From the International Herald Tribune:
The Anglican Church's shifting center
By Chloe Breyer
Published: July 24, 2008
In 1867, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Charles Thomas Longley, convened the very first Lambeth Conference of Bishops to address, among other things, scandalous writings of a South African bishop questioning Holy Communion as a precondition for salvation.
Only 76 of the 200 invited bishops showed up at Lambeth Palace. But together they resolved that "the whole Anglican Communion is deeply injured by the present condition of the Church in Natal" and recommended that a committee be appointed to "report on the best mode by which the Church may be delivered from the continuance of this scandal."
This week, more than 140 years later, as 650 bishops from 43 national churches and 164 countries gather at the University of Kent for the 14th Lambeth Conference, doctrinal disputes once again threaten to divide the Anglican Communion. A large number of primates and bishops from countries that were once British colonies are missing, not because of the harsh reality of intercontinental travel during the Victorian Age, but because of a boycott relating to biblical authority, homosexuality and gender roles.
The current fissures began a decade ago at the last Lambeth Conference with a controversial resolution about homosexual practice and the Bible, supported by a coalition of bishops from the Southern Hemisphere and a handful of allied American conservatives. The ordination of an openly gay bishop, the Right Reverend V. Gene Robinson from New Hampshire in 2003, the election in 2005 of the first woman primate, the Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori by the Episcopal Church, USA, and the recent General Synod vote for women bishops in England are steps that, arguably, help the church fulfill its Baptismal vows to "respect the dignity of every human being."
Comment: the resolution that Breyer characterizes as "controversial" was passed with over 70% of the vote by the 1998 Lambeth Conference. That's a significantly wider group than bishops from the Global South combined with a "handful of allied American conservatives." The consecration of VGR had nothing to do with the baptismal vow that Breyer cites; it had to do with the flagrant disrespect of pecusa for the rest of the Anglican Communion.
They are also events that have heightened tensions at the current conference. Indeed, 230 dissenting bishops lead by the primates of Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, the southern cone of South America and Australia met last month in Jerusalem to set up an alternative communion "a fellowship of confessing Anglicans," in which conservative bishops and parishes in the United States could opt out of their own national church structures and come under the oversight of bishops and primates overseas. (This has already happened in the United States and Canada where, for example, The Anglican Church of the Good Shepherd of San Angelino, Texas, receives oversight from the archbishop of Uganda).
Comment: The conference Breyer mentioned was organized after pecusa reneged on promises made to the Anglican Communion and the Archbishop of Canterbury failed to allow the implementation of sanctions that had been agreed upon by the primates of the Anglican Communion. The Global South bishops have boycotted (the word used by Breyer but not widely accepted by the bishops referenced) the Lambeth Conference because the ABC allowed those who consecrated VGR to be seated at Lambeth. The ABC chose a handful (yes, in this case it was a handful) of pecusa bishops over 270 Global South bishops.
In addition to the boycotting bishops, lawsuits over church property in the United States and a confusing morass of Web sites claiming the title "Anglican" are other indications of the hostile context in which Lambeth 2008 is convening.
Comment: So, these sites are not Anglican? The hostile context of Lambeth was initiated by pecusa and pecusa has refused to do what is necessary to restore the peace in the Anglican Communion.
What can the bishops present at Lambeth do to heal the wounds within the Anglican communion while still honoring the biblical principle that all human beings are made in the image of God? One idea would be for church leaders to resolve now to hold the next Lambeth Conference - the one that meets in 2018 - in a city in the Southern Hemisphere.
Comment: This is window dressing for a conference in ten years.
For one thing, the vast majority of Anglicans live in Africa. Philip Jenkins and others have written about the "typical" modern Christian being a young woman of color living in the global south. "If we want to visualize a typical contemporary Christian, we should think of a woman living in a village in Nigeria or in a Brazilian favela," he writes in "The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity."
Anglicans are no exception to this geographic shift in Christianity's center of gravity. The Church of Nigeria claims 18 million members, while the entire Episcopal Church, USA, has about 4 million.
Holding the Lambeth Conference 2018 in the global south acknowledges an important strand of truth in the views of dissenting conservative bishops and leaves the door slightly further ajar should any of them wish to return in the future.
Comment: Let's be clear - the "dissenting conservative bishops" represent the majority of the Anglican Communion. Breyer's statement here is both patronizing and insulting given that she is in a tiny and shrinking province of the Anglican Communion.
The dissenting bishops gathered at the Global Anglican Future Conference in Jerusalem proclaimed themselves to be the beginning of a truly "post-colonial" church - quite correctly identifying the need for the Anglican Communion to shed some of its 19th century trappings.
The echoes of empire are more audible, perhaps, from Canterbury Cathedral than they might be from other Anglican cathedrals around the world. Summoning bishops home to the "Mother Church" from their colonial outposts every 10 years might have made sense a century ago, when most of those bishops were homesick English missionaries. Since 1998, however, bishops born and raised in Africa, Asia and South America have outnumbered their European and North American counterparts by more than three to two.
Relocating the Lambeth Conference geographically while maintaining its character as an instrument of unity honors the work of many church leaders in the global south who do not agree that the Communion should split over questions of sexuality. The former archbishop of South Africa, the Most Reverend Njonkulu Ndungane, for example, has repeatedly challenged his fellow African bishops on their priorities. Women's leadership also plays an important role in the Southern Hemisphere, with many provinces in Africa ordaining women and almost all of them recognizing the spiritual and secular power of the Mothers' Unions - a century-old association of Anglican women committed to strengthening families with particularly strong chapters in Africa and South Asia.
Indeed, for the last five years more than 100 ordained and lay Anglican women leaders from north and south have met harmoniously at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in New York - somehow managing to overcome doctrinal differences enough to worship together.
Holding a future Lambeth Conference in the south would help the Church better understand the diverse contexts that many members of the Communion emerge from and prevent over-simplified conclusions about geography and theology.
What about the host? What about the Archbishop of Canterbury, the first among equals, who this year and in years past addresses the gathered bishops from his throne in the Cathedral in Canterbury? Could he still be the first among equals if the next Lambeth were in, say, Johannesburg or Madras?
There is no reason that the Archbishop of Canterbury couldn't maintain his position as "first among equals" and an instrument of unity in his person while playing the role of guest rather than host.
Comment: As GAFCON stated in so many words, the ABC has forfeited his moral authority by his dithering over the crisis in Anglicanism the last five years. He may be first among equals, but he and the other instruments of communion have lost the trust of the majority of the Anglican primates. Relocating the next Lambeth will not result in the restoration of trust.
By dislocating the Lambeth Conference from its English moorings, this important gathering could rid itself of some of its colonial vestiges and relocate closer to the heart of the current Anglican Communion. A change of this magnitude would take some imagination on the part of bishops gathered this week in Kent, but as modern leaders in a religious tradition that produced poets and artists like John Donne, William Blake, and Julian of Norwich, such vision would not be impossible.
Chloe Breyer is associate minister at St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Harlem and director of the Interfaith Center of New York. She is the author of "The Close: A Young Woman's First Year at Seminary."
Comment: this essay really doesn't address any of the issues involving the current Anglican crisis. The only reason I can see for the IHT publishing this piece is that Chloe Breyer is the daughter of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. This essay is neither timely nor helpful.
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