Scene Is Set for Anglican Unity Debate at Lambeth
Episcopal News Service. July 28, 1988 [88167]
CANTERBURY, England (DPS, July 28) -- Authority and unity in the Anglican Communion is the dominant theme during the early days of the 1988 Lambeth Conference here, as 525 bishops from 27 churches representing nearly 70 million Anglicans around the world gather for a three-week meeting.
The Conference is being held July 17-August 11 at the University of Kent. It convenes every ten years. The Archbishop of Canterbury himself, Dr. Robert Runcie, at whose personal invitation the bishops come here, stated the theme in stark terms in his opening address to the bishops.
"Do we actually need a worldwide communion?" he asked. "Is our worldwide family of Christians worth bonding together? Or is our paramount concern the preservation or promotion of that particular expression of Anglicanism which has developed within the culture of our own province?"
The Archbishop said that he believes "we do need," and want, a unified Communion, because "it is only by being in communion together that diversity and differences have value. Without relationship," he said, "difference divides."
Runcie's address, "The Nature of the Unity We Seek," emphasized the importance of the subject of unity in the Communion by the scheduling of the talk near the beginning of the Conference and by the directness of the Archbishop's message.
Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning of the Episcopal Church says that one of his paramount concerns as he leads an American contingent of 130 bishops in Canterbury is to support Runcie's effort to preserve unity. This position is being echoed by other American bishops in interviews, and it appears to be the sincere desire of the Conference as a whole.
The point of contention that is serving as a vehicle for the debate is the issue of the ordination of women, which so far has been approved in five provinces in the Anglican Communion.
The Episcopal Church has been ordaining women since January 1977. There are now 1,400 women priests and deacons in the American Church. The 1976 canonical change which allowed for women's ordination also provided for the eventuality of the ordination of a woman as bishop. The first election of a woman to the U.S. House of Bishops is expected to occur in the near future.
Browning has stated repeatedly that "I will never turn my back" on women's ordination or on the Church's wide-ranging efforts to include women, minorities, and other disenfranchised people in the mainstream of its mission and ministry. Browning believes -- as do the Archbishop of Canterbury and many other primates -- that there are ways to preserve unity while maintaining commitment of the Church to women. Runcie announced publicly for the first time two weeks ago in an address to the Church of England's General Synod that he supported the ordination of women.
In his address to the Lambeth Conference on unity, Runcie spoke in considerable detail about unity within the Anglican Communion, ecumenical unity among the Christian churches, and the "unity of all creation."
On unity in the Anglican Communion, Runcie said that while "we must never make the survival of the Anglican Communion an end in itself. . . [it] is not about to dissolve [and] it is a little early to be taking the covers off the lifeboats and abandoning ship."
He said: "I hope the [ordination of women] won't dominate this Conference, but we need to recognize that our unity is threatened over [it] whatever we ultimately decide to do. There are dangers to our communion in this Lambeth Conference endorsing or failing to endorse such developments. And there are equal dangers to the communion by trying to avoid the issue altogether."
Runcie said that the worldwide communion is indeed necessary, and the way to make it stronger perhaps is to foster interdependence rather than autonomy.
At the same time, he warned that "should our answer be 'yes' to a minimum structuring of our mutual interdependence -- that which is actually required for the maintenance of communion and no more -- we would challenge not only the 'go it alone' attitudes of enterprising independence but also the 'I and only I am left' attitudes of those who believe they are the sole repositories of 'true' Anglicanism."