Lambeth Conference Generating Excitement
Episcopal News Service. June 9, 1988 [88120]
Susan Young, News Editor of Church Times, London.
LONDON (DPS, June 9) -- Until quite recently, if you asked any informed Anglican what he or she expected from the forthcoming Lambeth Conference, chances are they'd have said, "Trouble over women bishops."
Well, the topic will loom large on the Conference agenda, to be sure, and it may indeed give trouble. But now, with this once-a-decade gathering of bishops from all over the Anglican Communion nearly upon us, the tensions and anxieties are being dislodged, if only temporarily, by a sense of excitement.
In the host Church of England there is an almost festive air among those directly involved.
This, the twelfth Lambeth Conference, will meet from July 16 to August 7 at the University of Kent in the city that is home to the mother church of the Anglican Communion -- the 900-year-old Cathedral and Metropolitan Church of Christ, Canterbury.
There will be about 500 bishops (mostly diocesan but also including some assistants, suffragans and coadjutors) at the Conference. But other participants, such as members of the Anglican Consultative Council, representatives of other Churches and consultants, will swell the total attendance figure to about 1,200.
Officials reckon that this is going to be the best-prepared Lambeth Conference ever. Should that prove to be the case, much of the credit must got the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie.
It was one of his principal concerns when he decided, five years ago, that this twelfth Conference should be held, that each bishop would communicate closely with his people about its themes and so "bring his diocese with him" when he came to Canterbury.
As a result, a lot of people have done a lot of homework through a wide range of consultations right across the Communion. This means that the input to the Conference of people's hopes, fears, aspirations and opinions will be greater, and should be better informed, than ever before.
There are four major themes for consideration and exploration at the Conference. Each bishop will be assigned to one of the theme groups in which detailed, specialized work will be done. The reports of these groups will then be brought to plenary sessions of the Conference for further discussion and, where appropriate, for consideration or resolutions. The groups are: Mission and Ministry, Dogmatic and Pastoral Concerns, Ecumenical Relations, and Christianity and the Social Order.
Although each of these groups has its special interest, they will not be working in isolation from each other, for many of the issues will have relevance to and implications for more than one of the themes.
Women priests and bishops, for example, may well be discussed, from a different angle, in all four groups.
Authority in the Anglican Communion -- what it is, what it ought to be, and how it can and should be exercised -- is certain to be another major issue. It is becoming a problem, and a pressing problem, for a communion of autonomous churches in which deep divisions of principle and practice are beginning to appear.
The Lambeth Conference itself will be the subject of intense and perhaps heated debate on this point. Should it be abolished, or developed to include clergy and lay people? Would the provinces accept a Lambeth Conference having binding powers over them? At present it has only a moral authority.
But, as ever, there will be more to this Lambeth Conference than hard work, conflicting opinions and daunting problems. There will be splendor in worship -- the highlights being opening and closing Eucharists in Canterbury Cathedral and a special service in Christopher Wren's masterpiece, St. Paul's Cathedral, London, when the whole Conference makes a day-trip to London.
And a touch to crown it all, perhaps -- Queen Elizabeth II has invited delegates to a garden party at Buckingham Palace.