Archbishop Philip Freier says he will return to Melbourne from the Lambeth Conference with a far greater sense of the vitality of the Anglican Communion worldwide, which he describes as a “blessing to the world”.

“This has been an opportunity for sharing concerns about mission and evangelism, and reconsidering the needs of a hurting world,” he said at the conclusion of the ten yearly gathering of bishops from around the world. “This is the irony”, he said “that there is so much good to speak about but the focus is so often on the unresolved tensions in the Communion.”

Dr Freier observed that the ”˜Reflections Document’ from the Lambeth Conference represented the spectrum of opinions that had been raised but cautioned against looking at this document as the Church’s authoritative teaching. He thought that the three presidential addresses by the Archbishop of Canterbury were more indicative of where the communion stood on the matters that threatened to divide it. He says he will strongly urge the Anglican Church in Australia to commit itself to the Covenant process.

“As far as the Covenant is concerned, there is certainly more clarity required on some of the details. But I strongly believe that this is the best opportunity to build our unity and to strengthen co-operation across the communion in evangelism and works of mercy.”

Read it all

(ACNS) A series of 10 video journals featuring more than 30 bishops from around the world attending the 2008 Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion are now available for viewing at Trinity Wall Street’s website, www.trinitywallstreet.org. Produced for the Lambeth Conference by Trinity Wall Street, the video journals were shown at the outset of each conference day, introducing participants to the daily thematic focus. The journals portray the personal experiences of bishops and spouses as they relate to that day’s theme and include segments which capture the life of conference.

The videos run approximately five minutes in length and address topics ranging from evangelism, social justice and the environment to engagement in a multi-faith world and the abuse of power. Bishops in the videos include Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury; Daniel Deng Bul Yak, Archbishop of Sudan; Miguel Tamayo, Bishop of Uruguay; Edward Malecdan, Bishop of Northern Philippines; David Beetge, Bishop of Highveld, South Africa; Victoria Matthews, Bishop of Christchurch, New Zealand; Alexander John Malik, Bishop of Lahore, Pakistan; and Mark Sisk, Bishop of New York, USA.

The Anglican Communion is considered Christianity’s third largest denomination. Once every ten years, its leaders meet to discuss the state of the communion, renew their partnerships, explore their Anglican identity and invigorate their mission. This year, 650 bishops and archbishops from all over the world attended the 14th conference held July 16 – August 4.

This is the third conference where Trinity Wall Street was asked to provide the assembly with communications support.

Read it all.

(ACNS) The Board of Governors of the Church Commissioners, and the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England have both met within the past few days to discuss an approach from the Lambeth Conference Company* for financial help. The Board met this morning (August 11th) and the Council on Thursday August 7th.

The Company has assured the Board and the Council that it is continuing to make further approaches throughout the Anglican Communion to meet the full cost of this year’s Conference. It cannot, however, be confident that these will generate funds sufficiently quickly for it to meet all of its obligations as they fall due over the coming weeks and months.

The Board of Governors of the Church Commissioners and the Archbishops’ Council have therefore each agreed to make available to the Company up to £600k as required to enable the Company to honour its commitments while fundraising efforts continue. At this stage both bodies regard these amounts as interest free loan facilities.

They will be considering these matters again at their September meetings when they expect a further report from the Company about the progress of its fundraising efforts.

Read it all.

Notwithstanding Archbishop Rowan’s magnificent final Address, I continue to see a negotiated “orderly separation” as the best and most fruitful way forward for the Anglican Communion. The experience of this Lambeth Conference, underlined by that final Address, has again convinced me that the Anglican Communion cannot hold in tension convictions and practices that are incompatible, and so not patent of “reconciliation”, without continuing seriously to damage the life and witness of Anglican Churches as much in “the Global South” as in North America and in other provinces that have followed the lead of TEC. The experience of this Conference cannot have encouraged any participant to imagine that the latter are about to turn their backs on a generation or more of development in directions foreign to the life and convictions of the vast majority of Anglicans, let alone of other Christians, across the world. I cannot see that the members of an “international family of Churches” can thrive and grow and offer a clear witness to Jesus Christ as Lord while offering contradictory teaching, on a matter as central as the character of the Holy Life, in different parts of a world knit together by instantaneous e-communications.

I am not imagining that such an “orderly separation” could prove either straightforward or painless. Archbishop Rowan said two years ago that if partings came, they would be as unmanageable, and as unpredictable in their effects, as the splintering of panes of glass; and I realise that there could be especially difficult implications for the Church of England, as there continue to be for the Churches of North America. But I recognise as quite fair the summary of my and others’ views offered by the Guardian newspaper’s Editorial on August 4th: they “feel that the avoidance of confrontation this past fortnight has merely set up a worse confrontation in the future”.

If this may be the future under God of the Anglican Communion – a large “orthodox” majority continuing to look to its historic roots (I pray and hope) in the See of Canterbury yet maintaining some defined relationship with a “separated” and more “liberal” Communion of Churches centred on TEC ”“ much now depends on the GAFCON Primates and the rest of the “Global South” quickly mending the relationships between them that have been put at risk, and on all of them together reacting positively to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s stated intention to call a meeting of the Primates of the Communion early in 2009.

By then they, and the rest of us, may have a clear sense of how TEC and others are going to respond to Archbishop Rowan’s calls in his final Address on August 3rd; and the Archbishop may himself be in a position to judge whether there is a will for the Anglican Communion to go forward together in Our Lord’s service ”“ or whether he faces the terrifyingly difficult decision between initiating negotiations that may make for “an orderly separation”, or watching a still more destructive separation take place around him.

Read it all.

Yet, according to some, avoiding taking a stand doesn’t mean nothing will happen.

Reverend Peter Frank, spokesman for Anglican Communion Network, an evangelical renewal movement, said that by design, the Lambeth Conference was structured to forestall any decision-making.

“It was depressing for those who hoped the Anglican Communion would return to mainstream Christianity,” said Frank.

Further, because of the moratorium on decisions concerning ordination of gays and same-sex unions, Frank foresees a widening in the present divisions between liberal and conservative factions.

“Nether side will wait for another 10 years to act,” said Frank. “The moratorium will empower the innovative to be freer to act because they know that nothing on the radar will happen to them. However, it (the lack of any official decisions) will empower the defenders of the faith to be realistic, not count on the leadership, and organize within the structure. And they are in the majority.”

Read it all.

A number of bishops expressed frustration with the conference’s design, comparing it to “Bible school for bishops,” with endless talk but little action. “I don’t think we’ve done anything to resolve the crisis,” said conservative bishop Keith Ackerman of Quincy, Illinois, despite Williams’s suggestion that “the pieces are on the board” to resolve some problems.

In a presidential address, Williams said he would be bringing forward proposals within two months for a pastoral forum to deal with conflict situations in the Anglican Communion. The forum could also offer recommendations on what to do if any of the three moratoria were broken, said a paper presented to the conference.

Liberal Episcopalians such as Dean Wolfe, a bishop from Kansas, said the succession of meetings after Lambeth “is a dance that will go on for some time.” Wolfe added: “We don’t see this as a permanent marginalization.”

Read it all.

Former civil rights activist Cox, 87, the oldest man in the history of the American House of Bishops, was one of two bishops ceremonially ”˜deposed’ ”“ or stripped of office ”“ three months ago, despite his age and the fact that his wife has Alzheimer’s.

His faithful congregations were thrown out of their churches, and he suffered financially.

Worse, according to Turley, is that Jefferts Schori in her deposition speech to the House of Bishops asked the bishops assembled ”˜to continue to reach out’ in pastoral care to both the Rt Rev John-David Schofield and Cox.

“Abandoning the Communion of this Church does not mean we abandon a person as a member of the Body of Christ,” Jefferts Schori said.

Cox told British-based Lapido Media that there has been no single contact, or even telephone call, to confirm his welfare.

“As a matter of fact I haven’t heard anything from her or any of her friends. Nonetheless, I have not had any kind of disparaging conversation about her with anybody. I have not even spoken ill against the two bishops who brought charges against me. I have just let it go because I know where my faith is and I have stated that.”

Cox was ”˜deposed’ on March 12 this year for crossing diocesan lines in ordaining two priests and a deacon in Kansas at the request of the Bishop of Uganda, Henry Orombi.

Read it all.

“We have 700 men here. Do you think any of them beat their wives? Chances are they do,” argued Roskam, in The Lambeth Witness, a daily newsletter for gay-rights supporters in the 77 million-member Anglican Communion.

“The most devout Christians beat their wives. … Many of our bishops come from places where it is culturally accepted to beat your wife. In that regard, it makes conversation quite difficult.”

The key, she added, is that “Violence against women, and violence against children for that matter, is violence against the defenseless. With women, it goes hand-in-hand with misogyny.”

The New York bishop’s accusations rocked the conference, which was already tense due to the absence of about 280 conservative bishops – many from Nigeria and Uganda – who declined to attend due to the presence of U.S. leaders who backed the 2003 consecration of the openly gay and noncelibate Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. Only 617 Anglican bishops pre-registered and some of those failed to attend, according to a report in The Living Church magazine. Thus, nearly a quarter of the bishops in attendance came from the small, but wealthy, U.S. Episcopal Church.

Read it all but also make sure to read Bishop Roskam’s own comments about this (entry #9 for July 31,2008):

So it was on this day that I was one of the press briefers for the Episcopal Church. And no, I did not say that clergy in the Third World beat their wives! In fact I said nothing about violence in the developing world per se. All my comments were made in the context of the pervasive nature of vioence against women all around the world. The only area I singled out was our own context, siting the recent spate of murders in the New York area of women, and sometimes their children also, by husbands or boyfriends. But of course, those comments were not quoted.

What was the tenor of the meeting?

There was a real sense of gained understanding across the board that we’re all in this together. The church needs to use the moral authority it has to bring attention to those things because people across the globe are suffering in ways that they don’t need to be.

What was the archbishop of Canterbury’s message to the bishops?

He spoke about a generosity of spirit toward each other. He didn’t scold, but he was very clear in his language that what one province (of the church) does (has) an impact on another province. We need to be judicious and cautious in our own autonomous determinations.

What’s your message for the Diocese of Southwest Florida?

I took away from Lambeth a gladness of heart to be who I am as bishop of the Diocese of Southwest Florida. What we do here has the great potential to be global in effect, and an individual participating in the life of the local Episcopal congregation can be of assistance in terms of prayer and resources to people they’ll never meet but who desperately need their relationship.

Read it all.

A £1.2m deficit in the recent Lambeth Conference’s budget will be discussed on Monday by the committee that manages the Church of England’s assets.

A boycott of the conference by more than a quarter of bishops over the issue of homosexuality is thought to be partly responsible.

The Church’s main executive body, the Archbishops’ Council, has already agreed to pay half the shortfall.

Now Church Commissioners will decide how to meet the rest of the costs.

Read it all.

I suppose some will argue that we did not do anything at the Lambeth Conference, but then, that is really the point. Many of us came to do something, whether to restate norms strongly, to break new ground, to create new forms and structures for the Anglican Communion, to force others to their knees in repentance and contrition, to make someone come to our way of seeing things, or to win over those we consider the others. Yet that is what happened at the last Lambeth Conference in 1998, and we walked away with a document that all of us have wanted to use as a club on the head of someone else, or a theological straight-jacket to confine another’s thinking. We left that conference with seething anger or smug self-righteousness. Like Naomi, in the book of Ruth at the time of the loss of all the men in her life, the loss of her present happiness and her future security, we wanted to say, “Call me not Naomi, call me mara,” (which means “bitter”). In 1998, we set up rules with the expectation of obedience, but we did not deepen what we have come to call “the bonds of affection” with the hope of commitment to God and to each other by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

There are times in the lives of us human beings when our drive to do something betrays our impatience, our strong wills, and our inability to listen to and be transformed by the Holy Spirit.

In preparation for this Lambeth Conference, the Archbishop of Canterbury reminded us repeatedly that we were not going to be doing any legislation, building any structures, voting anything into or out of existence. Archbishop Rowan invited us to come together to pray, to listen to scripture and to each other and to the movement of the Holy Spirit among us. He himself refrained from giving us a direction. Instead, he began with five meditations on the nature and dimensions of episcopacy and episcopal ministry, and in his Presidential Addresses he laid out a framework, describing how he sees us and the Anglican Communion-our cracks and warts, our behaviors and attitudes, and the wide range of our theological thinking on the issues du jour, namely homosexuality and incursions by one bishop or province into another bishop’s diocese and jurisdiction. Each day we met in bible study for an hour and a quarter, focusing on the great I AM passages in the gospel of St. John: living water, bread, shepherd, the way, the truth and the life, and the resurrection, to name a number of them. In our sharing, we talked about our personal lives and ministries, the different dimensions of our faith, the things we hold dear. We kept returning to the text, especially to the person of Jesus and how he spoke about himself and particularly how he treated others. Again and again, we saw him exercise the same patience and warmth and hospitality to those who were blind or deaf to him and his work, to those who found faith, and to those who tried repeatedly to trip him up and plot against him. He only withdrew when people started picking up rocks with which to stone him.

Read it all.

The point that interests me is why he continues and whether what we see is peculiarly religious behaviour. It’s just possible that it is not. What the Archbishop is holding on to is the idea that we can’t have ideas alone. They are always part of a conversation within a particular community, and sometimes the things that we get from that community are more important than any particular idea. In his case, as a Christian, who believes that the church (in some sense) is a means for God’s purpose in the world, he has to think that connection with it is a vital part of what he is called to do.

Something like this has to be the position of anyone who is aware that they are part of any kind of intellectual and cultural tradition. Even when we disagree with old ideas, we do so in the belief that the people we admire and have learned from would agree with us if only they could have had our experiences. In some fairly limited areas this is actually more or less true. Scientists, for example, can be brought round by new experiments to change their minds about scientific facts, though on matters of the heart, or of politics, they can be just as stupid and illogical as everyone else.

But in those parts of life which aren’t susceptible to clear and simple demonstrations, we have to face the possibility that people we love and admire really can sincerely disagree with us. The only alternative ”“ though I agree that it is a very popular one ”“ is to demonise entirely everyone who disagrees. But anyone who is not prepared to do that may one day find themselves in a position almost as grotesque and as humiliating as Williams’, though not, perhaps, on this particular subject.

Read it all.

(ACNS) The 2008 Lambeth Conference involved the participation of some 680 bishops and 3000 participants overall. From Cathedral to parishes and volunteers all over the UK, support for 2008 meeting was indeed generous.

With a budget of £5.6 million, and in common with previous Conferences, the projection of a deficit in the immediate period following the Conference was always recognised. For an international conference on this scale and taking into account the places from which the participants travelled, England continues to be the most economical place to hold such a gathering and a university campus the most financially viable.

Successful fund raising has been taking place as planned, before, during and following the Conference, including raising bursaries for the participation of almost 40% of the bishops from developing countries.

Bishops were notified of the current financial position during the conference, and the possibility raised with them that there might have to be further approaches for assistance with the costs of the Conference at this stage, the shortfall in funding is unclear as bills come in to be settled, but it is likely to be approaching £1 million.

The shortfall is being addressed as agreed by the continuing fund raising programme, and we are grateful for the assistance of the Archbishop’s Council of the Church of England in supporting the cash flow of the Conference company as the fundraising continues around the Communion.

The Revd Canon Kenneth Kearon
Secretary General, The Anglican Communion,
Director, The Lambeth Company

Bishops of the Anglican Communion, a confederation of churches with roots in the Church of England, held their once-a-decade meeting recently and managed to avert a long-predicted schism over homosexuality. Although 200 conservative bishops boycotted the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury, England, other conservatives showed up and joined their liberal counterparts in soul-searching sessions inspired by the Zulu indaba, or tribal conference.

Still, tensions were evident between liberal bishops from North America and conservative ones from the “Global South.” The archbishop of Sudan demanded the resignation of Gene Robinson, the openly gay New Hampshire bishop whose ordination in 2003 was the casus belli of the crisis. A female bishop from the United States suggested that “many of our bishops come from places where it is culturally accepted to beat your wife.”

Read it all.

But the forms and structures of the various provinces of the Anglican communion have diverged significantly, in ways that challenge those ancient ties to England and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Those provinces are the result of evangelism tied to colonial structures, whether of Britain or her former colonies, and that colonial history has still to be unpacked and assessed. The present attempts to manage conflict in the communion through a renewed focus on structural ties to old or new authorities have generated significant resistance, both from provinces who largely absented themselves from Lambeth and from dissenting voices among the attending bishops.

The Anglican communion’s present reality reflects a struggle to grow into a new level of maturity, like that of adult siblings in a much-conflicted family. As we continue to wrestle, sufficient space and respect for the differing gifts of the siblings just might lead to greater maturity in relationship. This will require greater self-definition as well as decreased reactivity. Jesus’ own example in relationships with his opponents and with his disciples will be instructive.

Read it all.

My concluding comment to both the Archbishop of Canterbury and other bishops at Lambeth is this. “Holding paradoxes in appropriate tension” – which is the call from Lambeth 2008 – may be a useful process in certain domains. Our understanding of the behaviour of light in contemporary physics is one such. But to ask Athanasius or the Cappadocians of the 4th C, and now the Anglican Communion of the 21st C, to stay in formal fellowship with those whose beliefs and practices are “essentially” contradictory and not merely complementary (as are the two contemporary models regarding light) is itself anathema – as many a Church Council canon has affirmed. At root, the traditional logic that undergirded the idea of comprehensiveness is no longer the contemporary logic that is driving the call for inclusivity, in all manner of spheres. It is therefore a “catastrophic failure of leadership” (Nelson Mandela), I submit, to permit, let alone to foster, the continuation of such an incoherent form of Communion as is now the result of Lambeth 2008.

This comment is not born of frustration or fear. Nor does it try to preempt what may or may not happen at the next ACC meeting in May 2009 re the proposed Covenant, nor the extended probable scenarios beforehand via the Primates or thereafter via all the provinces. On the contrary, it has grown itself from a fellowship that is quintessentially Anglican, a process of broad conversation and engagement, pastoral and intellectual, local and international, with the living and the dead, over 25 years, coram Deo. It comes, as with Archbishop Orombi, out of “love [of] the Lord Jesus Christ, and … love [of] the Anglican Communion”. Such love comes too with a final concern: “For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23:31).

Read it all.

Dr [Tom] Wright said: “At this stage it is very important that we focus on what Lambeth did and not what what happened eight years ago.”

He said Lambeth had been successful in taking forward the Covenant process and the conference had achieved its objectives.

He said: “People can make political capital out of anything. Lambeth was a great achievement and we must build on that.”

Read it all.

Reports came in from Lambeth that a number of TEC revisionist bishops were spreading misinformation in their Indaba groups about the state of litigation in the United States. Their claim was that the orthodox churches and dioceses “were suing them,” and the blame was really to be put on the orthodox. This is untrue, but it has been proven that if a lie is told often enough, people begin to believe there is something to it. Let us look at a few examples of lawsuits in the US.

In California, the bishop of Los Angeles is suing the orthodox churches, as is also the case in the diocese of San Diego. The Los Angeles orthodox churches won in the lower court and were reversed in a Court of Appeals, and the case is now before the California Supreme Court. The point to take away is that Bishop J. Jon Bruno initiated the lawsuit, demanding even the children’s Sunday School crayons (no, I am not joking, you can read it in the public record), and for anyone, especially a California bishop, to assert that they were sued first is a deliberate untruth.

In Virginia, Bishop Peter Lee had worked out an arbitration procedure that would have allowed the churches and the diocese to negotiate an agreed-upon settlement and avoid litigation. The churches proceeded with their parish votes and the registration of the vote tallies with the local Court Houses, as per the 1867 Virginia law that applied to church splits. When the TEC Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori heard about it, she advised Bishop Lee that “there is a new sheriff in town.” Lee was told that if he didn’t sue the churches, TEC would sue him. Bishop Lee uncharacteristically buckled under the pressure, and without advance notice, launched the lawsuits. For him to say that the Virginia churches sued him would be a gross violation of the truth also.

Somewhere in the United States, a parish may have asked for a declaratory judgment to settle issues of property title, or may have, once they were sued, filed a counter suit in defense, but it has been the model of the orthodox churches not to use the courts to attack bishops, dioceses, or TEC. The very aggressive stance that TEC has taken was first formulated by leadership within the Presbyterian Church in the US, and it appears that TEC Chancellor David Booth Beers is following the Presbyterian game plan to a “P.”

Read it all.

But the ultimate value of Lambeth””and indeed the continued unity of the communion””may depend on new instruments that Williams alluded to in his formal speeches to the bishops. One is a proposed Pastoral Forum, which would enforce a moratorium not only on all actions relating to the hot-button sexual issues but also on the creation of new jurisdictions within the territories of already existing ones. The other is a long-standing proposal for a new “Covenant for the Communion,” an explicit statement of beliefs that all practicing Anglicans would presumably have to sign on to.

But conservative Anglicans say they see nothing new in these proposals and furthermore doubt that they would be enforced any more vigorously than the existing instruments are. “I would say what Lambeth is doing is far too little and far too late,” says Martyn Minns, missionary bishop of the breakaway Convocation of Anglicans in North America. Liberals have their own reservations. Robinson, a conspicuous presence on the fringes of the conference, to which he was not invited, says that the loose Anglican confederation with its tradition of tolerating divergent views is in no need of fixing “with either a covenant or a Pastoral Forum or anything of the sort.” And calling the various proposals a “series of big ‘ifs,’ ” Jefferts Schori says that the Episcopal Church “will continue to define itself through its legislative processes.”

Even church-watchers who were impressed by what they heard about the collegial quality of the Lambeth Conference fear that it only papered over the differences. “I was encouraged by the personal relationships formed by the bishops,” says the Rev. Frank Kirkpatrick, author of The Episcopal Church in Crisis and a professor of religion at Trinity College in Connecticut. “But I’m not sure Lambeth resolved anything.”

Read it all.

KIM LAWTON (Managing Editor, RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY): Well, I think the big news from the meeting was that there wasn’t any big news. A lot of people feared that there might be some kind of an actual split at this meeting. That didn’t happen. About a third of the bishops boycotted. That did have an impact, but there wasn’t any big explosion. They’re still hanging together, but this sort of uneasy stalemate continues.

[Bob] ABERNETHY: And what does the stalemate mean for the typical American Episcopal parish?

LAWTON: Well, not much in the short term. There are — the majority of the worldwide Anglican Communion is upset that the U.S. elected a gay bishop, that same-sex blessings occur inside some Episcopal churches. The Communion would like that to stop. But the bishops that are doing that in the U.S. say, “We’re not going to stop.” The majority of the Communion is not happy that some Americans have said, “We don’t want to be part of the Episcopal Church,” and so they’re affiliating with these African churches in some cases. The Communion says well, we don’t like that, that isn’t done in the Anglican Communion. That should stop. But it probably will continue. And so the question is, can all of this still happen within one Anglican umbrella?

Read or watch it all.

For five years, conservative Episcopalians eager to escape their liberal American church have been building ties with African Anglicans half a world away.

But they have few connections with black Americans in their own back yard, say black Episcopal bishops gathered here for a once-a-decade meeting of Anglican prelates.

“It’s something that I like to point out,” said the Bishop Eugene Sutton,the first black Episcopal bishop in Maryland, “the historical anomaly of dioceses that have nothing to do with the black community going all the way to Africa to make these relationships.”

Moreover, Sutton and other black bishops here say that the use of Scripture to reject homosexuality in the Anglican Communion evokes previous eras’ Biblically based arguments in support of slavery and racism.

African prelates, however, reject that argument, and American conservatives say it is shared theology — not race — that motivates their alliances.

“This is just another revisionist attempt to use anything to undermine the orthodox position of the church and spread the agenda of inclusiveness,” said the Right Rev. Peter Beckwith, the conservative bishop of Springfield, Ill.

Read it all–one I did not get around to posting until now, as it is ever thus. Interestingly, I did just notice now that this article is in today’s Washington Post–KSH.

Here is one:

Peter Forster, Bishop of Chester
The conference was an effective if low-key holding operation, which brought home to those in North America and elsewhere the depth of disunity which their actions were causing. Only future events will show whether the tide can be fully turned towards increased unity ”” and truth. There were some excellent plenary addresses and visiting lecturers. The highlights, as ever, were in the shared meals and conversations, and in new friendships.

Read them all.

The once-a-decade gathering of Anglican bishops from around the world, which was branded an “expensive exercise in futility” when it finished on Sunday with no agreement over the divisive issue of homosexuality, cost almost £6million to stage.

Most of the money was spent on hiring the University of Kent campus in Canterbury for three weeks, and for providing food and transport for the 670 prelates and their spouses.

But the Lambeth Company, the arm of the 80 million-strong Anglican Communion that runs the conference, urgently needs to raise at least another £1m.

To help pay its bills, it was disclosed yesterday that the Archbishops’ Council, part of the Church of England, has provided the organisers with an interest-free £600,000 loan after holding an emergency meeting.

Read it all.

Question: We’re hearing that the Lambeth Conference ended up over 2 million pounds in debt. Has the American church been asked to help foot that bill? And if so, will we?

KJS: My understanding is that the conference is a million pounds in debt. Or two million dollars…uh…or short fall. Yes we’ve been asked and the bishops of this church responded in ways that would provide bursaries for those unable to attend as scholarship assistance. I believe there..that the Archbishop of Canterbury has expressed a desire to come to the United States and uh…do some fund raising work and we have certainly offered our assistance in that…when he would like to do that.

–The Presiding Bishop in a webcast yesterday with the Presiding Bishop and Bishop Mark Sisk on the Lambeth Conference

We were told that we were to treat the Conference as a pilgrimage, and it did have such a feel, but for me it was like being involved in the pilgrimage of the life cycle of the butterfly, egg, larva, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly. The conference for me felt like the chrysalis stage. The caterpillar entering this stage spins thread around itself which hardens into a protective shell. On the campus of the University of Kent, we were in just such a protective shell, with the world and its pressures and reporters kept at bay.

Inside the chrysalis shell the caterpillar turns into a soft, squidgy jelly like blob. Its structures soften and dissolve and something new begins to appear. And then the miracle occurs, out of this soft, squidgy confusing, not now, not ‘yetness’, the body of the beautiful butterfly is formed and in the fullness of time, breaks out and flies.

At Canterbury the Anglican Church allowed itself to risk being changed through the liquid of conversation and challenge across cultures and beliefs. It’s not at all certain that minds were altered but positions might have been softened and if so there’s a chance that something beautiful might emerge in the future which is nothing quite like we’ve known so far. The Anglican Communion might yet fly anew better fit for purpose.

Read it all.

One reason why senior Catholic clerics view a possible schism with dismay is personal and emotional. As the Second Vatican Council’s decree on ecumenicism noted, the Anglican Communion occupies a “special place” in relation to the Catholic church. In the 44 years since then, many Catholics have invested time, effort and prayer in trying to reunite with the Church of England, and there have been moments when they dared to hope it was possible. Good friendships and working relationships have been formed along the way (one is between Rowan Williams and the Archbishop of Westminster, Cormac Murphy-O’Connor). No one likes to hear a row in a friend’s house.

But there are other, less sentimental reasons why the Catholic hierarchy dreads a split. In particular, the acceptance into the Catholic church of large numbers of married Anglican clerics would make it harder for the Vatican to hold its already shaky line on priestly celibacy. Since 1980, when rules were drawn up for the reception of Anglican clerics (some of whom were unhappy at the prospect of women priests in their Communion), more than 80 have taken the leap worldwide. Most are married. Catherine Pepinster, the editor of a liberal Catholic weekly, the Tablet, says that in Britain most Catholics feel that these priests “bring something beneficial to their ministry. They understand people’s married lives, and that is appreciated.”

Read it all.

Dr [Alastair] Redfern said the topic of homosexuality came up a number of times during the conference and that it was decided more discussion was needed before any decisions were made.

But the conference had not changed his views.

He said: “The American church has consecrated as a bishop its first practising homosexual.

“I think it’s wrong and it’s wrong in the view of most of the people at the conference.

“We expect the highest standards of people in this position.”

The bishop said this did not mean he and his fellow bishops were condemnatory of homosexuality.

He said: “Just as we say to any unmarried person that you should get married before you have sex, we say the same to homosexuals.

“The teaching of our church is that sexual activity belongs in marriage between men and women, and I hold by that.”

Read it all.

What’s needed to under-write the Covenant is the further implementation of what’s known as the Windsor Process. Again there was much endorsement of the process, along with some anxiety about commitment to it. Crucially, there was support for three moratoria:

* consecration of people in same-sex relationships
* blessings of same-sex unions
* cross-border incursions by bishops.

Without these it will be very hard to move forward. Secondly there will be a Pastoral Forum which can come into action quickly in a situation of dispute, and thirdly the four Instruments of Communion (the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Primates’ Meeting) will need to have their roles and relationships clarified to avoid the confusions and distrust of recent years.

What now?

Of course there are real concerns. Mine centre on whether the Gafcon bishops and leaders will be prepared to engage with the re-affirmed Covenant and Windsor processes, and whether the American church will hold to the moratoria. It was a huge impoverishment that the Gafcon bishops weren’t all with us (though 80 were). We need all of us to be exercising gracious restraint and committing ourselves to affection, trust and goodwill towards each other and in particular to the Archbishop of Canterbury. But such ‘affection, trust and goodwill’ are surely at the heart of any Christlike living. How can we not offer such gifts to each other?

This was a remarkable experience for all of your bishops. We were fully engaged and much inspired.

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The problems for Dr Williams have come as he plays the role of leader of the Anglican communion. Those holding a minority view, still less mavericks, will always struggle in such a pivotal roles, as he himself will surely know.

Since taking over as archbishop, he has followed a studiously orthodox path when it comes to same-sex partnerships, along with much else. He feels he is obliged to explain the Church’s teaching on subjects, even if they may conflict a little with his own. A difficult position to be in ”“ the stakes are very high indeed, with the threat of an irrevocable schism ever present ”“ and one that we would do well to appreciate a little better.

If he has been unlucky in some of the battles he has had to fight, he has hardly been helped by fellow liberals: the North American churches’ decisions to push ahead with blessing same-sex unions has merely made the position more difficult for Lambeth Palace.

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(ENS) Addressing the development of a proposed Anglican covenant that would outline basic beliefs, [Presiding Bishop Katharine] Jefferts Schori said, “there was great willingness to think about a a covenant that spoke positively about what we do share as members of the communion. There was really no interest in producing a covenant that defined who could be excluded.”

A committee called the covenant design group will meet this fall to consider the comments from the bishops and possibly produce another draft that will then be made public and presented to the international Anglican Consultative Council in May. “The ACC will make a decision about what to do next, whether to send it back for further revision, reject it or send on to the provinces for consideration,” said Jefferts Schori.

[Bishop Mark] Sisk said one bishop in his group talked about how important it is for families to have standards, “but I said that you stick together, even if you disagree.”

When asked how Lambeth affects the status of gay and lesbian church members, Jefferts Schori said, “we were very clear for an overwhelming majority of the bishops of this church that the well being and adequate and appropriate pastoral care of gay and lesbian members of the church is a significant mission issue for us. We have been having conversations and debate for more than 40 years. Even though other parts of the communion may not understand that, we have been working at this for a long time. Our conversations are not going to end.”

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