Church of England gives £600,000 to bail out Lambeth Conference: CEN 8.15.08 p 6. August 20, 2008
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The Church of England has given the Lambeth Conference an emergency loan of £600,000 to cover the estimated £1.2 million shortfall for the July 16 to Aug 3 conference.
On Aug 11, the Board of Governors of the Church Commissioners met with the officers of the Lambeth Conference Company, a corporation set up by the Anglican Consultative Council and Lambeth Palace to manage the conference, to address the cash shortfall.
The Lambeth Conference Company’s officers, who include ACC Secretary General Kenneth Kearon and Lambeth Chief of Staff Chris Smith reported that they were unable to meet the conference’s financial obligations. The Board and the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England, which met on Aug 7, agreed to extend a temporary interest free loan to the Lambeth Conference while it attempted to raise money to cover the shortfall.
According to a January 2008 internal conference document distributed to the bishops who had registered, the budget for the Lambeth Conference was £4.4 million and the Lambeth Spouses’ Conference was £1.2 million, excluding the costs of travel to the conference.
Conference spokesman Archbishop Phillip Aspinall told the media that a final accounting would not be available until after the conference closed its books in mid-August, but a member of the conference organizing team told The Church of England Newspaper the deficit could rise to £2 million. In contrast, the 1998 conference ended with a budget surplus of over £1 million.
Asked how the costs of the forthcoming primates meeting would be covered, on Aug 3 Dr. Williams said “we are looking at various routes to meet what looks like a shortfall at this stage. We knew this would be difficult. I don’t think I can go into details because I don’t have the direct management of that question.
Dr. Williams declined to answer further questions on this point, saying “it’s just that’s not my particular responsibility at the moment, although I’m rather concerned about it.”
In a statement released on Aug 8, Canon Kearon said “the projection of a deficit in the immediate period following the Conference was always recognized,” and that “the shortfall in funding is unclear as bills come in to be settled, but it is likely to be approaching £1 million.”
“The shortfall is being addressed as agreed by the continuing fund raising programme” he noted, adding that England remained the most economical location for hosting the conference which “involved the participation of some 680 bishops and 3000 participants.”
The total number of Anglican bishops attending the conference is unclear, but according to documents made available to the bishops at Lambeth, only 617 bishops had registered for the conference.
This registration data is also incomplete, as some participants such as the Archbishop of Canterbury were not registered for the conference but present for the conference, while others who had registered, such as the bishops of Pennsylvania, Salisbury and Western Kansas, were not present.
The Bishop of Lincoln, John Saxby’s registration was lost by the conference, and he was shown as not being present in the registration tally. Upon arrival on July 16, Bishop Saxby was registered and was given the lodgings set aside for the Bishop of Salisbury, who though registered, was absent from the gathering due to illness.
Among the 617 registered bishops, were 468 of the communion’s 699 diocesan bishops and 149 suffragan bishops, bishops co-adjutor, and bishops without territorial sees such as bishops for the armed forces, the US Presiding Bishop, the Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Prime Bishop of the Episcopal Church of the Philippines, the National Evangelism Bishop of the Philippines, and the Bishop of the Office of Pastoral Development for the US House of Bishops.
Bishops from all provinces of the Communion save for Uganda, registered for the conference. However, the one bishop registered from the Church of Nigeria, Bishop Cyril Okorocha of Owerri did not attend the meeting, and of the 17 Kenyan bishops registered, only six came with one departing after the close of the retreat.
Not all absent bishops were boycotting bishops, as a number of sees across the communion are vacant. However, absences from Africa were most noticeable as 181 of the continent’s 296 diocesan bishops were not present.
[...] By George Conger, CEN [...]