We don’t want at the Lambeth Conference to be creating a lot of new rules but we do obviously need to strengthen our relationships and we need to put those relationships on another footing, slightly firmer footing, where we have promised to one another that this is how we will conduct our life together. And it is in that light that at this year we are discussing together the proposal for what we are calling a covenant between the Anglican Churches of the world. A covenant. A relationship of promise. We undertake that this is how we will relate to one another; that when these problems occur, that this is how we will handle them together, that this is how advice will be given and shared and that this is how decisions and discernment can be taken forward.
That is a very a big part of what we will be looking at this year but it is not everything because no covenant, no arrangement of that sort is worth the paper it is written on if it doesn’t grow out of the relationships that are built as people pray together and share their lives together over tow and a half weeks. And to try and underline, we have also decided that this year we are going to begin the Lambeth Conference with a couple of days of retreat, of quiet prayer and reflection. There will be addresses. There will be a lot of open space and open time where people can just be alone with God, to think deeply about what they want from the conference and perhaps have the opportunity to talk quietly with one of two others about their hopes and fears.
What I would really most like to see in this years Lambeth Conference is the sense that this is essentially a spiritual encounter. A time when people are encountering God as they encounter one another, a time when people will feel that their life of prayer and witness is being deepened and their resources are being stretched. Not a time when we are being besieged by problems that need to be solved and statements that need to be finalised, but a time when people feel that they are growing in their ministry.
And for that to happen once again, we are going to need the prayers and the support of so many people around the world. Yes this is a conference for Bishops, not for Bishops with their clergy and laity as so often happens but primarily for Bishops
As always, I stand in support of and pray for
the ABC. He does not need our criticism but
our prayers and support.
It’s interesting to see him talk. He is very subdued here.
Content: He is a brilliant and profound theologian. He must know the meaning of the deep divide between bishops who, like KJS, can’t seem to articulate the classic statement of the gospel and those who live (in the biggest sense of “live”) by that historic gospel. How can he roll off the spiritual ideals and expectations in this presentation with a straight face? And he certainly has a straight face here.
His history is Romanticised regarding the reasons for the first Lambeth Conference and this chat goes downhill from there. If anyone needed a visual and auditory confirmation that the intent of this Lambeth is to do nothing and give that nothingness the veneer of religious shellac, this is it. Of course, that has been proclaimed openly since September 2007 repeatedly. May God have mercy.
So, the great Anglican Experiment seems to be over. Let’s stop wasting time and just admit that there is nothing Anglican anymore. Every jurisidiction defines Anglicanism, redefines Anglicanism, defies Anglicanism, re-writes it, ignores it, persecutes it, and then cries over it. Let’s stop this BS about “Communion” and just admit that each province is its own entity with a common wistful history gone by. Revisionism is going to win and call itself Anglican. Reasserting groups will win and call themselves Anglican. In the end, everybody is right and everybody is wrong. Why? Because the reformed and catholic theological and political assumptions died out long ago. Many somebodies of centuries past trusted this future generation too much and gave us a generous polity, and they were wrong. The rules should have been more explicit, but who would have thought that a new breed of Pharisee would take over the Church – one where nihilism is the norm.
The Anglican Communion has died.
The Archbishop just ordered the tombstone.
The ABC is part of the problem.
He sits idly by while fellow Anglicans are being persecuted by TEC without so much as a word of encouragement to the alternative structures which have arisen to protect biblical faithfulness.
He continues to cling to the false notion that that he can have it both ways. Lambeth is a trap, stay away!
At the heart of the whole Anglican Communion is relationship.
I would have thought that faith in Jesus Christ and fidelity to Scripture might have been at the heart.
Silly me.
When he was elected I thought, “He’s a liberal. He’ll do nothing but worsen the situation”. Then he made noises that made me think that maybe he’s a liberal who gets it and who actually cares more for the church than for his pet theories. Maybe he could be a Nixon-going-to-China sort of leader. Perhaps only a liberal could bring radical liberalism to bay.
I have learned that I should always trust my first instinct. It is quite clear that there shall be NO SOLUTION to Anglicanism’s problems coming from Canterbury or Lambeth while this bewhiskered overeducated fool is in charge.
Um, Chris Hathaway, I would have said a relationship with Jesus Christ is more than just the dry bones of “faith in” him. One can have academic faith in something, but one has to have a relationship with someone.
And I think the Rowan Williams has always argued that relationship with Christ is inextricably linked to a relationship with his Church and his other followers.
Just a thought.
This was worth hearing (and reading– I did both). The ABC might be bewhiskered, but… a fool? Did he fail to cover the bases? Why criticize him for what he didn’t say? No one who has heard or read a sampling of what he says in other contexts could conclude that he considers faith in, or relationship with, Christ to be peripheral. If the Bishops are going to get together this summer, they could to worse than read the Gospel of John together, prayerfully. Up to now they’ve accomplished as much as they can by trying to act as a legislature. If someone hopes that this is the meeting where ECUSA is put on trial… that isn’t what Lambeth is about.
Yes, definitely, keep him in prayer.
Pax,
Chuck Bradshaw
Uhm, Marcus, if you want to quibble about semantics, faith is a relationship, and a relationship with God not based upon faith is no relationship at all.
My point was that a church should have something concrete at its foundation, something which it can and will defend. The ABC was opting for a vague concept of “relationship”, with one another and presumably with God as well, as the basis for Anglicanism’s existence. Without properly defining this concept it can have no meaning. Rowan clearly has little motivation to do either.
OK, naysayers: if this conference does turn on the Americans and does demand that they retreat from their ways, how many of you are going to make a public confession that you were wrong? Or how many of you will simply turn towards the next opportunity to program the death of Anglicanism?
I’ve been complaining about the posturing for a long time, but there doesn’t ever seem a reason to stop complaining. I read the ABC rather differently from the naysayers, but that’s unimportant, because it seems pointless to discuss the differences of opinion. Besides (if I may be permitted a less than charitable remark), given that the ABC is a smart guy, I think there’s a much higher chance that he knows what he is doing than there is that you know what he’s doing.
Representatives of over half the world’s Anglicans are not coming to Lambeth.
How smart is that?
Well, it’s pretty stupid for them not to come, in my opinion– unless of course their intent is simply to destroy the communion. It’s feeding the rhetoric of American liberals who find it convenient to crow about the arrogance of the Africans. It is also legitimizing the plans of 815 to simply throw the reasserter dissidents off their properties. Cantuar may be smart, but he can’t make anyone else smart.
I am not sure those not coming are either stupid or intent on destroying the Communion; but they do seem to have experienced a devastating loss of confidence in some of the Communion structures. Would it be fair to say that, through his efforts to go after two wayward lost sheep, the ABC is now faced with the majority of the flock having wandered off unsure of his ultimate direction or destination? To me when I read his June ’06 essay on the Communion it seemed to me that the ABC had a clear vision. I have not seen that coming across recently.
I think something more urgent and radical is required from the shepherd than an invitation to shoot the breeze in N’daba groups – would you not say?
Re: #10 on Naysayers-
I will strip naked and scream repentance while flagellating myself with rusty barbed wire. That’s how sure I am that Lambeth will be nothing more irritaing to TEC than raised eyebrows.
No. 6 – Faith in Jesus Christ and Fidelity to Scripture is presumed. Every time you talk about religion to someone to you have to stipulate at the beginning your faith in Christ & fidelity to scripture?
C. Wingate,
it is not from lack of concrete experience that we are skeptical of the dental capacity in the ABC’s supposed intended discipline of TEC et al. We have seen copious examples of dithering and fiddling while Anglicanism burns. But miracles can happen, and I will be glad if they do, but I am done giving these guys the benefit of the doubt. From now on I expect proof before I trust their resolve or intentions.
I know Rowan “is a smart guy” and smart people have never ever stubbornly done stupid things………so the only reason that I don’t trust such a brilliant intellectual like him is…..his damn scragly beard.
He is the egghead. he is the walrus, goo goo g’joo
Faith in Jesus Christ and Fidelity to Scripture is presumed
Rob, what Anglican Communion do you know that I don’t? Schori has no faith in Christ, no fidelity to Scripture. What such basics are lacking in principle so-called leaders of a church one can no longer simply assume anything. Is Rowan saying anything that makes you think he sees apostacy as a problem in Anglicanism? I don’t see it.
Chris – I might agree with you to a limited extent about KJS, although I don’t think you can make such a blanket statement about her just from sound bites about her theological meanderings. But this thread was about Williams, wasn’t it? I think those items of faith are assumed in the planning for Lambeth. By the way, I dont’s think KJS’s theology is very well formed, but in her defence she did, a while back, give a clarification of the “Christ in one of many ways” speech that was satisfying enough to me. I was in Titus One Nine several months ago..
Chris Hathaway – Forgot to add “Thanks for your reply.”
Mr. Hathaway, I have yet to see any reason to accept your slur that “Schori has no faith in Christ”. Fidelity to scripture is, I suppose, another story, but I think we can all be roundly criticized on that point, so it’s not what I would consider a resounding rejoinder. In any case your criticism of her doesn’t strike me as sufficiently thoughtful– though I would criticize her greatly, and I wish she did not occupy her present throne.
Um, and while we talking about scripture: a strong argument could be made that “giving these guys the benefit of the doubt” arises directly out of moral principles stated by Jesus Himself. In any case, I don’t see how it harms anyone to give Lambeth the benefit of the doubt. If it fails to resolve matters “satisfactorily” (and of course, your satisfaction may vary), then we’re really no worse off than we are now (which is to say, in a bad way). On the other hand, it has seemed to me that you should be numbered among those who really want the conference to fail, the commonion to be torn apart, and the American Anglicans to be dispersed to the winds or made captive to 815 (the latter outcome being far more likely). I have forgotten, if you have ever stated it, your present church fealty. If you are not a member of ECUSA or one of the other Anglican communion churches, permit me to point out that breaking up the communion or visiting destruction on the American church is not going to enhance the legitimacy of the continuing churches, nor is it going to demonstrate the legitimacy of Catholic or Orthodox claims. The faults of those bodies are their own, and will remain whatever happens to ECUSA.