Read it all.

At the AAC, we learned long ago that since the media can help or hurt you, treat them humanely, the way you would wish to be treated. When an event occurs, certainly those present take away their own impressions, but for the vast majority who will only read about it or see it on the TV, the media interprets the event. Why would anyone go out of their way to make life miserable for the media? Although GAFCON in Jerusalem wasn’t perfect from a media standpoint, there was a sincere attempt to get the media what they needed: access inside during plenary sessions, interviews with bishops, press conferences, etc. In retrospect, could it have been done better? Absolutely, but there was a genuine attempt to do the right thing for the media.

Contrasted with that philosophy is the view that the media is your enemy and you must a) keep them out, b) choose between good and bad media for access, and c) have everyone so disciplined that their talking points are recited no matter what the question. One has to pity the media, seeing how they are being treated at Lambeth, but then again, it doesn’t sound like the bishops themselves are being all that well taken care of, either. The secrecy thing is either hilarious or pathetic: is not everyone there under godly authority? Are some there in defiance of their House of Bishops or their Primate? Are they making a “prophetic statement” by being there anyway? Yet their “prophetic statement” must be kept secret.

Read it all.

We enter now into the final and crucial week. The Bible Study and Indaba Groups have begun to peel away layers of caution and hesitation therein laying bare many difficult issues. This has been painful at times as we’ve faced the chasm that divides us. Like many of you, particularly those who have been to General Convention or provincial gatherings of one kind or another, I have lived with this chasm for so many years that it is easy to forget that for Christians elsewhere it is hardly the most pressing issue they face. For some of them it is the need for food, shelter, clean water, coping as refugees or holding firm to the gospel in the midst of persecution that dominates their ministries. Yet the crisis that The Episcopal Church threw the Anglican Communion into in 2003 has not only complicated our lives as Episcopalians but has made it increasingly difficult for them to do their ministries in what were already demanding cultural contexts. A conference such as Lambeth must address many concerns and these are often interconnected and multilayered. Perhaps I can share some of our discussions with you later, but for now there is a verse in the Mosaic Law that comes to mind as I write about these two seminal groups of the conference: “You shall not uncover your sister’s nakedness.” That is, it would be inappropriate in my mind to discuss in any detail what is transpiring in the Bible Study and Indaba Groups. Beyond saying it is the striving of people from diverse cultures to engage one another respectfully yet honestly in order to understand what the challenges are that dominate the lives of our people.

The last two meetings of the Self-Select Session, The Bible and Human Sexuality, I attended (Wednesday and Friday) were much improved over the first. We looked at certain Old Testament passages regarding human sexuality in the second session and New Testament passages in the third session. Some of each session was spent in a lecture format, some in small group work and some in larger group discussion. The time was hardly sufficient for the subject at hand. At the end of our final meeting an Australian bishop made a statement that was in a way a question, but there was hardly any answer that seemed sufficient with which the presenter could reply””“Surely a loving Heavenly Father would not leave his children confused about something so fundamental as human sexuality”¦if so, I’ve been wasting my time for forty-three years!” I suppose some were put off by the force of his words, but it seemed to me a necessary and poignant pause with which to end our time.

Read it all.

Nobody, not even Professor Ian Douglas of the Lambeth Design Group, can say what’s going to happen this week. Rumours abound and red herrings come and go. There has been one hearing of the Windsor Continuation Group and two presentations. The hearing on part C is scheduled for Monday afternoon.

The indabas get to grips with the Covenant, the ongoing Windsor processes and Communion matters in general on Friday and Saturday. All are feeding back into the final Reflections document which the Archbishop of Canterbury will present at the conclusion of the Conference. Self-select sessions are continuing to run on related matters.

Any kind of substantial recommendation about ecclesiastical structures and processes would have to be done through the provinces and the ACC. Ian Douglas describes both Windsor and the accompanying Covenant processes as separate strands weaving into the Lambeth programme. Bishops present can share their mind on the Covenant: all bishops, including absentees, will complete a questionnaire. All provinces will be invited to respond again at the end of this year; round three begins in early 2009, with a third draft taken to the ACC meeting in Jamaica in May.

Read it all. I agree emphatically with that first line. Yesterday in the parish where I serve I was asked constantly about what is really happening at Lambeth 2008 and I said no one–not even those who are there–really knows. All you can do is get glimpses. This is a time for perserverance, patience and prayer–KSH.

This is a crucial week for the Anglican Communion. This afternoon, we get the third document from the Windsor Continuation Group. That could be a reiteration of Windsor, or an attempt to enforce Dar es Salaam, in other words, the removal of rebellious Primates from the councils of the church. Both conservatives and liberals could then be at risk. Then there are the Covenant and human sexuality debates. Liberals are deeply unhappy about the Covenant, in particular the appendix. Read it here and you’ll understand why. Conservatives are even more unhappy about TEC resistance to rowing back on human sexuality, as made clear by Bishop Mouneer Anis in his letter back home to Egypt. (Dr Anis pictured here by George Conger.)

Then on Sunday afternoon we get the Archbishop of Canterbury’s final reflections.

Even Anglican bishops are human beings. It might be going too far to make of the weather here a pathetic fallacy, although the Bible does it often. In any case, the latter-day prophets that man the Met Office might have got it wrong. But if we do get some horrible British weather here over the next few days, as sadly seems likely, I just can’t envisage the bishops continuing to get along as well as they have begun to do. The weather vane will turn, again.

Read it all.

Are we more prejudiced over here? “I would say you are just as far along this issue as we are, only you won’t admit it,” he says. “You have so many gay clergy, gay partnered clergy, gay couples who are both clergy. The bishops know it. Their congregations know it. But can you get anyone to talk about it? Oh no. I think it’s a hold-over from Victorian times.”

Irrelevant, out of touch with society, blinkered . . . no description could be more damaging for a church with a falling roll call that is signally failing to attract new generations. Robinson says Williams knows this. It’s also one of the reasons why he is happy to be a thorn in the side of Anglicanism: “I am simply not willing to let these guys meet without being reminded that in every single one of their churches, no matter what country it is in, they all have gay and lesbian people.”

Perhaps this is just what the Anglican church needs: a natural self-publicist who is equally comfortable hobnobbing with the likes of Sir Ian McKellan, the gay actor, as he is talking about the scriptures. Robinson seems happy to accept the mantle of missionary: “I think the American compulsion to talk about everything openly is a great strength ”“ and a weakness. We appear unnecessarily brash, but I love that about us. I feel called to be as open as I can be about my life so that young lesbians and gay men will understand that they can have wonderful relationships, be mothers and fathers and [achieve] real distinction for themselves in their careers.

“Does anyone think that if I were hit by one of your marvellous double-decker buses this issue is going to go away? That’s what’s so remarkable about the Archbishop of Sudan’s statement this week that, if I resigned, the church would go back to being the way it was.”

Read it all.

Religion is as long as a piece of string; true faith lies in the heart of the believer and is rarely susceptible to argument. Clearly, for lots of Muslims Islam is not a doctrine of gentleness, tolerance, sexual equality, forgiveness, democracy and all the rest. For countless others it clearly is.

What follows inescapably from this is that religious people and their views should not be officially recognised in groups. Religion should not be allowed a public space or public representation. This is hard for those of us who used to love the muddled Anglican compromise; it means the disestablishment of our national church ”“ if it doesn’t self-destruct first.

The challenge of other, fiercer and more divisive convictions has forced the issue; multiculturalism has been subversive. There must be no more religious schools ”“ personally I would leave those that exist alone. There must be no public recognition of religious associations as representatives of anything or anybody: not on campuses, not in student unions, not in government consultations or in parliament.

So-called religious community leaders, or umbrella groups of religious bodies, must of course be free to associate as they like in private, in a free country, but publicly they must be ignored. Publicly they must not teach or promote illegal prejudices. Forced into the private sphere, denied the oxygen of publicity, power and influence, highly politicised religious groups will wither on the vine. Perhaps, in that wonderful phrase of Yeats, they might even wither into truth.

Read it all.

Evangelicalism, now the only other real party, has also failed badly, particularly in not developing an intellectual culture among clergy and laity in the nation to engage with secularist relativism and hedonism. During the 19th Century evangelicals transformed culture with their societies and projects to improve social conditions and reach all levels of the nation. This is hardly the case now, despite the heroic efforts of many parish clergy. The liberals have decided to place the unity of the body of Christ well behind the gay agenda, also a useful way of purging the church of evangelicals, as happened in the USA. With conservative catholic Anglicans now very rare, only the evangelicals will stand for biblical trinitarianism rather than a multi faith theism.

The success of the gay lobby will not mean ”˜inclusion’ but a real splintering of liberals and evangelicals, management and workers, into two churches in England. Newman, ever the polemicist, would be delighted at this looming catastrophe for his old church.

Read it all.

All this matters today because the integrity of the Communion is under threat from the impoverished extremes of liberals and conservatives. If liberals want to broaden the priesthood to include women and gay bishops or if conservatives want to oppose any such development, then they must produce theological arguments from within the Episcopal tradition. Both must also respect the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury as ”˜first among equals’. Otherwise, liberal and conservative bishops would depart from Anglican orthodoxy and loose their own legitimacy.

It is hard to see how the conflicting visions can be reconciled. But in order to reunify the 80-million strong worldwide Communion, Anglicans could do worse than recover Anglican theology. Rowan Williams has taken a first step by questioning the non-theological motivations that prompted liberals to press ahead with appointing a gay bishop and conservatives to establish a rival council of bishops.
His critics rightly contend that his leadership since 2003 has not succeeded in breaking the deadlock. Though he inherited many problems from his predecessor, thus far he has failed to change the terms of the debate ”“ not least because his own stance has at times oscillated between social liberalism and theological conservatism.

Read it all.

(ENS) Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, speaking in a brief interview before the bishops’ traditional group photo, acknowledged that “there are some frustrations, but it’s important to let the process progress. We are working at getting it right.” The majority of the groups are working as hoped, he said.

Bishop Mark Beckwith of the Diocese of Newark (New Jersey) wrote in a message to his diocese that “the indaba process has challenged the Western linear way of proceeding — and I think it has opened up creativity. It certainly has exposed a deep desire that I have heard from others that we hold together as a unique body of Christ, while acknowledging that we are indeed being buffeted about by serious difference and disagreement.”

He added that, “the indaba process seems to enable us to express our disagreements about theology and sexuality openly and honestly.”

Bishop Robert O’Neill of Colorado acknowledged that “there has been frustration. Part of it is the physical layout of (our group’s) room; it’s difficult to sit facing each other. Some of it arises out of a sensation there is a Western structure overlaid on an African structure. We talked openly today. We identified things that are important for us to engage. There was a desire to take stock and make sure we had time to talk about things that are more difficult.”

Some bishops — among them Andrew Burnham of Ebbsfleet, England writing in a blog or Internet diary — thought the process was trying to contain too many topics in too little time.

Read it all.

This is a good place from which to participate in the Lambeth Conference which is trying to build something new while living in the ruins of a succession of spiritual communities. As everyone knows, we are in crisis, and what at one time seemed primarily an abstract problem of theological coherence has caused the Anglican Communion to begin to break up.

It is an unprecedented situation which the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has decided needs an unprecedented response. Gone is the approach of the last hundred years of Lambeth Conferences, which developed, debated and voted on large numbers of substantive resolutions in a parliament of bishops. In the Archbishop`s view, resolutions (notably Resolution 1.10 of the last Lambeth Conference which addressed the blessing of same sex unions and bishops invading each other’s jurisdictions) only heighten tensions in the Communion and are rarely put into action. In its place he has instituted a heavily managed process of small group discussions on prescribed topics, interspersed with optional lectures and presentations on related (and unrelated) topics.

Interestingly, the Archbishop has by a tour de force single-handedly altered the balance of power between his own office and that of the Lambeth Conference. For his power is now no longer simply one of invitation to the bishops to a conference which he hosts. It is one in which he now decides what the bishops can and cannot do when they gather. This is easy to exaggerate, and I know the Archbishop has no lust for power, but it is worth observing, if only as a footnote.

To my knowledge, the only person who has called the Archbishop`s bluff, and that affectionately and only by implication, was that wise observer of the Anglican scene, the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, who, in a sparsely attended `self-select` session on the Windsor Report on Wednesday, teasingly observed that the main difference between the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and the Archbishop of Canterbury was that the Archbishop of Canterbury exercised infinitely more power over his bishops.

Read it carefully and read it all (by the way knowledgeable readers may know that Kallistos Ware is a former Anglican).

It is forty years since The Malta Report set Anglicans and Catholics on the way towards unity. Throughout these years, the Catholic Church has always sought dialogue with the Anglican Communion as a whole, with all the challenge that your treasured diversity can sometimes bring to the table. So our Church takes no pleasure at all to see the current strains in your communion ”“ we have committed ourselves to a journey towards unity, so new tensions only slow the progress. But they do seem to concern matters that are very important. These discussions are about the degree of unity in faith necessary for Christians to be in communion, not least so that they may be able to offer the Gospel confidently to the world. Our future dialogue will not be easy until such fundamental matters are resolved, with greater clarity.

People sometimes ask me: ”˜Has it been worth it?’ ”˜You’ve given a great deal of your life to this work and yet where are the results? Are we any closer yet to being united?’ My answer is ”˜Yes, it has.’ I have said many times that I believe the path to unity is like a road with no exit for those who genuinely seek unity and are also seeking the conversion it requires. That’s because I know it is Christ’s will that we be one, and however long it takes that has to be our goal. Pope Benedict again and again comes back to this as at the heart of what he is working for.

Moreover, I am sure that the dialogue Statements of ARCIC, whether or not they are accepted in their entirety, do signal real convergence. We now have the substantial consensus between us on Eucharist and about Ministry, indicated by ARCIC’s work. To the extent that we have achieved genuine convergence in these and other matters, to that extent we are also drawing nearer to the truth together. If truth really is expressed in these agreements they must sooner or later bear fruit. They are ”˜money in the bank’, whose value will one day be clearly seen. We can already notice one result of this ”“ in the changed relationships of these years, and the ways Anglicans and Catholics can sometimes work together with greater confidence in the faith we share.

So I am not gloomy. Dialogue will continue in some form. Even if we sometimes find it hard to discern just how to go forward we cannot give up on seeking the unity Christ wills. As The Gift of Authority puts it so well, ”˜Only when all believers are united in the common celebration of the Eucharist will the God whose purpose it is to bring all things into unity in Christ be truly glorified by the people of God’ (paragraph 33).

Read it all.

“Sudan came out with the statement for reasons of their own, and felt they had to say something. It was important for them to make that statement, and we appreciate them for that. I don’t think you will find any of the Global South provinces disagreeing with what they say. The way they put it will be coming from Sudan, but the essence ”” yes.”

Archbishop Chew had not studied the statement, but there was nothing new in it, he suggested: it repeated Windsor and was consistent with the Primates’ statement from Dromantine. “They are not calling for anything new, which would have been unfair. They are saying that if we do not take up what we have committed [ourselves to] seriously, then even in the eyes of the secular world, our credibility is reduced.”

The Global South comprises more than 75 per cent of the total membership of the Communion. It was speaking what the whole Communion should be speaking in its good times, the Archbishop suggested. Although nothing could be solved in the two weeks of the Conference, and even the Covenant would have to undergo the lengthy constitutional process of being returned to the provinces, the dragging out of the issue would be unfair on the Windsor group and the Covenant group, and could not continue.

“We have more priorities in our home provinces than in the Communion: we cannot think of it as the thing more important than the diocese,” he said. “It is taking a big toll on our time. This is the fifth time I have been in the UK on a working trip. I can’t afford that. It isn’t fair. So I hope and don’t think that [the Archbishop of Canterbury’s ] words can be taken in isolation.

Read it all.

Most Christians believe gay sex is a sin and that practising gays should not be ordained. A survey by ComRes of 517 Protestant Christians in Britain found that only 3 per cent of nonCatholic Christians believe homosexuality is not a sin, while 81 per cent say it is and 15 per cent say “it is more complicated than this”. Taking into account all Protestant denominations, 81 per cent believe that gay sex is sinful.

The survey also found that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, lacks majority support. Only one in three Anglicans said Dr Williams represented their views.

Read it all.

Finally, I was astonished by your declaration that ECUSA and the Anglican Church of Canada have satisfied the requirements of the Windsor Report. I note that you acknowledge that this is merely your personal view but where is your evidence? In our Dromantine Communiqué we said that “there remains a very real question about whether the North American churches are willing to accept the same teaching on matters of sexual morality as is generally accepted elsewhere in the Communion,” and that because of this, “the underlying reality of our communion in God the Holy Trinity is obscured, and the effectiveness of our common mission severely hindered.” [12] I have seen no change in this and no willingness to fully embrace Lambeth 1.10 as our current agreement on matters of human sexuality ”“ as you know this is the underlying assumption of the Windsor Report.

I was present in Nottingham for the recent ACC meeting and heard both Presiding Bishop Griswold and Archbishop Hutchinson, and their teams, try to justify their innovations. They failed. They made clear that there is no turning back and they did so with little or no reference to the plain teaching of the Holy Scriptures or the devastation that their actions have brought on us all.

While I am grateful that “regret” has been expressed and a temporary moratorium on Episcopal consecrations has been established, same-sex blessings continue to be authorized in some dioceses in both Provinces. And we all know that this is no more than a brief cessation of provocative actions and that no permanent change of mind is intended.

—Archbishop of Nigeria Peter Akinola in an open letter to Archbishop Robin Eames in 2005, highlighting the central problem which existed then, exists now, and which the report about the September 2007 House of Bishops meeting evaluated incorrectly, as Gene Robinson said at the time. It must be addressed this week in Lambeth if the huge breach in the communion is to move toward healing–KSH.

God took these bell ringers from their individual circumstances, with varying degrees of faith, wove them together in mutual submission to the discipline of the bells and used them to make something both wondrous and beautiful.

Key is a willingness to submit to discipline and authority. The giving of time and talent, the individual struggles to learn the “changes,” are important. But without submission to a common authority, the bell captain, they’d just be individuals pulling on ropes and ringing bells producing chaos of notes and chords rung at random. This would quickly drive the town’s population to distraction and anger. Not a pleasant result. No blessing to be gained here.

A church, or communion which has lost sight of its mission, pays increasingly less attention to the rich and varied accumulated wisdom of its past, and is unwilling to submit to the discipline required to achieve the interdependence that both creates community and blesses the wider populace, is a church of neither sacred nor secular value.

Even if the ringers affirmed the same faith with like-hearted passion, the bells would not long sound without acceptance of a common discipline of purpose and accountability.

Neither can the Communion proclaim a Gospel that blesses both the sanctified and the secular without a commonly held commitment to a discipline requiring voluntary submission of independent lives to a greater purpose than self-expression and personal gratification.

Read it all.

Advocates of the encyclical draw assurance from the declining fertility rates across the developed world, especially in Europe. No country in Europe has a fertility rate above 2.1, the number of children each woman needs to have by the end of her child-bearing years to keep a population stable.

Even with increasing immigration, Europe is projected to suffer a population loss in the 21st century that will rival the impact of the Black Death, leading some to talk about the continent’s “demographic suicide.”

Not coincidentally, Europe is also the most secular region of the world, where the use of artificial contraception is utterly unproblematic. Among those committed to Catholic teaching, the obvious question becomes: What more clear proof of the folly of separating sex and child-bearing could one want?

So the future of “Humanae Vitae” as the teaching of the Catholic Church seems secure, even if it will also continue to be the most widely flouted injunction of the church at the level of practice.

The encyclical’s surprising resilience is a reminder that forecasting the Catholic future in moments of crisis is always a dangerous enterprise ”” a point with relevance to a more recent Catholic predicament. Many critics believe that the church has not yet responded adequately to the recent sex-abuse scandals, leading to predictions that the church will “have to” become more accountable, more participatory and more democratic.

While those steps may appear inevitable today, it seemed unthinkable to many observers 40 years ago that “Humanae Vitae” would still be in vigor well into the 21st century.

Catholicism can and does change, but trying to guess how and when is almost always a fool’s errand.

Read it all.

Click here; starting at about 9:35 there is a segment on the Lambeth spouses conference (about 4 minutes) which concludes with an interview with Dr. Jane Williams (just a little over 4 minutes, who delightfully responds at the end to queries about her husband, Dr. Rowan Williams). Then starting about 27:45 there are three segments, the first by Trevor Barnes on the consideration of global warming which includes comments from the Archbishop of Burundi, Bernard Ntahoturi, the second a conversation with Archbishop Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone, and the third with the Rev. Dr. Ian Douglas of Episcopal Divinity School in Massachusetts, a member of the Lambeth Design Group (a total of about 14 minutes for the three consecutive segments).

In the last days, I’ve seen evidence of the kingdom of heaven among bishops who agree and disagree about the hot-button issues, bishops who speak different languages, and among bishops who come from vastly different contexts. One bishop in Madagascar has told of a diocese that is devastated every year by cyclones, sometimes several times ”“ yet he continues his work to rebuild. He holds a vision of a cathedral and churches that will be shelters from the storm, both literally and figuratively, and used for schools during the week. He says, “I will build more churches and fill them with the poor.”

Another bishop in Sudan tells us about his people who are returning refugees, who have nothing, no ability to grow crops or feed themselves, and are struggling to reestablish their lives. He also tells us of the presence of Al Qaeda, and large guns being carried south by nomads, and he tells us of his fears that warfare will soon break out in even larger ways. Yet that bishop, and his brother bishops, continue to speak good news to their people, to tell their stories to others, and to seek our prayers and support, particularly from the more powerful nations of the world who may yet convince Sudan to care for all its people.

The kingdom of heaven is like 650 bishops marching through the streets of this city a couple of days ago, insisting that together we can end global poverty, if we have the will to do it. Your prime minister shares that hope, and has pledged his assistance in very concrete ways, as he told us in a powerful speech on Thursday. That hope is like a mustard seed that can grow into a tree of life large and generous enough to shelter all the people of this world, but it’s going to take lots of us to water and fertilize it.

Read it all.

Check out both entries.

Listen to it all.

Update: Ruth’s sense of the conference at this point seems largely to dovetail with that of Jim Naughton here.

This is a very valuable interview and worth the time. He says he is cautiously “hopeful” going into this week, but concerned about the domination of the conference by the “very vocal” Episcopal Church participants.

It now looks as if the Lambeth Conference is beginning to go in the direction hoped for by both the Archbishop of Canterbury and Rome ”“ preventing schism through the centralisation of authority.

The three major proposals are these:

1. A new Anglican ”˜Faith and Order Commission’ which will looks a lot like an embryonic Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The body would “give guidance” on doctrinal questions to the Anglican Communion.

2. A “blueprint” for a Code of Canon Law ”“ a set of rules which are “descriptive” rather than “prescriptive”. It is likely that these rules would prevent, say, conservative African bishops exercising oversight over conservative American dioceses which do not recognise their own bishop’s authority.

3. An ”˜Anglican Covenant’ ”“ a document setting out core Anglican beliefs and a biding agreement to abide by them. This would almost certainly exclude the possibility of a practising gay man becoming a bishop.

These ideas come out of the Windsor Continuation Group, which is responsible for implementing the 2004 Windsor Report commissioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury to chart a way through the crisis engendered by the consecration of Gene Robinson in 2003. One of the main players in this group is the Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, who is close to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the man to watch in the current crisis.

With only a week to go before the Lambeth Conference ends, the stakes could not be higher. These plans are, essentially, Dr Williams’s proposals for resolving the crisis; and there aren’t any others that stand a chance. The big question is: will the North Americans accept them? And will they be enough to bring back the Gafcon bishops boycotting Lambeth?

Read it all.

The host of the Spouses’ Conference, Jane Williams, wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury, says the spouses are ”˜looking at some of the most urgent issues facing us as human beings made in God’s image.’

And, as the conference approaches its final week, she spoke about the stories the spouses have been telling: ”˜I feel as though I can hardly bare for it [the conference] ever to end because there are 550 of us and obviously the proportion of stories I have heard is still quite small of all of those people. And every single one has the most extraordinary story to tell.

”˜We have heard some stories of amazing hardship, fantastic hope, often the two together – hardship and hope.

”˜I spent a little while yesterday talking to the bishops’ wives from the Congo and as you know, Congo has been through a long period of war and civil unrest. And the kind of rebuilding work that all of those women are involved in within their dioceses is just so uplifting; to hear what they are doing on hardly any resources and they are doing simply out of love of God and love of the people God has given to them.’

Read it all.

Faith and Ministry. The overall theme of the month-long meeting is “The Renewal of the Church,” with particular reference to faith, ministry and church union. Subordinate topics for consideration range widely, from the proper relationship between Christianity and secularism to such purely ecclesiastical issues as Prayer Book reform. There is ample opportunity for bishops to raise new issues. Last week, for example, Archbishop Donald Coggan of York formally proposed that women be admitted to the priesthood””an idea that was shouted down by his peers.

This year’s conference has streamlined some of the more somnolent procedures of the past. Instead of doing all their business in plenary sessions, the bishops have been assigned to 33 subcommittees, which are responsible for drafting resolutions prior to debate. They have also adopted an innovation of the Second Vatican Council: 25 theological experts are available for consultation by the bishops.

Resolutions of the Lambeth Conference are not binding on the 19 member churches, but they are intended to express the consensus of the Communion.

Read it all.

Some nice background.

On Tuesday 22 July, approximately 200 bishops and several primates gathered to discuss issues which concern the Global South, especially that of the faithful Anglicans in the United States. Bishop Bob Duncan of Pittsburgh spoke, along with Bishop Michael Scott-Joynt of Winchester and Bishop N.T. Wright of Durham. We had a wonderful time with the bishops from Africa, Asia, Latin America, UK, Australia, New Zealand and USA. We were all encouraged and ended the meeting by singing “He is Lord.”

Our daily Bible study time in small groups have included good opportunities to meet and share our thoughts, bringing tough issues to the surface and talking about them. I was encouraged by several American Bishops who thanked me for my words to the TEC House of Bishops in New Orleans. One of them said “we needed to hear your words because our knowledge of the communion is limited.” I do not believe that The Episcopal Church is going to change its direction. It is not all about sexuality but about biblical interpretation, Ecclesiology and Christology. This reminds me with the position of US administration before and during the war in Iraq. They refused to listen to millions of voices that cried against the war. The North American churches believe that the truth was revealed to them and that the other churches in the Communion need to follow them.

Read it all.

bout a quarter of the bishops in the worldwide Anglican Communion — including most from Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda — are consequently boycotting the once-a-decade meeting this summer in Canterbury.

And the Nigerian church, which accounts for 17 million of the 77 million Anglicans worldwide, is leading the opposition to the communion’s leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

“The issue is not that of gay alone. The crux of it is the revisionist agenda, which is that some people are out to rewrite the Bible,” Archbishop of Lagos Adebola Ademowo said Saturday.

“The authority of the Scriptures cannot be challenged. Old time religion is good enough for us.”

Speaking specifically about Williams, the 60-year-old said: “That man, I don’t know what’s wrong — he should be able to say ‘this is the Bible standard’ and come out and defend it.”

Read it all.

Last week, at one of the morning services at the Conference, one of our African bishops spoke powerfully about how Jesus himself is the gift, even before he does anything, heals or feeds anyone, and, he said, we have to ask, ‘What if the Church itself is the gift, the sign of something new and life giving, even before it solves any problems, brings peace or prosperity or education or medicine?’

It’s a very good question. And if we want to answer that, yes, the Church itself really is the gift, then the Church has to look like a gift. It has to look like a solace where people don’t seem to be alone or trapped, anxious and fearful: a place where people seem to live in a larger more joyous and hopeful atmosphere, and where they are treasured and nourished as precious images of GOD.

Churches that are divided and fearful and inward-looking don’t easily give that message; and our Anglican family badly needs to find some ways of resolving its internal tensions that will set it free to be more confidently what GOD wants it to be. Part of our agenda at this Conference is to do with this. But our willingness to work at it constructively has a lot to do with hearing good news from our own members ”“ the sort of good news we’ve heard something of this morning.

Read it all.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has spoken of the need to resolve “internal tensions” within the Anglican Church.

In a sermon in Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams suggested rows over gay clergy and women bishops hampered the global Anglican Communion’s mission.

It comes during the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops, which some are boycotting over the gay clergy issue.

Archbishop Gregory Venables, from South America, said there was “frustration” that sexuality had yet to be discussed.

Read it all.