RWANDA: Bishops rebuke Archbishop of Canterbury, announce no-show at Lambeth Conference
Episcopal News Service. June 28, 2007 [062807-05]
Matthew Davies
The Episcopal Church of Rwanda's House of Bishops, which met in Kigali on June 19, have issued a communiqué criticizing the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury and announcing that they will not attend the Lambeth Conference because "some of our bishops have not been invited."
The decision comes in response to a May 22 announcement that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, had invited all but a "small number of bishops" to the 2008 Lambeth Conference, due to be held July 16-August 4, 2008 at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England.
Among the bishops not invited were those consecrated to serve the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA), a breakaway group not formally recognized by the Anglican Communion or the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Rwanda communiqué, which criticized Williams' decision, describes the AMiA bishops as being "of the Province of Rwanda" and "given the responsibility to lead Rwanda's missionary outreach to North America."
"We are a united body and will not participate in a conference which would divide our number," the communiqué said. "The invitations to Lambeth 2008 have been issued in complete disregard of our conscientious commitment to the apostolic faith once delivered."
Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire; Martyn Minns, bishop of the Church of Nigeria-founded Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA); and Nolbert Kunonga, the controversial bishop of Harare in Zimbabwe are also among the "small number of bishops" who have not been invited to the 2008 conference.
Rwanda becomes the third Anglican Province in recent weeks to announce its bishops intend to boycott the Lambeth Conference. Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi issued a statement May 30 indicating that the Ugandan House of Bishops will not attend and Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola said May 22 that withholding an invitation to Minns "will be viewed as withholding invitation to the entire House of Bishops of the Church of Nigeria."
The Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, Anglican Communion secretary general, told ENS that breakaway groups such as the AMiA and CANA had been grouped together when considering the invitations to Lambeth. He confirmed that neither the AMiA nor CANA is officially recognized as a constituent member of the Anglican Communion.
"In 2000, when the consecrations took place in Singapore on behalf of AMiA, at that time Archbishop George Carey said in a letter that he could not accept the consecrations as regular and that he would not regard himself as being in Communion with the bishops consecrated," Kearon told ENS. "The Primates, meeting in Oporto in 2000, also distanced themselves from these consecrations and affirmed the content of Carey's letter."
Williams has also referred to the consecrations of AMiA and CANA bishops as irregular. "We would like to know why their consecrations are considered irregular when the actions of [the Episcopal Church] are not considered irregular," Rwanda's bishops said in their communiqué. "We feel that the words of the Archbishop are tantamount to a threat, and we cannot accept this."
In a June 18 letter sent to Rwandese Primate Emmanuel Kolini, Williams wrote: "You should know that I have not invited the bishops of AMiA and CANA. This is not a question of asking anyone to disassociate themselves at this stage from what have been described as the missionary initiatives of your Provinces. I appreciate that you may not be happy with these decisions, but I feel that as we approach a critical juncture of the life of the Communion, I must act in accordance to the clear guidance of the instruments of the Communion."
The Rwanda communiqué also upheld the "Road to Lambeth" report, commissioned in 2006 by the Primates of the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA). That report said that the Anglican Communion faced "a crisis of doctrine and a crisis of leadership, in which the failure of the 'Instruments' of the Communion to exercise discipline has called into question the viability of the Anglican Communion as a united Christian body under a common foundation of faith."
In the report, the CAPA Primates said "we must receive assurances from the Primates and the Archbishop of Canterbury that this crisis will be resolved before a Lambeth Conference is convened."
"There is no point, in our view, in meeting and meeting and not resolving the fundamental crisis of Anglican identity," the report said. "We will definitely not attend any Lambeth Conference to which the violators of the Lambeth Resolution are also invited as participants or observers."
The Rwanda communiqué noted that Resolution 1.10 from the 1998 Lambeth Conference "has not been respected by the Episcopal Church ... the Anglican Church of Canada, and other like-minded Provinces, which are now violating the resolution as well as holy orders by making the decision to ordain and to consecrate practicing homosexuals."
In another rebuke of Williams, Rwanda's bishops said that "the leadership of Canterbury has ignored and constantly taken lightly the resolutions from the Primates' meetings and the statement in the "Road to Lambeth" document."
They opined that Williams' decision to invite all but one of the Episcopal Church's bishops, and not to invite the bishops of AMiA and CANA, "has shown that he has now taken sides because the Primates have asked [the Episcopal Church] for repentance in order to be in communion with them."