The meeting was designed without any votes or legislation, and no one expects the Anglicans to resolve their problems by the assembly’s end. Organizers instead hope their discussions will help clarify what direction they should take to stay together.
The Anglican spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, prefaced the gathering with a three-day private prayer retreat for the bishops that ended Saturday. In one session at the cathedral, he asked bishops to pray with someone they were afraid to meet.
“A Lambeth Conference is not a political meeting about organization or structure alone, but it is a spiritual meeting,” said Archbishop Phillip Aspinall, head of the Anglican Church of Australia. “We must go into this confident that a way has been found to the Father … . We must be confident that that way is there.”