30 September 2014 A.D. Per 105th Senior Pastor of Canterbury, Lambeth 2018 is Off/Cancelled (Postponed?)
30
September 2014 A.D. Per 105th
Senior Pastor of Canterbury, Lambeth 2018 is Off/Cancelled (Postponed?)
Note, this article is dated to 2014. The issue is still pending. Justin Welby has called for a Primatial meeting in Jan 2016. One issue may be Lambeth 2018. Cancelled or postponed? The 2014 article below--for which we are thankful--gives some insider-baseball reports. It sounds like a cancellation or postponement is under review.
Conger, George.
“Lambeth Conference cancelled.” Anglican Ink. 30 Sept 2014. http://anglicanink.com/article/lambeth-conference-cancelled. Accessed 30 Sept 2014.
Lambeth Conference cancelled
30 Sep 2014
Author:
George
Conger
The 2018 Lambeth Conference has been
cancelled. The precarious state of the Anglican Communion has led the
Archbishop of Canterbury to postpone indefinitely the every ten year meeting of
the bishops of the Anglican Communion.
A spokesman for Archbishop Justin
Welby told Anglican Ink that as the archbishop had not yet met with each of the
primates of the communion, he would not be commenting on the news. Since his
installation last year, the Archbishop of Canterbury has travelled extensively
and plans on visiting the 37 other provinces of the Anglican Communion within
the first 18 months of his term of office.
News of the cancellation was made
public by the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Most Rev. Katharine
Jefferts Schori on 23 Sept 2014. In response to a question from the Bishop of
Rochester, the Rt. Rev. Prince Singh, who asked if money was being set aside to
fund the Episcopal Church’s participation in the 2018 meeting, the Presiding
Bishop told the Fall Meeting of the House of Bishops gathered in Taipei,
Taiwan, that she had been told by Archbishop Welby the meeting had been
cancelled.
According to a report of the exchange
printed by the Episcopal News Service, the Presiding Bishop said Archbishop
Welby had “been very clear that he is not going to call a Lambeth until he is
reasonably certain that the vast majority of bishops would attend. It needs to
be preceded by a primates meeting at which a vast majority of primates are
present.”
She further stated that “as he
continues his visits around the communion to those primates it’s unlikely that
he will call such a meeting at all until at least a year from now or probably
18 months from now. Therefore I think we are looking at 2019, more likely 2020,
before a Lambeth Conference.”
And, if and when it is held, the
format of the gathering will likely be different from that of the controversial
2008 gathering. The next Lambeth will “have a rather different format” and the
spouses’ conference will be eliminated “simply because of scale issues and
regional contextual issues. Bishops’ spouses fill very different roles in
different parts of the communion and the feedback from the last one was that it
did not serve the spouses particularly well,” the Presiding Bishop said.
First held in 1867 in London at
Lambeth Palace, the Lambeth Conferences have gathered the bishops of the
Anglican Communion every ten years to discuss the common issues facing the
wider church. The conferences have been postponed only twice. The 1918
gathering was postponed to 1920 due to the First World War, and the 1940
conference was postponed to 1948 because of the Second World War.
The decision to postpone the 2018
gathering due to internal dissention is unprecedented. From the first gathering
in 1868 which dealt in part with the contentious issue of episcopal autonomy
and Biblical interpretation and the heterodox bishop of Natal the Rt. Rev. John
W. Colenso (as he was considered by most of his peers) the Lambeth Conferences
have consistently discussed controversial issues. Though the resolutions and
debates have no juridical value as each province is governed by its own canon
law, the pronouncements have always held great moral authority. The 1930
Conference’s endorsement of contraception, for example, provided the foundation
for the Episcopal Church to change its formal view of the morality of birth
control in 1948. While in 1998 the Conference restated the church’s formal view
that homosexual activity was immoral.
In organizing the 2008 Conference,
Dr. Rowan Williams – who had endorsed a minority statement on homosexuality at
the conference – changed the parameters and purpose of the meeting. A format of
indaba, a South African word that the conference organizers interpreted as
meaning a form of guided conversation, was adopted. The new format did not
permit formal or conclusive statements and was designed to prevent action
through what critics saw was conversation without end.
The gathering was also hampered by
the largest boycott in the conference’s history. The bishops of the province of
York boycotted the 1868 gathering in protest to what they saw as the Archbishop
of Canterbury’s presumption at calling a gathering of all the bishops, and J.C.
Ryle and a handful of other evangelical bishops boycotted the 1888 gathering
out of concerns the conference was institutionalizing what they believed to be
an un-biblical prelacy. The question of women bishops attending Lambeth 1998
led a handful of traditionalists to boycott the conference. Two English
missionary bishops in Madagascar declined to attend the gathering due to the
presence of women bishops,
However the Archbishop of
Canterbury’s decision to invite the American, Canadian and Central American
bishops who consecrated the Bishop of New Hampshire, the Rt. Rev. V. Gene
Robinson to Lambeth led to 206 diocesan and 8 suffragan bishops to reject
Archbishop Rown Williams’ invitation.
In 2008 the Anglican Communion
consisted of 729 dioceses, missionary districts, and ecclesial entities divided
into 38 provinces and six extra-provincial jurisdictions. Approximately 260
dioceses and jurisdictions within the Communion were not represented by their
diocesan bishops at Lambeth. In addition to those boycotting the meeting in
protest, the Archbishop of Polynesia, remained at home to lead the coronation
services of the King of Tonga, while the Bishop of Salisbury was felled by a
stroke. Pending legal proceedings prevented the Bishop of Pennsylvania from
attending while bishops from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of North India
have never attended the Lambeth Conference.
Zimbabwe’s uncertain political situation
prevented the Bishop of Manicaland from coming while a handful of bishops were
also blocked from attending Lambeth due to local circumstances.
Of those identified as absent: 214
bishops from 10 provinces made an affirmative decision not to accept Dr. Williams’
invitation due to reasons of conscience: Australia 7; Southern Cone 1;
Episcopal Church 1; Church of England 3; Uganda 30; Nigeria 137; Kenya 25;
Rwanda 8; South East Asia 1; and Jerusalem and the Middle East 1. From Africa’s
324 dioceses, 200 diocesan bishops (61 percent) were identified as having
refused Dr. Williams’ invitation.
Archbishop Welby’s flying visits
across the Communion have sought to ameliorate this situation.
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