Readers of this column have been misled. On May 23 in my column, I stated that while there will be fewer resolutions at the 2008 Lambeth Conference, there would be some. In fact, I was quoting the Archbishop of Canterbury in his January press conference. In answer to a question from Ruth Gledhill of The Times, he said quite categorically that there would be resolutions.<\/p>\n
In April, when the Presiding Bishop of the USA had her own Lambeth Conference press launch, she was joined by one of the Lambeth designers, Professor Ian Douglas of the Episcopal Divinity School. To exactly the same question, they reassured their audience that there would be no resolutions whatsoever. In fact, the format of the conference, with its Indaba groups expressly ruled out resolutions. No motions, or items of business could come from these 40-strong groups.<\/p>\n
I assumed then that the Archbishop of Canterbury was right and that the Presiding Bishop of the USA was wrong. After all, this is the Archbishop of Canterbury\u2019s conference. He invites the bishops, welcomes them to Canterbury, hosts and presides over the Lambeth Conference.<\/p>\n
So I decided to phone the communications director of the Anglican Consultative Council to investigate this considerable disparity between \u201d\u02dcthere will be resolutions\u2019 and \u201d\u02dcthere will be none\u2019. He explained that the design of the Lambeth Conference simply didn\u2019t allow for resolutions and that this had been the intention of the design group. He didn\u2019t know anything about the Archbishop of Canterbury\u2019s statement in January, but suggested that perhaps the Archbishop meant that in circumstances of emergency, a declaration of war, for example, the Conference may issue a \u201d\u02dchouse resolution\u2019.
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I still wasn\u2019t convinced that this explained the contradiction and decided that only Lambeth Palace could settle matters. After several days, the press officer did resolve it. In fact, there would be no resolutions at the Lambeth Conference, the Lambeth Design group\u2019s work had now completely ruled this out.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m left wondering who is in the driving seat at the Lambeth Conference the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Presiding Bishop of the USA, Lambeth Palace or the Lambeth design group?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s no real surprise that some bishops are intending not to go to the Lambeth Conference. The Bishop of Lewes, Wallace Benn, told me last week that among his reasons for not attending was the fact that Lambeth was downgraded from a synod of bishops to a training conference. Other English bishops have intimated that should their dire expectations of the conference be fulfilled they will be getting in their cars and returning home.<\/p>\n
The Lambeth Conference will cost millions of pounds, yet there is no real process which will lead to any substantial piece of work done by the conference. In fact, there will be no opportunity for anything really surprising to come out of the assembly of bishops, because nothing can be tabled, and no resolutions can emerge from conversations in the groups. In 1988, Bishops from the global south called for a Decade of Evangelism, which in turn saw extraordinary growth over the next 10 years in many provinces in the communion. Lambeth Conferences in the past have made major contributions to contemporary debates on marriage and family life, on debt and social justice. 2008 seems to preclude the possibility of any such intervention on important issues facing the world.<\/p>\n
Listening to many of the lectures and sermons from the Global Anglican Future Conference on Anglicantv (www.Anglicantv.org) prompts me to wonder that if the organization of the Lambeth Conference had been put in the hands of the group who organised this, whether a much larger attendance at Lambeth would now be guaranteed. In five months, the Gafcon organisers have assembled 1,000 people, including some 200 bishops in the Holy Land, with all the difficulties that entails. There is an opportunity for pilgrimage, networking and spiritual refreshment, as well as, the work of the conference, including a final statement.<\/p>\n
There have been hiccups. I have been critical of both the timing and the place for the conference. The selection of Jerusalem ruled out bishops and delegates from countries such as Pakistan. Furthermore, the refusal of Jordanian authorities to allow the Archbishop of Nigeria to cross the border meant that the entire conference decamped from their Jordan base to Jerusalem early.<\/p>\n
The reassuring message from Gafcon however, is overwhelmingly one of staying in the communion, and reforming from within, when at times it looked as though a separatist tendency might rule the day.<\/p>\n
–This article appears in the Church of England Newspaper, June 27, 2008 issue, on page 23<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Readers of this column have been misled. On May 23 in my column, I stated that while there will be fewer resolutions at the 2008 Lambeth Conference, there would be some. In fact, I was quoting the Archbishop of Canterbury…<\/span><\/p>\n