Conger

The boycott of the 2008 Lambeth Conference does not mark the end of the Anglican Communion, the Archbishop of Sydney has said. However, the Lambeth Conference’s role as an “instrument of unity” is no more.

Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald on Feb 5, Dr. Peter Jensen said he and his suffragans would not attend the July 16 to Aug 3 gathering out of “faithfulness” to Scripture and in solidarity with Africa’s Anglicans.

On Jan 30 Archbishop Peter Akinola stated the Nigerian bishops along with those of Rwanda and Uganda “are not going to the Lambeth Conference.”

The proposed agenda of the 2008 Lambeth Conference will differ in purpose and structure from past gatherings of the Communion’s bishops. Speaking to the BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme on Jan 27, Archbishop Rowan Williams stated he wanted the Lambeth Conference to give “space” to the “huge number of Anglicans” for whom homosexuality is “not the overwhelming issue, who really want to talk about mission, about development, and questions like that.”

Dr. Williams said he hoped Lambeth would allow the bishops to have a “good serious look at what structures we need to avoid the kind of confusion we’ve had in the last couple of years.”

His desire was also for “both ends of the spectrum” to “make some concessions to stay together. So the American Church is willing to say, ‘Alright, we won’t rush things,’ if the African and other churches are willing to say, ‘We won’t instantly condemn’.”

In his Advent letter to the Primates, Dr. Williams stated the Lambeth Conference would be “a meeting of the chief pastors and teachers of the Communion, seeking an authoritative common voice.”

However, the agenda does not envision creating a forum for the bishops to find their voice. The bishops will be given a “look” at the proposed Anglican Covenant, but no action will be taken, nor will there be any consequences for rejecting the common voice reached in 1998.

Archbishop Akinola expressed disquiet with the proposed agenda. “What is the use of the Lambeth conference for a three weeks’ jamboree which will sweep” the issues dividing the Communion “under the carpet,” he said.

Dr. Jensen explained that while the 1998 Lambeth Conference “made it clear that the leaders of the overwhelming majority of Anglicans worldwide maintained the biblical view of sexual ethics,” within five years Anglican churches in the US and Canada had “officially transgressed these boundaries in defiance of the Lambeth resolution and the teaching of the Bible.”

The “fallout” had made it “clear that we shall never go back to being the communion which we once were,” he said.

The African provinces that are boycotting Lambeth are “are not ending the Anglican Communion, or even dividing it. They are simply dealing with the reality that the nature of the communion has now been altered and reflecting that Lambeth is not as crucial to the future as it once was.

Dr. Jensen said he had come to share the African view “that since the American actions were taken in direct defiance of the previous Lambeth Conference, the Americans have irreparably damaged the standing of the conference itself.” To attend the conference without a resolution of these questions would be to “overlook” the “issues at stake.”

As the Conference is presently constructed, “those who say [that these issue do] not matter are the ones who are attending Lambeth,” Archbishop Akinola said.

Leaders of the Global South coalition tell The Church of England Newspaper there appears to be little the Archbishop of Canterbury can say or do at this stage to salvage the situation. While assurances have been given and programmes laid out at every Primates meeting since 2003, no substantive action has occurred.

“Why will it be different this time?”, one primate said.