Doing The Lambeth Walk: Part 2
Monday 21 July
This weekend has marked a new stage in the Conference. On Saturday, we moved from the two and a half days of retreat, led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, towards the Opening Service of the Conference itself, which took place on Sunday morning in Canterbury Cathedral.
In between, I was involved in the welcoming of the ecumenical guests, most of whom arrived on Saturday. I have the personal privilege of ‘looking after' Professor Robert Gribben, a Methodist from Australia, who will be co-chairing the new Anglican Methodist International Commission on Mission and Unity with me, which will have its first meeting in Mexico in January. Most of the churches represented sent letters of greeting to the Conference, which have reminded us all again (if we have read them) that our present ‘revisionism' in parts of the Communion not only threatens the unity of Anglicanism, but also our relationships with our ecumenical brothers and sisters. The Secretariat of State from the Vatican writes:
New issues that have arisen in our relationship pose a further and grave challenge to the hope for full and visible unity.....
And the Archbishop of Constantinople writes:
With all our heart we as Orthodox pray that the present Lambeth Conference will prove to be a council of reconciliation and unity, an occasion for speaking the truth in sincerity and without compromise, yet an occasion for speaking the truth in love....
The question is not only how much value do we place on our own unity within the communion, but how much value do we place on our relationships with other churches? Quite honestly, I have the impression that those with a strong liberal starting-point are prepared to give up most things to succeed with their ‘agenda'.
Sunday morning saw the service in the Cathedral. I remembered so well the vibrancy of the opening service in 1998, the congregation united in expressive and reverent worship which was God-focused and unifying. This year was very different. I experienced the worship as heavy, with several new hymns which felt very humanistic, even if they were full of supposed inclusivity. And the sermon, which ought to have been a place for uniting the congregation, was music to some ears and not to others. It was concluded with a song sung by the preacher, the Bishop of Colombo in Sri Lanka, to a Buddhist chant, and greeted by applause, presumably begun by those who liked its mood, which I perceived as dividing the congregation. The best part of the service for me was the greeting of the Gospel by a song from Melanesia, carried as it was into the middle of the congregation by people in native dress, on a little boat! But, overall, I left the service feeling isolated, and was glad to meet many others afterwards who felt the same. It was sad that the point of unity, where I had personally decided to receive Holy Communion as an expression of my hope that the resurrection would come in our Communion was such a ‘cold place' for conservatives. So much so, that I saw some primates choosing not to receive the bread and wine. My heart felt ‘strangely cold'!
The afternoon saw the first main session of Lambeth proper, explaining to us the process of the Indaba groups, which will be the main method of participation in the issues of Lambeth. A special focus was given to a report from the Anglican Covenant Design Group by Archbishop Drexel Gomez, and a report from the Windsor Continuation Group by Bishop Clive Hanford. It is the second of these which was particularly encouraging, when Clive Hanford spelt out the present thinking of the group in a way which, I imagine, seemed realistic to most people. He mentioned, first of all, the severity of the situation, the complex reality of our life together as Anglicans, the inconsistency of the application of the Windsor Report, and the Breakdown of trust in the Communion. Also, for the first time I have heard this spelt out, the fear among many of a ‘wider agenda', only just over the horizon, with creedal issues, new ways of seeing the authority of scripture, Christology and salvation; and other issues in some places like lay presidency at the Holy Communion. In his view, positions are becoming more ‘extreme', and our communion is being diminished. He mentioned also GAFCON, ‘congregational episcopalianism', and quoted from one of the hymns sung that morning, ‘All are welcome. All are welcome, all are welcome in this place', saying that that did not mean ‘anything goes'; and encouraging us to find limits for our diversity. He ended by saying that ‘a divided church cannot with credibility speak a message of reconciliation to a divided world'.
The afternoon ended with an address by Rowan Williams, in which he said: ‘We stand in the middle of one of the most severe challenges to have faced the Anglican family in its history', but he reminded us that our generations did not invent differences and divisions in the church: We have been there before. The Archbishop looked at three models often suggested for the future:
1)An Anglican Federation, where we are under one roof but quite separate within, and even work against each other;
2) Autonomous churches, which we are, and which simply do their own thing;
3) More centralized control.
But he offered a fourth option: Council (or was it Counsel??) and Covenant. Let's see how it will pan out. I'll keep the diocese informed.
+ Harold
TO VIEW BISHOP HAROLD'S EARLIER REPORT FROM LAMBETH GO TO THE NEWS/EVENTS PAGE (SEE TOP OF THIS PAGE). WHEN NEWS/EVENTS PAGES OPENS CLICK ON ‘OLDER NEWS ITEMS'ON THE MENU ON THE RIGHT HAND SIDE.
Photographs: ' © Lambeth Conference '