No Decisions at Lambeth Conference
After 18 days of meeting together, 617 of the world’s nearly 900 Anglican bishops concluded the 2008 Lambeth Conference in Kent, England, without making decisions about the issues dividing the Anglican Communion.
Instead, the gathered bishops issued a 161 paragraph “Lambeth Indaba” document that drew together reports from 17 “Indaba” groups that discussed a slate of pre-selected issues such as “The Bishop and Social Justice” and “The Bishop and Mission.” The reflections document is intended to serve as a “narrative” of the conference. “It seeks to describe our lived experience and the open and honest discussions we have had together,” writes Archbishop Roger Herft, who penned the introduction.
It does not lay out a timeline or suggest a new way forward to unifying the Anglican Communion around the mainstream Christian consensus on issues of human sexuality. Instead, it offers general support for ongoing initiatives that were first suggested in the 2004 Windsor Report and subsequent meetings of the primates of the Anglican Communion, such as the Anglican Communion Covenant and the proposed moratoria on same sex blessings, the election of bishops in same-sex relationships, and bishops taking foreign parishes and dioceses into their churches.
The indaba document also expresses general support for the creation of the latest in a long line of committees and commissions intended to offer some relief to faithful Anglicans who have been forced into conflict or have had to leave their dioceses or national churches. This latest effort, called the “Pastoral Forum,” has no clear timeline, authority, budget, or membership.
A number of Network bishops attended the Lambeth Conference. Writing after the conference concluded, Bishop Mark Lawrence of South Carolina stated, “I had come to speak a word of hope and perhaps to intervene on behalf of our beloved, but in the last resolve the family refused the long needed measures.”
A significant coalition of Global South bishops and archbishops who attended Lambeth spoke with more clarity than the conference as a whole. Their statement, which was signed by 11 primates, said in part, “We are consciously mindful of the absence of our fellow episcopal colleagues from Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and elsewhere, who, for principled reasons could not be present at this Lambeth Conference. We thank God for their costly faithfulness and vigilance. We acknowledge the issuing of the Jerusalem Declaration which deserves careful study and consideration. At the same time, we also stand in solidarity with all the faithful Bishops, Clergy and Laity in the United States and Canada and elsewhere who are suffering recrimination and hostility perpetrated upon them by their dioceses and/or national churches.”
The GAFCON primates council will be offering its response to the Lambeth Conference when they gather for the first time in August.