New ultimatum to Lambeth bishops: CEN 4.18.08 p 1. April 18, 2008
Posted by geoconger in Archbishop of Canterbury, Church of England Newspaper, Lambeth 2008.trackback
Bishops attending the Lambeth Conference will be asked to affirm their willingness to abide by the recommendations of the Windsor Report and work towards the creation of an Anglican Communion Covenant.
A spokesman for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams told The Church of England Newspaper that letters affirming support for Windsor and the Covenant process had not yet been mailed, but would go out presently.
Bishops attending Lambeth must have a “willingness to work with those aspects of the [Lambeth] Conference’s agenda that relate to implementing the recommendations of [the Windsor Report], including the development of a Covenant,” Dr. Williams wrote in his Dec. 14 Advent pastoral letter.
The Windsor Report calls for a ban on gay bishops and blessings and discouraged violating the diocesan boundaries of bishops in opposing theological camps. Affirming the recommendations of the Windsor Report may cause difficulty for US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and other progressive American, Canadian, Brazilian and British bishops who have given either their formal or informal support to moves to normalize homosexuality within the life of the church. It also closes the door on full participation in the conference of the Bishop of New Hampshire, the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson.
Overseas primates who have backed the violation of diocesan boundaries by African-consecrated American missionary bishops, could also fall afoul of Dr. Williams’ dictate. However, as the principle provinces backing overseas missionary bishops-Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda-will not be at Lambeth, the warning is a “moot point”, one overseas primate told The Church of England Newspaper.
Approximately 600 of the Communion’s 716 diocesan and 171 suffragan and assistant bishops have stated they would attend Lambeth, and more responses are expected to arrive in the coming weeks, a member of the conference team said.
Dr. William’s Advent letter warned against campaigning by the bishops on the disparate issues dividing the Communion. Attendance at Lambeth was predicated at avoiding “the present degree of damaging and draining tension arising again. I intend to be in direct contact with those who have expressed unease about this, so as to try and clarify how deep their difficulties go with accepting or adopting the Conference’s agenda.”
Speaking to the Fulcrum Conference in Islington last week, the Bishop of Durham, the Rt. Rev. N.T. Wright said “when the Archbishop issued his invitations, he made it clear as I said that their basis was Windsor and the Covenant as the tools to shape our future common life.”
“Those bishops who might be thought particularly unsympathetic to Windsor and the Covenant” would be asked by Dr. Williams “whether they were really prepared to build on this dual foundation. ”
“Many will say this is far too little, far too late – just as many others will be livid to think that the Archbishop, having already not invited Gene Robinson to Lambeth, should be suggesting that some others might absent themselves as well,” Dr. Wright said. “But this is what he promised he would do, and he is doing it.”
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Conger 
[…] Williams New Ultimatum Published April 18, 2008 Uncategorized Read it all; here is […]
I suspect that most TEC bishops are more than willing to work within the Windsor process and with the Anglican Covenant process as it unfolds. So if this is a self selecting sort of letter, I suspect no TEC bishop would feel the need to not go. And indeed TEC has been Windsor compliant, despite various claims to the contrary.
It is good too that the non Windsor compliant global south bishops and primates will not attend. They have shown through their consistent actions that they have no respect for the totality of the Windsor process and no interest in anything other than capitulation to their threats and ultimatums.
[…] By George Conger for CEN […]
The Windsor report noted that boundary crossing by bishops from outside North America was happening, and it noted that such events came because of the spiritual and theological distance experienced by conservative Episcopalians in “progressive” dioceses. The Windsor report thus recommended that dioceses make opportunities for spiritually acceptable oversight (not merely ceremonial visits, but actual oversight) for the conservatives.
All other things being equal, when conservative parishes are under the full care of bishops whom they trust to uphold historic doctrine and practice, there will be no need for “interventions.” Since, however, the progressive dioceses cannot bear to let conservative parishes have care acceptable to them, the conservative parishes cannot be blamed for asking a foreign bishop to come to their aid.
I just managed to pick myself up off the floor after laughing at Mike Russell’s reply. The American bishops are SO not compliant with what the Windsor report suggests. Some are LOUDLY – in your face non compliant and yet he has the audacity, or perhaps I should say the cruelty to slight the Global South Bishops. Remember, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance. Ponder on that Mr. Russell.
[…] New ultimatum to Lambeth bishops: CEN 4.18.08 p 1. Bishops attending the Lambeth Conference will be asked to affirm their willingness to abide by the recommendations of […] […]
Ms. Schori and her “gang” will give lip service and then continue persecuting the orthodox. They know that the longer they can “hang in there”, the rest of TEC will gradually compromise.This has been the pattern of the past. Someone should depose Ms Schori and fire her Chancellor. Trust must be earned. Love is a gift. Trust for Ms Schori and the HOB has been lost for most of us.
Until the TEC stops concentrating on litigation to maintain their position as spiritual leaders and replaces it with Christian love for their fellow Anglicans nothing will be solved.
My way or the highway just doesn’t work in dealing with maters of faith.
Schori will just sucseed in either driving marginal Anglicans completly out of the church, spending vast sums of money on lawyers and achieving nothing, or ending up with hundreds of empty pieces of property.
It has probably gone too far to be healed except thru the grace of GOD.
Allyn Aldrich
Thank you Allyn.
I submit that the Grace of God through his Holy Spirit is already about the business of healing Anglicanism in North America. For example, a Dark Spirit has sent us Katherine Schori. A rutheless fanatic whose barbarities have made clear the fate of the moderate and conservative Christians if they remain in TEC. The Holy Spirit has countered with ++Peter, ++Luke, ++Gregory to succor and protect us, giving refuge from heresy and a grand platform to begin evanglising into a new Anglican Reformation.
I believe the Holy Spirit is working in our hearts and minds to recognize the immense folly of the concept that the Body of Christ is divided into geographic units.
We are learning, and will teach the rest of Christianity, that Anglicanism is a system of worship, not geography, and that its center is shifting South where Anglicans must also be Christians. We are learning, and will teach the rest of Christianity that the decayed Northern European remnants (TEC, ACC, COE) have lost forever the control of this unique God given part of the Body of Christ.
I am an enthusiastic proclaimer of The New Anglican Reformation. It will cleanse and heal the church, without regard to boundaries.
I am an Episcopalian who came to this faith in 1976 and I am so upset with the state of this church (lower case) that I could cry. We are attacking those who want to leave (for legitimate reasons) and are so concerned about who owns what that we’ve forgotten what really matters; the Gospel! I’m sick of it. Let them(us) leave and if those who support of Bishop Robinson stand on their own and have their own ‘church’. That’s all I have to say on this.
The TEC was taken over as early as 1979 by a sleazy band of left-wing bishops whose principal concern seemed to rid the church of conservative Episopalians. Ordination of women and the barbarities of the “new” illiterate Book of Common Prayer cost the church heavily. From a high water mark of 3.3 million communicants, at about the time of the introduction of the new BCP, it declined to 2.2 million. For any Protestant denomination to lose fully a third of its membership is noteworthy. For the TEC it was a disaster. Not only the members but also their children were lost for good, along with millions of dollars in contribution each year. In fact, however, the radical bishops had another card to play — ordination of the egregious Robinson. That pretty much assured the departure of those conservatives who were left. But one has to question their motives. As a lawyer, I subscribe to the old Latin question of “qui bono,” which means “who benefits.” It appears that the answer is the weird sexually indeterminate Katherine Schori and those clustered around her in the TEC headquarters in New York. They now have access to hundreds of millions of dollars in trust funds left the real Episcopal church by parishioners such as J. P. Morgan, etc. They are not only using those trusts to fund litigation against dissident dioceses and parishes but also to pad their own pockets. They steadfastly refuse to give an accounting about what has happened to the trust funds. Also don’t forget the scandal of a few years ago when the National TEC hired a woman as treasurer who lived — to put it mildly — way beyond her pay grade, with several luxury cars and a luxury apartment. Simple greed is probably a better explanation than simply adherence to a homosexual agenda and a badly flawed theology that denies the basic tenets of the old and true church. The TEC is gone and will never return. The best that we can hope for is that the barbarians will leave as soon as they complete looting the vaults.