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 of the most important dissenting voices in China today belongs to Peter Zhao, a Communist Party member and adviser to the Chinese Central Committee. Mr. Zhao is among a group of Chinese intellectuals who look to the West to find the key to economic success. Mr. Zhao in particular believes that Christianity and the ethical system based upon its teachings are the reason that Western countries dominate the global economy. “The strong U.S. economy is just on the surface,” he says. “The backbone is the moral foundation.”

Without a unifying moral system enforced by common values, Mr. Zhao argues, there can be no real trust between people. Without faith among business partners and between management and shareholders, only the threat of the law can keep people honest. “There are problems of corruption emerging. . . . There is concern about whether China’s market economy will ever become a sound market economy.”

Mr. Zhao has made his case in both popular and academic publications in the past several years, publishing more than 200 articles — for instance, “Market Economies With Churches and Market Economies Without Churches” — explaining how Christianity leads to long-term growth. “From the ancient time till now everybody wants to make more money,” Mr. Zhao told me. “But from history we see only Christians have a continuous nonstop creative spirit and the spirit for innovation.”

Read it all.

LIBERALS are fond of brow-beating the Churches about sectarianism and disunity. These twin evils, they say with some justification, are harmful to society because they set one group against another and because sectarianism is, at the very least, uncivil.

It now transpires that all this liberal bleating about sectarianism and disunity was exactly that, bleating. But it was also hypocritical because when it suits their agenda liberals are very inclined to use sectarian language of their own and have no hesitation adding to the already deep divisions between the Churches.

Read it all.

Another mother nearby had a litany of reasons why the series was good for girls. “Twilight helps girls realize they don’t need to settle for anything less than what they really want,” she began. “It teaches them to keep high standards. That there are guys that will treat them with respect. Girls today need to learn this, and they can learn it from this series.”

When asked about the fact that there were almost no boys present at the event, this group of women said that they knew boys who had started to read the series because they realized that “to get the girls, they need to figure out Edward.”

As clergy and parents and even a few teachers struggle to make a case for abstinence among the young, it may seem strange and unexpected that Ms. Meyer has served up one of the most compelling and effective arguments for abstinence in mainstream American culture — through a teen vampire romance. It may also be that she is trying to stay true to her faith’s teachings on sex even within her fiction. Regardless, Ms. Meyer has somehow made not having sex seem like the sexiest decision two people can make and has conveyed this effectively to her teenage audience.

Some of her young fans are hoping for a sex scene in “Breaking Dawn,” however. As one girl told me: “I’m looking forward to Bella and Edward getting married so they can have sex.” What a novel idea.

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.

Please try to guess the top 10 before you read the article.

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.

Read it all.

And, entering the debate over Archbishop Alan Harper’s comment that if science can prove homosexuality to be “natural” then the Church may need to reconsider its approach to the issue, Bishop [Harold] Miller explained why he disagreed.

“If you say that because you are born with a certain inclination then it is God-given and you should be free to follow that through in your life, it doesn’t make any logical sense whatever,” he said.

“You would then have to say that there are many different inclinations with which people are born ”” even if it is true that this is an inherent thing ”” and which people spend their lifetime trying to subdue.
“The fact that you are born with it doesn’t make any moral judgement on the inclination. People fight to subdue inherently bad tempers, depressive streaks or lots of sexual inclinations. Some inclinations are good, some are not good and some are mixed.”

Bishop Miller warned that changing positions on homosexuality would open up other areas of debate, some of which may be even more divisive.
“I stood at the front gate of a Cathedral in America last month and read a notice saying ‘Anybody going on the LGBT parade come to the Cathedral first and have your relationship blessed by the bishop’.

“There’s no doubt about it ”” it’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered for a start ”” so the thing has widened already and you have to ask: what does it mean for someone who’s born bisexual to follow their inclination or inclinations?”

Read the whole interview and there is an additional article about the interview here.

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.

Read it all.

(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.”

Read it all.

The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth Design Group, as they planned Lambeth 2008, made the decision that this time around, the Conference would not deal with any resolutions. Archbishop Rowan made it clear that Lambeth I.10 remains the mind of the Communion on the subject of human sexuality and would not be re-visited in 2008; nor, in the process, would we take up any other subjects in a legislative mode. We would instead have a season of “fasting” in which we listen to each other, take counsel, pray and reflect together, but avoid any definitive actions that would further exacerbate the conflict that has engulfed the Anglican Communion particularly since the actions of the Episcopal Church’s General Convention in 2003. The decision to “fast” from resolutions was a controversial one, but in the end I’m convinced that it was wise, prudent, and courageous.

That means that “Lambeth Indaba” isn’t an authoritative teaching document; it doesn’t intend to be. Rather, it is a report of our conversations, a snapshot of the bishops in the midst of a long and ultimately productive time together. The document seeks to be faithful to the Gospel, faithful to the Indaba process, faithful to the bishops and their context, and faithful to the Communion (pp. 7-8). It goes on to describe conversations on mission and evangelism, the environment, ecumenism, relations with world religions, Anglican bishops and Anglican identity, human sexuality, the Bible, the Anglican Covenant, and the Windsor process. Necessarily, the document contains contradictory material. After all, it simply reports what we said to one another; and since we sometimes (often!) didn’t agree, “Lambeth Indaba” allows us a glimpse at the theological and pastoral diversity that characterizes the Anglican Communion. Don’t read the document looking for an authoritative pronouncement. You won’t find it; and I think it’s safe to say that this Lambeth Conference probably couldn’t have found a consensus on some of the difficult matters that continue to divide us. Yet, as I mentioned at the beginning of these reflections, the search for unity in the midst of significant conflict was a kind of subtext that permeated the whole Conference, from start to finish; you’ll find echoes of that yearning throughout “Lambeth Indaba”. I encourage you to download the document and to read it prayerfully and carefully, and in that way to pray with and for the bishops who spend nearly three weeks in Canterbury.

I should add a bittersweet footnote to the preceding paragraph. We weren’t all there. Four provinces (Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya) declined the Archbishop’s invitation to come to Lambeth (though in the end several Kenyan bishops did attend); several Australian and British bishops were also missing, as were a couple of Americans. Those who chose to say away did so in large part to protest the presence of the Episcopal Church, and in part as well because they disapproved of Lambeth’s non-legislative format. Many, though not all, of these bishops had attended a meeting in Jerusalem entitled “Global Anglican Futures Conference” at the end of June, though some bishops were present both at Lambeth and at GAFCON. (Note the GAFCON website.) The absence of so many Christian friends from the Lambeth Conference was a grievous loss indeed. We needed their strong voices. The Conference was less robustly representative because of their absence.

Archbishop Rowan’s concluding presidential address summarized our time together and gave what I believe to be an authoritative interpretation of the Lambeth Conference and its long-term effects.

Read it all.

Although the Reflections document is merely a report of our discussions (Lambeth has no legislative authority), many of its comments related to human sexuality are bound to gain attention in the coming months. The American Church realizes that our policy of inclusion is not shared by the majority. The document reflects that fact. Even though I had hoped that the Communion could accept the American Church’s actions, I was disappointed that this was not the case. Bishop Gene Robinson’s exclusion was personally difficult for me, and I supported him the best I could by attending an off- campus Eucharist with him. Most (but not all) of the 38 constituent provinces still feel that there is need for a covenant agreement which would contain some kind of discipline for those provinces that proceed with the consecration of openly gay or lesbian bishops, or who offer blessings of same gender unions. Both the meaning of these passages, and the disciplinary implications are still unclear, but I don’t think it would be an overstatement to say that many of us in the American Church feel caught between our love for the Communion and our conviction that in the church there can be no outsiders. The result, as someone half jokingly remarked, is that “the Anglican Communion welcomes everyone, except a few, and the Americans, who welcome everyone.” So this tension will continue.

For my part, I intend to do three things. The first is to nurture the friendships I made with my colleagues from around the world. I am sure my prayer-group members (which included one very vocal critic of the American Church) and I will be friends for life, for we pledged to pray daily for each another. Second, our mission partnerships need to be strengthened. I hope to build on our relationship with Western Mexico and Dar es Salaam, and both will be present at our Convention in October. Third, the clergy and I will be discussing the pastoral implications of the Reflections document at our clericus meetings this fall and how we as one Diocese can best respond to it.

Read it all.

It does not lay out a timeline or suggest a new way forward to unifying the Anglican Communion around the mainstream Christian consensus on issues of human sexuality. Instead, it offers general support for ongoing initiatives that were first suggested in the 2004 Windsor Report and subsequent meetings of the primates of the Anglican Communion, such as the Anglican Communion Covenant and the proposed moratoria on same sex blessings, the election of bishops in same-sex relationships, and bishops taking foreign parishes and dioceses into their churches.

The indaba document also expresses general support for the creation of the latest in a long line of committees and commissions intended to offer some relief to faithful Anglicans who have been forced into conflict or have had to leave their dioceses or national churches. This latest effort, called the “Pastoral Forum,” has no clear timeline, authority, budget, or membership.

A number of Network bishops attended the Lambeth Conference. Writing after the conference concluded, Bishop Mark Lawrence of South Carolina stated, “I had come to speak a word of hope and perhaps to intervene on behalf of our beloved, but in the last resolve the family refused the long needed measures.”

Read it all.

In his farewell, Williams pleaded with Lambeth ’08 participants to have “a season of gracious restraint” over the months that it will take to prepare, negotiate and circulate the Anglican Covenant. He beseeched liberals not to ordain gays and lesbians to the priesthood, elect them as bishops or allow priests to officiate at same-sex, partnership ceremonies. He asked conservatives threatening to walk out not to leave.

In University City, [the Rev. Brooke] Myers expects that most priests will follow what their bishops ask about holding same-sex consecration ceremonies during the moratorium season. Most would ask permission and not follow the more audacious “do it, then ask forgiveness” mode, he said — although the hiatus already has been breeched in Massachusetts and California.

Late Monday, a weary Bishop Wayne Smith returned to St. Louis, with high praise for his fellow bishops and “the near absence of poisonous statements, the tendency away from grandstanding, the fact that no one stormed out in protest.”

Still, Smith, the bishop of the Missouri Diocese and its 14,000 Episcopalians from central Missouri to the Mississippi River, does not see a clear solution to heal the fissure. “The shape of any Anglican Covenant, from what I can see, remains an open question.”

Read it all.

Ok, suppose you had to write what you think happened Lambeth 2008 in 20 words or less, written as a headline. What would you say?

Mine is: Rowan Williams tries really hard himself; but is it too little too late for the Anglican Communion?

Metropolitan Kallistos Ware (Orthodox) was simply outstanding. ”˜If one member of the body suffers, all suffer’, he began, referring to 1 Corinthians 12.16. ”˜Your questions are our questions’. He continued by noting that there are two questions he would be asked on his return from Lambeth (I wonder will they be the same two in Down and Dromore for me?)

* Did the bishops at Lambeth clearly proclaim Jesus Christ as the only Saviour of the world?
* Did they clearly uphold Christian teaching on marriage and the family?

On the first, from the Indaba reflections, he is clear we pass the test, but on the second, he felt there was a degree of ambiguity. Have we fully affirmed Lambeth 1.10, he asked? His speech finished with a clear comment that our answers on these questions would have a decisive impact on future ecumenical dialogue with the orthodox churches, and that truth matters more than outward unity. I wanted to say ”˜Amen’!

The second ecumenical speaker was Professor Ian Torrance, representing the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, who was also most helpful in his comments. He noted that some people were living with the notion that the Anglican Communion might ”˜self-correct’, which he said he did not believe. A quiet and reserved man, he had given himself to a great deal of listening, and said ”˜I could feel the anxiety’. His speech ended with a quote from St Cyprian about bishops (great to have a Presbyterian telling us what bishops should be!), ”˜The episcopate is one, each part of which is held by each bishop for the whole.’ The message couldn’t be clearer.

Read it all.

Is it still possible to be a liberal Anglican? Not in the old way. Liberal Anglicans have to follow Williams onto the high wire, to some extent. By staying within an institution that has taken an anti-liberal turn, they collude in his act. In other words, liberal Anglicans have been Rowanised. They buy his long-range hope for reform that the church as a whole can accept.

Why has this happened? Why hasn’t a tougher liberal Anglicanism emerged that says that the truth of liberalism must not be sacrificed to “unity”? If Christian unity is so important (it would say), then surely the break with Rome was a mistake ”“ surely Anglicans should repent of it right now. Isn’t this version of Christianity one that tries to incorporate liberal principles? Why is such liberal Christian rhetoric more or less absent among Anglican clergy?

The answer, as I see it, is that institutional religion is not very compatible with liberalism, at the end of the day. It is addicted to some degree of authoritarianism, legalism. The Church of England concealed this, for centuries ”“ thanks to its cultural establishment it was a fairly liberal Christian institution. But that era’s over. It now follows the logic of Roman Catholicism ”“ liberalism is a threat to unity.

Read it all.

IN THE end it held together, but only just. The 650-odd bishops who attended the once-a-decade Lambeth conference went home with open schism between the liberal and conservative wings of the worldwide Anglican Communion averted. A split may prove no more than postponed, as the agreed mechanisms for making minds meet are oh-so-slowly put in place (see article). But at least the unedifying spectacle of comrades in Christ tearing strips off each other over gay sex will vanish from the headlines for a bit.

Does it matter if Anglicans fall out? Most churches are riven by tensions: it is not so long ago that the Roman Catholic Opus Dei glared at liberation theologists, and Moscow’s Orthodox still squabble like mad with Constantinople’s. But Anglicans lack the glue that binds those churches together: the power of the pope to impose discipline on straying Catholics; the body of undisputed theology that unites Orthodox believers even when they quarrel. Anglicanism works through relationships, a sense of belonging to a family with a shared inheritance. That now has waned. Despite the apparent reprieve, this year’s Lambeth conference could well be the last of its kind.

As a secular newspaper that supports gay marriage and believes in a firm line between church and state, we can hardly claim to be a neutral observer in this. Yet trying to look at the Communion from an Anglican perspective (or that of most of them), two things stand out. First, schism might not be a bad thing. And disestablishment would be a very good thing.

Read it all.

The third principle that I am working with is that there will be little further change on the international front and little prospect for pulling back together the various shards of the Communion while Rowan Williams still occupies the see of Canterbury. Please note carefully that I’m not blaming him for this conference or for other failures of the Communion as a whole — I don’t really believe that the blame lies on merely one person.

Nor do I necessarily know that a new occupant of the see of Canterbury would be able to pull the shards back together again.

Nor do I believe that the see of Canterbury is “irrelevant” or “unimportant.”

I merely say, as a statement of belief, that while Rowan Williams is the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Communion will essentially be in a “holding pattern” of increasing fragmentation and distancing among various groups. The trust that has been lost and continues to be lost prevents renewed closeness and connection as a whole within the Anglican Communion. It is sad, and I don’t like it. But it is what it is, and we need to understand and accept that as reality and work within that reality, or move on and join another denomination. That applies, actually, to those Primates and bishops of the Anglican Communion as well who are associated with GAFCON.

The fact is that no action has occurred that will cause the Anglican Communion to step back from the brink of fragmentation. There have been words — but no action as of yet — and I see nothing that causes me to believe that this time Rowan Williams will do the hard things necessary to call the Anglican Communion back.

The thing to do is to make the best of how things are now and work within how things are now, doing the small things well within our parishes and dioceses, while waiting for a turn of the tide and winds on the international front, if that turn is to come. If that turn never comes, then the Anglican Communion will continue to whirl apart — the center not only did not hold but it will continue not to hold. And thus, the Anglican Communion will continue to further fragment until all but the bare bones of the structure remain.

Of course, if that is to happen, we certainly will not have been hindered or damaged by doing the small things with great love and attentiveness. It will simply be done while in the midst of living out the consequences of the lack of discipline within the Anglican Communion.

Read it all.