Anglican Mainstream

Today is the London Day fpr the Lambeth Conference.  The bishops and their wives are leaving the campus at 7 a.m. after a week on site to march along Whitehall in support of the Millennium Development Goals, to have lunch at Lambeth Palace and tea at Buckingham Palace.

What happens at tea with the Queen? If 1988 and 1998 are anything to go by, guests form a long line to queue down Constitution Hill to get in. They walk through the red corridors of the Palace out into the spacious garden outside.  Tea is served in tents that line the lawns and then mill around talking.  They are then “encouraged” to gather into large groups while Palace staff select a favoured few to be presented to Her Majesty.  Her Majesty with other members of the Royal Family join the gathering after about 45 minutes and meet selected guests. In 1988 Princess Margaret, the Queen’s younger sister, asked one bishop: “and are you a Muslim bishop?”  Strange but true.  After half and hour or so the Queen goes to a smaller tent to have tea with more selected guests. All the while a military band is playing afternoon music. The Queen then returns to the Palace, the guests continue to mill around and gradually return to their coaches for the long drive back to Canterbury , and London back to Canterbury in the evening rush hour takes anything up to 3 to 4 hours. They will be sleeping on the coaches on the way back.

The March of Witness will be attended by the Anglican Mainstream team, largely on the grounds that there has been very little opportunity to meet with bishops at all. No one knows where any of the bishops are living, not even the bishops.  There is no access to any of the meetings, except the occasional plenary.   So we will not be at tea at the Palace, unlike 1988 when the press were invited.  How times have changed.

The press were so frustrated by this that on Day 2 that they organised their own bootleg press conference with the fine Archbishop of Sudan, Dr Deng. He will be a major force among African Anglicans in the next decade.  Tall, imposing, articulate, with an earned doctorate he answered all the questions from the press with clarity, brevity and firmness.
 

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