I have lost count of the number of people who have commiserated with me because I am going to the Lambeth Conference. They either assume it will be an ecclesiastical punch-up or imagine the company of over six hundred bishops must be a foretaste of everlasting punishment.
An overload of episcopal fellowship will be bearable because of the cultural and theological diversity among the bishops, let alone their varied personalities. My real regret is that the diversity will be diminished compared with the last two Lambeth Conferences, because there have been so many refusals of the Archbishops invitation. While I wouldn’t relish any sort of ecclesiastical punch-up, I will be disappointed if we don’t discuss the issues which are currently so divisive. We need to do so in ways less oppressive than some of the plenary sessions last time, but it is difficult to have a debate if some of the main contenders are not represented.
Those bishops who refuse to come stand in a longer tradition than they may realize. Archbishop Longley invited 151 bishops to the first Lambeth Conference in 1867. (He even included all retired bishops: we would need an extra university campus if that was tried again.) In the event 76 bishops turned up, almost exactly half those who were invited. This time the proportion will be a good deal higher.
Bishops will stay away from this year’s Lambeth Conference for the opposite reason given by the original refuseniks. They think the Lambeth Conference has too little authority. They also believe its standing has been fatally weakened by the way in which Resolution 1.10 from the last conference has not been obeyed in some parts of the Anglican Communion. There seems to be less concern over the failure of the Communion to implement and obey many other resolutions over the years. But they ask, not unreasonably, what is the point in passing Resolutions if nothing is resolved? Doesn’t this simply reveal a vacuum of authority at the heart of Anglicanism?
It is intriguing that the Lambeth bishops have, from the beginning, produced a stream of resolutions, reports and pastoral letters. The Colenso affair (the hot topic at the first conference), evolution, birth control, the South India scheme or the ordination of women: there has always been some Communion-breaking issue which has tested episcopal unity and also spawned lengthy pronouncements. The current convulsion over sexuality doesn’t seem at first sight so very different.
But it has introduced a new, if not entirely unprecedented, factor. The Dean of Sydney, the Very Reverend Phillip Jensen, was recently reported as saying that the problem with the Lambeth Conference was the attendance of bishops who had consecrated Bishop Gene Robinson (who has not received an invitation himself). Those who consecrated him, argued Dean Jensen, were ‘false teachers who have acted in a way which makes fellowship with them impossible’. So it seems you cannot even confer, let alone worship, with those whom you believe have led the Church into error.
I am glad the same stance was not taken by the vast majority of English Anglicans when the decision was made to ordain women to the priesthood. The Act of Synod on episcopal ministry, as well as the provisions within the Measure itself, were grounded in a desire on both sides of that issue to remain in fellowship with each other despite profound differences. If things had been different, then I don’t suppose I would even be writing this article. If progress is slow on the ordination of women to the episcopate, it is the desire to remain in fellowship and with as much sacramental unity as possible which makes the task of devising legislation exacting.
Perhaps in these matters we need to renew our acquaintance with the Donatists. The parallels are inexact, though Dean Jensen’s words do carry some echoes of those fourth-century schismatics who thought they were more faithful to the Gospel than anyone else. The origins of the Donatist controversy centred on the consecration of Caecilian as Bishop of Carthage around 311. The claim, especially of bishops in Numidia, was that the consecrators included those who had betrayed the Christian faith in the Diocletian persecution and so were false teachers.
As time went on, the Donatists exploited economic unrest in North Africa, and consequent resentment of Rome as an imperial power and ecclesiastical authority, to add fervour to their cause. More locally, Numidia had no fondness for Carthage. In the current controversies within our own Anglican Communion, resentment of American hegemony and Western cultural imperialism is frequently exploited too.
St Augustine cut the branch on which the Donatists sat by stressing that the unworthiness of the minister did not effect the validity of the sacrament, a theological position so central to Anglicanism that it found its way into the Thirty-Nine Articles. But the long-lasting nature of the Donatist controversy weakened severely the North African Church. The Donatists only disappeared when almost the whole of the North African church was wiped out by Muslim conquest in the seventh century. If parallel it is, it is a grim one.
Back in the 1860s, Archbishop Longley recognized the imperfections of Anglican ecclesiology but placed considerable faith in the determination of this developing worldwide Communion to remain in fellowship. He believed that conferring with one another was a way to unity. In his day, St Augustine challenged the Donatists to public debate about that theological imperative derived from Christ himself – the unity of the Church. They were not responsive. I fear that those who have refused the Archbishop’s invitation to this Lambeth Conference will damage the unity of the church and the mission of Christ in our own time more than they seem to know.
–This article appears in the May 2008 edition of New Directions magazine
Augustine of course thought that the Donatists should belong to the one, catholic church. If the good bishop believes his own argument, which I suspect he, on reflection, does not, then he should be making moves to resign his orders and become a Roman Catholic.
No one who wants to remain in the Anglican Communion has the right to use the Donatist argument because it applies to them. It saws off the very branch one is sitting on.
Once again, driver8, I agree wholeheartedly with you. Or to put it another way, St. Augustine of Hippo had an anti-Pelagian side that was at least as strong as his anti-Donatist side. Augustine hated both heresy and schism. The Donatists weren’t heretics. The promoters of the “gay is OK” delusion are HERETICS. And that is not just because of their views on sexual ethics, but primarily because of their rejection of biblical authority and their adoption of a relativist view of theology and morality.
I have no doubgt whatsoever that if Augustine were alive and an Anglican today, he would fiercely denounce the heretical advocates of the false gospel among us and he’d refuse to share the Peace or Communion with them either.
The bishop of Norwich completely fails to make the necessary distinction between matters of adiaphora, where differences of opinion can and must be tolerated, and essential matters where there is no such room for tolerance. Surely, the authority of Holy Scripture is a “core doctrine,” and thus those who in practice (and sometimes even in theory and in their speech) deny the supreme authority of God’s Word written must be held accountable. And if they refuse to repent, no fellowship with them is possible. It’s noticeable and significant that Bishop Graham James doesn’t even attempt to deal with stern biblical passages like 1 Cor. 5:11 or Rom. 16:17-18 that call for shunning those who refuse to repent for their persistent and scandalous sin and who refuse to cease and desist in teaching false doctrine that’s leading some believers astray.
But that’s really no surprise, is it? The bishop has simply capitulated to the spirit of the age, which regards tolerance and inclusivity as the highest of values, and intolerance as the worst of vices. Augustine could not have disagreed more.
David Handy+
If you don’t believe in anything very much it’s real easy to be tolerant.
The old Donatist slur. *yawn*
[blockquote]I fear that those who have refused the Archbishop’s invitation to this Lambeth Conference will damage the unity of the church and the mission of Christ in our own time more than they seem to know.[/blockquote]
Uh! NO!….I think that has already been done by VGR, his consecraters, +Rowans lack of leadership. The womens ordination just got the wheel spinnng, then VGR, his consecraters, KJS and her antics, just pushed the wheel in to full tilt! Let us not put blame where it does not belong.
I am strongly suspicious that being a bishop involves an IQ requirement, but not a very high one. This chap have a degree? Ever take a logic class? Read history before the 1950’s with perception. I am constatnly amazed at the lack of argumentation, or even thought, or even sequential analysis in this type of material. Perhaps, as would seem to be true in the ECUSa/TEC/GCC/EO-PAC one merely needs to mouth the politically correct platitudes to be one of those alleged not to have left their mind at the door. One could not discern it from this sort of tripe.
And had there been thought at the illegal non-canonical ordination of women rather than mere acculturation, yes, the outcome might have been other than it was………thoughtful rather than merely acquiescent.
Chickens do roost, apparently.
Yes – it’s all the fault of those Africans and a few Ozzies. Keep repeating it and you might believe it if nobody else does.
And let’s brush under the carpet the fact that less than half of the Communion are represented at Lambeth. I don’t agree with people staying away but I understand why they are. The serious questions about how the ABC allowed this to happen remain. His unaccountable actions in the last year remain unexplained.
#6- I think it is the desire of the church to promote ‘yes men’ who will never question state or court controversy. The only quality needed is to draft foggy repsonses to vital questions which say everything and nothing and can be read in whatever manner the reader wishes……..now clear analysis, logic and theology might lead away from this…no?
Regarding Donatism. I submit that those who support blessing same sex unions are the real donatists. Please read my reasoning [url=http://deaconslant.blogspot.com/2008/04/donatism-and-episcopal-church.html]here[/url]
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
I am always greatly amused when people wheel out the church fathers as models of generous tolerance. Have they actually ever [i]read[/i] patristic letters and treatises? The early church’s journey to understanding the shape of Christian and biblical orthodoxy was accompanied by no end of pamphleteering, propaganda, anathemising, invective, personal attacks, jousting and even power games. Only by some very selective use of the evidence at hand might you manage to contrast the present situation negatively with what was going on back then.
And that’s quite apart from the fact, already pointed out, that no one in a Protestant denomination has any business defending unity at all costs.
[i]”I am glad the same stance was not taken by the vast majority of English Anglicans when the decision was made to ordain women to the priesthood. The Act of Synod on episcopal ministry, as well as the provisions within the Measure itself, were grounded in a desire on both sides of that issue to remain in fellowship with each other despite profound differences. If things had been different, then I don’t suppose I would even be writing this article. If progress is slow on the ordination of women to the episcopate, it is the desire to remain in fellowship and with as much sacramental unity as possible which makes the task of devising legislation exacting.” [/i]
Does the irony of this particular point strike anyone else? Is he really that blind?
The Act of Synod was the only thing that prevented the same stance being taken over women’s ordination. Because of the two integrities which the CofE invented to allow for those of biblical convictions to remain, it was possible to maintain unity. Some would say it was always a delusion of course – two contradictions would be more accurate.
Yet what is the proposal that the English House of Bishops is now taking to General Synod in July? It is the revocation of the Act of Synod and the consecration of women to the episcopate of the CofE by a single clause without provision for dissenters – the abolishing of the two integrities.
So the Church of England will ban people from holding to a biblical position about the role of women – and yippee it will be false teaching for all. Bishop, enjoy the inconsistency you detect while you can. You and your colleagues in the House are doing a good job of bringing everything uniformly into line – with false teaching. Thanks to your proposal, the tear in the fabric of the Anglican Communion is about to be matched by a tear in the fabric of the Church of England.
Let’s review, shall we?
Cantaur said that those who are not committed to the Windsor Report and Process should excuse themselves from Lambeth…or that he would. Right?
Yet:
The various bishops of California have moved with break-neck speed to endorse SSBs just because a secular law allows civil unions at a courthouse or by someone’s pool.
And now:
???
General Convention means nothing because the “prophetic” progressives don’t abide decisions of GC or any other deliberative body. Andrus, Bruno, et al know better than the whole Church.
OK Cantaur. What will you do now that you have been trumped?
Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk…..
…and you wonder why GAFCON is meeting?