Ed Salmon, the former bishop of South Carolina who is either retired or on sabbatical, depending on which bit of the Church is doing the talking, was invited to the Lambeth Conference. He is 75 and he says he is retired. Nevertheless, he was delighted to be asked to come to Lambeth. The invites were sent out before he retired and he assumed this was because of the grey area surrounding his precise status at present. He booked his flights, hotels and so on. Just one week before he was due to come, he was told he wasn’t invited after all. So he came anyway and I met him in the little flat in Canterbury where Anglican Mainstream has its hq. He and Gene Robinson, both uninvited bishops at the conference, are both here still, preaching God’s word on the fringes.
Read it all and watch the whole video interview with Bishop Edward Salmon.
From what I understand, Bishop Salmon continues to provide oversight of All Saint’s Chevy Chase. So though he is retired as the Bishop of South Carolina, he still is active as that parish’s Bishop. I would think, on those grounds, he should have gotten to keep his invitation.