Watch it all if you are inclined to this sort of thing–the featured guest is Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times.

Conference organisers went round every bishop in their “indaba” discussion groups asking if they would mind being identified to the press so a list of consenting attendees could be compiled. But of course this would not include those who had just failed to make it to their session that morning, not just the publicity-shy ones.

Today we finally received the long-awaited document – 12 typed pages of names and dioceses in no particular order, some underlined, some crossed-out and some with ticks next to them for no discernible reason.

The information-hungry hacks scoured the list for unexpected attendees, such as a cache of hidden Ugandans. But instead the all-knowing George Conger, of the Church of England Newspaper, spotted a notable absentee. The Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the entire 80 million-strong Anglican Communion, is not on the official list of attendees at the Lambeth Conference.

Read it all.

Listen to it all.

Dr Rowan Williams said there was a “very strong feeling” within the 80 million-strong Communion that guidance is needed on questions of Biblical teaching, which have led it to the brink of schism over sexuality.

He said he was “enthusiastic” about the idea of a Faith and Order Commission that has been proposed by a group set up to resolve the crisis triggered by liberal Americans, who in 2003 elected an openly gay bishop, the Rt Rev Gene Robinson.

But liberals claim the Commission – which would be based on a code of Canon Law and which is being proposed in addition to a new set of rules to bind the provinces of Anglicanism – has echoes of the medieval Inquisition, which was used to enforce Roman Catholic doctrine and punish those condemned as heretics.

It came as the most senior Catholic in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, warned of the “shadows” spreading over the relationship between Rome and Canterbury caused by the liberal attitude of some Anglican churches towards homosexuality and the introduction of women to the clergy.

Read it all.

How is the conference? Worrisome.

How is your indaba group? “Well, the funny thing is,” began one bishop, “The Americans here have this cheat sheet that they use in our group. It has statements on it that justify their decisions in the last two conventions that led to the consecration of Gene Robinson and same-sex marriage. It is a prioritized list of talking points and the one in our group reads off this thing every day.”

It was as if someone dropped a bomb in the room. Was I surprised that my church would utilize a tactic of this nature to persuade the rest of the Communion? No, I was not. Was I surprised that one of those same bishops would bring the document and read from it in a forum such as the Indaba group? No, I was not. Was I surprised by the strong counter reaction of the other bishops in the room, who considered this to be almost treachery? Yes.

Read it all.

So what does the content of this WGC document mean?

It means that the people in charge of this process have at last realised, perhaps thanks to Gafcon, that the African provinces who are boycotting Lambeth are serious. There is a desperation to keep them on board to prevent the Church from splitting.

If this new Commission enforces the new canon law blueprint in a way that is strictly in line with Lambeth 1.10, it also means there will be huge anger in the US. The Episcopal Church could well find itself riven by a formal split, leaving questions over which will be recognised by Canterbury. (Maybe those behind the name change from the former PECUSA saw this coming and that was a preparatory step.)

But we are fools if we think just the US will be affected. There are many traditionalist, catholic parishes in the Church of England that might well prefer to be aligned with a liberal TEC than a strictly conservative evangelical province.

The key to this in the UK will be where the moderate conservatives go. The extreme end of Gafcon, it is accepted, might already be lost. But will the Bishop of Durham Tom Wright, the respectable and intellectual face of orthodoxy, and others of his ilk, who are disliked by the far right, go with this? Gary Lillibridge, Bishop of West Texas, is a member of the Windsor Contination Group and is a highly-respected conservative bishop, in similar mould to Dr Wright.

My sources tell me the moderate conservatives are on side with this….

Read it all.

An Anglican version of the Roman Catholic church’s “inquisition” is proposed today in a document seen by The Times.

Bishops are urging the setting up of an Anglican Faith and Order Commission to give “guidance” on controversial issues such as same-sex blessings and gay ordinations.

The commission was put forward as a proposal this week to the 650 bishops attending the Lambeth Conference as a way of preserving the future unity of the Anglican Communion. Insiders compared it with the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the body formerly headed by the present Pope as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and previously known as the Holy Office or Inquisition.

This morning’s “observations” document is the second in a series of three. The third will be published next week. The document says: “Anglicans are currently failing to recognise Church in one another.”

Read it all.

Speaking to journalists at the once-in-a-decade Lambeth Conference, Dr Williams said: “I’m looking for consent, not coercion, but unless we do have something about which we consent, which we trust to resolve some of our differences, we shall be flying further apart.

“It’s not as if we have co-existed without any impact on one another as local churches. There have to be protocols and conventions by which we recognise one another as churches, by which we understand and manage the exchange between ourselves.

“The difficulties we presently face have a lot to do with that recognition. No-one has the authority to impose. We have to do it by ourselves. That also means some may consent and some won’t, and that in itself has implications.”

Read it all.

2. Where we would like to be: Towards a Way Forward

If we are to survive as an international family of Churches, then the Windsor Report’s suggestion of a shift of emphasis to ”˜autonomy-in-communion’ might yet require a further step to ”˜ communion with autonomy and accountability’ cf. recommendations in the Virginia Report of the International Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission and the Windsor Report. The covenant process is intended to bring the Communion to a point where its understanding of Communion is renewed and deepened. There are a number of fundamental questions which need to be answered.

i. Can we recognise the Church in another?
* Anglicans are currently failing to recognise Church in one another;
* We value independence at the expense of interdependence in the Body of Christ
* We denigrate the discipleship of others
* This has led to internal fragmentation as well as to confusion among our ecumenical partners

ii What is a Communion of Churches?
*Recovering a common understanding of what it means to be a global communion.
*A common understanding of the place and role of the Episcopal office within the sensus fidelium of the whole Church.

Read it all.

…there are signs that this westernized Indaba is being taken seriously by the bishops and they are gaining much from it. Far from avoiding difficult conversations, many of them report that they are actually having them. Good on them.

My questions remain about the outcome, and the actual reportage of Indaba, and the writing down of some kind of final statement. I remain convinced that the process is built for manipulation by a bureaucracy which lazily wants the crisis to be downplayed and the fuss just to go away. I can’t see that without resolution, amendments and votes, the final document can be anything but descriptive of the process, and the diversity of viewpoints in the communion.

More importantly, I see no sign that the bishops and the conference have any desire to face the biggest elephant in their midst. I’m not referring to issues of homosexuality, and authority directly, but to the glaringly obvious fact that a quarter of the bishops in the Anglican Communion are actually missing. This raises at least two urgent questions for the bishops who are in Canterbury. How can this Lambeth Conference be an Instrument of Unity when so many have gone AWOL? What steps must the Anglican Communion take to ensure that the next time they meet these absent bishops are present?

Read it all.

Good heavens.

This [statement by the Episcopal Church of Sudan] is troubling stuff, especially when taken together with the GAFCON verdict that the latest draft of the Anglican Covenant falls far short of anything that the conservatives could work with. If there were any doubt in the bishops’ minds about what was expected of them at Lambeth, it ought to have evaporated by now. They have two more weeks to find a formula that might give the waiting Communion some hope. This is more than an affirmation of the Covenant, though that may be part of the solution. What has to be demonstrated is that the different factions are prepared to work together. Archbishop Deng seemed to suggest that the reason for the Sudanese presence at the Lambeth Conference was merely to express its will. Having done so, however, he must be active in finding a way forward. The Communion contains views other than his own, as he must know.

Read it all. This editorial falls far short–as is alas becoming all too common with this publication–of seeing a way for Lambeth 2008 to make any kind of meaningful contribution toward enabling the current huge mess in the Anglican Communion to become any better. True, it is a matter of working together, and I have long been insisting it will involve sacrifice on all sides.

However, any meaningful step in a constructive direction must include the North American church’s cessation of the practice which is precisely at issue in debate. Christians have heretofore considered what Anglicans are currently debating as impermissible and immoral. We cannot have a debate about whether to do something which the American church in particular with ever increasing speed is continuing to do. The way in which the American church has gone about this has been a fiasco for those advocating for this change . The global debate by TEC’s actions has been set back many more years than most dare to understand.

Amidst all the pleading to work together and to have conversation and on and on must be understood that without a total cessation of the practice–which is what the Windsor Report pleaded for–no meaningful progress is really possible. And what is about to happen at Lambeth 2008 if there is no cessation is that the de facto situation in the entire Anglican Communion will be one of reception on the matter of blessing non-celibate same sex unions. Perceptive readers of the Windsor Report will know that on this matter ‘reception’ is not the Anglican Communion’s collective discernment of how to handle this question. But if nothing is done then whether there is a claim to work together or talk more or not, the tear at the deepest level on the Anglican Communion will get worse. This reality is what the Episcopal Church of the Sudan was rightly getting at.

If this tragedy occurs, the responsibility will lie in manifold places, but it will fall primarily–as it does increasingly–at Archbishop Rowan Williams’ feet–KSH.

I should have known better. I should have understood that a City with such a rich and extensive history as Canterbury cannot be “done” in one day. My original assumption was that I would spend perhaps twenty minutes in the Cathedral, take the thirty-minute train ride to Goodenstone Park Garden and then on to Augustine’s Abbey. I might even tuck in a castle or two along the way, I thought. Can’t be done. In the end, I spent two and a half hours “communing with saints” in the Cathedral. Then, it was almost lunch time and it seemed wiser to abandon my ambitious plan of taking the entire county of Kent in a day and stay right here in Canterbury. A visit to the Norman Castle (dating back to the 11th century) and a couple of museums wrapped up the day.

The Cathedral visit was incredibly satisfying; a truly fulfilling and spiritual experience. There was a strong awareness for every moment of the visit that I was physically present and meditating in the exact physical location that thousands and thousands of people – going back to the sixth century A.D. – have been. There was a sense of being in communion with all those saints and recognizing once again the vastness of this holy family both in space and time. A truly awesome experience that language simply cannot fully express.

Read it all.

The document handed out to the Episcopal church’s Lambeth contingent encourages bishops to promote the idea of diversity by using examples from the Bible and scripture.

“God made a diverse creation who reveals many gifts but the same spirit. Jesus calls a diverse witness into being and sends them into witness. St Paul called a diverse church to unity in Christ.”

The document, entitled Lambeth Talking Points, also provides advice for bishops when dealing with journalists: “A good message will reach the audience without giving the media more than they need or can use.”

One US bishop, Keith Ackerman from the diocese of Quincy, said the document was “embarrassing”.

“We should come to Lambeth spiritually prepared, not tactically prepared. It is a clear attempt to dominate the debates we are having and push them in a certain direction.

“The Episcopal church is attempting to manipulate this conference. It was hoping to convince the rest of the Anglican Communion that its innovations should be incorporated and respected.”

Read it all.

Important update: A copy of TEC’s talking points material is here.

More than 80 percent of Anglicans lived in Britain in 1900, in contrast to a mere 1 percent in sub-Saharan Africa–a figure that had risen only to 8 percent by 1970. Now, a majority (55 percent) of the world’s Anglicans live in sub-Saharan Africa. British Anglicans now constitute one-third of the world total, and the Church of England notes that low church participation makes the figure for great Britain deceivingly high.

–World Christian database, research version, May 2008, as cited by Christian Century, July 29, 2008, page 14

In a break with tradition, the bishops did not process, Olympic-style, behind their provincial standards; nor did they wear copes and mitres. They walked in pairs, in Convocation robes, deliberately “undifferentiated” so as to reflect a desire born out of their three-day retreat to be “less triumphal than some might expect Anglicans to be, or had been in the past”, the Australian Primate, Dr Phillip Aspinall, explained afterwards. The only group separated out were the Primates.

It was intended to be less formal and more accessible ”” and it also hid gaps in the representation of some African provinces. There was a ripple of interest among the press when the Bishop of Durham appeared wearing his cassock: was it some kind of protest? No, his robes had been mislaid somewhere on the campus of the University of Kent.

Read it all.

But ”“ flanked by 1,500 other faith leaders, diplomats, politicians and charity heads ”“ there was no mistaking their unity yesterday as they moved as one body in the name of justice and peace for the higher causes of their mission. Among those joining them were Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster; Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi; Sir Iqbal Sacranie; Dr Indarjit Singh; and other senior representatives of Muslim and Sikh organisations.

Inside Lambeth Palace, Dr Williams’s home and the scene of several stormy controversies in recent months, the bishops listened to a clearly moved Gordon Brown as he showed that he had heard their message. “A hundred years is too long to wait for justice and that is why we must act now,” Mr Brown said. “You have sent a symbol, a very clear message with rising force that poverty can be eradicated, poverty must be eradicated and if we all work together for change poverty will be eradicated.”

Read it all–and I like that picture.

Speaking at the Lambeth Conference this week Bishop [Michael] Burrows said “at the end of the day the Church of Ireland is enriched not diminished” by the differing views of its bishops on same sex issues. In his own dioceses same sex matters were “not the big issues”, which would include promotion of the gospel, the Aids crisis and ecumenism. He didn’t think the outcome of the conference would greatly influence people and was “always relieved that Lambeth’s role is advisory not binding”. He rejoiced in belonging to “a church which doesn’t regard its instruments as uttering infallibly”.

He felt this particularly about a resolution on human sexuality from the last Lambeth Conference in 1998 which rejected homosexual practice as incompatible with scripture. The resolution also rejected the legitimising or blessing of same-sex unions or the ordination of those involved in same-gender unions.

He believed a covenant would be drafted towards the end of this conference, but that it would be along Lisbon Treaty lines with “different degrees of signing up to it”. He is finding the process of discussion “very cumbersome . . . physically, very tiring.” It was “a well-intentioned attempt by a dysfunctional family to keep talking until we realise we cannot fall out of love with one another”. But there was, he felt, “a danger of going round and round the elephants rather than going over or through them”.

Read it all.

Perhaps my favorite time in Orlando was spent in a small group with Dr. J. I. Packer. It is hard to overestimate Packer’s impact on evangelical Christianity. The graciousness he afforded me to sit on a couch and ask him questions for more than an hour was humbling and helpful. He is very clear minded at age eighty-two and he remains incredibly conversant, insightful, and witty. Impressively, his words are impeccably precise.

As we sat on the couch together, he explained that Anglicanism is patterned after the ancient Roman governmental system so that a bishop has jurisdiction over a geographic area. However, this long-established ecclesiological pattern has been breached because Anglicanism is suffering from “heretical bishops.” By “heretical bishops,” Packer was referring to those bishops who sanction homosexual activity. He explained that the “heretical bishops” won support for their position following much lobbying. This sadly required Bible-believing Anglican churches to come under the authority of other orthodox bishops outside of their geographic area rather than remain under “heretical bishops.”

When asked about calling those who support homosexuality and profess to be Christian “heretical,” Packer very carefully and insightfully explained what he meant.

Read it all.

First, this is also about the faithful people of New Hampshire who called me to be their bishop. Everyone seems to forget that I am not here representing myself, but rather all the people of the Diocese of New Hampshire, with whom it is my privilege to minister in Christ’s name. They have called me to minister with them as their Bishop, and suggestions that I resign ignore the vows that I have taken to serve my flock in New Hampshire. I would no more let them down or reneg on my commitments to them than fly to the moon. We may be the one diocese in the entire Communion who is, for the most part, beyond all this obsession with sex and are getting on with the Gospel. They would be infuriated, as well they should be, if I entertained any notion of resigning. And it is not just Gene Robinson who is being denied representation at the Lambeth Conference, it is the people of New Hampshire who have been deprived of a seat at the table.

Second, those calling for my resignation seem to be under the impression that if Gene Robinson went away, that all would go back to being “like it was,” whatever that was! Does ANYONE think that if I resigned, this issue would go away?! I could be hit by a big, British, doubledecker bus today, and it would not change the fact that there are faithful, able and gifted gay and lesbian priests of this Episcopal Church who are known and loved for what they bring to ordained ministry, who will before long be recognized with a nomination for the episcopate (as has already happened in dioceses other than New Hampshire), and one of them will be elected. Not because they are gay or lesbian, but because the people who elect them recognize their gifts for ministry in that particular diocese. We are not going away, as much as some would like us to. That toothpaste isn’t going to go back into the tube! Not if the Bishop of New Hampshire resigns. Not if the “offending” bishops leave the Lambeth Conference. Not ever.

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

The following comments are reflections from my own notes but full texts of many addresses are on the Lambeth website.

We are called here to conversation where we acknowledge one to another the importance of this Anglican Communion. We believe in the communion as an inclusive community but where inclusivity does not equal anything goes. Even as we celebrate unity in diversity, we are challenged to ask ourselves what the limits are of such diversity, and to hold before us at all times the thought that God has called this Communion into being and has a purpose for it. We have been reminded that a divided church cannot with integrity preach a gospel of reconciliation to a broken world.

We are not here to reinforce one another’s anxieties, but to fix our hope upon Jesus and to remind each other of the hope of what God has done, is doing and will do, in opening a new and living way in Jesus Christ. We are continually called to look at God’s mission in the world and our part in that mission.
Each person at this conference and in the wider communion is called to be a place where God is revealed. For each one of us we ask ‘where have you seen the Son of God revealed?’ “How did you recognize him?”

Read it all.

The day started with an amazingly upbeat Eucharist led by the Episcopal Church of Cuba and which undoubtedly contributed to the texture of the morning. The story of the woman taken in adultery in John’s Gospel was a good vehicle to take the Bible study group into a discussion of a statement by the Sudanese Bishops in which they expressed their opposition to the consecration of a practicing homosexual as a bishop. Whilst the majority of my group shared the concerns of the Sudanese, the engagement was much more about how we can ensure that the Communion remains intact.

I was moved by the very positive statements being made about the value of the Anglican Communion. We considered how provinces having a different attitude to these things may not be an issue which can be resolved, but we went onto consider how we can find a future together. Whilst we didn’t even begin to resolve the issues, we did achieve a quality of engagement which will frustrate those looking for conflict and schism.

Read it all.

For all that, Anglicanism’s public troubles proceed from the takeover of Western Anglicanism by theological activists whose purpose is the remolding of Christianity into something less like the old-time religion than like the platform on which Barack Obama will run for president.

Whereas orthodox Christianity insists on the salvational role of the second person of the trinity – more popularly called Jesus – activist orthodoxy calls for supporting climate change and advancing women’s rights. And for establishing homosexuality as a sexual “preference” equivalent to heterosexuality.

It was the Episcopal Church’s consecration of a gay man, V. Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire that, for many Anglicans, here and abroad, finally ignited the gasoline on the brush pile. American conservatives blasted the consecration; foreign heads of overseas Anglican churches promised to support their brothers’ stand for God-given, as they saw it, moral norms. Great ugliness ensued: ungenerous words spoken on all sides; declarations of independence from the church; lawsuits levied by the church against rebels seeking to take their churches with them; the Gospel made a token of strife and mutual accusation.

A fourth-century father of the church, speaking of his own time, pronounced on ours: “We are making war upon one another,” said Gregory of Nazianzus, “and almost upon those of the same household. Or if you will, we the members of the same body, are consuming and being consumed by one another.”

Read it all.

Holding a future Lambeth Conference in the south would help the Church better understand the diverse contexts that many members of the Communion emerge from and prevent over-simplified conclusions about geography and theology.

What about the host? What about the Archbishop of Canterbury, the first among equals, who this year and in years past addresses the gathered bishops from his throne in the Cathedral in Canterbury? Could he still be the first among equals if the next Lambeth were in, say, Johannesburg or Madras?

There is no reason that the Archbishop of Canterbury couldn’t maintain his position as “first among equals” and an instrument of unity in his person while playing the role of guest rather than host.

By dislocating the Lambeth Conference from its English moorings, this important gathering could rid itself of some of its colonial vestiges and relocate closer to the heart of the current Anglican Communion. A change of this magnitude would take some imagination on the part of bishops gathered this week in Kent, but as modern leaders in a religious tradition that produced poets and artists like John Donne, William Blake, and Julian of Norwich, such vision would not be impossible.

Read it all.

It is true that Africa’s Christianity, even among august denominations like the Anglicans, is more passionate than it is farther north. Apart from the contest with Islam, this also reflects the need to offer as intense an experience as do the Pentecostalists. On the other hand, many African Anglicans love the idea of an episcopate that goes back to the dawn of the Christian era, something the Pentecostalists can’t provide. In Kenya, Anglicanism offers social cachet; and in Rwanda, Anglicanism attracts those who prefer the Anglophone Commonwealth to the Francophone past.

Some African Anglicans, such as Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda, reject the idea that they are clones of the Victorian missionaries, or of any other European model. Today’s Ugandan church, he says, bears the stamp of the “East African revival”, a movement that swept the region in the 1930s, with emphasis on the need for reconciliation and repentance. The Anglican Communion needs plenty of both.

Read it all.

Today I have prepared to give witness to the Windsor Continuation Group Hearings. The “Turmoil in the USA” is one of the identified sections of their preliminary report, which bothered a number of us, as you might imagine. Troubling is the false perception that we are proclaiming alternatives to traditional Christology and soteriology. These have been extended characterizations against The Episcopal Church by those opposed to our position on human sexuality or to the broader approach to biblical interpretation. It is a surprise however to see them appear apparently uninvestigated in any extensive way. But that is what the hearings give us an opportunity to address.

We are reminded every day as we pray for those “for whatever reason” who are not here, that we are not complete as a Communion without those who stayed away or were not invited. A public statement by the Sudanese Archbishop yesterday calling on Gene Robinson to resign and excoriating The Episcopal Church reminds us that while we are being greeted at Lambeth by the very same Sudanese with whom many of us have ongoing partnerships, we must face our differences and explain ourselves to one another. Whether we can do this in the grace the Archbishop called us to in Canterbury Cathedral is a matter for all of our prayers.

Generally I would say that the focus on relationship building is at work. I have heard amazing stories of faith and courage as you might expect, and Donna has heard outrageous stories of women’s suffering which will have to become part of our focus on our return. Greetings from fellow bishops from Australia, New Zealand, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, England and Ireland (haven’t met a Welshman yet!), the West Indies, Sri Lanka, India, Singapore, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Canada, Zambia, Tanzania, the Philippines, Sudan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Madagascar, the Seychelles, Indian Ocean, Fiji, Melanesia, Congo, Mozambique, Cuba, Peru, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Taiwan, Korea, Malawi, and of course Scotland, Swaziland and the United States. Greetings too from Suzanne Peterson who arrived this week as a volunteer.

Read it all