Lambeth Put into Historical Perspective
Episcopal News Service. July 28, 1988 [88169D]
CANTERBURY, England (DPS, July 28) -- The Rev. Professor Owen Chadwick, Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, presented a studied and witty historical perspective of Lambeth Conferences to the bishops on July 19 in a plenary hall address. He said there were three reasons why the series of "meetings" was launched in 1867: the Canadian bishops asked the Archbishop of Canterbury for such a gathering, because they felt isolated and out of touch; the Anglican Communion was becoming international and there was a need for information; and to decide who was the rightful Bishop of Natal. Chadwick said there are three major problems with such international "councils" of bishops: language differences; "outside pressure" in that "it is obvious that bishops from all over the world meeting together is a political act"; and the fact that "unreal decisions are made." But, he said, it is also a fact that the issues before Lambeth Conferences do matter. Perhaps the two most notable contributions made by the meetings over the years have been the famous Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1888, which offered four prerequisites for Christian unity, and the Lambeth Appeal of 1920, a second challenge to the universal Church on unity. Among the several humorous anecdotes in Chadwick's lecture -- attended by all but a few of the bishops -- was one concerning the former Bishop of Peterborough, who in 1876 said of the Bishop of Lincoln, "He was inopportune and mischievous in the most saintly way."