Bishop Christopher Cocksworth, Bishop of Coventry, writes about Lambeth 2022 (having been to Lambeth 2008) here.
Catherine Fox (among several notable roles in life is a bishop's spouse and was also at Lambeth 2022) writes about Lambeth 2022 here as part of her "Diary" for a recent Church Times.
+Christopher writes this about the overall sense of the conference as a significant moment in the history of the Anglican Communion, albeit from an episcopal perspective:
"As well as being taken deeper into what it means to be a bishop in the Church of God, I also learned more of what the Lambeth Conference means to the life of the Anglican Communion. Essentially, the Church is relational. The Conference was that part of the Church manifested as the Anglican Communion being the Communion — or, rather, becoming more fully the Communion, because our being is always in the process of becoming. I saw more clearly how the relationality of the Communion involves relationship with the physical space of Canterbury Cathedral (as some sort of maternal home, awesome in its proportions and history); with the actual person of the Archbishop of Canterbury (as a generous and loving host, gifted in this case with an extraordinary energy); with each other (as called and sent by God to our people and places, gathered together now in this place and with this person for the building up of our common life); with brothers and sisters from other churches and communions (whose fellowship and wisdom beckoned us beyond ourselves into a bigger vision of the church); with Jesus Christ, in the Spirit, and his relationship with the Father (greatly helped by some wonderful liturgies and inspired music)."
He also has some critiques to offer, one of which is expressed thus:
"What the Conference was not so good at was enabling the proper episcopal oversight and leadership of the Communion that, at least until 2008, belonged to the character if not necessarily the constitution of the Lambeth Conference. That incapacity showed itself in the process for drafting, refining, and affirming the Lambeth Calls. We were presented with immature texts. I do not mean that they were of poor quality (though some were certainly better than others); rather that they had not been through the sort of maturation process that such agreed statements require. There was certainly no credible process for developing them during the Conference, and the appeal to a third stage of the Conference after the residential period felt like a missed opportunity.
It may well be that, given the size of the Communion and the constraints of time and language on the Conference itself, the Lambeth Conference cannot be expected to fulfill both the relational-educational role and the discussing, deliberating, deciding function that belongs to the ministry of bishops if they are to be used by God to form the church (again in the words of the Church of England Ordinal) “into a single communion of faith and love.” I hope that work is beginning now on a new structure and shape of the Lambeth Conference that allows both roles to be fulfilled."
Catherine writes this about the mood at the end of the conference:
"I wished, fleetingly, that I’d applied for a press pass as a reporter on the Lindfordshire Chronicle. But I was there in good faith, minus any ironic shield, experiencing everything raw. At times, this hurt. What I sensed by the end was not (as the BBC reported) an “air of self-congratulation” that we’d managed not to split the Communion in half. It felt more like being tipped out of the wash cycle into a wholly new landscape, beyond a preoccupation with being right. Being right necessitates others’ being wrong. This new space gestured towards the possibility of our all being in the right, baptised into it, and raised up on the other side.
I’d say that everyone seemed almost stunned. Stunned and tender — in both senses of that word. We were bruised (stone-washed, blood-washed), and yet full of love for one another. Despite the screaming panic of gulls, maybe the wood pigeons get the final word."
To what Catherine Fox says about how we ended up, I simply say, Amen.
To what Christopher Cocksworth says I also say Amen about what he observes about the “relationality” of the Communion, both personal relationships and locational (historio-geographical) relationships.
To what he says by way of critique of the conference insofar as it engaged with issues and didn’t come to much in the way of decision-making, I say we should follow through and work on how we do make Communion-wide, Communion-authoritative decisions.
This might or might not involve an “old style” Lambeth Conference: all bishops together, for several weeks, synodically, methodically working towards decisions.
My own preference for exploration would be for regional decision-making conferences to work on matters and for a smaller “council” of primates, bishops, perhaps chancellors as well, to then convert the regional decisions into a Communion decision (perhaps subject to ratification by the whole Lambeth Conference or the, possible, Anglican Congress). ACC could figure in the mix also - perhaps proposing the matters that need decisions made.
There is a future for the Anglican Communion. It is a future for those who turn up to gatherings and not for those who do not. What is a question du jour is what gatherings best enable us to be what we want to be.
Finally, a voice from England, currently in Australia: the SMH has an article featuring an interview with the ABC here and this opening sentence:
"The Archbishop of Canterbury says a schism in Australian Anglicanism is dangerous for the church because it looks to outsiders like any other institution that struggles to overcome differences."
Dear Bishop Peter I am aware the +Christopher is the Bishop of Coventry, a very different sort of bishop from the one who confirmed me in the nearby Holy trinity Church in that City. +Mervyn, when he appeared in cope and mitre was sometimes called the 'Ugly Duckling' because of the haphazard way in which his mitre stood on his intellectual forehead. +Marvyn was an old-school 'middle of the road' Anglican Bishop who, however, was able to put on his catholic persona - especially when he visited the nearby John the Baptist parish church which was 'ultra-montane' and where our Servers Guild (GSS) had its most exciting outings. +Christopher is 'different'.
ReplyDeleteIt seems now, in retrospect, that the Lambeth Conference of 2022 was either highly encouraging (for its eirenic - if somewhat less rules-centred - ethos); OR, it was frustrating for those few individuals who had come with an agenda to turn back the clock to a 39-Articular Religion which had occasioned the separation of the Gafcon Primates from the rest of us in the Anglican Communion. I, for one, am thankful that Charity mostly prevailed, wherein the ABC was able to draw together the majority present; while accepting that there would still be some disagreement on certain issues that were still under consideration by some provincial Churches, including The Church of England.
It seemed obvious to you, and to many others actually present at the Conference, that the Holy Spirit was, in fact, also present and helping bring about the degree of unity that was experienced. Not a bad outcome for a Lambeth Conference, in my view.
"... we should follow through and work on how we do make Communion-wide, Communion-authoritative decisions."
ReplyDeleteDecisions?
"regional decision-making conferences to work on matters..."
Decisions or not, yes. The Communion would be healthier with this bit of multi-polarity.
"...and for a smaller 'council' of primates, bishops, perhaps chancellors as well, to then convert the regional decisions into a Communion decision (perhaps subject to ratification by the whole Lambeth Conference or the, possible, Anglican Congress). ACC could figure in the mix also - perhaps proposing the matters that need decisions made."
Too many cooks spoil the broth. Better to stop while we are ahead.
No Congress ever. Abolish the ACC.
BW
ReplyDeleteDear BOWMAN: Abolish the A.C.C.? Really?
However, even some Roman Catholics would rather the historic Vatican II Council had never taken place - then, of course, the Tridentine Rule would still be de rigeur.
The Holy Spirit does NEED across the spectrum representation for Church Integrity - otherwise he might only have chosen the Disciple Peter. I know you're not keen on Synods, Bowman but we do have a difference of opinion (unity in diversity?) on that subject.
"Abolish the A.C.C.? Really?"
ReplyDeleteYes, regional conferences-- a half-dozen new synods!-- would be much more missional. They should meet as often as they like and communicate freely with each other all around the globe. If need be, they can call Lambeth Palace. Superfluous centrism is neo-colonialism.
"even some Roman Catholics"
Francis agrees with me: synodality, yes; parliaments, no. Watch Belgium and Germany.
"The Holy Spirit does NEED across the spectrum representation"
The Creator needs nothing.
We are not Whigs; we are Christians. Where you see representation, I see elite capture that has stifled evangelism and missions.
More broadly, the CLERGY should be a slice of society as a whole. Where they are not that, synods are neither an excuse nor a remedy. Indeed, they have often been classist and racist obstacles to inclusion. In 2022, who might we be electing that we are not already ordaining? In New England, the clergy are more representative than their synods.
Every institution eventually passes its prime, and may even become corrupt. Who can give a synod an appetite for tough decisions or sacrifice?
The Ordination of Women and That Topic tested the theological competence of national synods across the West and none has altogether passed. Indeed, none of these synods has deigned to respond to the findings of the others as every church is a planet unto itself.** Meanwhile, mine destabilizes the Communion by debating hypothetical causes that have no real constituencies even here. Living is learning and changing.
Again: synodality, yes; parliaments, no. There is no reason to think that laymen fail to do a creditable job in the witnessing, counting, oversight, etc that is mere governance. There have been appalling scandals where those checks were not in place. Beyond that, there is some life of the Body that organically flourishes around diocesan synods, and I suspect that we want much more of that.
The root problem is that popes assumed absolute power in the West, which Protestants just handed over, first to well-instructed princes, then to not so well-instructed national synods who (understandably) do not know what to do with it all (eg Way Forward discovers that all unblessed marriages are invalid). We need to think through our two centuries of experience with synods in a more churchly, contemporary, and realistic way.
** TEC's General Convention "task forces" usually do seek documents produced by their counterparts around the Communion. The TEC working document on marriage and the family memorably responded to an ACC report in a footnote. When working on a project, TEC's Standing Liturgical Commission makes contacts throughout the Communion and well beyond it. But generally and officially, each national synod ignores the others' theological products, which is not Communion.
BW
Bowman, are you seriously suggesting a Free-For-All Parish Government - rather than synodical government supervised by the bishop. If not, can you really claim to be 'Anglican'? (SIGH!)
ReplyDeleteRon/Bowman
ReplyDeleteI always understand Bowman in such threads of discussion as promoting "church wide conversation, reflection, discernment" (= "synodality") but not equating synodality as "synods" (or church in the mode of "parliament") ... that is, the discernment of the guidance of the Spirit may or may not be best made via motions and bills.
No, Father Ron,
ReplyDeleteNot a Free-For-All.
My reply to + Peter's OP affirms that regional conferences that circle the globe with horizontal relationships would be good for churches and a logical expression of what Anglicans understand Communion to be.
As a referent, Canterbury suffices. No more centre that that is useful or frankly wise. So redundant instruments should fade into history, the old congresses and ACC among them.
You have objected (I think) that this means that no representative body would then be at the centre. You're right, of course, but there isn't one there now. Nobody ever talks about being in Communion with the ACC.
But beyond that, representation in a parliamentary sense is not relevant or helpful to what personal figures of unity have been doing in catholic order for the score of centuries past. Moreover, I do not see how an Avignon could be avoided if divisive persons found their way to high places as has happened here in both TEC and USA. That would be a disaster.
Finally, talk of *representation* begs the very scriptural question, "Who really is being represented and to whom when the Body of Christ takes counsel?" Representatives in actual synods seem not to agree among themselves.
You are rightly protective of the synodically governed, episcopally led Anglican diocese. It has a few serious problems, but then it also has unrecognised strengths. Maybe *gathering the sense of the meeting* will disclose them more surely than *counting the votes for proposal X*. But on its very worst days, it is easy to love a diocese.
BW
"You are not here to shepherd yourselves," the pope said to the hundreds of clergy present in St. Peter's, "but others — all others — with love. And if it is fitting to show a particular concern, it should be for those whom God loves most: the poor and the outcast. The church is meant to be, as Pope John put it, 'the church of all, and particularly the church of the poor.' "
ReplyDeleteThe council, the pope said, calls for a church that is "madly in love with its Lord and with all the men and women whom he loves" and "that is rich in Jesus and poor in assets" and "a church that is free and freeing." (Pope Francis, on the 6th Anniversary of Vatican II
WOW! What a challenge for us Anglicans!
And in the meantime, in the heartland of our Mother Church oif England comes this NEWS:
ReplyDeleteAppointment of Dean of Canterbury: 11 October 2022
Her Late Majesty The Queen approved the nomination of The Very Reverend Dr David Monteith, Dean of Leicester, for election as Dean of Canterbury.
From: Prime Minister’s Office, 10 Downing Street
Published 11 October 2022.
I must confess, I was so overjoyed, I sent this response to "Thinking Anglicans' which shared the news (with almost instantaneous approval): -
"What very good news for the Church of England. At last, a same-sex-partnered priest - who has nothing to hide - appointed to a prestigious position in the ancient Diocese of Canterbury. And what a blessing his partner must be - to the bereaved and dying. Thanks be to God for this appointment. (Sorry, Leicester, you seem to be giving up a treasure! - but you have helped this couple of Christians to become themselves)"
I don't want you, Dear Bishop, to think I'm descending into old-age sentimentalism; but I can't help reflecting on my own ordination as a priest in the parish of Whangarei by Archbishop Paul Reeves. At the Reception afterwards in the Parish Hall, he asked what I had to say for myself, and all I could think of was a word of Scripture: "My heart is indicting of a good matter".
ReplyDeleteI felt like that this morning, when Diana and I were reading from our 'New Daylight' the commentary of Michael Mitton, which he headed 'PRIMAL DIVISIONS HEALED', quoting Galatians 3, verses 26-29, which says:
"For, in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through FAITH. As many of you as were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise". Michael's commentary is worth repeating here:
" In his letter to the Galatians Paul is having to defend the very open form of fellowship that was experienced at Pentecost. As time went on some Jewish believers felt indignant that Gentile converts to Christianity were not undergoing the requirements of the Jewish Law, such as circumcision. They saw Jewish Christians a superior to Gentile Christians. This was anathema to Paul, who profoundly believed that the Gospel was free to all. But he would have well understood these 'Judaisers' (as they were then called). For Paul himself had been a very devout Jew and would have once used a prayer popular at the time, thanking God that: "Thou hast not made me a Gentile, a slave or a woman".
But Paul's teaching in our passage today was most likely not just a throwaway sentiment to counter an old prayer. It may well be that he had pondered the divisions that caused such suffering in the world. Maybe he identified three that were 'primal divisions':
'Jew or Greek' speaks of the great divided between tribal cultures; the divide that was so beautifully healed at Pentecost; 'Slave or free' speaks of the terrible economic divisions, where those living in extravagant wealth oppress those who are poor; 'male and female' speaks of the gender divide that has caused, arguably, more pain even than the other two.
For Paul, the Christian community was one in which these three dreadful divides were healed through the work of Christ. If you belong to Christ, then you will no longer tolerate such divides. It is sad to reflect that nearly 2,000 years after Paul, these divides still exist - even in the Church. Paul would remind us that we are here to build a fellowship that models a healed world"
(With due attribution to 'New Daylight').
This puts into a proper perspective any division we might perpetuate to break this koinonia fellowship.
A modern Orthodox (not Gafcon) theologian, Kallistos Ware, had something vital to say about the need for Christians to update our awareness of what God is calling us to be and to do:
ReplyDelete"Yet while Ware was imbued with the spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, he also added his voice to modern calls for ecological responsibility and, mindful of the fact that some of the most important of the early Christian thinkers were women, he championed their role in Christian ministry, and indeed the inclusion of all, in a way that was bold by the standards of Orthodox Christianity.
“Clearly, tradition is life; it’s not a fixed formula,” he wrote. “Still less is it writings in leather-bound volumes. Tradition is the life of Christ present in the church through the Holy Spirit. It is not simply fixed doctrines, but the continuing self-understanding and self-criticism of the Christian community.”
(This from an Oxford-educated Orthodox who lived from time to time on the Island of Patmos, and was a personal friend of Archbishop Rowan Williams)
Thanks, Father Ron, for your last four comments. They have not been unfruitful, but the thoughts that resulted either were already familiar to + Peter's readers, not quite ripened, or baked into pies better served elsewhere.
ReplyDelete*
Many of your comments down the years have made most sense to me when I reframed them as family arguments. That is, they have opened more lines of thought when I understood you to be addressing others as persons in reciprocal roles where things said on all sides should be adequate to reality, to the speaker's perspective, and to the relationship.
There can be a lot of opposition in family conversations precisely because the members are not only not disowning each other but are trying to get their given relationships right. They fail if they cannot face facts, of course, but they also fail if they do so in ways that damage persons or rupture related roles. Hence the proverbial wisdom that fools want to be right and the wise want to be happy. This way of thinking in the Body is not unscriptural-- Jesus, his brother James, and the Pharisees come to mind-- but it is not the one we usually assume here.
*
James? After the Resurrection, both Pharisees and disciples in the Way worshiped at the Temple. So these communities, although distinct, must have known each other well, and the Pharisees particularly admired James's holiness. Meanwhile, when a new Roman prefect was late in getting to Jerusalem, the chief priest assumed his powers *ad interim* and had James executed. The Pharisees erupted. When the prefect arrived, they protested until the chief priest was sacked. If they had not seen James as a conspicuously righteous Jew by their own lights, it is hard to think that they would have taken the risks of objecting so forcefully to his execution.
The anecdote shows this: Jesus and the Pharisees obviously differed, but they were not utterly polarised. We are mistaken when we take his disagreements and diatribes as the "I'll never speak to you again!" cutoffs of a broken family that has disintegrated. Indeed for centuries to come, fathers and rabbis alike struggled with Jews who were determined to live as though all these sages were authorities of rival schools in one single family of Abraham. It is hard to blame them when we know that the halachic reasoning of Jesus influenced some rabbis' decisions on inheritances, that even Byzantine monastics were avid readers of later Jewish apocalyptic, and that both Jewish and Christian amulets came from the same hands. Possibly, it is more as barbarians from around the North Sea than as Gentiles of the Mediterranean that we keep preaching a Yeshua who oddly hates the Jews.
BW
Thanks, Bowman. I do appreciate your scholarly posts. Agape.
ReplyDeleteWhere did you find that story of James BW? Acts 12 attributes James’ execution to Herod and ‘he saw that it pleased the Jews’ and arrested Peter. I found from your earlier question to me that the teaching of the Pharisees about the oral law (Mishna and Talmud I think) became the basis for Judaism even up to today, so they were a powerful movement of law. Jesus seemed to want to keep to the Torah but with grace. But I haven’t solved the puzzle yet…!!!
ReplyDeleteMoya
Hi Moya.
ReplyDeleteAlan Segal (Yale historian of early Judaism) opened a lecture several years ago with the story. His source (which I do not recall offhand) was not in the NT.
A reminder that scholars like him (Daniel Boyarin, Peter Schaefer, Benjamin Sommers, Jacob Neusner, etc) read the gospels and letters as written by and for Jews. In their view, Jesus was an insightful halachist within the broad range of interpretation in his day, and his self-understanding as a divine messiah is obvious but not without other ancient parallels.
In this contemporary Judaic perspective on the NT, Jesus is sometimes (eg Boyarin, The Jewish Gospel) seen stepping into a role that was already waiting for him in nascent Judaism. In contrast, the German scholarship of a century and a half ago (aka liberal) thought that this role evolved after his death in the Hellenistic world and was first defined at Nicaea. The work of Martin Hengel, Larry Hurtado, and the whole Early High Christology Club inclines me to take the Judaic view seriously.
So yes, you're right: Jesus was too conservative or even reactionary in his reading of Torah to accept the Pharisees' revisions and elaborations of it. You can see the clash of their hermeneutics most clearly in St Mark vii on the law of ritual handwashing in of all places Galilee.
Why would anyone keep a Temple ritual a hundred miles from the Temple? The law does not require this-- although the text implies that some disciples do it-- so on the face of it, the complaint of Jesus's visitors makes no sense. As story and history, why was it plausible to St Mark that these critics would travel from Jerusalem to Galilee to talk to Jesus about this?
The principle of the Mishna is right there: when you have no Temple, holiness is keeping an elaborate simulacrum of its law as though you did. Jesus rejects this simulacrum, digresses to criticize the method behind it, and then twice uncovers a spiritual meaning in the original law's root concept of uncleanness. That makes sense in Galilee and in Jerusalem and indeed everywhere.
In so doing, the Lord draws law into a wisdom and apocalypse of the end of the Land. Where others saw this end as the ruin of the family of Abraham that frustrated his Father's plan to save the world through it, Jesus saw this as an opening for that plan's culmination throughout the world. Grace indeed!
BW
Thanks that’s interesting and helpful!
ReplyDeleteMoya