Updated 14 June
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has written to the Primates of Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda to tell them that his invitation to bishops from their provinces to attend the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops remains open. In a joint letter with the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon, Archbishop Justin said: “God calls us to unity and not to conflict so that the world may know he came from the Father. That is the very purpose of the church globally.”
Read the whole press release, dated 27 May, and read the full text of the letter here.
Read the text of the letter from the three primates dated 6 May, to which it is a response.
Read the 31 March Communiqué of the Primates’ Meeting to which they were responding.
Update
Read the further response from the three primates, dated 10 June, or download a pdf copy here.
“God calls us to unity and not to conflict” and so –
Has the invitation of Justin Welby now been extended to the spouses of all bishops?
It is not clear who is pulling the strings of these three Provinces of the Anglican Communion, who pride themselves by (apparently) representing 30 million of the Anglican Communion’s 70 million adherents. Their 6 May letter following the March communiqué is hardly of the first rank in PR terms. But they are not stupid. ++Cantuar chides them for jumping the gun on revision, but the reality is that the Church of England *is* becoming ”tolerant and complicit in the arrogance and errors of the revisionist Anglican Churches in the West.” Praise the LORD. LLF seems set to have a further… Read more »
The ‘3 Primates’ have this to say about their reasons for absenting themselves from Lambeth 2022:- “The Anglican Communion is undoubtedly experiencing spiritual warfare between the Kingdom of God and that of Satan. The Cry of Moses, “Who is on The Lord’s side?” (Exodus 32:36) calls for the crucial decision which all genuine Christians and church denominations must make at this period”. Perhaps these Primates are right! Satan is certainly interested in sundering the Body of Christ – especially on issues of Biblical interpretation. He is clever and cunning and is aware that there is nothing more exciting for His… Read more »
“Has the invitation of Justin Welby now been extended to the spouses of all bishops?” Of course not. Unity matters only when a claim of 30 million adherents may be made. Yet we now see that Cantuar’s years-long attempt to sit on the fence has accomplished absolutely nothing. Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda quite accurately suspect that the CofE is about to change its official position on same-sex marriage, because they see this already taking place in other strands of British Anglicanism. So of course Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda will now walk apart. If they had been told from 2003 or… Read more »
I have more respect for the Primates of Nigeria etc who will stay away on principle (thereby also affecting only themselves) than I do for the Archbishop of Canterbury who has excluded same sex spouses because their presence would be difficult and inconvenient. So, in the end, the one person who isn’t inconvenienced at all is the Archbishop of Canterbury. Funny that Not.
Yes, Jeremy! I think that it is now time for the ABC to invite the ‘missing ‘ spouses to Lambeth, thus setting right one more institutional injustice. This would be an act of reconciliation, rather than the act of schism loved by ‘You-know-who’
I have been left of a good few invitation lists in my time ! No doubt often with good reason, but not always.
Courtesy matters, but are people perhaps getting the non-invitation of spouses a little out of proportion ?
I thought being in full communion with other churches means accepting their rites, sacraments and members etc?
Well, to be fair, many of these African provinces have said that they are no longer in Full Communion with western provinces like The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.
I was slightly amused to see that in the text of the Primates’ letter – at least the version of it that I accessed via the link on TA above – the final biblical quote in it ‘The truth shall set you free’ (the motto of the Anglican Communion) is mis-ascribed as John 8.3. It should be John 8.32. If one is going to hammer on about correct use of the Bible it does seem to me that such details matter. I was however also interested in the comment in the Primates’ letter, ‘Their focus on the environment should be… Read more »
Fascinating stuff, thank you Clare Amos.
I am not at all sure the Diocese of Sydney bishops have agreed to attend. Does anyone know?
Below is the coverage of the Lambeth same sex spouse issue from Anglican Journal, the house of the Anglican Church of Canada. There is reported comment from our Primate on +Welby’s decision. From the article, “Many Canadian Anglicans have publicly criticized the exclusion of same-sex couples. The Ontario House of Bishops in 2019 declared support for Kevin Robertson, area bishop of York-Scarborough in the diocese of Toronto, and his husband Mohan Sharma.”
https://anglicanjournal.com/exclusion-of-same-sex-spouses-at-lambeth-conference-unfortunate-primate-says/
A general comment rather than a reply to you, Rod, but here is as good a place as any to post it. As readers of my posts may have gathered, I’m interested in morphological (structural) embryology rather than genetic. The structural development of genitalia and intersex conditions, and the way in which our embryonic development of each individual in some way recapitulates the evolutionary story (ontogeny repeats elements of phylogeny), have been known for getting on for two centuries. Think about that. Yet there are church people who are stuck with what was thought two millennia ago. Thank about that.… Read more »
Thanks Stanley. All the sciences matter, including biology. They form part of the basis for our post-enlightenment world, along with modern history, hermeneutics, and theories of cognition–the latter grounding metaphysics in the tradition I subscribe to. Many TA threads ago I made the argument here that the virgin birth is a piece of biblical mythology that must be read metaphorically, not literally. My argument is based in part on biology i.e. we cannot accept a literal reading of this ‘doctrine’ in an age of DNA, post-Darwin, post-Gregor Mendel. In fact, a literal reading of the virgin birth jeopardize the humanness… Read more »
Once again, this appeal to modern science seems to radically underestimate what people knew two thousand years ago. It was perfectly well understood by them that women did not become pregnant without having sex: indeed Mary at Luke 1:34 asks “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” It was known that such things did not happen without miraculous intervention. The difference is that our forebears believed that such a thing had happened, and that it was miraculous. Indeed all such arguments tend to start from an a priori position on miracles. If you believe that nothing can… Read more »
Notwithstanding the sometimes very interesting comments here from anonymous commentators, I have decided that I will take a pass on replying to anonymous or otherwise unidentified commentators going forward. Anonymity tends to work against intersubjective meaning robotizing the discussion even more than the medium demands sui generis. Additionally, as a professional I find it difficult, in this kind of medium, to respond to comments on biblical issues here which do not reference critical and hermeneutical issues. It is difficult to know, for example, what that may represent. I’m sure there are some folks here who feel anonymity is what is… Read more »
I content myself with arguments expressed in plain language and independent of any authority or prestige that my name might give them. If that means that credentialed professionals do not care to consider them on their merits, too bad.
Correction, 1st line above should read : “Anglican Journal, the house organ of the Anglican Church of Canada.”