Lambeth Digest, Day 6
Episcopal News Service. July 26, 2008 [072608-04]
Matthew Davies, Solange De Santis and Mary Frances Schjonberg
Much happens each day at the Lambeth Conference. In addition to Episcopal Life Media's other coverage, here's some other news from July 26, the sixth day of the conference.
Say 'Mitre,' please
On a muggy, overcast afternoon, the bishops gathered in red and white rochet and chimere vestments for the traditional group photo. A large grandstand had been set up in a field overlooking Canterbury and its historic cathedral, and the more than 600 bishops climbed up the grandstand, herded by a photographer with a microphone.
Hymn-singing broke out during the line-up for the photo shoot, particularly "Amazing Grace."
Before taking the picture, the photographer told the bishops, "If you have dark glasses on, we can't force you to take them off, but no one will know who you are," to general laughter. The photo shoot was not mandatory and at a news conference a few days earlier, it was acknowledged that a small number of bishops might not participate because that did not want their boycotting primates to know that they had come to Lambeth.
Preparing to snap the picture, the photographer urged those bishops seated in the front row to put their knees and feet together, and he asked everyone to be sure they were looking between the two heads in front of them so that no one was obscured.
After the photo, the photographer said, "We will now bring you down in an orderly fashion," again to laughter. Groups of bishops posed for their own pictures, including the group of female bishops at Lambeth and the Canadian bishops. Two Korean bishops wanted to pose with the women bishops for a picture, too.
The bishops' spouses gathered for group photo at the same spot earlier in the day.
Presiding Bishop responds to Sudanese archbishop's call for New Hampshire bishop's resignation
Asked at the afternoon news briefing if she would ask New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson to resign so that the Anglican Communion could move on to other issues, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori responded by saying "That is certainly not within my purview."
"He's the bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire and such a response would be a matter between him and his diocese," she said. "It is not anything that I would expect."
The question and the Presiding Bishop's response arose out of Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul's July 22 call for Robinson to resign his see.
Mike Barwell, a spokesman for Robinson, then noted that there have been numerous calls for Robinson to step down, beginning soon after he was elected to be bishop of New Hampshire.
"He's been very clear that he will not step down," Barwell said. "He has also been very clear that if he were to step down, the issue of gay clergy and gay bishops would not go away."
Jefferts Schori was asked later during the news conference whether her sense of creation as the body of God and the interconnectedness of all members of the body is being played out in discussions of the theology of human sexuality and homosexuality at the conference.
Noting that such discussions are formally planned for later next week, Jefferts said conversations about interconnectedness "grow out of our Pauline theology of the body of Christ that we are all members of the same body, which has one head and that head is not any one of us."
"All parts of the body are essential, even though they are different, and it's only when the body is working rather in harmony that it can most fruitfully represent the fullness of the image of God."
Gay Nigerian Anglican gets UK asylum
Davis Mac-Iyalla, a gay Anglican and activist who fled Nigeria in 2006 following death threats, has been granted asylum in the United Kingdom.
"LGBT Nigerians live in fear of their lives once they come out of the closet," Mac-Iyalla said in a news release from Integrity USA. "Now I can work on their behalf from the safety of a base in London."
Mac-Iyalla, the director of Changing Attitude Nigeria, received death threats after arriving at the Lambeth Conference to share his and other stories of gay Anglicans in Africa, according to a news release from the organization. British police established that the threats originated outside the UK and Mac-Iyalla decided that he had no option but to seek asylum in Britain.
Indaba Group Listeners selected to develop 'reflections document'
The Lambeth Conference indaba groups have selected 16 "listeners" to form a "reflections group" that will develop a "reflections document," expected to be made public on August 3, the last day of the conference.
The "listeners" are bishops Andrew Proud of the Horn of Africa, Jerusalem and the Middle East; Alan Abernethy of Connor, Ireland; Howard Gregory of Montego Bay, West Indies; Sue Moxley of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, Canada; K.G. Daniel of East Kerala, South India; Patrick Mwachiko of Masai, Tanzania; James Ochiel of Southern Nyanza, Kenya; Johannes Seoka of Pretoria, Southern Africa; Ezekiel Kondo of Khartoum, Sudan; Neil Alexander of Atlanta, United States; Roger Chung Po Chue of Antsiranana, Indian Ocean; Geralyn Wolf of Rhode Island, United States; David Njova of Lusaka, Central Africa; Bill Godfrey of Peru, Southern Cone; Michael Perham of Gloucester, England; and Louis Tsui of Eastern Kowloon, Hong Kong.
Each group nominated two members whom they believe to be most capable of carrying their views and the fruit of their discussion into the "reflections" process. The final selections were made to ensure a geographical and theological balance, the Rev. Paul Feheley of the Anglican Church of Canada, a member of the Lambeth Conference communications team, told media at the morning news briefing.
The group will be chaired by Archbishop Roger Herft of Perth, from the Anglican Church of Australia. Herft was the chaplain at the 1998 Lambeth Conference.
In hearings open only to bishops on July 28, 30 and 31, the group will present its work to that date and ask for feedback from the conference.
The Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, secretary general of the Anglican Communion, said in a letter sent to the bishops prior to the Lambeth Conference that "working with the summaries of the fruit of indaba arising from each group, it will be [the] duty [of the reflections group] to generate a common text which reflects authentically the indaba."
Kearon said that the Lambeth Conference Design Group hopes the process will "be received as an authentic account of the engagement of the bishops together in the service of Christ."
Canon law document offered for bishops' feedback at Lambeth Conference
Saying it is not intended as a covenant or a code of law, Canon John Rees, the legal adviser for the Anglican Communion, told media that a newly released draft document is intended to assist lawyers around the world and "to inform, not to oblige," especially in provinces that have limited legal provisions.
"The Principles of Canon Law Common to the Churches of the Anglican Communion" has been presented to the bishops at the 2008 Lambeth Conference and their feedback will inform the development of a second draft of the document.
Rees told the media that the principles, which were deduced by looking at a range of legal provisions in a variety of churches around the Anglican Communion, are "descriptive, not prescriptive."
The principles address issues such as ordination, clergy discipline, doctrine and liturgy, ecumenism, and church property, which Rees said needs to be "held in trust [for the church] and be available from generation to generation."
The document is the result of the work of the Anglican Communion Legal Advisers' Network and a drafting group, which has been meeting for six years. It originated in a series of conversations between Rees, former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, and Norman Doe, director of the Centre for Law and Religion at Cardiff Law School.
Members of the drafting group include Rees, Philippa Amable, chancellor of the Diocese of Ho, Ghana; David Booth Beers, chancellor to the presiding bishop, the Episcopal Church, United States; Robert Falby, chancellor of the Diocese of Toronto, Canada; Bernard Georges, chancellor of the Province of the Indian Ocean; Rubie Nottage, chancellor of the West Indies; and Fung-Yi Wong, provincial registrar of Hong Kong.
Rees described the principles as an "exercise" that would help "to keep faith with our Anglican heritage, doctrinally, liturgically and structurally. These principles are an attempt to map out what the main legal themes of that inheritance might look like, when some of the peripheral local detail is stripped away."
How green is your conference?
Questions about the Lambeth Conference's carbon footprint continue to be asked by participants and journalists alike.
A media briefer announced that the placards carried by the bishops and spouses during the July 24 Walk of Witness will be recycled and the wooden stakes used for growing tomatoes in a garden at the University of Kent.
As the bishops and their spouses entered the Lambeth Palace courtyard for a rally after the walk, the placards were unceremoniously dumped just inside the palace gate and a reporter at a media briefing the following morning asked if the marchers would be helped to keep their promise to be environmentally aware.
Archbishop Phillip Aspinall of Brisbane, the primate of Australia and principal spokesman for the bishops, told reporters that his indaba group had petitioned conference organizers to place recycling bins about the University of Kent campus where the conference is taking place.
Aspinall said that his group agreed to promote a carbon-offset initiative that was launched July 25 to mitigate the impact of all those who traveled to Canterbury and also vowed "to take whatever steps we can both now at this conference and into the future to make Lambeth Conferences as green as they can be."
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori noted during the same briefing that there are recycling bins in the kitchen areas of the campus dormitories.
Next up
The daily schedules for the bishops and spouses conferences, as well as each evening's official "fringe events" are here.