The Bishop of Arkansas offers some Thoughts on Yesterday at Lambeth

Many Third World bishops wanted the same sort of space and freedom that some of us in the West want. As one bishop stated it, due to his cultural context we Westerners simply cannot send in teams to video the witness of gay and lesbian African Anglicans and share that video with the Western world; it is an arrogance similar to us Westerners trying to mold every nation in the form of our own elected democracies. But this same bishop said that he had been to America and had requested to go to the house of partnered gay people, where he said his eyes had been opened to the cultural and missiological context of the West.

Another bishop said that he wanted to go home with the trust of his fellow bishops, the trust that he could make the appropriate decisions in his own setting. I was a bit more specific. I asked to be able to go home with the Communion’s understanding that the Episcopal Church and I as one of its bishops can make pastoral and leadership decisions in our own church on a case by base basis as we try to see the risen Christ reflected in the individual faces and circumstances of the people in our pews and members of the clergy. The shaking of heads around the room indicated that some concurred and some did not.

It may be that one old assumption that turned out to be wrong is that in some sense the Church of England was and would continue to be the hub for the Communion. That model may be breaking down, and a wheel with some new set of spokes and connectors might emerge. Or perhaps a totally new image will find its place as a way to describe how we are connected. The archbishop’s attempt to strengthen the hub may turn out to be an old solution to a new problem that requires a different architecture.

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