2008 is the year of the Lambeth Conference, a once every ten years gathering of all bishops in the Anglican Communion. On this page you will find news and information about Lambeth as well as reports and updates as the conference progresses throughout July.

Visit the Official Lambeth Website here.

The Archbishop of Canterbury set out his hopes for this year's Lambeth Conference in a video message addressed to Bishops and Dioceses across the worldwide communion.

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about the Lambeth Conference can be found here.

- The Archbishop of Canterbury has sent an open letter to the bishops of the Anglican Communion, at the Feast of Pentecost in advance of the Lambeth Conference. The full text of the letter can be found here.

- The faithful around the Communion have a unique opportunity for Bible Study with their Bishops during the Lambeth Conference as the series “Signs on the Way” makes its debut.

This special series - focusing on St John's Gospel - complements the Bible studies in which the bishops and their spouses will take part during the Lambeth Conference 2008.

The studies are structured so that they can be used either by groups or by individuals.

Download the Lambeth Bible Study here.
Visit the Lambeth link here.

- To read Bishop Brian Farran's sermon at the farewell Evensong on June 29 click here.

- The Australian Primate, Archbishop Phillip Aspinall will act as principal spokesman for the Anglican Communion bishops attending the 14th Lambeth Conference. He will chair a daily press conference during the Lambeth meeting at which he will be joined by bishops with specialist experience in the theme of the day. Archbishop Aspinall said it will be both a privilege and a challenge to articulate the voice of the bishops of the Communion at a time of enormous challenge for the church and the world.

- There will be a strong ecumenical presence at the 2008 Lambeth Conference. The Archbishop of Canterbury will welcome more than 75 representatives from a wide variety of churches and Christian communities. Two of the principal speakers at the conference come from the ecumenical world. View more here.

- The Archbishop of Canterbury has written a Pastoral Letter to all bishops at the conclusion of the Lambeth Conference. Read the letter here.

July 24

There are 650 Anglican Bishops at the Lambeth Conference from all over the world. Most have their spouses with them. In addition there are many support persons to organize such massive conferences for bishops and spouses. The huge number means that queuing becomes an art-form.

The Conference design group have borrowed a process from Africa indaba which ensures that in manageable sized groups all voices can be listened to on issues that face the Anglican Communion as well as on issues that individual bishops face in their own contexts.

Indaba is a process that slows decision-making, that looks for consensus, and that allows those for whom English is a second or third language the opportunity to express themselves and to be heard by others, including impatient westerners.

We are learning of the acute human suffering plaguing the lives of so many African nations. The ministries offered in Anglican dioceses in such African context are really miraculous especially when it is recognized that endemic corruption derails much medical treatment of HIV/AIDS.

The early days of the Lambeth Conference have been spent in study, in worship, in building trust and in careful listening. These are the necessary process ingredients that will provide a basis for tackling the issues before the whole Anglican Communion.

The Conference continues for another 10 days.

 

July 28

The first week of the Lambeth Conference has concluded. Today (Sunday) I am presiding and preaching in the parish of Faversham in the Diocese of Canterbury -about six miles out of Canterbury. This is a relaxing day mid-way through the Conference. 

The daily programme is very full and tight. Last night at Evening prayer the Archbishop of Canterbury reiterated the design of the programme. I think that the programme is working well, given that I can compare this Lambeth process with that of 1998. Interestingly only about a third of the bishops present have been to a previous Lambeth Conference. This is startingly so of the Episcopal church - I think only 15 of their about 140 bishops have been here before!

Each day begins with Eucharist at 7.15a.m. in the Big Top - a huge tent that is at the centre of the conference venue. On Saturday (yesterday) the Australians led the worship with Bishop George Browning preaching on the theme of the Environment. This theme is emerging as the number one priority in the Conference, especially from the voices of bishops from the emerging world.

We meet in small Bible Study groups of 8 at 9.15 for 75 minutes. These are the backbone of the Conference. In my group there are two bishops from West Africa, one from India, three Americans (two very conservative, one liberal) and an English bishop who is the coordinator. We are studing the great I AM sayings in John's Gospel.

Then after coffee it is into Indaba groups of about 40. Indaba is an African process that seeks to give every person present a voice. It is a listening process. Suprisingly, Fr. Fergus King is the reporter for my Indaba group - he is doing an amazing job.

The entire Conference is broken down into these Indaba groups. This listening process is reported to a Listening Group who will draft the document that will after several inspections by the Indaba groups be this Lambeth Conference's final document to the Anglican Communion. My view is that there will be much more ownership by the Conference of the final document because of the Indaba process.

The 1998 Lambeth Conference final report was largely drafted by support professionals although it too was critiqued by much larger sectional working groups of over 100 bishops before its final adoption. The final huge plenary of the 1998 Lambeth Conference (over 800 bishops in 1998) was very rugged in a debate that was not effectively controlled by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey. The 1998 Conference ended with many bisops feeling alienated by that final plenary.

I think Archbishop Rowan has given outstanding leadership to this Conference. He is truly a godly bishop, a great theological mind and humble! This combination is a bit of a shock to some bishops who operate with a public service mentality and expectation.

This coming week will see the Conference wrestle with the great issues of the nature of the Anglican Communion, with the proposed Covenant (to which I am increasingly leaning in its present form) and to the issue of human sexuality and how we respond to this in both the West and in emerging nations.

I am ever so grateful for your holding the Lambeth Conference in prayer. Please continue to do so. I will write again to keep you posted on this historic Lambeth Conference.

August 4

The Lambeth Conference has ended with a very positive tone amid a sense of hope for the future of the Anglican Communion. The final plenary session on Sunday afternoon last was marked by two standing ovations for the Archbishop of Canterbury. Rowan Williams has provided extraordinary leadership for this Lambeth Conference – deeply theologically thoughtful and articulate, prayerful, generous, kindly and above all with a transparent winsome integrity. Rowan was deeply embarrassed by the accolades given to him by the Conference – and the two in the final plenary were not the only occasions when the entire conference rose to applaud him.

The significant work of this Lambeth Conference has been on the level of relationships. Clearly bishops came with concern, distrust and fear for the future of the Anglican Communion in the aftermath of both the actions by The Episcopal Church in consecrating a gay man in an openly acknowledged homosexual relationship and in blessing same-sex unions as well as the incursions by other Provinces (mainly from African Primates) into the dioceses of the Episcopal Church.

Both the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates Meetings had called for moratoria on all three but prior to this Lambeth Conference these moratoria had not been observed. Again the overwhelming call from within the Lambeth Conference is that these moratoria be observed.

This significant work on relationships was undertaken in the daily small bible study groups of eight, and the wider Indaba groups of about forty. The Indaba process (about which I have already written) enabled all those voices who wished to speak to speak and to be heard. The Indaba group of which I was privileged to be a member was led by the Bishop of Southern Ohio, a very skilled small group leader. We were fortunate to have Fergus King as our rapeteur (reporter). Fergus did an amazing job and was deeply appreciated by the Indaba group. Fergus would be able to provide an objective perspective on this important component of the total Lambeth Conference process.

We cannot underestimate the importance of this focus on relationships. I think that the majority view from the bishops at Lambeth is that people could hear one another rather than listen through the media or through documents. This hearing of one another allowed people to shift ground, to indicate the pain and cost to them and their churches and to recognize yet again that we are interconnected, that the Anglican Communion is like a body so that when one area suffers the whole body feels the pain.

This development of trust has overcome much of the mistrust that has characterized the functioning of the Anglican Communion since the last Lambeth Conference. This will not be as visible initially as an Official Report document such as the Report from the 1998 Lambeth Conference. However, in my view this redevelopment of trust and listening carefully to each other is a necessary foundation for facing the issues before us.  There is a document that reflects the work that the bishops at this Lambeth Conference undertook together. It is much more a way of entering into their discussions and sensing the deep issues that surround us as we seek to be a faithful missionary church that holds together through the Holy Spirit’s gift of koinonia.

The Lambeth Conference focused not just on the polarized sexuality issue but on the need for the Anglican Communion to practise the five marks of mission that were adopted before the 1990s. These marks of mission include commitment to the Millennium Development Goals. We participated in a great walk of witness through the streets of London, past the Palace of Westminster (the Houses of Parliament) to Lambeth Palace where we hear two stirring speeches from the Archbishop of Canterbury and Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of Great Britain. This action brought wide media attention and once again focused the world’s inadequate performance thus far in implementing these goals.

September 25th is the date when the United Nations will meet to reconsider the progress thus far towards the Millennium Development Goals. We will be called throughout the Anglican Communion to a day of fasting, prayer and public witness to support our Government in its commitment to these goals and to exhort world leaders to catch up on the progress towards achieving these goals. Please note this in parish diaries now.

I recognized that the great differences between this Lambeth Conference and the 1998 Lambeth Conference included:

• The quality of the leadership of this Archbishop of Canterbury
• The genuine and sustained listening of bishops to one another
• The deep commitment to the Anglican Communion by bishops
• The change in atmosphere of listening rather than the previous adversarial culture of debate and voting on resolutions
• The effect of the witness of bishops in areas of persecution and desperate need
• The effect of the small Bible Study groups leading to value and deepening openness to the Spirit

One Sudanese bishop said to my Indaba group ‘because of our long suffering we have learned not to run away from what we hear but to go and see and then run away from what you see is dangerous.’ This was his explanation for the Sudanese bishops coming to Lambeth even though pressure was placed upon them to go to GAFCON and refuse the Archbishop of Canterbury’s invitation to attend the Lambeth Conference. These bishops contributed quite vocally to both the Indaba groups and to the plenary Listening Sessions. I think that they felt that they had been genuinely heard by bishops, particularly those from North America.

The English press is very cynical and strident in its reporting of the Conference. The Times in particular offered a schizoid evaluation of the Lambeth Conference. The leader at the final day of the Conference was laudatory and optimistic. Ruth Gledhill’s writing and blog is more negative. I understand that she is a priest’s daughter so I think you can wonder whether or not she brings other influences to bear on her reporting. As well, Joanna Sugden the daughter of Canon Chris Sugden a leading figure in organizing GAFCON, wrote cynically about the Conference and even the Opening Eucharist in Canterbury Cathedral. This style of writing does not reflect the internal working and cohesion of this Lambeth Conference.

So I think that the outcome from this crucial Lambeth Conference is greatly improved relationships amongst bishops of the Anglican Communion, a significant movement towards a Covenant to which I am now committed and a process for the development of a Pastoral Forum that will respond to divergences from the Covenant. Further, there was majority support for the moratoria which Provinces not at the Lambeth Conference need to heed as much as does the Anglican Church of Canada and The Episcopal Church.

The concluding Eucharist in Canterbury Cathedral had a very poignant observance when the Archbishop of Canterbury received the names of the seven Melanesian martyrs of recent time. A procession of Melanesian religious escorted the document with their names to the Chapel of Martyrs of Our Own Time in the Cathedral. As they did so they chanted the Litany of Saints. This was haunting and very moving as their voices faded as they moved further up the Cathedral to the chapel behind the High Altar.

I left the University of Kent (the site of the Lambeth Conference) with great gratitude to God and profound respect for my Episcopal colleagues and with real hope for the future of the Anglican Communion.

Grace and peace,
+Brian Newcastle.

Lambeth_Update_conclusion.pdf Download a pdf of the post Lambeth report (August 4) from Bishop Farran at the link.