Lambeth Conference Gathering Momentum
Episcopal News Service. October 8, 1987 [87200]
ST. CHARLES, Ill. (DPS, Oct. 8) -- The decennial Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops, set for next year, loomed large on the agenda for this year's Episcopal Church House of Bishops meeting. General plans were the topic at one evening's dinner, and in plenary sessions the bishops heard presentations on each of the four Lambeth themes: Dogmatic and Pastoral Concerns, Christianity and the Social Order, Ecumenical Relations and Mission and Ministry. Small group discussion followed each theme presentation.
On Sunday evening, the House of Bishops welcomed the Rev. Canon Samuel Van Culin, secretary general of the Anglican Consultative Council, as speaker at its "Ahead to Lambeth" dinner.
For Van Culin, an American who headed the Episcopal Church Center's World Mission unit for seven years prior to joining the ACC, it was a homecoming of sorts. His introduction by Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning -- whom Van Culin had succeeded in the World Mission post -- brought him a standing ovation. He drew a laugh from the assembled bishops by noting that 52 bishops have been elected since he last visited the House and "there are some churches in the Anglican Communion who don't even have 52 bishops!" He added that the size of the Episcopal Church makes it "central and critical to the life of the Anglican Communion."
After mentioning some of those involved in the coming 12th Lambeth who were present at the House of Bishops meeting, Van Culin noted that the first Lambeth, in 1867, was called not in an effort by the Archbishop of Canterbury to exercise jurisdiction but at the request of widely scattered bishops in an effort to give them an opportunity to talk with each other and him and to "develop fellowship out of which this Communion has emerged." He said the intervening Lambeth Conferences had "animated the Communion, given it its life and set its style and spirit throughout the world."
Attendance at the Conference, to be held on the campus of the University of Kent, is expected to be about 1,200 persons. Of that number, approximately 430 will be diocesan bishops -- Van Culin said the number is only approximate because the Anglican Communion is growing by about ten dioceses a year. There will also be about 30 suffragan bishops in attendance, and Van Culin noted that provinces within the Communion have different understandings of the office of suffragan, assistant and area bishops.
Bishops of churches in communion with the Anglican Church, who in the past have been observers, this time will send participating members. These include the Churches of North India, South India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan; the Mar Thoma Syrian Church of Malabar; and the Philippine Independent Church. The number each church will send is to be determined by formula, and bishops from Churches with Anglican roots (North and South India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) will be full voting members for the first time. Van Culin called it a "new dimension" and said that Lambeth is "increasingly becoming a full council, not just an Anglican tradition but part of growing fellowship." He also stressed recognition of the importance of having presbyteral and lay leadership of voices from around the Communion heard.
Participants, consultants and observers will be coming to Lambeth from all over the world, and the communications team for the conference includes persons from North America, Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Britain and Ireland.
Van Culin said that among Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie's hopes for the Conference is that it will assist bishops to fulfill their teaching, prophetic, spiritual and pastoral roles and that it will assist local churches in their mission and their search for unity. The often quoted request of the Archbishop that bishops "bring their dioceses with them" is only half, according to Van Culin. When the bishops get to the Conference, the Archbishop will tell them "to bring Lambeth home" to their dioceses. Another hope Runcie expressed is that the Conference will provide a sign of unity and give a sense of direction to the Church.
As part of the overall air of inclusiveness surrounding this Lambeth Conference, there will be more translation available in 1988 than ever before. Among other languages, materials have been translated into Japanese (a first), Portuguese and Spanish. There is also a commitment to provide simultaneous translation in those languages and in French at plenary sessions.
Primates of the various provinces will meet for a quiet day with the Archbishop of Canterbury the day before the Conference begins.
Worship will be an important part of Lambeth, and there will be a special Lambeth liturgy with options to insert the mass canons of individual provinces.
The daily schedule will begin with an hour of Bible study in small groups. It is hoped that these groups will form a "nest" or "home" within the vast size of the gathering where bonds can be formed and individual relationships nurtured. The bishops' wives, in their own groups, will be participating in the same Bible study, and it is hoped that this will contribute to a sense of "shared spirit and shared quest for the spirit." The study is being prepared by the Rt. Rev. John Taylor, retired bishop of Winchester.
Topics for presentations to plenary sessions include theological models, authority in the Anglican Communion, evangelism and culture and Christian unity. According to Van Culin, Runcie hopes the latter will lead to something similar to the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral whose centenary was celebrated at this House of Bishops meeting -- something of value not only to the Anglican Communion but to the wider Christian community.
There will also be a presentation by women on their perspective on the Lambeth themes: Women from the Anglican Consultative Council will be present, and the Archbishop of Canterbury has made a concerted effort to invite women as consultants, including two women priests.
Some time will be spent on resolutions, according to Van Culin, but it is hoped not a great deal of time will be spent on reports. Resolutions can focus on issues, clarify and a vote say "this is the mind of the Conference." It is also hoped that there will be a pastoral letter.
In his presentation on Dogmatic and Pastoral Concerns, the Rt. Rev. Mark Dyer, bishop of Bethlehem, declared the Lambeth Conference a microcosm of the Anglican Communion, sharing his impression with the House of Bishops that "we no longer have an English Church."
Dyer said the final draft of documents which bishops of the Anglican Communion will need to prepare themselves for the July meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury would be mailed Oct.10 by the Anglican Consultative Council. The four areas of concentration have all been shaped by the social, economic and cultural contexts of bishops in the 28 provinces of the Church. The emphasis, Dyer said, stresses concerns of a global communion.
The Dogmatic and Pastoral Concerns report for bishops in the Anglican Communion and their dioceses includes five emphases: Who and What is Christianity for Us Today, Christ and Culture, Christianity and Other Faiths, The Christian Inheritance: Elements of Anglican Authority and The Anglican Communion: Identity and Authority.
Providing ways of maintaining cohesiveness and support for the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the meeting of Primates also occupied the committee. Dyer said Lambeth was asking how to strengthen the moral authority of the Archbishop. Dyer expressed the hope that the ACC could be strengthened "to be the Standing Committee of our communion." He voiced concern that the Primates become more authoritative in their deliberations and suggested that even more people, lay and clergy together, determine the common life and fabric of the Church.
Dyer said that the Church acts anew in its authority through a process of reception. "We do something and let the Church receive it," he summarized, pointing to elements of Scripture, tradition, reason and experience. As Christianity and the doctrine of the Trinity encompass the suffering of the world, Christ comes first. "Authority is there," Dyer said.
The Rt. Rev. David Evans, bishop of Peru and Bolivia, outlined the content of the document "Christianity and the Social Order" and mentioned some of the concerns faced by the committee preparing it.
"More than any other, this is a document that seeks to speak with two voices, passion and reflection," he told the bishops. And, he added, sometimes the dialogue between the two, and between words and action, can be tense.
The committee also had to face the fact that there is a clamor for a "Lambeth voice" for every country's current issues, he said, and an effort is being made to reduce the number of issues addressed by the bishops so they may be dealt with more thoroughly.
While attempting to avoid duplication, "We did seek to try to find significant major theological concepts around which issues could cluster," said Evans, listing the following four major chapters in the document: Community and Liberation, Stewardship (Resources: Use and Abuse); Coercion and/or Violence and Family.
Evans also explained that the committee felt it necessary to include some justification for the Church's involvement in these issues and had found William temple's comment "that the Church should be concerned with principles but not with policy" helpful. "It is too easy to give way to naive oversimplifications, but it is possible to grasp great themes from the scriptures and to produce something called the Christian mind," Evans said. "We have to seek to influence, not just to be involved."
Evans said the committee concluded that the Church's impact is most needed today in the areas of human rights; coercion (both on the family and international levels); in developing a moral perspective on the international debt; and in producing a statement on AIDS that might prove a major worldwide contribution, as was the 1958 Lambeth statement on contraception.
Speaking of the "Christianity and the Social Order" document, Evans told the bishops it is designed to be a "challenge to the Church to face the issues in front of us, and encourage us all in the 'saltiness of our Christian witness.'
"We can make a difference for the problems that face us now and for the future," he concluded.
Archbishop Michael Peers of the Anglican Church of Canada described what he called "the basic tension of 27 different responses" from Anglican provinces to the Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue, one of the subjects which will be scrutinized with intensity at the Lambeth Conference. Peers appeared before the House of Bishops as chairman of the ecumenical relations section of Lambeth he outlined "three very different expectations" for Lambeth.
The first, which Peers described as "classic in the British tradition, is the expectation that Lambeth will produce a message, a word to be said to the Church by the conference itself. It will be biblically based, theologically sound, elegantly phrased, and, if possible, written beforehand."
A second concern voiced by Peers was that "Lambeth be a fair, just and participatory process, where we will all have our places." For the Church in Africa, he said, "Lambeth is expected to be a sign, something which is almost impossible to plan for, wrong to plan for, but it lays upon the conference a sense of expectation and openness that God will do something else with us."
The Lambeth ecumenical outline, contained in a document called The Emmaus Report, includes reference to four bi-lateral dialogues and a paper from the World Council of Churches titled Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry.
While the dialogue which produced the ARCIC paper is expected to attract the most attention, other continuing bi-lateral conversations will be analysed. They include conversations between Anglicans and the Orthodox churches, "in which we will be called on to examine orthodox criticism," the Anglican/Lutheran dialogue and limited eucharistic sharing, relationships with the Oriental Orthodox -- non Chalcedonian -- churches, and the response from the provinces to the WCC paper.
"In through, beyond, and in spite of our difficulties," Peers asked, "where is the ecumenical vision for our age? Not in the mating of ecclesiastical dinosaurs, but in the real attempt of the Church to be the sign to the world of unity which God wills to all creation."
A standing ovation followed the Rt. Rev. Michael Nazir-Ali's presentation to the House of Bishops on the Lambeth theme of Mission and Ministry, a presentation characterized by Bishop Mellick Belshaw of New Jersey as "a logical, profound and inspiring talk."
Nazir-Ali, a Pakistani who is one of the Archbishop of Canterbury's theological consultants and coordinator of studies in preparation for the Lambeth Conference 1988, is currently director-in-residence and director of the Project on Islam and Other Faiths at the Oxford Center for Mission Studies.
During his talk, he reminded his listeners of the extent and universality of Christian mission.
He began by pointing out that starting with the Book of Acts, the mission of the Church became stylized -- from Jerusalem to Rome -- a pattern which remains to this day.
"There are many positive things to be said about this," he observed, citing the Christianization of Europe. At the same time, the history of mission in other directions has been ignored: the early establishment of Christianity in the Persian Empire, the missionary movement in Ethiopia, the fact that the Christian Church in South India predates the arrival of Augustine in Canterbury.
"How may of us know that Armenia was the first Christian nation?" he asked.
Nazir-Ali reminded the bishops that, at the time of the Reformation, the reformers were interested in reforming church and society, not in world mission. "But the Counter-reformation did result in world mission," he said, citing the example of Christianity in Japan. Becoming even more specific, he noted the historic reluctance of Anglicans to engage in mission. For instance, the first Anglican presence in Asia, Africa and America was simply an adjunct, there to serve the colonizing peoples.
The Bishop then spoke of mission as presence, mission as identification, mission as reflection on action, mission as evangelization and mission as dialogue.
"Evangelism has to be carried out as dialogue with culture," he said. "Dialogue is for mutual understanding and service.
"It is not just understanding but challenge, and in that challenge we have opportunity for authentic witness."
Nazir-Ali went on to point out that the mission of the Church also makes us aware of our divisions; the ecumenical movement was born out of realization that the Church couldn't carry out its mission in a divided state.
Turning to the subject of ministry, Nazir-Ali asserted that "renewal of the Church is an essential pre-condition for Christian Mission." He mentioned not just charismatic renewal which, he said, must not be confused with total renewal, but also liturgical renewal, renewal in the study of scripture, and renewal in communal life. "Renewal has shown us the variety of ministries," he said.
In concluding, he stressed the need for vigorous analysis of both church and society if we are going to be effective in mission. "And," he said, "that analysis must lead to commitment for proclamation and service."