Today at Lambeth Tuesday July 22
This is clearly Archbishop Rowan Williams conference. Do the math. He gave an opening welcome. He has led a three day retreat in which he gave five addresses. He presided at the opening Eucharist at which he chose the preacher. He gave a presidential address. He has chaired both plenaries that have happened this week.
There can be no complaints about lack of leadership. This is his conference.
There was a gathering on Tuesday afternoon of 150 – 200 orthodox bishops at which among others Bishop Michael Scott-Joynt of Winchester, Bishop Tom Wright of Durham, and Bishop Bob Duncan of Pittsburgh spoke. It should not be forgotten that on September 20 the House of Bishops of TEC will be voting on whether to depose him. It must feel odd for him and his wife Nara to be on campus for three weeks with those seeking to remove him.
The press are beginning to take matters into their own hands. Told that they could not have an interview in the press schedule with the Archbishop of Sudan, they went ahead and organised their own press conference in which everyone got to ask the questions they wanted to.
The Sudanese statement has taken the conference by surprise: first the TEC rushed a spokesperson into the press room after the Archbishop had spoken. After all TEC bishops were with the Sudanese bishops at Salisbury for the pre-Lambeth conference. Second, the Archbishop was asked directly by one man (not on the press corps) if a particular American bishop on campus had written the statement for them. He was given a flat no. The Archbishop does have an earned Ph.D by the way. Third the Archbishop of the Sudan was very direct: Gene Robinson should resign and his consecrators should confess their wrongdoing to the conference. That for him is the way to save the Anglican Communion.
The Windsor Continuation Group has produced its first set of observations and is due to bring another set on “Where should we be?” on Wednesday. On Monday they will present “How do we get from here to there?” The final Indaba on Saturday August 2nd will focus on this issue, and written summaries of the responses from the Indaba will be given to the WCG who will meet in late 2008. They will report to the Archbishop of Canterbury as planning takes place for the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Jamaica in 2009. Who are missing from this scenario? The Primates’ Meeting.
There have been two plenaries on evangelism. At the first Brian Maclaren, author of Generous Orthodoxy, a book which got Archbishop Rowan’s attention in a Canterbury Bookshop a few years ago he told us, spoke on evangelism in post-modern, post-colonial society. The presentation had some gems. He commended the Anglican Church on two counts: being a global community means that no one size fits all, and our liturgy makes space for spiritual seekers in a way that “mean spirited protestant preaching” does not.
However, he characterised the African Church as made up of Prosperity Preaching and a dualistic gospel of evacuation to heaven after death. Bishop Sebastian Bakare of Harare noted that the African church is far too diverse to be characterised in this way. It is to be doubted whether missiologists such as Lamin Sanneh and Andrew Walls, or historians such as Philip Jenkins and Terry Ranger, would agree with Brian Maclaren’s too broad brush approach.
There was more to applaud in the presentation on Tuesday night from Cardinal Ivan Dias, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, Rome who for ten years was Archbishop of Bombay. He began his presentation on Mission, Social Justice and Evangelisation by saying that “The theme of evangelisation must be considered in the wider context of spiritual combat. If this context is ignored in favour of a myopic world-vision, Christ’s salvation will be conveniently dismissed as irrelevant” He traced the themes of combat in scripture through Ephesians 6 and saw it present today in the “hideous anti-God monster or secularism, spiritual indifference, and relativism. He affirmed the uniqueness of Christ and the universality of his salvation quoting Acts 4:12 and Philippians 2 10-11.
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