Thinking Anglicans

Lambeth: some lighter news

Riazat Butt wrote on the Guardian newsblog about Escorts on offer for lonely bishops at Lambeth conference.

This article also mentions the dining hall flow chart, which can be found here.

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Pittsburgh changes its URL

The Diocese of Pittsburgh has moved its website to a new URL. Peter Frank writes:

www.pitanglican.org To Become Diocese’s New Internet Address

The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh is in the process of moving its online home to www.pitanglican.org. The new address, based on Pittsburgh’s airport code, now is the primary host for the diocesan website and all diocesan staff email accounts.

“We are grateful for the use of our former address, pgh.anglican.org, which has been very kindly loaned to us by the Society of Archbishop Justus for more than a decade. That said, given the diocese’s coming vote on realignment and the decision of the Society earlier this year to take back the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin’s address after it approved a similar vote, it seemed prudent to make this change now,” said the Rev. Peter Frank, director of communications for the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh.

An independent non-profit organization that is unaffiliated with any governing structure in the Anglican Communion, the Society of Archbishop Justus has nonetheless hewed closely to the Episcopal Church’s determination of who is officially Anglican in the controversies of recent years. Explaining their decision earlier this year to revoke the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin’s use of sanjoquin.anglican.org, society member Simon Sarmiento stated “We made the change after receiving a specific request to do so from the Chancellor of the Presiding Bishop of the US Episcopal Church.”

“As the sole owner of all ‘anglican.org’ domain names, including pgh.anglican.org , the Society of Archbishop Justus is, of course, free to take advice from whomever it likes on how to parcel out use of that resource. However, we in Pittsburgh would be foolish not to take note of whom the Society chose to listen to in the case of San Joaquin,” added Frank.

While pgh.anglican.org may continue to direct individuals to the diocesan website for an interim period, the diocese encourages individuals to update their web browsers and email lists to reflect the change.

www.pitanglican.org will be our online home for many years to come,” said Frank.

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GAFCON's mistake about the Covenant

The briefing paper formerly on the GAFCON website has been removed.

Andrew Goddard explains why this may have happened in this article at Covenant

GAFCON & The Anglican Covenant:

The first and irrefutable conclusion that must be drawn from these two documents is the shocking inadequacy of GAFCON’s theological resource group and wider leadership. To have produced a briefing paper claiming to summarise the changes between the Nassau and St Andrew’s draft covenants but actually comparing the St Andrew’s draft to a quite different document unrelated to the covenant (and which many of the GAFCON team were involved in writing) is an astonishing error. That nobody in the group (or among the GAFCON leadership which released it) realised that the claimed removals from the Nassau draft were therefore all fraudulent suggests an inexcusable level of ignorance about the covenant process on the part of all those involved in writing and then disseminating this briefing paper to the wider Communion. The authorship is unclear but either we have a very small number of people writing what claims to be a representative document commended by seven Primates or we have a large group which failed to spot this basic and serious flaw. I am not sure which of these options is I would prefer to be reality. Unfortunately this all gives the strong impression that the conclusion – “the new document is severely flawed and should be repudiated” – was already decided upon on other grounds.

The second conclusion is that the other response of the same team is therefore seriously discredited, especially if it was put together on the basis of the briefing paper or by people who had seen the briefing paper and not realised its basic error.

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Lambeth: Monday press conference

Updated again Tuesday afternoon

There was a press conference today at Canterbury, at which the Archbishop of Canterbury answered questions.

A full audio recording of this can be downloaded from the ACO website, go here.

A video recording of it is available at ENS, go here.
Navigate to the video by date: 07/21/08.

Jim Naughton has posted about it, see Live: ABC meets the press.

I will add links here to further reports about this event.

Anglican Journal Communion not headed for a schism, says Archbishop of Canterbury

BBC ‘Alienation’ over women bishops and also Robert Pigott’s Lambeth diary: Saying sorry

Guardian Riazat Butt Church is not wounded and bleeding, says Williams

Telegraph Martin Beckford Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams: Traditionalists ‘alienated’ by women bishops

Tuesday afternoon

The Times Ruth Gledhill Archbishop confirms church’s anti-gay sex stance

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Love Thy Neighbour

Stonewall has issued a report which Ruth Gledhill describes in The Times, see Faith leaders out of touch about gays and also Lambeth Diary: faith people ‘moderate’ on gays.

The Stonewall press release says:

Many faith leaders inadequately reflect their followers’ religious objections to lesbian and gay sexuality, new research has found. Love Thy Neighbour – published today by Stonewall and based on interviews with Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Christian participants from across the north of England – found that many hold significantly more moderate views of homosexuality than is often claimed on their behalf. Participants suggested to researchers from the University of Leeds that when the perceived tension between faith and sexual orientation is discussed in public, the agenda often becomes so dominated by aggression and sensationalism that levels of respect between faith communities and gay communities are overlooked.

Ben Summerskill, Stonewall Chief Executive, said: ‘Witnessing the saddening divisions in the Church of England demonstrated at this week’s Lambeth Conference, it’s telling that so many people of faith say they actually live, work and socialise with lesbian and gay people, and that significantly reduces negative ideas about difference. Many Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hindus are clearly markedly more moderate that we are often allowed to believe. The stark conclusion to draw when it comes to religion and homosexuality is that it may be time to start listening to the voices of the many people of faith in Britain which have until now not been heard enough.’

Interviewees suggested that new legal protections for lesbian and gay people, including civil partnership, have had a ‘civilising effect’ on British society. The increased acceptance of gay people on a national and political level has also had a positive impact on attitudes at a local level, they said. This confirms the findings of Living together, a YouGov survey of 2,000 people published by Stonewall in 2007, which found that 84 per cent of people who identified as religious disagreed with the statement ‘homosexuality is morally unacceptable in all circumstances.’

Ruth has made the full report available here. It’s a 200K PDF.

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GAFCON primate never saw the Covenant response

Pat Ashworth interviewed Bishop Greg Venables.

Her report at the Church Times blog is headlined Greg Venables had not seen or agreed the GAFCON Covenant response:

HE WAS diplomatic about it, but it was clearly vexing to the Archbishop of the Southern Cone, Greg Venables, that he had neither seen nor agreed the published response to the St Andrew’s draft Covenant , issued by GAFCON on Friday in his name and those of the Primates of Nigeria, West Africa, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. None of the other six is present at the conference…

…“If the conservative orthodox group within the Communion is going to come out of this very difficult situation in a way that honours God, it’s going to have to be consulting together, agreed not just on what we believe but prepared to be tolerant and considerate and loving on secondary issues and also committed to talking together and doing things together,” said Bishop Venables.
“If we speak, it’s because we have had dialogue and we have agreed on what we’re saying. The GAFCON statement as it came out of Jerusalem [The Jerusalem Statement and Declaration] was fully agreed on and worked out together – but obviously other things haven’t been followed through in the same consultative, collegial way, which is a great pity.”

…Bishop Venables had agreed the accompanying response to some of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s concerns, a response which, although uncompromising, has a markedly less high-handed tone. Was GAFCON starting from a totally fixed position with no compromise and no leeway, I asked Bishop Venables? “That’s the opposite of what a number of us feel, “he said. “I wouldn’t be here at Lambeth if I didn’t think that God had always got the door open, and if we move towards him then hopefully we would be moving towards each other if we were all sincerely seeking the same thing.”

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Lambeth: Monday news reports

Riazat Butt reports on Sunday’s events in the Guardian Church crisis: Simmering dissent, pleas for unity and grass skirts in the aisles as Anglicans meet

Ruth Gledhill reports them in The Times Archbishop of Canterbury says: ‘Now we must work out what is really important’ and Joanna Sugden wrote The shindig begins with nerves and half-naked dancers

George Pitcher in the Telegraph has Bishops boycotting Lambeth Conference ‘are weakening church’s efforts to resolve crisis’

For the BBC Nick Higham asks Will the conference bring communion?

And the Radio 4 breakfast programme Today had Theo Hobson and Nick Baines discussing the conference, go here for the 6 minute segment at 0840.

James Macintyre in the Independent has Bishops back plea for ‘inclusive communion’

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Lambeth: Sunday documents

Rowan Williams gave a Presidential Address. For an html copy of the full text it is necessary to go to ENS who have kindly reformatted it here.

The official press release about it is here.

ACNS has however the full text of the Sermon given by the Right Reverend Duleep de Chickera, the Bishop of Colombo at the opening service in Canterbury Cathedral.

The Order of Service is available as a PDF here.

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a GAFCON fragment

According to Chris Sugden writing in Evangelicals Now August 2008 edition

Gafcon takes off…. [emphasis added]

…A preparatory Conference for 140 was held in Jordan from June 17. However on June 18 the Jordanian authorities announced that sufficient high level permission had not been granted for the conference to take place. the conference hall was shut and no meeting allowed. At the same time Archbishop Akinola, travelling on his diplomatic passport was denied entry. So on June 19, the 140 people relocated early to Jerusalem. the hotels concerned, in the chain, transferred the costs. A miracle…

This doesn’t seem to have been mentioned anywhere else before.

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Lambeth: Sunday newspaper comment

Simon Jenkins in the Sunday Times wrote A broad church with narrow attitudes. Here’s an extract:

…The visible loathing of some Anglicans for gays and women – expressed in terms that would have them prosecuted in any other walk of life – is indefensible. The British make much noise opposing the intolerant practices of Muslims and other imported religions. They seem deaf to the intolerance of members of their home-grown church. That the conservatives have constant recourse to biblical texts has no more to do with the case than if Islamic scholars appealed to the Koran against the Crown Prosecution Service. The law of the land is the law of the land.

No less astonishing is that the parties are largely warring because the Church of England remains stuck in an imperial time warp. A global membership of some 80m – overwhelmingly in the new Commonwealth – is under the leadership of an archbishop in England, custodian of just a million souls, and a governing body meeting in Lambeth.

The origins of this dispute thus lie not so much in the biblical understanding of sexuality but rather in Anglicanism’s inability to handle global diversity in human behaviour. There is no way African cultures will regard sex in the same way as Asians or Europeans. Why does the church pretend otherwise?

This is a relic of the status of the Church of England as the established church in what was once a far-flung empire. It has struggled to mimic the diversity of the British Commonwealth, allowing archbishoprics to flourish and hierarchies to proliferate. But the trappings of doctrinal centralism remain in place.

The obvious solution to the row over gay and women bishops would be to live and let live. Let a thousand sexualities bloom under the capacious canopy of mother church. Do not impose on the cultures of Africa the sexual norms and gender equalities that have evolved under the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant aegis. There is no need for this dispute…

Read it all.

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Lambeth: BBC radio report

The BBC Radio 4 Sunday programme had a major report on the Lambeth Conference. It includes recorded interviews with Vincent Strudwick, Graham Kings, Norman Doe, Lucy Winkett and Judith Maltby, by Trevor Barnes, and live interviews with Paul Handley and Stephen Bates, by Roger Bolton.

Go to this page, open the link there, and go forward 23 mins 45 secs (URL will not persist after one week).

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Lambeth: Saturday and the Welcome Pack

I visited the University of Kent at Canterbury on Saturday.

My main purpose was to give a Media training session to some Americans and Canadians, but before I did that, I wanted to collect my Press credentials and to check in at the Media Centre. I was interested to see if the accommodation there was as dire as Ruth Gledhill had originally reported. I had forgotten how ugly some of the buildings are.

The letter telling me where to go to collect my credentials had said:

Your accreditation pass and welcome pack will be available from the Accreditation Desk in the GRIMOND Building, University of Kent at Canterbury, from the morning of Wednesday, July 16.

While waiting in what turned out to be the wrong queue at the GRIMOND building, I met an English bishop of my acquaintance who, when I explained to him what I had come to do, said he thought the CofE bishops might find a similar session useful. Before you ask, he wasn’t NT Wright.

When I went to the right desk, I got my accreditation pass and blue lanyard quickly enough, and also a very welcome free pass for use in either of two car parks on campus. But when I asked if there was anything else I should receive, I got an emphatic No.

Expecting to receive perhaps at least a paper map of the campus (how minimalist can a Welcome Pack be?), I was a bit surprised but tried not to show it. I asked again, just to make sure. Still No.

So then I asked if other material was to be obtained from the Media Centre. Yes, she said, it was. So off I went to find the Media Centre. Luckily I had written down its location before leaving home.

When you get there, it is indeed up a lot of stairs and down a lot of corridors, and the space allocated for journalists seems extraordinarily small for the huge number of them that have been given accreditation. I was told (I did not see it for myself) that the room to be used for press briefings only seats a few dozen.

But on the other hand, it is much, much closer to the main conference venues than the place used for these purposes in 1998. It was at the other end of the campus, but was a lecture theatre with ample room for everyone to sit. And it had been equipped with CCTV to allow journalists to watch the plenary proceedings from afar. Space for journalists in the tent ten years ago was extremely limited.

Anyway, when I got to the Press Office I found Peter Crumpler, and told him what had happened at the Registration Desk. He rolled his eyes and said: “Didn’t they give you a personal ID and login for the WiFi?” “No”, I said, “they didn’t.” Of course, it hadn’t occurred to me to ask specifically for that, in the absence of absolutely any other paperwork.

I really didn’t want to go all the way back to the other building at that point, so I borrowed a login ID from another journalist and tried to get my laptop connected to the University network. I did succeed eventually, but it was not straightforward. I will start again on that trail on Monday morning.

Before I left the Media Centre, I did get from Peter’s friendly staff a copy of the paper Official Programme & Event Guide, which lists all the separate events in detail and contains lots of useful information. Today, I’m at home perusing the Programme Guide to plan my future visits.

But I still have no idea what else might have been in the Welcome Pack.

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Lambeth: more Saturday news

I said earlier that news was scarce yesterday. The Bishop of Durham leapt to the rescue, and gave interviews to all the journalists he could find, who happily quoted him at some length, but apparently didn’t ask any questions.

The longest quotes were in the Telegraph where Jonathan Wynne-Jones wrote Anglican communion a ‘train wreck’, says bishop.

“All sorts of forces have built up over the years in the communion through misunderstanding and people doing things differently without really consulting,” he said.

“Sooner or later this was all going to meet and hit the buffers. It’s been like a slow-moving train wreck.”

The bishop, who is highly respected and a close friend of the Archbishop of Canterbury, told The Sunday Telegraph that the presence of American bishops involved in the consecration of Gene Robinson, the first openly homosexual Anglican bishop, was proving divisive.

“A lot of people here have a lot of questions about why the American bishops are here,” he said. “Those questions are in the room.”

…Bishop Wright said that there was mistrust between the different factions over who was going to make the next significant move. “It’s like a very odd game of cards,” he said. “We’re all being very civil and talking politely, but people are wondering who is going to play which card next and hence what responses may be possible.”

Bishop Wright added that the summit was lacking direction and questioned how effective it would be.

“There’s a sense that we’re all not quite sure where this is going. That’s the mood of the conference. It is gloriously confusing at the moment and slightly worrying in that one has no idea what’s actually going on.”

But he also spoke to either Victoria Combe or Ruth Gledhill who wrote Gay bishop’s ‘row ‘like Iraq war’ for the Sunday Times.

One of the Church of England’s most senior bishops has compared the consecration of a gay bishop in America to the invasion of Iraq.

Tom Wright, the bishop of Durham and the fourth most senior in the English hierarchy, said both events showed Americans were prepared to act “how they please” with disregard for the rest of the world…

…Wright, who represents moderate conservative clerics who, rather than schism, want provision within the church for conservatives opposed to gay clergy and women bishops, said: “George Bush said he was going to invade Iraq. Everyone told him not to because there would be consequences, but he did it anyway.

“The Americans floated the balloon in 2003 when they consecrated Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire. They knew exactly what they were doing then and they know exactly what they are doing now. They knew it would be unacceptable to the majority of the Communion. They are doing exactly as they please.”

He continued: “Either the rest of the world caves in or someone has to stand up to them.”

And he spoke to Riazat Butt whose article for the Guardian was mainly about Church of England unrest threatens to harm links with Vatican.

As a consequence of all this Jim Naughton had a dream nightmare of an interview with Bishop Wright, as reported at Live: a lesson in moral reasoning on the Episcopal Café.

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The Lambeth Reader

This document, which was mentioned in various earlier reports on the conference, is now available as a PDF file on the official site.

You can also obtain the official bible studies booklet, Signs on the Way, from this page in two formats.

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Alongside Lambeth

Press Release

If you are in Lambeth for a few days please consider taking part in this program for visitors, guests and volunteers. Gathering ‘alongside’ the Bishops and Spouses meetings, we will be sharing our experiences of faith through Bible studies and discussions. Everyone is welcome regardless of faith background. Alongside Lambeth is sponsored by Inclusive Church and Thinking Anglicans.

Bible Study
Meet at the café in the Marketplace at 11 am any morning except July 24 and July 27. After a brief devotional, small groups will meet for Bible Study and discussion. We’ll be paralleling the Bishop’s process by using the ‘Signs on the Way’ Bible study booklet. This is a time to set aside roles and agendas as we discover the person of Jesus together through the study of John’s Gospel.

Buzz Groups
This is a unique opportunity to meet with other Anglicans. If you want to meet with people who have similar interest to you, or if there’s something you particularly want to share, you can offer a Buzz Group. You can sign up at the Inclusive Church booth in advance or give your information to the Buzz Group coordinator before the morning’s Bible Study. Groups will normally take place at 12 noon, starting on Tuesday July 22nd. After gathering at the Marketplace Café, each group will find its own space to meet in one of the public areas of the campus.

Growing in Mission
Each afternoon at 4 pm, except July 24, there will be a talk and discussion in St Stephens Church, (down the hill from the campus) followed by Evening Prayer. A variety of speakers and panels will offer reflection on the same subjects that the Bishops are considering (not necessarily in the same order). Topics include
* Care-full listening
* Anglican Identity
* Youth and Mission
* Sexuality and mission
* Environmental stewardship
See below for confirmed speakers. Information will be available at the Inclusive Church stall as speakers are added.

Evening Prayer
Each day except July 27, Evening Prayer will be led by the clergy team of St Stephens, at St Stephens. They are also available to pray and meet with people individually as needed. For Chaplaincy services please contact the Rev. Caro Hall 0750 368 1408 or enquire at the Inclusive Church Booth.

Monday July 21st Care-full Listening
Sue Burns (New Zealand): Sissi Loftin and Janet Brocklehurst (US/UK)

Sue Burns is a priest from Aotearoa/New Zealand where she works in ministry formation and theological education. In response to the request for listening in the Anglican Communion, Sue developed a process of respectful conversations which she facilitated in dioceses in Aotearoa / New Zealand and Pasifika. Together with Janet Trisk of Grahamstown SA Sue contributed a chapter on sexuality and Identity for the book prepared for Lambeth, The Anglican Communion and Homosexuality.
Sissi Loftin and Janet Brocklehurst are training as facilitators with The Compassionate
Listening Project and have been with them a couple of times to Israel-Palestine, listening to all sides of the conflict. They have also offered Compassionate Listening in their home parish and hope to find a way to use their skills in building bridges within the Anglican Communion.

Tuesday July 22nd Communion for Creation: Co-operation for the sake of God’s Earth
Eric Beresford (Canada)

Eric Beresford was the staff person responsible for planning and putting together the Anglican Communion Environmental Network. During his time with the Anglican Communion Office he worked with the ACC to prepare and pass a motion on the Patenting of Biological and Genetic materials and the implications of this for food security. Eric has taught Environmental Ethics both at McGill University and at Atlantic School of Theology where he is the President. He will be discussing the possible impact the Anglican Communion might have on current efforts to reduce climate change.

Wednesday July 23rd Youth Inc – Why’s it so scary?
Rev Canon Dianna Gwilliam (UK)

Dianna Gwilliam worked for many years as a youth minister during her training for ordination and since then. She is currently Vicar of a parish in south-east London and Chaplain to an Educational Foundation which includes 6 schools. She is particularly interested in theological education for children and young people and says that serving a parish in which there are eight schools is ‘brilliant!’

Coming soon…
Giles Goddard (UK)
Andrew Wingate (UK)
Rowan Smith (S Africa)
Jenny TePaa (New Zealand)
A panel on Sexuality and Mission

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Lambeth: Saturday news

News is scarce.

Riazat Butt reports on the GAFCON releases, in Prelates ‘are justifying sin’

And also reports on the new book by Jane Williams, World of a Wah: wife of Rowan Williams speaks out.

Ruth Gledhill also reports on the GAFCON material in The Times, in Rowan Williams takes up the cross of diplomacy.

George Conger at Religious Intelligence says No signs of crisis as Lambeth Conference begins.

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opinions as Lambeth starts

Christopher Howse avoids Lambeth entirely and writes about gravestones. See Finding a fitting stone reminder in the Telegraph.

In the Guardian Chris Chivers writes that the Anglican communion needs to take a more global perspective on its problems, see Face to Faith.

In The Times Cathy Ross writes that the average Anglican is a black, female teenager.

Giles Fraser writing in the Church Times asks Can there be compromise on women bishops?

And at Comment is free Judith Maltby notices that Suddenly, it’s time for tolerance.

Graham Kings at Fulcrum and the Church of England Newspaper asks how can bishops disagree Christianly?

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Rebuilding Communion

In last week’s Church Times Bishop Kenneth Stevenson reviewed the book to which I contributed a chapter, Rebuilding Communion: Who pays the price? From the Lambeth Conference 1988 to the Lambeth Conference 2008 and beyond Peter Francis, editor.

The review was published under the headline Telling it like it is.

Read more about the book here.

Bishop Stevenson writes:

IT MUST be hard to be gay and Anglican at the moment. After a largely hidden history, Anglican gays now find themselves the subject of open discussion, caused partly by a greater general readiness to talk about issues of sexuality, and partly by activists in the gay community speaking up for their rights. Sadly, the majority of them feel excluded from this discussion, and some of them even echo what some Jews used to say in Nazi Germany — “Don’t champion us, because it will only make things more difficult for us.”

A turning-point in England was the General Synod in February last year, when gay members fearlessly spoke up for themselves in a chamber that had not hitherto heard from them in that way.

This timely little book opens with an essay by Simon Sarmiento chronicling events, resolutions, and decisions about homosexuality in the Anglican Communion over the past decade. His personal views are clear, but the facts he describes are indisputable. There is a hardening of the line in many places, with some obvious exceptions.

There follow six essays from different continents, telling personal stories about what it is like to be gay and Anglican — the African perspective is particularly significant. And a third section is made up of six further short contributions, including one from Martyn Percy on Anglican history and attitudes, and one from Michael Ingham, arguing in favour of something that is still too far for many sympathisers: the same-sex blessing.

This book needs to be read far beyond the confines of the gay community. In some ways, it provides a worldwide Anglican counterpoint to those speeches at last year’s Synod. Those who are deaf, or over-ready to condemn, need at least to recognise the historic pain that this increasingly vocal minority brings to the discussion table. Whatever our views, we should all be ready to condemn homophobia, as Cardinal Hume used to remind us.

I voted for Lambeth 1.10 on that desultory Wednesday afternoon in 1998, and I have regretted it ever since. As these essays show, it has become far too blunt an instrument; moreover, the “listening process” for which it calls should have been well under way by the time Archbishop Rowan Williams arrived at Canterbury.

Here’s hoping that we can be helped to locate exactly where our disagreements lie, and to find an authentically Anglican way through them.

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more GAFCON statements

Two main documents have been issued:

GAFCON responds to the Archbishop of Canterbury

The Global Anglican Future Conference gathered leaders from around the Anglican Communion for pilgrimage, prayer and serious theological reflection. We are grateful to the Archbishop of Canterbury for engaging with the Jerusalem Statement and Declaration. We wish to respond to some of his concerns…

Response of GAFCON to the St Andrew’s Draft Text of an Anglican Communion Covenant

…Sadly this new draft of An Anglican Covenant is both seriously limited and severely flawed. Whether or not the tool of covenant is the right way to approach the crisis within the Communion, this document is defective and its defects cannot be corrected by piecemeal amendment because they are fundamental. The St. Andrews Draft is theologically incoherent and its proposals unworkable. It has no prospect of success since it fails to address the problems which have created the crisis and the new realities which have ensued…

A third document is Changes between the Nassau and St Andrew’s Drafts of an Anglican Covenant

BRIEFING PAPER from the Theological Resource Group of GAFCON

Changes between the Nassau and St Andrews Drafts of An Anglican Covenant

Executive Summary

The St Andrews Draft is not a conservative revision of the Nassau Draft. Its changes are so significant theologically and practically that they completely recast both the grounds of common life together and the process by which the assault upon that common life by TEC and ACoC is to be addressed. The Nassau Draft is a much better document than its successor. The new document is severely flawed and should be repudiated…

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Lambeth: first Friday evening

Some more news reports and blogging from Canterbury today.

Rachel Boulding in the Church Times Dr Jefferts Schori: ‘We can get beyond sexuality’

Riazat Butt on the Guardian News blog Americans are calling the shots – with gusto – at Lambeth conference

The American bishops’ blog is here.

Ruth Gledhill Lambeth Diary: Nigerian bishop flees and also Lambeth Diary: Anglicans in Recovery.

Marites Sison Anglican Journal Lambeth prays for those present and those absent

Martin Beckford at the Telegraph has Archbishop of Canterbury faces calls to stop American clergy defecting.

Fulcrum points us to BBC World Service, where

This weekend the talking starts in earnest at the Lambeth Conference, the global meeting of the Anglican church that takes place once every ten years.
This year’s event is being overshadowed by fears of a split in the church – between liberals who support the ordination of openly gay bishops and clergy, and more traditionalist leaders who say that homosexuality is fundamentally a sin.
Ed Butler examines the theological basis for the rift in the Anglican Communion.

Those interviewed include Graham Kings and Colin Coward.

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