantages to going out than staying in. If only someone had told the Gafcon bishops this.

At the Lambeth conference, few are bemoaning the absence of traditionalist Africans – except journalists scuttling around to make bricks out of hay – and the Americans are left calling the shots and, boy, are they doing it with gusto.

Not content with bringing a battalion of pro-gay lobbyists to the sprawling University of Kent campus, the efficient US episcopal machine is also churning out daily – informal – briefings on what the mood is like and what is being said by whom. Think of it as a bishop a day keeps the schism away.

They are also blogging as if their lives depended on it. It’s great for gossip-starved media, but bad news for organisers who were praying for a non-eventful event.

Read it all. She is right, and it is a big strategic mistake. At a time in the world when America’s leadership is highly questioned and in many places resented, at a time in the Anglican Communion when American unilateralism has caused unprecedented damage to their church family, TEC’s leaders are taking exactly the opposite approach than they should be–KSH.

In effect the Pope, far from holding open his door to welcome the malcontents, has told them to sort themselves out and make peace with their fellows, male and female. To show he means business, he has dispatched no fewer than three cardinals to convey his message to this week’s Lambeth Conference of 600 Anglican bishops at the University of Kent.

Pope Benedict and Archbishop Williams of Canterbury get on well. Both are theologians. This is a big plus. But the odds remain against Anglican peace; for the question is not whether the loose worldwide federation of 38 provinces will split: the core issue is how it is to handle the split which has already occurred.

As long ago as 2005, when the Primates worldwide met near Newry, Co Down, 19 ”” more than half of those present ”” refused to attend the Communion service because North American Episcopalian liberal clergy were present. It may be brutal to say it, but the current decennial gathering in Kent is a bit of a sham; for it no longer can be said fully to represent the Anglican Communion.

More than 200 of its bishops are not there ”” because they insist upon staying away. The largest body of absentees are those of the conservative Afro-Asian grouping who call themselves the Global South. Its main component is the powerful Anglican Church of Nigeria, led by Archbishop Peter Akinola.

Read it all.

There is also a family reunion aspect to this Lambeth Conference. While most of the Episcopal Church bishops have not attended the Lambeth Conference before, we are connecting with others, including many bishops from around the world who we know in other contexts. In my case, I am connecting with people I met in Spain last summer, including those who are not facing the issues as I am, and I am delighted. There is joy in the reunion.

We then had the retreat in the Canterbury Cathedral. I don’t think the Lambeth Conference has ever been started with a retreat. There are two aspects:

We begin in prayer and that gets spiritual priorities straight. Episcopal ministry ought to be grounded in prayer.

The second important thing is that it draws on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s greatest strength, which is spirituality.

Posted in * Anglican - Episcopal, Episcopal Church (TEC), Lambeth 2008, TEC Bishops

wo absentees were public news today, Bishop John David Schofield was technically disinvited though the language used in relation to this skates over this fact. Bishop Ed Salmon formerly of South Carolina who had made all his bookings and reservations prior to the second election of Bishop Mark Lawrence heard that he was no longer invited well after he had made non-refundable reservations. He is attending as press.

Moreover, a bishop from Canada has said freely that once Lambeth is over the Canadian church will be moving forward apace with same-sex blessings etc. This gives substance to the observation that there is denial in what looks to be a potentially schizophrenic conference. Everyone knows that the North American lobbies are determined to have their agenda affirmed. However, all the processes of the conference in plenary addresses and small discussion groups mean that there is no place for the whole conference to hear itself think and address this elephant in the room.

The bishops are clearly valuing the focus on worship, Bible study and spiritual input in a historic cathedral setting. This is obviously a very good place to start. But where is it all going?

Read it all.

Read it all.

———
[b]UPDATE:[/b] See Comment 4 below for a more substantive report from Bp. Howe sent to the Central FL clergy listserv and shared with permission.
–elfgirl

If the work of the Lambeth Conference is in fact to strengthen rather than weaken the Communion in the days and years to come, we are firmly convinced that the bishops there assembled must find ways to address in a constructive manner several key issues.

First and foremost among these is the already announced intention of a significant number of bishops within TEC to allow clergy within their dioceses to bless unions between members of the same gender. This course of action is patently contrary to Lambeth resolution 1:10, the Windsor Report, the Dar as Salaam Communiqué, and the positions of all the Instruments of Communion. Further, the dioceses in question are well known, having made their intentions quite public. To ignore what can only be understood as defiance of the mind of the Communion will serve only to increase the jurisdictional battles now being waged. It will also weaken both the credibility and moral authority of the Lambeth Conference of Bishops and the integrity of the Anglican Communion as a whole.

A second issue that requires immediate attention is the vulnerable state of those Anglo Catholic dioceses and parishes in TEC that do not believe that the ordination of women is in accord with catholic tradition….

Read it all.

Read it all.