Nigerian Primate: Consensus on Sexuality Necessary Before Lambeth Conference

From The Living Church:

01/29/2007


The issue of homosexuality and the Anglican Communion must be resolved before the 2008 Lambeth Conference, if the Church of Nigeria is to participate, according to Archbishop Peter Akinola.

In a Jan. 14 interview with the Guardian newspaper of Lagos, Archbishop Akinola, the primate of the Communion’s largest province, said sending more than 100 Nigerian bishops to Lambeth would not be an act of prudent stewardship, if the conference was simply going to be an expensive episcopal jamboree.

“A Lambeth Conference that will not be able to guide the church in a way that the church will embrace” and “comply” is “not worth attending,” the archbishop said. The Church of Nigeria would be a “bad steward, to use God’s resources and waste it on jamboree. God will hold me responsible and accountable for spending money in that way.”

The Lambeth Conference “does not legislate” nor can it tell “any diocese or province” what to do, Archbishop Akinola said. However, “as a result of the fellowship, praying together, studying the word of God together,” the bishops at Lambeth come to a “consensus of opinion, which we now commend to the provinces for further actions.”

No decision as to whether the Nigerian bishops would attend Lambeth has yet been reached, Archbishop Akinola told the Guardian.

“We are hoping that after the primates’ meeting in Tanzania next month, we will have a clearer vision of what we have. If the Lambeth Conference is worth attending, we must put this problem behind us,” he said.

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