AND SO it begins. The 2008 Lambeth Conference starts, appropriately enough, with a three-day retreat in Canterbury, before the big opening service in the cathedral on Sunday morning. On the assumption that the bishops who registered (and have been paid for) have actually turned up, the organisers ought to be quietly pleased. They have collected together well over the quorum needed to claim still to be the voice of the episcopate of the Anglican Communion.
A key constituency, though, is the conservative one. The loss of so many Nigerians, Ugandans, and Rwandans is critical. Given that the Lambeth Conference is not a church council with the authority to legislate for the Communion, one of its most important functions is to enable bishops to inform themselves of other models of the Church. The gay debate of the past five years has suffered from too much niche internet activity, whereby each side has logged on merely to those sites with which they agree. As a consequence, the personal encounters that would formerly have taken place through letters or telephone conversations have been lacking. This has made a face-to-face meeting all the more desirable.
This is a serious flaw in Lambeth 2008. Laypeople and clergy are not represented directly at the Lambeth Conference (one of the structural questions about the governance of the Communion, though not one that we hear many bishops asking). For this reason alone, bishops have a duty to be as widely informed as possible on different approaches to theological and ethical matters, regardless of their personal preferences. Thus, even if individual bishops believe that the differences that exist in Anglicanism at present stop them from receiving at the same altar (we believe otherwise), it nevertheless behoves them to attend the Lambeth Conference in order to converse with those with whom they disagree.
Fortunately, many conservatives have chosen to do so. Thus, many of those who attended GAFCON — the Tanzanian bishops, for example — have come to Lambeth to continue the debate begun in Jerusalem. They will find themselves rubbing shoulders with many others who call themselves conservatives but who have chosen not to walk apart. It is this more than anything else that gives us hope for the future of Anglicanism. The jury is still out on how much stronger the bond between provinces can be made. Dr Williams was persuasive in our interview last week when he spoke of the contribution of the internet, which, paradoxically, in the light of the criticisms above, forces a greater intimacy on the Communion, so that one part of it cannot function without affecting the others. Our hope is that the bishops in Canterbury find a way of asserting this as a strength of Anglicanism, not a weakness.
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