From the Washington Window: Kenneth Kearon Describes Plans for Lambeth Conference

“These issues that we’re facing are an issue of every church in the world, and we are the only ones that are facing it,” he said. “We’re getting a right hammering in the media about it”¦ but if we do face it that can be a great gift to the rest of the world.”

While same sex issues are causing friction across the Communion, Kearon said, he believes they are just the “presenting issue” ”“ symptomatic of a wider division.

The Anglican Church, which has its roots in the Church of England, essentially spread with the British Empire, he said, “on a really rather haphazard basis.” After the American Revolutionary War, the Episcopal Church in the United States “began to distance itself” from the Church of England, as it no longer fell under the sovereignty of the crown, and that rift, between the North American church and the church in the British colonies, has continued to widen. When the British Empire began to crumble in the 1950s and 60s, many colonial churches wanted to become national churches, and also loosened their links with the Church of England.

“That does lead today to very different understandings of the church,” Kearon said. “As churches became autonomous, there became a need for different kinds of governance.”

The instruments of unity ”“ the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates Meeting ”“ essentially provide this.

“I think as the Communion has grown and become more diverse, those structures have become strained,” Kearon said. “I think there’s a need to look at the instruments of unity.”

One attempt to address these divisions is the proposed Anglican Covenant, first suggested by the 2003 Windsor Report, a commission set up to study significant challenges in the Anglican Communion. This will be discussed at the Lambeth Conference, and will be taken up again in 2009 by the Anglican Consultative Council, Kearon said.

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