So Lambeth is a conference held by the bishops of the Anglican Communion every ten years since 1867 to discuss doctrine and reaffirm the communion. The communion itself is an association of Anglican churches around the world. Each Anglican Church is actually autonomous so the communion doesn’t have power so much as influence. The conference produces “resolutions” which are not contractual but expressions of agreed values or doctrines for the communion.

This years Lambeth was controversial because after the last one, the Episcopal Church in America (which is part of the communion) ordained a homosexual bishop after the conference had resolved not to ordain homosexuals. This has provoked a reaction in some churches who have since questioned the viability of the communion and whether there still is a communion or whether there is a parting of ways for a largish chunk of the Anglican Church. There are some disenfranchised parishes in America who have sought refuge by becoming part of African Anglican churches who are not shy about condemning homosexuality. This in turn has sparked issues of colonialist tensions in the African churches setting themselves against the western churches but with some of the western churches aligning themselves with the African churches, most notably the Sydney Diocese in Australia.

As I mentioned in a previous post, these mostly African churches have come to a resolution through the Global Anglican Futures Conference (GAFCon) to form a new council of leadership for the global Anglican Church which will be more “top-down” and have real power over the churches that seek to be part of it. Notably, the model that GAFCon has proposed will have the power to excommunicate churches which the Anglican Communion currently lacks.

In other words, the Anglican Communion is currently like a family reunion, no-one in the family has the power to kick someone out even if there are tensions and problems. The GAFCon leadership will be more like a corporation with a board of directors, but it is a bit fuzzy as to the exact set-up at the moment.

Getting back to the 2008 Lambeth, the main criticism has been that it was all talk and no resolutions. According to the Religion Report’s interview with Bruce Kaye (a former secretary general of the Anglican Church in Australia), this was quite deliberate because Rowan William’s (the Archbishop of Canterbury who leads the communion) plan was to set a mood and get general vibes of things rather than lay down resolutions that often get ignored anyway.

The long term plan for the non-GAFCon part of the communion seems to be to form a “covenant” which will be more binding and have the possibility of punitive measures for maverick churches.

It was interesting to hear Dr Kaye’s research into conflict resolution in the Anglican Church (for his book on this topic) and his thoughts on models for dealing with conflict:

...[what is missing is a model] which actually takes the conflicts that arise as conflicts to be dealt with directly. It is interesting that not at all has any institutional effort been directed to bringing the conflicted parties together in any conflict resolution or high level theological debate, about the substantial issues at all in this process. What has been pursued has been an institutional management strategy; do we exclude these people, control these people, tell them to stop doing this and so on and so forth? No-one’s actually, no instrument of the communion has actually addressed the fundamental question that’s in dispute. (Dr Bruce Kaye, “Lambeth Post-Mortem”, Religion Report, link)

What is wrong with the way conflict is handled now?

... it enables other agendas and other layers of conflict to be loaded on to this one, without the thing being clearly identified. And it enables people to conduct the argument without real understanding of the other people’s points of view. (Dr Bruce Kaye, “Lambeth Post-Mortem”, Religion Report, link)

This does seem to be the case from what I can see. From my own experience I know I can learn to respect people with whom I disagree once I’ve been able to talk with them and understand where they’re coming from. Of course I might still think they’re wrong but that’s not the point. A reasonable outcome sometimes is to agree to disagree and then identify what we do have in common in order that we can still co-operate in the places where we have confluence.

References

The Religion Report, “Lambeth Post-mortem”
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2008/2333504.htm

“Lambeth Conferences” in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambeth_Conferences

According to the Religion Report, the outcome of GAFCon is that the members have resolved to be in schism with the Canadian and US Episcopal Churches. Actually part of the membership of GAFCon are disenfranchised American churches who have somehow moved themselves to be under the leadership of the Archbishop of Uganda. (Disclaimer: this is my simplified understanding of things based on media reportage and interviews but without actually understanding the relationships of various leadership roles in the Church). As far as I know this is mainly because the US and Canadian Churches have ordained gay bishops.

Also, GAFCon has set up a group of primates (which I think refers to a position of governance) which seems to be set in opposition to the Archbishop of Canterbury or maybe intended to be an alternative. This group of Bishops will rule on what is acceptable Anglican doctrine and practice and decide which Anglican churches meet the standard.

There has also been some clarification of why these groups don’t want to split from the Anglican Church. Yes it has to do with property, people and money but it is also about wanting to change the Church rather than risk becoming marginalised as a small splinter group. If they were to break away, they would lose certain resources that they have now and possibly lose their legitimacy. To me in a way, this is about wanting to have control of the Anglican “brand” rather than trying to start a new one.

The African Churches and conservative US and Australian Dioceses (aka Sydney Anglicans) main thrust is that the Anglican Church has become too liberal and needs to be more orthodox (i.e. return to traditional morality and Biblical interpretation). However, the mainstream US churches argue that while traditional Christianity is having a great run in Africa (a mainly patriarchal society that tolerates persecution of homosexuals), western society will not tolerate traditional Christianity and so they must respond by re-reading the Bible and reconstructing Christianity in the context of contemporary society.

It was interesting to hear Thomas Oden commenting that the Anglican Church has had this tension between Anglo-Catholics and Protestants, liberals and conservatives (although the two seem to have swapped places in some ways) for five centuries without the need for schism.

The report on how conservative Christians are being funded in the US is just downright scary and worth a listen as well.

Religion Report Coverage:

Jerusalem and Global Anglican Futures – following the money and leaders. Thomas Oden on the Confessing movement in the United States . In the context of these USA “Confessing movements”, has the “Global Anglican Futures” conference really amounted to anything new for the international Anglican church?

US Episcopalian Canon Jim Naughton on GAFCON
The ideas, the money and the effort behind the conference in Jerusalem.

Newcastle Bishop Brian Farran on GAFCON
What implications does the “Global Anglican Futures” conference have for the Australian Anglican church?

From what I can piece together, the women bishops thing all comes down to how conservative you are when it comes to scriptural interpretation and church tradition or a combination of those, for example, some liberal biblical interpreters might still object to women bishops just because it is not part of church tradition (perhaps extreme Anglo-Catholics might take this view?). Where as some relatively literal minded biblical interpreters might point to Paul’s letters (e.g. 1 Cor 14.34-36 and 1 Tim 2.11-15). Then centralist evangelicals like in the Melbourne Anglican Diocese are liberal enough in both church tradition and scriptural interpretation to not have a problem with women bishops.

As for GAFCon, I can only point to the Radio National program linked above which in summary suggests that Australian conservative evangelical Anglicans are teaming up with the conservative African Anglican churches to oppose the current direction of the Anglican Communion. Again, this seems to all come back to various mixes of conservatism and liberalism in scripture and tradition.

Actually, I think I should save my original topic which was going to be “Vatican II and all that Jazz” for another post and just leave this one how it is. If you’ve read this far and have some thoughts on the state of the Anglican church, please enlighten me in the comments.