Personal note: I wrote a short essay on the Third Article of the Thirty-Nine Articles that was also published in the first edition of the North American Anglican. ed.
by Chris Sugden
in North American Anglican Vol 1. No.1 November 2008.
www.39articles.com
All that said, the Conference had an unforgettable conclusion.. As the
final service ended in Canterbury Cathedral, the names of nine members
of an Anglican Mission Order in Melanesia martyred in 2003 were placed
in the chapel of Martyrs of our Time. Their colleagues processed with
their names, from the nave up the many steps to the quire screen,
singing the most haunting refrain. They passed from sight through the
quire screen. But they continued singing. The refrain echoed round the
cathedral. It was as though we had seen the martyrs themselves pass into
the nearer presence of God, yet their beautiful singing could still he
heard. Strong men and women wept. =20
Introduction
How will Anglican History view the 2008 Lambeth Conference? Too early
to tell, but Rowan Williams stamped his personality and will clearly on
every aspect of it.
He gave five addresses at the opening retreat. He gave a welcoming
address, three presidential addresses, closing the conference with one
in which he articulated an agenda for the future. He chaired all the
public plenary addresses by visiting guests and their question sessions.
He preached at the closing service. He has been criticized for not
taking a clear lead in the past =96 was this a response?
He did not wish the conference to engage in plenary debates with
resolutions and votes. In their place were 'indabas', extended
discussions among groups of 40 bishops, which produced over 40 pages and
137 paragraphs of reflections. Indabas are apparently schediuled for
the Primates' Meeting in February 2009.
In issuing the invitations to the conference in July 2007, before the
TEC had formally responded to the Dar-es-Salaam communiqu=E9 or the
primates had had a chance to review the TEC response, Rowan Williams has
been acting alone, without the primates' meeting. The direct result was
that 230 bishops did not attend, explaining: "How can we explain to our
church members that while we and they are formally out of communion with
the Episcopal Church, we at the same time live with them at the Lambeth
Conference as though nothing had happened? This would be hypocrisy."
The Lambeth 230
As an early press conference established, the responsibility for their
non-attendance was entirely his. Archbishop Williams was asked why had
had invited the consecrators of Gene Robinson, whose inclusion in the
invitation list was the stated reason for 230 bishops ( 29 % of the
total number of bishops) representing over half the communion not
attending. He answered that many US bishops had retired since then and
new ones had joined the house. Further, the TEC House of Bishops had
"asked for forgiveness for offence caused last year." Archbishop
Williams said he had circulated a letter to all Anglican provinces on
whether this response was satisfactory. Half the provinces said that it
probably was all right. "Therefore we did not want to go down the list
(and exclude) the consecrators." Who was the "we" ? =96 the Archbishop
himself. The invitation was his alone, the judgment that the response
was adequate was his alone, so the responsibility for the absence of the
230 bishops was also his.
The absence of the 230 bishops was mentioned frequently. It was
referred to by the Archbishop of Canterbury in his welcome address, by
Bishop de Chickera in the opening sermon and Archbishop Aspinall from
Australia who chaired the press conferences. This is because the liberal
vision is to have all views expressed at a meeting. However, this will
always be in the controlling framework of being on a journey and never
being able to settle on an answer.
This expresses the paramountcy of the liberal world view: they want all
views present, but those with orthodox views are asked to sit with those
who preach heresy. This is like asking for a consultation about a
patient afflicted with a devastating illness to include both those who
come from the long experience of medical science, and practitioners of
alternative medicine in all its forms.=20
The absent Lambeth 230 questioned the ability of the liberal
establishment to hold the ring for all the views that can be expressed
=96 but only within the one framework which was clearly liberal: the
chairman of the Bible Study Committee, Gerald West said he had no view
of Lambeth 1.10 and is the author of a "Gay Primer" for the Church of
Southern Africa. In that case the most effective counterargument to the
imperialism of ideas is simply not to turn up.
And that is exactly what Archbishop Orombi said in an article in the
London Times on August 1st. "We believe that our absence at this Lambeth
Conference is the only way that our voice will be heard. For more than
ten years we have been speaking and have not been heard. So maybe our
absence will speak louder than our words."
Some degree of distance was expressed by the orthodox in the conference
itself. Some primates and bishops did not take communion. Worship was
held at at least two "separate altars" each day during the conference.
Some bishops did not attend all their indaba sessions. One at least
found the proposal for them to share sermon notes on a passage of
scripture a subtle way of criticizing African preaching traditions, and
refused to play the game. And two primates left early.
The Lambeth press officers were asked who was making the decisions at
the conference, since even a decision about releasing any list of names
of those present was a long time in not coming. Eventually only a list
of numbers by province was released after the conference. This reduced
the number of bishops attending from the original claim of 650 to 617,
since the original published number had included bishops of churches in
ecumenical relationships.
The press officers answered that three groups were meeting: the Lambeth
Design Group, the Anglican Consultative Council officers, and the
Lambeth Staff. The Archbishop of Canterbury attended all the meetings.
Bishops spoke much of their respect, loyalty and affection for
Archbishop Williams. To speak like that of a primate in Africa is
regarded as fawning on an autocratic tribal chief. The Lambeth
Conference Network in the Anglican Communion seems to have been
overtaken by celebrity culture and very firmly managed towards a
pre-determined outcome.
Part of that outcome was to affirm the commitment of the Anglican
Communion to the Millennium Development Goals. We must examine this
carefully. The purpose of the Walk in London was admitted to be to
deflect attention away from the news reports on the debates on sexuality
in the Anglican Communion, and give concrete expression to the argument
that there are more important matters. But we need to consider the
following. The dominant culture of the west is secular hedonism.
Therefore the Christian witness to faithful marriage between a man and a
woman is on the cutting edge of the witness of God's will and best in
that culture. To attempt to deflect attention from that witness, as
being secondary to Millennium Development Goals. Is to accept the
approach of Western Culture that it can be absolved from its other
supposed shortcomings because it is kind and generous to poor black and
brown people. However, the focus of the MDG's is on western
governments, agencies and churches giving money to poor black and brown
people: not on those people being empowered economically, seeking
enterprise solutions to poverty or addressing the issue of identity
through the good news of a new identity and transforming power through
Jesus Christ which is a major key to addressing the culture of poverty.
MDGs are the successor to the Jubilee Campaign for dropping the debt
which are all about Western Society's need to do something rather than
enabling people in the Global South. Draping Lambeth Palace with
banners to Keep the Promise was an example of gesture politics and in
the views of some demeaning. Will we have banners on Buckingham Palace
next? The aim to draw attention away from the debate on sexuality was
entirely of a piece with western society's aim to draw attention away
from its own disobedience and decadence by focusing on the poverty and
injustice elsewhere and calling for greater moral effort on its part.
Resisting TEC?
Why was this monarchical approach adopted? It may have been to
neutralize the clear campaign by the TEC to control and even change the
agenda. The TEC delegation was the largest; all had been issued with
mobile phones to secure communication. It was virtually impossible to
find bishops on the campus since there were no room lists, and no
effective postal system around the residences. The TEC bishops were
issued with a briefing memo to put forward three ideas: "a church
celebrates both unity and diversity; the Anglican Communion is a
community of faith in Jesus Christ, bound together through baptism in
Jesus Christ; the reconciling work of Christ is at the heart of our
common life". The TEC ran its own press conferences with three of their
bishops at 3.30 most afternoons outside the Press Building.
It was strongly suggested that there might be an attempt through the
Indaba groups to press that Gene Robinson, who was giving seminars
around the campus, should be a seated member of the conference. This
was dropped after the press statement on the second day of the
conference from the Archbishop of Sudan called for Gene Robinson to
resign, and for TEC to confess to the conference. The most blatant
example of TEC's attempt to influence the conference occurred in the
Lambeth Witness, published by Integrity USA, which as the only daily
publication on campus, was often mistaken to be the official Lambeth
Daily, which had no paper edition in 2008. In the Lambeth Witness,
Bishop Catherine Roskam from TEC suggested that statistically at least
some of the bishops at the conference were wife-beaters, and that there
were incidences of wife-beating in some African nations. This was widely
seen as an attempt to undermine the Sudanese and other Africans who had
been outspoken on issues of sexuality.
Any agenda?
What agenda did emerge? When the Archbishop of Canterbury was asked
this question at the closing press conference, he immediately referred
to the statement of the Windsor Continuation Group that came at the
beginning of the conference.=20
This called for a complete cessation of=20
(a) the celebration of blessings for same-sex unions,
(b) consecrations of those living in openly gay relationships and
(c) all cross-border interventions and inter-provincial claims of
jurisdiction
The group writes that "cessation of activity. .. applies to practices
that may have already been authorised as well as proposed for
authorisation in the future. " The agenda also included the Pastoral
Forum, for which bishops from overseas jurisdictions in the United
States had not asked.
Had this agenda been discussed with the Primates, or endorsed by the
conference? The closing presidential address had enumerated these and
received a standing ovation, but not from the Presiding Bishop of TEC
who stood with arms folded.
Minority reports
Some bishops probably saw from afar this attempt to produce an agenda
out of what were only styled as reflections. The Moderators from the
Churches of North and South India, Pakistan and Bangladesh issued their
own statement as the conference ended. As other bishops had claimed to
represent over half the church going Anglicans, they claimed to
"represent nearly a quarter of the human race practicing and living all
the major faiths of the world". In other words, they knew what they were
talking about in inter-faith matters. They applauded the walk of witness
on world poverty but concluded that this "will mean an equitable sharing
of resources within the Communion". They were saddened and disturbed by
the 'fractured nature of the Anglican Communion' which "seems primarily
to have been caused by the issue of human sexuality=85=85We acknowledge =
the
biblical norms on human sexuality and urge that within the Anglican
Communion this may be upheld for the effective witness of the Gospel."
They ask that "our differences, self-justifications and arrogant
attitudes may be crucified and that we all experience the power of the
resurrection for the transformation of our life together in the
Communion." Primates from the Global South, the Council of Anglican
Province of Africa Bishops and the Bishops of Egypt also made public
statements as the conference ended. Did this flurry of 'minority
reports' represent a frustration at not having any opportunity to
express a common mind and a protest against the Conference leadership?
Missing most glaringly from the Reflections are the presence of sin and
disobedience in the leadership of the communion, clear disobedience to
revealed truth in Scripture and a total avoidance of the issues of power
in any relationships local or global. Mere repetition of being gracious
and not rushing to judgment is the ploy that unethical power uses to
mask its strategies of continuing hegemony.
Culture of Inclusion
The Culture of Lambeth was of Inclusive Church. The opening service was
on the theme of diversity in unity. Most self-select sessions were from
the liberal perspective. The market place was dominated by gay
organisations.=20
The Archbishop said in his second presidential address: "And the answer,
I hope, is that we speak from the centre. We should try to speak from
the heart of our identity as Anglicans; and ultimately from that deepest
centre which is our awareness of living in and as the Body of Christ."
What is the centre which is the heart of our identity as Anglicans? Is
it defined by the faith, or is it defined by inclusion?=20
Traditional Anglican liberalism was founded on core Christian truths and
commitments. Secular liberalism denies that truth is possible and urges
the equality of every person and their views. Therefore all views can
contribute and must be at the table.=20
Secular liberalism places the value of inclusion over against
faithfulness and faith. The claim to speak from the centre must face
the challenge of whether the faith that defines the centre is the centre
of faith, or the centre of the secular vision of inclusion?
Impact analysis
What has or will be the impact of the Conference. It was the conference
of what can best be described now as the Lambeth Network in the
Communion. At the end, the press were told that the Secretary General
of the ACC would be writing to all the absentee bishops to ask for their
views on the matters under consideration. Over a month later the letters
had not been sent out. But a Primates Meeting of the Fellowship of
Confessing Anglicans Network had already had time to make a response:
"We are grateful that there is an acknowledgement that Lambeth 1.10 of
1998 remains an authentic expression of the mind of the Communion. We
also note the renewed call for moratoria on the consecration of bishops
who are homosexually partnered and the blessing of same-sex unions as
well so-called 'border-crossing'. Likewise there is mention of the
creation of a 'Pastoral Forum' to look after disaffected parishes or
dioceses and continued work on an Anglican Covenant.
They said their "immediate difficulty is that the voice of Lambeth 2008
is seriously weakened because it merely repeated what has been said by
the Primates' Meeting (in Gramado early 2003, Lambeth October 2003,
Dromantine, February 2005 and Dar es Salaam, February 2007) and which
has proved to change nothing. Indeed the Windsor Continuation Group
itself made the same point, 'The three moratoria have been requested
several times: Windsor (2004); Dromantine (2005); Dar es Salaam (2007)
and the requests have been less than wholeheartedly embraced on all
sides=85 The failure to respond presents us with a situation where if =
the
three moratoria are not observed the Communion is likely to fracture.'
"We are therefore continually offered the same strategies which mean
further delay and unlikely results. Indeed, delay itself seems to be a
strategy employed by some in order to resolve the issue through
weariness. The Anglican Covenant will take a long time to be widely
accepted and may have no particular force when it does. The idea of
'moratoria' has never dealt with the underlying problem as is shown by
the equivalence of cross-border care and protection with the sexual sins
which have caused the problems.
In any case, some North American Bishops appear to have indicated
already that they will not keep to them. It appears that people living
in a homosexual unions continue to be ordained in some dioceses in
contravention to Lambeth 1.10. In principle, this is no different from
consecrating a bishop who adopts the same pattern of life, or indeed, of
blessing same-sex unions. The idea of the Pastoral Forum has only now
emerged but has never been discussed with those actually affected by the
innovations which have created the problems with which we are trying to
deal. If the Panel of Reference did not work, it is unclear how the
Pastoral Forum will succeed."
There exists some considerable overlap between the two Networks. A
number of those who were present at Jerusalem attended Lambeth , and
many of those at Lambeth held orthodox convictions as expressed in the
minority statements of CAPA, the Global South and the South Asian
Bishops.=20
The FoCA primates were sensitive to this in noting that "Given that some
esteemed colleagues from the Global South have strongly commended the
Windsor Process to us, we are reluctant to say that it cannot work. But
there is nothing new here such as to make us hesitate from the course we
are taking, given the urgency of the situations with which we are
dealing and the realities already on the ground. As they themselves
remark, 'the Anglican Communion as a communion of ordered churches is at
the probable brink of collapse'. We warmly appreciate the good words
which they have written about GAFCON and look forward to co-operation
with them in the future as we ourselves try to avoid that collapse and
renew the Communion."=20
It is probable that Global South will work as a geographical network,
including more liberal provinces such as Korea and Southern Africa,
while the FoCA Anglicans will focus on Anglican identity through faith,
as expressed in the Jerusalem Declaration, as a fellowship of orthodox
Anglicans globally.
The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans Primates were justified in their
assessment of the weakness of the outcome of Lambeth when news broke
that Jeffrey John was being considered for nomination to the see of
Bangor in Wales in an election set for October 10. As one senior figure
commented: Lambeth was only a time-out as in a football game.
All that said, the Conference had an unforgettable conclusion.. As the
final service ended in Canterbury Cathedral, the names of nine members
of an Anglican Mission Order in Melanesia martyred in 2003 were placed
in the chapel of Martyrs of our Time. Their colleagues processed with
their names, from the nave up the many steps to the quire screen,
singing the most haunting refrain. They passed from sight through the
quire screen. But they continued singing. The refrain echoed round the
cathedral. It was as though we had seen the martyrs themselves pass into
the nearer presence of God, yet their beautiful singing could still he
heard. Strong men and women wept.
Chris Sugden
Anglican Mainstream
www.anglican-mainstream.net
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