Diocese news
Lambeth 2008
On July 8, my wife and I fly to Scotland. We will
be there for most of a week as part of a hospitality program for the bishops coming to Lambeth from outside of Great Britain. On July 15 we will travel with the Scottish bishops to Canterbury for the Lambeth Conference. The Lambeth Conference is for all bishops in the Anglican Communion and is held every ten years. The first conference was in 1867 and was held at Lambeth Palace, the home of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Interestingly, one of the causes for the initial conference was a dispute about the orthodoxy of a bishop. John Colenso, Bishop of Natal, had been charged with heresy for having a liberal interpretation of the creation stories in the Old Testament. In response Archbishop Edward White Benson articulated the nature of the Conference in his writings: “The Conference was in no sense a Synod and not adapted, or competent, or within its powers, if it should attempt to make binding decisions on the doctrines or discipline….” The Conference was to gather the wider church who share a common heritage and liturgy to strengthen “the bonds of affection” for the sake of mission. As we near this decade's Conference, the media is filled with talk of the Communion breaking apart and, as a result, there is a sense of Lambeth being a showdown between the liberal West and the conservative South. I am sure this sells newspapers, but it is not my sense of what will happen at all. First, there will be no votes on any subject. The Conference is not a legislative body. Second, most of the work is to be done in small groups of eight bishops. We spend much of every morning in Bible study and then address such topics as evangelism and mission, the ecumenical movement, the Millennium Development Goals, HIV Aids, engagement with other faiths, and Anglican Identity. One session is on human sexuality. My guess is that little exciting news will come from the Conference itself. We are sequestered at the University of Kent. However, there is a Marketplace outside the University, and I believe that will be the source of the media reports. My plea to you is to rely on sound sources of news. Read the Episcopal News Service (www.episcopalchurch. org); I will also be posting my reflections on our website (www.diocesewnc. org).
Just before writing this article, I read Bill Bishop's book The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart. He documents that since 1965, Americans' sense of identity as well as their ability to tolerate being with people with whom they disagree has gotten smaller and smaller. We are sorting ourselves
into isolated groups of like minded people. We are losing our common greens where the whole community gathers. Our edges are growing sharper and our statesmen or stateswomen fewer. The broad middle is becoming a narrow strip. As a result, “we
have created, and are creating, new institutions distinguished by their isolation and single-mindedness” but what we have lost “will be any sense of the whole.” I am going to the 2008 Lambeth Conference to rediscover and to proclaim the importance of the comprehensiveness of the Good News of Jesus Christ as it is reflected in the Anglican Communion. I am going to gather with my brothers and sisters around the globe to witness to the wideness of God's mercy that is wider than the sea. I am going because I believe with all my heart that the waters of baptism are deeper
than any of our positions on any topic. Because we are an incarnational people, it is essential that we gather face to face
and speak from our hearts. I am not looking for some miraculous compromise that will make us all happy, but I am looking for an end to any suspicion of one another and to any acrimony that may exist. I am looking for an increase in the awareness of how all of us are trying to live faithfully as disciples of Jesus Christ as best as we can. In The Big Sort, Bill Bishop writes about the work of Max Gluckman with the Nuer tribe in the Upper Nile. Gluckman found that the tribe was organized such that “people who are friends on one basis are enemies on another.” This prevents them from
demonizing one another and maintains the bonds of mutual affection. The Nuer have a saying: “They are our enemies; we marry them.” Then they will have to get along. We need to stop sorting and start collecting. We need to stop moving away from
one another and move toward one another. We need to see the divisions in the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church as a litmus test for our need to love the Lord Jesus Christ more. The issue is not “those people”; the issue is our own need to go deeper into the waters of baptism which is the source of communion.
I am going to Lambeth because this is not my Church or our Church or their Church; this is God's Church. We do not choose; Christ does. Therefore, it's not about who is in and who is out; it's about our ability to see the face of Christ in one another and our dedication to do all we can to go deeper in our faith and love and hope until our vision changes. I am going to catch the vision so that our Church can proclaim the Good News that Christ has reconciled all our differences in His love. I ask for your prayers for all bishops and for our Church.
+ G. PORTER TAYLOR
Bishop, Diocese of Western N.C.
-Courtesey of the Highland Episcopalian