It’s not often that one can claim to be a keener Anglican than one’s local bishop, but I am attending the Lambeth Conference, and Pete Broadbent, the Bishop of Willesden, is not. He is an evangelical, who sympathises with the Gafcon movement. I ask a couple of local vicars what they think of his boycott: they are not impressed. “By staying away from the conference I think the bishop undermines his own authority,” says one. So in my neck of the woods this conference is hardly conducive to episcopal authority and church unity.
The main point about this conference is that it is determined not to make rules, or “resolutions”. It’s just a massive talking-shop. The idea is that bishops get to hear other points of view in small discussion groups modelled on the Zulu council meeting, the “indaba”. The experience is meant to make the bishops glad to belong to a common body, full of cultural diversity.
I arrived in Canterbury on Sunday, as the bishops’ retreat ended, and the conference proper began. There was a lot of episcopal idealism in the air, a lot of bullish upbeat rhetoric. A South African bishop told a press conference about the indabas of his native village. There was also an Australian bishop there: he didn’t tell us whether indabas resembled his native tradition of drinking tinnies round the barbie. At the risk of sounding un-PC, there is a serious point here: the Anglican communion does play the exotic-primitivist card quite strongly.
So many labels.
Evangelical, liberal, loyalist, itchy, reappraiser, reasserter, heretic, apostate, … Don’t forget sinner.
But don’t we all sing the hymn
[i]In Christ there is no east nor west
in Him no south or north[/i]
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The idea is that bishops get to hear other points of view in small discussion groups modelled on the Zulu council meeting, the “indaba”. The experience is meant to make the bishops glad to belong to a common body, full of cultural diversity.
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In the end if the body holds together only because that is what we all want, it may not be so bad. The Anglican sky will not fall.
Many are uncomfortable with the ambiguity that may then be left in the air when the meeting adjourns, but life is that way. There is uncertainty in life. We say to the Father: [i]Give us this day our daily bread[/i].
That’s what we pray, but He doesn’t give us any such thing. We earn it ourselves, we make decisions, judgments, – this is called work by most people – and we do not sit around all day drinking chai and talking talking talking talking, whose point is to avoid acting, making decisions, judgments – working, in short. Does Anglicanism need more uncertainty?
And why shouldn’t every one of us be a lot more than uncomfortable with – ambiguity – a nice way of saying sessile inertia. No, life isn’t that way, except for those well-paid,comfy bishops who can afford to spend three weeks chatting to no discernible purpose. The rest of the world earns its daily bread by working. It become clearer and clearer with every report that we are looking at parasites feeding off the theological body. Get a job, ABC, for once in your life, do something productive. Larry
[blockquote]The idea is that bishops get to hear other points of view in small discussion groups modelled on the Zulu council meeting, the “indabaâ€. The experience is meant to make the bishops glad to belong to a common body, full of cultural diversity.[/blockquote]
Exactly how much cultural diversity is there in a Zulu council meeting?