The once-every-decade Lambeth Conference of bishops from throughout the worldwide Anglican Communion will begin this week in Canterbury, England. On Thursday, the bishops will begin a three-day retreat focusing on God’s mission and a bishop’s discipleship. They will gather for a special service in Canterbury ’s Christ Church Cathedral on Sunday.
American bishops represent nearly 25 percent of about 650 Anglican bishops scheduled to attend the conference, which runs through August 3. About 230 conservative bishops, mostly from Africa and Asia and representing 40 million of the world’s 77 million Anglicans, have decided not to attend the conference to protest what they see as the North American provinces’ departure from traditional Christian norms.
When he announced plans for the conference program back in January, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams noted that the first Lambeth Conference in 1867 was called in part in response to “a crisis about the limits of diversity allowed in the Anglican churches around the world.
“There’s nothing so very new about a Lambeth Conference meeting in a climate of some controversy,” he said. He emphasized that the conference “has never been a lawmaking body in the strict sense and it wasn’t designed to be one: every local Anglican province around the world has its own independent system of church law and there is no supreme court.”
Since its inception, conference participants have “always been willing to look for ways of setting our common life on a firm basis so that we can act and serve more effectively in our world,” Archbishop Williams said. This year’s gathering will focus on strengthening the sense of a shared Anglican identity among the bishops, and helping to equip bishops for mission.
The Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, secretary general of the Anglican Consultative Council, said Archbishop Williams has sought to make the conference free from “political posturing or parliamentary process,” but that the bishops would release a final document that would be “descriptive of the totality of the engagement which the bishops have undertaken under God. The final document must also be robust enough to describe realistically and honestly where the bishops of the Communion understand our life together to have come, and their resolve for the future.
“It is hoped that every bishop attending the conference will be given the opportunity to shape the reflections document,” he said. The hope of the Lambeth Design Group, according to Canon Kearon, is that the final document will “be available on the last day of the conference as an authentic account of the engagement of the bishops together in the service of Christ.”
While many of the official Lambeth sessions will be closed to the general public, a number of bishops have been appointed to report on the conference’s daily themes during media briefings. These include Anglican identity, gender violence, human sexuality issues, environmental concerns, ecumenical and interfaith relations, and mission and evangelism.
The Living Church magazine (www.livingchurch.org) contributed to this article.