I have lost count of the number of people who have commiserated with me because I am going to the Lambeth Conference. They either assume it will be an ecclesiastical punch-up or imagine the company of over six hundred bishops must be a foretaste of everlasting punishment.

An overload of episcopal fellowship will be bearable because of the cultural and theological diversity among the bishops, let alone their varied personalities. My real regret is that the diversity will be diminished compared with the last two Lambeth Conferences, because there have been so many refusals of the Archbishops invitation. While I wouldn’t relish any sort of ecclesiastical punch-up, I will be disappointed if we don’t discuss the issues which are currently so divisive. We need to do so in ways less oppressive than some of the plenary sessions last time, but it is difficult to have a debate if some of the main contenders are not represented.

Those bishops who refuse to come stand in a longer tradition than they may realize. Archbishop Longley invited 151 bishops to the first Lambeth Conference in 1867. (He even included all retired bishops: we would need an extra university campus if that was tried again.) In the event 76 bishops turned up, almost exactly half those who were invited. This time the proportion will be a good deal higher.
Bishops will stay away from this year’s Lambeth Conference for the opposite reason given by the original refuseniks. They think the Lambeth Conference has too little authority. They also believe its standing has been fatally weakened by the way in which Resolution 1.10 from the last conference has not been obeyed in some parts of the Anglican Communion. There seems to be less concern over the failure of the Communion to implement and obey many other resolutions over the years. But they ask, not unreasonably, what is the point in passing Resolutions if nothing is resolved? Doesn’t this simply reveal a vacuum of authority at the heart of Anglicanism?

It is intriguing that the Lambeth bishops have, from the beginning, produced a stream of resolutions, reports and pastoral letters. The Colenso affair (the hot topic at the first conference), evolution, birth control, the South India scheme or the ordination of women: there has always been some Communion-breaking issue which has tested episcopal unity and also spawned lengthy pronouncements. The current convulsion over sexuality doesn’t seem at first sight so very different.

But it has introduced a new, if not entirely unprecedented, factor. The Dean of Sydney, the Very Reverend Phillip Jensen, was recently reported as saying that the problem with the Lambeth Conference was the attendance of bishops who had consecrated Bishop Gene Robinson (who has not received an invitation himself). Those who consecrated him, argued Dean Jensen, were ‘false teachers who have acted in a way which makes fellowship with them impossible’. So it seems you cannot even confer, let alone worship, with those whom you believe have led the Church into error.

I am glad the same stance was not taken by the vast majority of English Anglicans when the decision was made to ordain women to the priesthood. The Act of Synod on episcopal ministry, as well as the provisions within the Measure itself, were grounded in a desire on both sides of that issue to remain in fellowship with each other despite profound differences. If things had been different, then I don’t suppose I would even be writing this article. If progress is slow on the ordination of women to the episcopate, it is the desire to remain in fellowship and with as much sacramental unity as possible which makes the task of devising legislation exacting.

Perhaps in these matters we need to renew our acquaintance with the Donatists. The parallels are inexact, though Dean Jensen’s words do carry some echoes of those fourth-century schismatics who thought they were more faithful to the Gospel than anyone else. The origins of the Donatist controversy centred on the consecration of Caecilian as Bishop of Carthage around 311. The claim, especially of bishops in Numidia, was that the consecrators included those who had betrayed the Christian faith in the Diocletian persecution and so were false teachers.

As time went on, the Donatists exploited economic unrest in North Africa, and consequent resentment of Rome as an imperial power and ecclesiastical authority, to add fervour to their cause. More locally, Numidia had no fondness for Carthage. In the current controversies within our own Anglican Communion, resentment of American hegemony and Western cultural imperialism is frequently exploited too.

St Augustine cut the branch on which the Donatists sat by stressing that the unworthiness of the minister did not effect the validity of the sacrament, a theological position so central to Anglicanism that it found its way into the Thirty-Nine Articles. But the long-lasting nature of the Donatist controversy weakened severely the North African Church. The Donatists only disappeared when almost the whole of the North African church was wiped out by Muslim conquest in the seventh century. If parallel it is, it is a grim one.

Back in the 1860s, Archbishop Longley recognized the imperfections of Anglican ecclesiology but placed considerable faith in the determination of this developing worldwide Communion to remain in fellowship. He believed that conferring with one another was a way to unity. In his day, St Augustine challenged the Donatists to public debate about that theological imperative derived from Christ himself – the unity of the Church. They were not responsive. I fear that those who have refused the Archbishop’s invitation to this Lambeth Conference will damage the unity of the church and the mission of Christ in our own time more than they seem to know.

–This article appears in the May 2008 edition of New Directions magazine

Listen to it all (about 17 3/4 minutes).

Before the 2008 Lambeth Conference begins, it’s well worth recalling why the 1998 version proved so controversial. Many readers will remember the pictures on every front page of Richard Kirker, the homosexual activist, being ”˜exorcised’ by Bishop Emmanuel Chukwuma of Nigeria ”” a moment which it seems for many captured the ”˜agony’ and ”˜shame’ of the whole ”˜debacle’.

However there was more than enough shame and blame to go round on all sides. Bishops in 1997 and 1998 in the run-up to the conference were universally agreed that the subject of homosexuality should not dominate proceedings. These comments were reflected in all the regional meetings which were organised as ways of prioritising what should be part of discussions. I spoke to large numbers of bishops around the world before the conference and they were determined that what they saw as largely an American issue should not be forced down their throats.

So what happened? Well, the tone was set by Bishop John Spong who sent out a ”˜White Paper’ to all Anglican bishops worldwide slamming ”˜pre-scientific’ attitudes to homosexuality, and lambasting the leaders of the Communion, reserving particular vitriol for the statement of the Kuala Lumpur ”˜South-to-South’ event. He compounded this with a pre-Lambeth interview with me, in which he kept returning to the theme of how the American Church (so prophetic in its search for social justice) was not going to be dictated to by people who were barely one-step removed from animism. It did not help that he had just released a book ”˜Why Christianity must change or die’, and 12 so-called ”˜Theses’ which ditched the central tenets of Christianity itself.
He was not to play a large part in the subsequent conference himself, but his words caused great hurt and consternation and provoked an inevitable reaction. Then there were the jibes repeated increasingly throughout the Lambeth Conference that African bishops were being ”˜bought’ by chicken dinners laid on by rich American conservatives.

Years, if not centuries, of being patronised by the Europeans and Americans it seemed were coming to a head just at a point where Anglicans in Africa and throughout the developing world were organising and meeting together against a background of extraordinary church growth and new-found confidence.

So is there any truth to allegations that the Africans were somehow ”˜bought’, or manipulated by American conservatives? There’s no more truth in this than in suggesting that their hitherto, relative silence in the communion had been bought by the largely liberal leadership of the US Church in previous times. There is something distasteful (if not racist) about suggesting that the whole class of leadership in particular countries is somehow particularly susceptible to bribery or manipulation. But the question is whether money changed hands?

Of course, it did. Masses of money changed hands. Most of it on the quiet. I heard that bishops were helped with spending money while they were in England. Spouses were bought children’s shoes for when they returned to poverty-stricken situations like Southern Sudan, and many people offered kindnesses to each other throughout the duration of the Lambeth Conference. Such charitable and friendly giving face-to-face should be a private matter. It is true, in addition, that the Bishop of Dallas, Jim Stanton, head of the American Anglican Council at the time, took over a headquarters at the Franciscan Studies Centre on the campus where he aimed to help bishops from the two-thirds world gather in friendship, have access to fax machines, photocopying, phones, meeting rooms and computers. These sorts of facilities could not be offered effectively by the official organisers, and at previous conferences, many bishops were unable to be in contact with dioceses and family back home. Interestingly, rooms at the Franciscan Studies Centre also hosted the special sub-section of the conference devoted to homosexuality, when the official venue proved unsuitable.

So was there any bribery? Clearly not. But did American conservatives help to organise the voices of bishops from the two-thirds world? Undoubtedly so. Was there anything sinister about this? I’ve never thought so.

This sort of effective organisation outside the official structures of the conference is unlikely to happen at this summer’s conference. American conservatives have fragmented into various groupings such as Anglican Mission in America, the Anglican Network, CANA and other acronyms and for the most part are reserving their energies for the so-called GAFCON meeting in Jordan and Israel before Lambeth. However, there will continue to be lobby groups of every description at the Lambeth Conference. The conservatives will be less of a formidable force this time, but under the auspices of the Inclusive Church network, liberal Anglican ”˜lobbyists’ are determined to influence proceedings just as effectively as their counterparts did 10 years ago.

In the wake of growing ”˜green’ awareness, the 2008 Lambeth Conference, even in its current depleted form, may be the last big Anglican jamboree ever. It’s more likely that smaller regional meetings become the norm for the future, especially in the light of the fact that the Archbishop of Canterbury is trying to pare down his flying to a bare minimum. In early May on his visit to Rome for the seventh Building Bridges Seminar and a private audience with the Pope, he travelled more than 1,000 miles by train.

The Times ”˜People’ column (Rowan on the rails, May 1 2008) mischievously suggests that while most of the year will be flight-free for the Archbishop, the result is likely to be greater scrutiny of whether his plans mean that more clerics have to travel by plane to meet him.

–This article appeared in the Church of England Newspaper, May 9, 2008 edition on page 14

What is the Lambeth Conference? It is a once-a-decade gathering of bishops from the worldwide Anglican Communion. Every 10 years, bishops come together, at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, for a time of prayer, Bible study, fellowship and collegiality. Much of our ministry in the church involves work that we share as
bishops, even though we live and work in very different circumstances. It is important to note, however, that the conference is not primarily a legislative body. Each province in the Anglican Communion (the Episcopal Church is one example) has its own canons and sets of rules that govern its common life.

Read it all (pages 1 and 4).

The first bishop married his gay partner in New Hampshire this weekend. The second bishop will be settling into a new house with his wife in a New Jersey suburb, chosen so that he can shuttle more easily between conservative churches opposed to the first one’s theology and lifestyle.

Bishop V. Gene Robinson of the Episcopal Church USA and Bishop Martyn Minns of the Anglican Church of Nigeria are the twin bookends of the current struggle within the worldwide Anglican Communion. Fallen bookends, one might add, insofar as they are the only two Anglican bishops so far to be dis-invited from the Communion’s once-a-decade Lambeth Conference this July by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.

The tall, British-born Minns, 65, got the boot because he led a batch of U.S. Episcopal congregations, including the one where he was church rector, out of Episcopalianism and into the authority of the Anglican archdiocese of Nigeria ”” primarily out of dismay that Episcopalianism had elected the openly-gay Robinson to be the bishop of New Hampshire. And Robinson, 61, a chatty, gray-haired Kentuckian who once said he looked forward to being a “June bride,” was blackballed from Lambeth, (which will convene in Canterbury), because Williams felt that the Episcopal church in the U.S. had made him a bishop in the teeth of advice by the Anglican leadership not to engage in such a divisive move.

So where does that leave the two antagonists this summer? In each case, the present is about family and the near future about religious politicking. Robinson got hitched Saturday to his partner of 20 years, Mark Andrew, at St. Paul’s Episcopal church in Concord, N.H. in a civil union presided over by a justice of the peace, according to the Concord Monitor. In a recent essay he says he regretted the June bride remark, noting that he should have made a more sober statement about the longing of gays and lesbians to celebrate their own “faithful, monogamous, lifelong-intentioned, holy vows,” the kind of sentiment he also expressed in his recent book In the Eye of the Storm: Pulled to the Center by God.

Minns, meanwhile, is spending his weekend in Morristown, N.J, where he moved last month.

Read it all.

Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson was united in a civil union ceremony with longtime partner Mark Andrew yesterday afternoon at St. Paul’s Church in Concord. Attorney Ronna Wise, a justice of the peace, performed the private ceremony before about 120 friends and family.

The day marked the five-year anniversary of the New Hampshire election that, once ratified, made Robinson the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican church.

Robinson had made public his intent to get a civil union but had purposely kept the date and the details quiet. He did so, said spokesman Mike Barwell, out of respect for next month’s worldwide Anglican church conference in England. Although there were undercover police officers at the ceremony, Barwell said, there were no problems or protesters.

Robinson has been excluded from the Lambeth Conference because of the divide his sexuality has caused in the church. But he will make the trip to England and host his own events. Barwell said Robinson didn’t want to inflame the controversy by making his civil union a public event.

Read it all.

There is a technique used by good chefs to make a concentrated red wine sauce: simply take an entire bottle of red wine, and gently simmer it (with, say, some minced shallots, garlic and herbs) over low heat until the 25 ounces of wine have been reduced to about 3 ounces of rich, red sauce. It’s a marvelous sauce marchand de vin (without any butter or fat) to accompany grilled meat—but as any good chef will tell you, how the sauce turns out depends on the wine with which you started.

Episcopal Life, the national news organ of The Episcopal Church, is currently publishing a series of Sunday bulletin inserts that deals with the history of the Lambeth Conference—the decennial gathering of all the active Bishops in the Anglican Communion under the auspices of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Like a sauce marchand de vin, the series has been condensed from a longer series written by the Rev. Christopher L. Webber, the author of Welcome to the Episcopal Church, and Re-Inventing Marriage (as well as others described on his Web site). The parent series, entitled “Unity and Diversity in the Lambeth Conference,” was posted on the now-ended Episcopal Majority site; you can read it in four parts here, here, here and here.

By the time the longer series has been reduced to the bulletin version, what remains is chiefly the pro-American, pro-Episcopal Church bias of its author, but the theme of the longer series—“Unity and Diversity”—has been boiled down (by some anonymous editor at Episcopal Life, I must assume, for reasons shortly to appear) to a single note of “Change—It’s Healthy, Necessary, and Inevitable.” Please do not misinterpret me: there is nothing wrong with bias; we each have our own. The problem I am reacting to is the lack of balance in the resulting condensed product.

Read it all.

Stephen Crittenden: While we have you here, Canon Conger, as well as being one of the senior correspondents for the truly excellent Church of England Newspaper, you have your own very fine blog site on all matters Anglican, and it seems like a good opportunity to catch up on what’s going on in North America in the lead-up to the Lambeth conference. It seems that things are being ramped up to quite a considerable degree in the lead-up to Lambeth. I notice that the church in California is preparing to conduct its first gay marriages, Bishop G. Robinson of New Hampshire who’s the gay bishop at the centre of the whole crisis, has recently announced that he wants to marry. A number of dioceses in Canada seem to be moving in the direction of same sex blessings. It really does look like Lambeth could be a real showdown would you agree? Or is that not how you read the situation?

George Conger: Well the Archbishop of Canterbury is desperate that nothing happen at Lambeth. He wants to prevent any sort of showdown, and so he’s devised a program that minimises any opportunity for collective mass action on particular issues. Using the tool of small groups and face-to-face discussion, a cynic would say that’s the way to prevent real action from taking place. What you’re seeing in the US are people as I say, establishing facts on the ground, going into the conference saying ‘Well this is the situation where I am’, and basically playing a political gamesmanship. ‘This is how far we’re going to go and get what we want, be it same sex blessings, the normalisation of gay clergy, or from the conservative side, we’re going to have parallel churches overseen by African archbishops in the US’, and basically saying, ‘What are you going to do about it?’ It’s a game of brinksmanship right now in the run-up to Lambeth. And there could be an explosion. Neither side is backing away, and for conservatives this is an issue of salvation; that the liberals are teaching a false doctrine, a false Christ; for liberals, the conservatives are blind to the call of justice and the prophetic words of the gospel. There are two religions in one church. There’s no sanction for bad behaviour in the Anglican communion.

Read it all.

Meanwhile, discussions at the Vatican on devising a possible structure for the Traditional Anglican Communion to come into communion with Rome are understood to be nearing completion.

The communion is a breakaway group of 400,000 Anglicans opposed to women’s ordination.

However, during his May 5 meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, [Archbishop Rowan] Williams asked that any potential announcement be delayed until after the Lambeth Conference.

Veteran observers of the Anglicans’ continuing identity crisis are not optimistic that it can be resolved, given the wide gulf that exists between liberal-minded Anglican hierarchies in Western countries and more orthodox bishops in the developing world.

Viscount Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, author of Anglican Orders: Null and Void?, believes that in the absence of a magisterium and under the less-than-decisive leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury, there is “no chance whatsoever that the Lambeth Conference will settle the question of what ”” if anything ”” the Anglican Communion believes.”

Read it all (subscriber only).

Update: The full article may also be found here.

But Bishop John-David Schofield of the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin also will be attending the conference. He has received his Lambeth study materials and has begun familiarizing himself with them, according to the Rev. Canon Bill Gandenberger, canon to the ordinary of the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin.

“Bishop Schofield received and accepted his invitation to Lambeth shortly after the invitations were first issued,” Canon Gandenberger said. “Shortly thereafter he received the study material common to all the bishops.”

Canon Gandenberger said he had no knowledge of any further correspondence from either Archbishop Williams’ office or the Lambeth planning committee.

In a related development, the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin amended its civil complaint against the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin on June 2, adding Merrill Lynch and the “Anglican Diocese Holding Corporation” as defendants.

Read it all.

This event is a conference for bishops and it seems completely right for this topic to kick off this historic event. But I think that this topic also speaks to the Archbishop’s hope to confront what he has identified as a “major ecclesiological issue.” I think that the Archbishop has given up trying to get our bishops to take an independent stand on the future of the moratorium of same sex blessings for instance, and is now moving to “plan B” and turning his attention to encouraging our bishops to understand their “distinctive charism” as bishops, perhaps in a new way. I envision Archbishop Rowan pondering in, to use his word, “puzzlement” why these bishops of the Episcopal Church don’t just stand up and exercise their authority as bishops like most of the rest of the bishops in the Communion do. Why would our bishops “bind themselves to future direction for the Convention?” Some of us in TEC in the past have thought that perhaps the Archbishop and others in the Anglican Communion do not understand the baptismal covenant that we hold foundational. Perhaps they just don’t “get” the way we choose to govern ourselves; the ministers of the church as the laity, clergy and the bishops, and that at the very core of our beliefs we believe in the God- given gifts of all God’s people, none more important than the other, just gifts differing. We believe that God speaks uniquely through laity, bishops, priests and deacons. This participatory structure in our church allows a fullness of revelation and insight that must not be lost in this important time of discernment. But I think our governance is clearly understood. I just don’t think the Archbishop has much use for it…

At the Lambeth Conference, I believe that the voice of the conformed bishop will be easily heard and affirmed. The prophetic voice will not be easily heard.

Read it all.

Read it all.

The conventional wisdom is wrong. At least about the Lambeth Conference.

I watched the video news-conference by The Rev. Dr. Ian Douglas and the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts-Schori yesterday. I had these big ideas about live-blogging it, but that wasn’t practical. I am glad I didn’t. In attempting to draw immediate conclusions, I would have missed the heart of the story.

My gut feeling was very positive…that the attempt is to build a basis for resolution of thorny issues by building on relationships. But I was still perplexed, at a time when Anglican divisions are at their highest and most delicate…how can we move forward? And when everyone is itching for a solution (theirs) how can consensus be reached?

One of the most perplexing things about Lambeth is that there will be no legislation, no plenary reports from which resolutions will be drawn, no voting and no Big Reports. This has driven many people a little crazy. If they aren’t going to Say Something Definitive, then what’s the point?

The conventional wisdom is that Lambeth will attempt to paper over differences. There is plenty of precedent.

Read it all.

[Katharine Jefferts] Schori pointed to the first Lambeth Conference in 1867 convened as a response to “bishops teaching things that other bishops found uncomfortable.” She said there were also issues of bishops overstepping their jurisdiction similar to issues facing Episcopal bishops today.

“We still haven’t sorted that out,” she said. “This gathering, we’ll continue to wrestle with some of the challenges of living together in a complex and diverse and sometimes challenging family. That is God’s gift to us and we celebrate it.”

Steve Waring, who has covered the controversy for the conservative Living Church Magazine, said resolutions are the “bread and butter of the Anglican church gathering since the beginning.” He believes they have been omitted from the agenda because any resolutions at such a tense time could fracture the church.

“It’s quintessentially Anglican to put things off,” Waring said. “There’s always hope that the end of the world could come first.”

Read it all.

Members of the Anglican Church in Kenya would like to know why our bishops are not attending the Lambeth 2008 Conference.

Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi is reported as reasoning thus: “Lambeth 2008 should have been about a return to God in view of these realities, yet it’s obvious that won’t be the case. Canterbury has sanctioned homosexuality. We cannot be going there to keep up with its theological gymnastics.”

Is this not missing the point of Lambeth? Isn’t this cowardly?

This conference is central in our church tradition as one of the four instruments of the Anglican Communion.

Read the whole thing.

Prof. [Ian] Douglas said the unprecedented format for the once-every-10-year conference, which was first held in 1867, will be difficult for journalists to cover and for the public to follow because there is no “focal point of up-down decision-making.” He said the new format will not shy away from discussion of controversial issues, but it is not designed to offer statements implying that various issues have been resolved.

He suggested that rather than taking on these issues “head on,” they will be discussed face-to-face. “Is a process that creates winners and losers the best way to meet a problem head on?” he asked rhetorically. “It is incorrect to describe Lambeth as a closed shop. The design has allowed for and encouraged wide open hospitality.”

Bishop Jefferts Schori declined to elaborate on the statement issued by the House of Bishops after it was revealed earlier this year that an invitation to the conference would not be forthcoming for Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, but she did not think the lack of an invitation would hinder Bishop Robinson’s ability to have his voice be heard. Bishop Robinson will have an exhibit booth in what is called the “fringe” portion of the conference.

Read it all.

The 2008 Lambeth Conference is primarily an opportunity for bishops to get to know one another and to strengthen partnerships, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told media gathered for a May 20 news briefing at the Episcopal Church Center in New York City.

Acknowledging that partnerships throughout the Communion have grown significantly in recent years, Jefferts Schori said her hopes for Lambeth and the Anglican Communion are “that we encounter each other as human beings working in vastly different contexts around the globe and that we build relationships.”

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has invited more than 800 bishops to attend the July 16-August 3 conference on the campus of the University of Kent in southeast England, and more than three quarters have accepted, planners have said.

Read it all and if you desire you can watch the press conference here.

Bishop N.T. Wright of Durham, England, said in a recent visit to Nashville that tensions among Anglicans must be resolved soon.

“We cannot afford to have again the same sort of five years we have just had,” he said. “It has been hugely costly ”” financially, humanly and in terms of our witness.”

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church believes the Anglican Communion will not find peace and unity until feuding members set aside their theological differences and focus on something more important ”” like saving the world.

“There is communion and unity when people are focused in the needs of others,” said Jefferts Schori during a visit to Middle Tennessee last week. “When they are focused on their own doctrinal differences, that is when life is more challenging.”

Read the whole article.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ Pentecost letter to the bishops of the Anglican Communion was not the anticipated communication in which he reportedly would ask bishops to predicate their attendace at the Lambeth Conference this summer upon their willingness to accept the recommendations in the Windsor Report.

A spokesman said Archbishop Williams had modified his plan to write to bishops whose stated positions ran contrary to the colleagial gathering of equals he envisions for Lambeth. Instead, Archbishop Williams has been in telephone contact with a number of bishops, asking that they honor the integrity of the meeting, the spokesman told The Church of England Newspaper.

Read it all.

At the heart of this will be the indaba groups. Indaba is a Zulu word describing a meeting for purposeful discussion among equals. Its aim is not to negotiate a formula that will keep everyone happy but to go to the heart of an issue and find what the true challenges are before seeking God’s way forward. It is a method with parallels in many cultures, and it is close to what Benedictine monks and Quaker Meetings seek to achieve as they listen quietly together to God, in a community where all are committed to a fellowship of love and attention to each other and to the word of God.

Each day’s work in this context will go forward with careful facilitation and preparation, to ensure that all voices are heard (and many languages also!). The hope is that over the two weeks we spend together, these groups will build a level of trust that will help us break down the walls we have so often built against each other in the Communion. And in combination with the intensive prayer and fellowship of the smaller Bible study groups, all this will result, by God’s grace, in clearer vision and discernment of what needs to be done.

As I noted when I wrote to you in Advent, this makes it all the more essential that those who come to Lambeth will arrive genuinely willing to engage fully in that growth towards closer unity that the Windsor Report and the Covenant Process envisage. We hope that people will not come so wedded to their own agenda and their local priorities that they cannot listen to those from other cultural backgrounds. As you may have gathered, in circumstances where there has been divisive or controversial action, I have been discussing privately with some bishops the need to be wholeheartedly part of a shared vision and process in our time together.

Read it all.

IT IS becoming clear that the conservative case is going to be well represented at the forthcoming Lambeth Conference in Canterbury. At least two conservative bishops have confirmed that they will be attending, with the express purpose of promoting their cause.

One is the Presiding Bishop of the Southern Cone, the Most Revd Greg Venables. He told The Times that he would attend both the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in June and the Lambeth Conference in July.

Bishop Venables has been censured in recent weeks for ministering to congregations in Canada and San Joaquin, in the US, without the permission of the Anglican leadership in those provinces, and in contravention of the Windsor process.

He told The Times: “It is clear the division is pretty final. Dialogue is the one thing that is lacking. I don’t think we are going to change people’s minds, but I think it would be wrong for us to get to a point where we acknowledge a division and try to organise it without being together and talking about it.”

Read it all.

Bishops Robert Duncan and Henry Scriven confirmed today that they will be attending both the Global Anglican Future Conference in Jordan and Jerusalem in June and the Lambeth Conference of Bishops in Kent, England, this July and August.

“After consulting with the people of Pittsburgh and our friends around the globe, we have come to the conclusion that it is necessary for us to be present at both gatherings,” said Bishop Robert Duncan.

The Global Anglican Future Conference is focused on moving forward with the work and witness of the church even as the crisis in the Anglican Communion over discipline and biblical authority continues. It brings together hundreds of bishops who have, as a matter of conscience, decided not to attend the Lambeth Conference, as well as other bishops who believe that global partnerships and the current conflicts necessitate their presence at both meetings. Among those going to Jerusalem and Jordan are many of the strongest supporters of orthodox Anglicans in North America. “We will be among friends, focused squarely on the Gospel, and dealing openly with how we build the missionary relationships, covenantal boundaries and responsible structures for the future of Anglicanism,” said Bishop Duncan.

Bishops Duncan and Scriven will then join some six-hundred bishops and archbishops (about two-thirds of all Anglican bishops) who will be attending the Anglican Communion’s once-a-decade Lambeth Conference of Bishops.

Read it all.

In an interview with me while he was in Canada, Archbishop Gregory Venables explained why he will be attending both the Global Anglican Future Conference next month in Jordan and Israel, and the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury, Kent in July.

The Archbishop of the Southern Cone said: ‘I will be at Gafcon and also I am going to be at Lambeth. I think that is pretty important from the point of view of you guys [meaning the Press. rg].

‘Someone’s got to be there to talk to you about what is going on.’ [Too right, and initial impressions indicate we’re going to have even less access than last time. It’s nice to know that at least one Bishop is prepared to sup with us sinners, the few there are left. rg]

AB Greg continued: ”That was one of the reasons why I eventually made a final decision to go, which was only recently.

‘I think someone has got to go and show their face and speak to the situation.’

Read it all.

The issue of homosexuality continues to tear the Anglican Communion apart in the build-up to the 2008 Lambeth Conference. In June the conservatives who oppose the ordination of gay priests will meet in Jerusalem, in what some see as an alternative conference. Many of these will refuse to go on to Canterbury for the main meeting in July.

Meanwhile the gay Bishop, Gene Robinson, whose consecration brought this dispute to a head, shows no sign of backing out of the limelight. His latest book In the Eye of the Storm is published this week by the Canterbury Press. He explained why he wrote it.

Listen to it all (just under 7 minutes)

A spokesman for Archbishop Williams told The Living Church the internet video presentation was “not related” to his forthcoming letter to the bishops of the Communion. In that letter, the archbishop is reported to ask that they predicate their attendance at the Lambeth Conference upon their willingness to accept the Windsor Report and Anglican Covenant processes.

The video presentation, titled “Better bishops for the sake of a better church,” was a pastoral didactic tool, the spokesman. The presentation broadcast on the internet video service, outlines the archbishop’s hopes for the conference.

Read it all.

It is up to the bishop of each diocese to decide whether to permit such blessings. Bishop Robinson, after consulting with a council in his diocese, has approved his own ceremony.

Bishop Robinson said he was surprised at another controversy that arose last year when he endorsed Senator Barack Obama before the New Hampshire primary. Some voters in the state said religious leaders should stay out of politics. Bishop Robinson said he had talked three times with Mr. Obama, of Illinois, and advised him on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues.

Bishop Robinson spoke in an interview at The New York Times, and is promoting his new book, “In the Eye of the Storm: Swept to the Center by God” (Seabury Books). The publicity tour will take him to a few unexpected places: a conference of black church leaders and the Hay Festival, a literary gathering in England.

In England, the Anglican church has plenty of gay clergymen, he said, but the difference with the church in the United States is that they are in the closet.

“I myself have probably met 300 partnered gay clergy there,” Bishop Robinson said. “I have met bishops who will go and have a lovely dinner with a priest and his gay partner, and then warn the priest that if the dinner becomes public, the bishop will be your worst enemy.”

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.

It was very satisfying to hear a Church of England Bishop boldly and fearlessly state that the Resurrection is unquestionably central to the Christian faith. AND it must be properly understood not as “life after death” for Christ but as a Resurrected Body which is the beginning of our Resurrection.

He was asked about the Anglican Communion and Lambeth. He said (briefly as time was late) that he feels we have moved from “1 Corinthians to 2 Corinthians” by which he meant (as I understood him) that it is time for Rowan Williams to reassert his apostolic authority over the straying churches. Not sure exactly how or what this means, but nonetheless he is planning to attend Lambeth with that message.

I can’t help but think of how often Christians say things critical of people who “live in an ivory tower” of intellectualism, implying that people who spend years of their life researching are somehow ignoring ministry. Yet after they emerge from their studies and start sharing their insights, they are Rock Stars. N.T. Wright, fortunately, uses his gifts to equip the whole body of Christ, rather than simply exploring theoretical questions. However, it took him years of study to get where he is. I think we need to do a better job of encouraging (and funding) young scholars and trusting their work as faithfulness to their calling. Who knows what future N.T. Wrights are out there? It may take them literally decades to be ready to break it down for us, but it will be worth it. Lets be on the lookout for opportunities to support young scholars.

Read it all.

We don’t want at the Lambeth Conference to be creating a lot of new rules but we do obviously need to strengthen our relationships and we need to put those relationships on another footing, slightly firmer footing, where we have promised to one another that this is how we will conduct our life together. And it is in that light that at this year we are discussing together the proposal for what we are calling a covenant between the Anglican Churches of the world. A covenant. A relationship of promise. We undertake that this is how we will relate to one another; that when these problems occur, that this is how we will handle them together, that this is how advice will be given and shared and that this is how decisions and discernment can be taken forward.

That is a very a big part of what we will be looking at this year but it is not everything because no covenant, no arrangement of that sort is worth the paper it is written on if it doesn’t grow out of the relationships that are built as people pray together and share their lives together over tow and a half weeks. And to try and underline, we have also decided that this year we are going to begin the Lambeth Conference with a couple of days of retreat, of quiet prayer and reflection. There will be addresses. There will be a lot of open space and open time where people can just be alone with God, to think deeply about what they want from the conference and perhaps have the opportunity to talk quietly with one of two others about their hopes and fears.

What I would really most like to see in this years Lambeth Conference is the sense that this is essentially a spiritual encounter. A time when people are encountering God as they encounter one another, a time when people will feel that their life of prayer and witness is being deepened and their resources are being stretched. Not a time when we are being besieged by problems that need to be solved and statements that need to be finalised, but a time when people feel that they are growing in their ministry.

And for that to happen once again, we are going to need the prayers and the support of so many people around the world. Yes this is a conference for Bishops, not for Bishops with their clergy and laity as so often happens but primarily for Bishops

Read it carefully and read it all.

By George Conger

Bishops attending the Lambeth Conference will be asked to affirm their willingness to abide by the recommendations of the Windsor Report and work towards the creation of an Anglican Communion Covenant.

A spokesman for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams told The Church of England Newspaper that letters affirming support for Windsor and the Covenant process had not yet been mailed, but would go out presently.

Bishops attending Lambeth must have a “willingness to work with those aspects of the [Lambeth] Conference’s agenda that relate to implementing the recommendations of [the Windsor Report], including the development of a Covenant,” Dr. Williams wrote in his Dec. 14 Advent pastoral letter.

The Windsor Report calls for a ban on gay bishops and blessings and discouraged violating the diocesan boundaries of bishops in opposing theological camps. Affirming the recommendations of the Windsor Report may cause difficulty for US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and other progressive American, Canadian, Brazilian and British bishops who have given either their formal or informal support to moves to normalize homosexuality within the life of the church. It also closes the door on full participation in the conference of the Bishop of New Hampshire, the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson.

Overseas primates who have backed the violation of diocesan boundaries by African-consecrated American missionary bishops, could also fall afoul of Dr. Williams’ dictate. However, as the principle provinces backing overseas missionary bishops-Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda-will not be at Lambeth, the warning is a “moot point”, one overseas primate told The Church of England Newspaper.

Approximately 600 of the Communion’s 716 diocesan and 171 suffragan and assistant bishops have stated they would attend Lambeth, and more responses are expected to arrive in the coming weeks, a member of the conference team said.

Dr. William’s Advent letter warned against campaigning by the bishops on the disparate issues dividing the Communion. Attendance at Lambeth was predicated at avoiding “the present degree of damaging and draining tension arising again. I intend to be in direct contact with those who have expressed unease about this, so as to try and clarify how deep their difficulties go with accepting or adopting the Conference’s agenda.”

Speaking to the Fulcrum Conference in Islington last week, the Bishop of Durham, the Rt. Rev. N.T. Wright said “when the Archbishop issued his invitations, he made it clear as I said that their basis was Windsor and the Covenant as the tools to shape our future common life.”

“Those bishops who might be thought particularly unsympathetic to Windsor and the Covenant” would be asked by Dr. Williams “whether they were really prepared to build on this dual foundation. “

“Many will say this is far too little, far too late – just as many others will be livid to think that the Archbishop, having already not invited Gene Robinson to Lambeth, should be suggesting that some others might absent themselves as well,” Dr. Wright said. “But this is what he promised he would do, and he is doing it.”

–This article appears in the April 18th, 2008, Church of England Newspaper, page 1

Third, however, all this has come about not least because Paul has written a painful letter (2.3f.). This too is of course historically controversial: is the ‘painful letter’ 1 Corinthians itself, or is it one of the somewhat disjointed sections of 2 Corinthians itself, perhaps chapters 10-13? I am cautiously with those who think that it is a letter written between the two epistles, and now lost, but that doesn’t take away from the remarkable relevance of 2 Corinthians for our present moment. When the Archbishop issued his invitations, he made it clear as I said that their basis was Windsor and the Covenant as the tools to shape our future common life. That invitation was issued only three months after the remarkable joint statement from the Primates issued in Tanzania in February 2007. After a summer and autumn of various tangled and unsatisfactory events, the Archbishop then wrote an Advent pastoral letter in which he reiterated the terms of his initial invitation and declared that he would be writing to those bishops who might be thought particularly unsympathetic to Windsor and the Covenant to ask them whether they were really prepared to build on this dual foundation. Those letters, I understand, are in the post as we speak, written with apostolic pain and heart-searching but also with apostolic necessity. I am well aware that many will say this is far too little, far too late – just as many others will be livid to think that the Archbishop, having already not invited Gene Robinson to Lambeth, should be suggesting that some others might absent themselves as well. But this is what he promised he would do, and he is doing it. If I know anything about anything, I know that he deserves our prayers at this most difficult and fraught moment in the run-up to Lambeth itself.

Fourth, we have seen, predictably but sadly, the rise of the super-apostles, who have wanted everything to be cut and dried in ways for which our existing polity simply did not, and does not, allow. Please note, I do not for one moment underestimate the awful situation that many of our American and Canadian friends have found themselves in, vilified, attacked and undermined by ecclesiastical authority figures who seem to have lost all grip on the gospel of Jesus Christ and to be eager only for lawsuits and property squabbles. I pray daily for many friends over there who are in intolerable situations and I don’t underestimate the pressures and strains. But I do have to say, as well, that these situations have been exploited by those who have long wanted to shift the balance of power in the Anglican Communion and who have used this awful situation as an opportunity to do so. And now, just as the super-apostles were conveying the message to Paul that if he wanted to return to Corinth he’d need letters of recommendation, we are told that, if we want to go on being thought of as evangelicals, we should withdraw from Lambeth and join the super-gathering which, though not officially, is clearly designed as an alternative, and which of course hands an apparent moral victory to those who can cheerfully wave goodbye to the ‘secessionists’. I have written about this elsewhere, and it is of course a very sad situation which none of us (I trust) would wish but which seems to be worsening by the day.

Read it all–my emphasis (Hat tip: Babyblue).