Lambeth Conference will help bishops strengthen partnerships, Jefferts Schori tells media
Episcopal News Service. May 20, 2008 [052008-02]
Matthew Davies
The 2008 Lambeth Conference is primarily an opportunity for bishops to get to know one another and to strengthen partnerships, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told media gathered for a May 20 news briefing at the Episcopal Church Center in New York City.
Acknowledging that partnerships throughout the Communion have grown significantly in recent years, Jefferts Schori said her hopes for Lambeth and the Anglican Communion are "that we encounter each other as human beings working in vastly different contexts around the globe and that we build relationships."
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has invited more than 800 bishops to attend the July 16-August 3 conference on the campus of the University of Kent in southeast England, and more than three quarters have accepted, planners have said.
The conference has met roughly once every 10 years since its inception in 1867, but this year's gathering is set to be an entirely different encounter to any of its predecessors.
The Rev. Dr. Ian Douglas, Angus Dun professor of world Christianity at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, joined the Presiding Bishop at the briefing, which was webcast live and is available for on-demand viewing at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/.
Douglas, who is a member of the Lambeth Conference Design Group which has met regularly since February 2004 in preparation for the 2008 gathering, said it was the hope and desire of the design group "to do a new thing and help the Anglican Communion focus on what were the mission opportunities of the Communion globally."
Unlike previous conferences, the 2008 gathering will include fewer plenary sessions "and no resolutions," Douglas told the media.
The conference, Douglas said, will not be text- or report-driven, nor will it include "time spent drafting resolutions based on those reports."
Acknowledging that "parliamentary procedure leads generally to winners and losers," Jefferts Schori said that the focus at this Lambeth "removes the emphasis on procedure and legislation [and] really beings us back to the heart of what it means to be Christian community…That is the place to where God calls us."
The design group, which for the first time included lay people and priests as well as bishops, was committed to "creating opportunities for bishops to come together to have deep and meaningful prayer and conversation to equip each other to be more effective as bishops and thus strengthening the Anglican Communion," Douglas said.
The design of the conference, he said, was closely related to that of an Anglican congress or the Anglican gathering that was originally planned for this summer in Cape Town. After the gathering was canceled due to financial and logistical reasons, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that he wanted its design to be incorporated into the planning for the Lambeth Conference.
The conference will begin with three retreat days "in which we can spend time together in quiet and begin to direct our minds towards the central issues of faith," said Williams at the Lambeth Conference program launch earlier this year.
The main conference days are split into four sections: group Bible study, expanded meetings called "Indaba" groups, self-selecting groups and optional "fringe" events.
The Bible study groups, which will include about eight bishops, will focus on the gospel of St. John. The Indaba groups, named after a Zulu word meaning purposeful conversation, will include around 40 bishops. For the self-selecting groups, the bishops may choose between various workshops, seminars or discussions that will focus on a particular conference topic. Fringe events in the evening will provide an opportunity for entertainment and fellowship through film screenings, theater productions, dinners and discussions.
"This design is fundamentally about encounter -- conversations amongst leaders all orienting to what God is calling the Anglican Communion and bishops to be about in the wider world," said Douglas. "It's de-centered, many voiced, conversational and relational -- an opportunity for genuine and deep meaningful conversation and building of incarnational relationships."
"Conversation entered into deeply and fully leads to opportunity for conversion, and I have that as a hope," said Jefferts Schori, adding that the Bible study and Indaba groups "are really about 'hanging out' with people you don't know, getting to know others as incarnate images of God -- an opportunity to meet the other in a way that's flesh rather than the discarnate communication we engage in on the internet."
The Indaba sessions "are not shying away from the hard questions," Douglas said, noting that they will include study and conversations on the authority of the Bible, human sexuality, gender and violence, Anglican identity and the Anglican covenant.
During a question-and-answer session, Jefferts Schori and Douglas were asked about the GAFCON conference, a gathering of conservative Christians to be held in Jerusalem one month prior to the Lambeth Conference.
Jefferts Schori noted that bishops from the Episcopal Church are likely to attend GAFCON, adding that she has asked Colorado Bishop Robert O'Neill to be present with Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem Suheil Dawani during that time. Dawani had previously called for the conference to be moved, expressing concern that it would "import inter-Anglican conflict" into his diocese.
Jefferts Schori recognized, however, that face-to face encounters "always have positive potential."
"It's always good for Christians to come together and meet each other and have conversation," said Douglas, expressing his hope that the bishops who participate in GAFCON will also attend Lambeth.
Asked about New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson, an openly gay man ordained a bishop in 2003, who has not been invited to attend the conference as an official participant, Jefferts Schori said the House of Bishops had expressed its disappointment that "one of our number has been omitted."
Robinson plans to be in Canterbury throughout the Lambeth Conference and "will be present around the edges," said Jefferts Schori, announcing that bishops from the Episcopal Church's Province I are planning to offer a reception for other bishops to meet Robinson. "I believe he will be at least as present as if he had been given an invitation," she said.
Douglas said that the conference is designed as "a many-voiced global perspective as a stop along the way in this Communion that's in a process of becoming. We are participating in a change."
Underscoring the Millennium Development Goals "as an image of what the Communion could be engaged in together," Jefferts Schori said: "Together we are building something that moves toward the reign of God when the hungry are fed…and children have access to healthcare. We are moving toward the dream of what we hold together; of what a healed world looks like. Lambeth is part of that vision."
During a pre-conference hospitality initiative, every bishop and spouse attending the Lambeth Conference and Spouses Conference will enjoy the hospitality of an English, Scottish or Welsh diocese. Jefferts Schori will be spending time in the Diocese of Salisbury along with all the bishops of the Episcopal Church of the Sudan. On Sunday, July 13, Jefferts Schori will preach at Salisbury Cathedral.
"It takes the whole world to know the whole Gospel," said Douglas. "We are much closer today to knowing the whole Gospel. In all of our differences is where the fullness of what God is up to in Jesus Christ."
"It takes the whole Communion to engage in God's mission," said Jefferts Schori, adding that this is why "we have so much invested in its continuation and growth and why people of different viewpoints and ethnicities continue to remain in Communion with one another."
"It's an opportunity to come together and have challenging and enriching and, we hope, converting conversations," she added.
Douglas underscored the importance of daily worship at Lambeth "where different provinces are invited to bring their cultural understandings and find a way of unity in diversity," he said. "This can be an icon of where we are in the Anglican Communion."
"This is a bold new exciting thing that we are walking into together," said Douglas. "It's going to be something like we've never seen before. I believe we are being faithful to who we are as Anglicans in the world today and to where God is calling us."
Further information about the Lambeth Conference is available online.