The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



The Rt. Rev. John C. Bauerschmidt: Second Letter from Lambeth

Letter from Lambeth, July 26th

Following our time of retreat and the opening of the Conference with worship in Canterbury Cathedral and an initial Plenary session, the daily schedule at the Lambeth Conference has taken a more or less regular shape. The day begins with a Eucharist celebrated in “The Big Top”, a very large tent set up on the grounds of the University of Kent that can accommodate all the Conference participants. Each liturgy is celebrated by a particular Province of the Communion, so we are exposed in a limited way to some of the liturgical diversity within the worldwide Church.

Meals are a mad dash to one of several dining rooms on the campus, and are followed immediately for the bishops by a gathering for Bible Study. We have continued with the Study groups that began during the retreat, composed of approximately eight bishops from the different Provinces. The Bible Study is followed by a gathering of several of these groups for “Indaba”, a Zulu word that describes a gathering for purposeful discussion. Each day we have a different topic (Anglican Identity, Evangelism, Social Justice, Ecumenism, the Environment, etc) and a discussion of the Bishop’s role in relation to it. Our discussion is reported back to the Reflection Group and will help to shape the document that I understand will emerge from the Conference. By the end of the Indaba Group the morning is over and the Conference breaks for lunch. The parallel Spouses’ Conference has a modified version of this same morning routine.

The afternoon provides the opportunity for some open hearings on issues of particular concern, and also self-select sessions on different issues that are of concern to the bishops and to the Anglican Communion as a whole. There is worship in the evening, and on a number of evenings there have been Plenary sessions in the evening, where important speakers have addressed particular topics (for instance, Brian McLaren spoke very convincingly on what evangelism looks like in modern, post-modern, and post-colonial contexts). Somewhere in the midst of all this participants find the time to move back and forth from their rooms to the different locations on a fairly spread out campus. A number of us are rooming at a healthy distance from “The Big Top”, and Bible Study and Indaba groups are rarely located in the same venue. I haven’t even mentioned scratching together the time to prepare for the sessions, or washing one’s clothes or brushing one’s teeth, or even answering e-mail. I’m glad to tell you bishops and spouses somehow find the time to do these things as well.

A significant departure from this schedule took place on Thursday, with the “Walk of Witness” in London. Bishops walked from Whitehall to Lambeth Palace to offer witness to the importance of the Millennium Development Goals. We were addressed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and sat down together under a grand marquee in Lambeth Palace Garden for lunch: the only meal that has gathered all of us together under one roof, one participant remarked, and rightly so. We then travelled by bus to Buckingham Palace for tea, hosted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. It was an exceptional day, not only in terms of the Conference, but in terms of anyone’s lifetime experience.

There continues to be considerable energy at the Lambeth Conference about the issues raised by the Windsor Report. The “Windsor Continuation Group” appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury in February 2008 to “address outstanding questions arising from the Windsor Report and the various formal responses from provinces and instruments of the Anglican Communion” (February, 2008 Press Release) has begun to report to the Conference, starting with a description of “where we are” at our opening session, and an additional report on “where we should like to be” at a public hearing this past week. I think these sessions have been challenging ones for all the bishops of the Episcopal Church, as they have kept before us the issues outlined by Windsor that threaten the Communion. The Group will offer the final part of their reflections this week, in order to continue to weigh the response of the Conference before issuing a report.

Let me remind you of the charge outlined by the Archbishop of Canterbury in his Advent 2007 Letter to this “Continuation Group”: to “work on the unanswered questions arising from the inconclusive evaluation of the primates to New Orleans and to take certain issues forward to Lambeth. This will feed in to the discussions at Lambeth about Anglican identity and the Covenant process; I suggest that it will also have to consider whether in the present circumstances it is possible for provinces or individual bishops at odds with the expressed mind of the Communion to participate fully in representative Communion agencies, including ecumenical bodies. Its responsibility will be to weigh current developments in the light of the clear recommendations of Windsor and of the subsequent statements from the ACC and the Primates' Meeting…”.

The Conference will also begin this week to take up the Covenant Process, which was itself one of the recommendations of the Windsor Report for finding a way to repair the fabric of the Anglican Communion. Here the Archbishop in his Presidential Address at the Conference has framed the discussion of the Covenant as a means of deeper engagement with each other in the Communion. “That’s why a Covenant should not be thought of as a means for excluding the difficult or rebellious but as an intensification – for those who so choose – of relations that already exist. And those who in conscience could not make those intensified commitments are not thereby shut off from all fellowship; it is just that they have chosen not to seek that kind of unity, for reasons that may be utterly serious and prayerful. Whatever the popular perception, the options before us are not irreparable schism or forced assimilation. We need to think through what all this involves in the conviction that all our existing bonds of friendship and fellowship are valuable and channels of grace, even if some want to give such bonds a more formal and demanding shape”.

It is clear to me that a careful re-reading of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Advent Letter is the best way to understand what is happening at this Lambeth Conference. This Conference is an intentional exercise, and the point is to deepen the Communion we have with God and with one another. The Archbishop means for us to engage these issues, not in isolation, but as a part of an extended consideration of our responsibility as pastors confronted with a diverse range of issues and placed in many different contexts. We are meant to do this as we come to know each other better. Anyone who believes that the Conference is about avoiding difficulty or doing nothing has got it exactly wrong. Again, the Advent Letter: “How then should the Lambeth Conference be viewed? It is not a canonical tribunal, but neither is it merely a general consultation. It is a meeting of the chief pastors and teachers of the Communion, seeking an authoritative common voice. It is also a meeting designed to strengthen and deepen the sense of what the episcopal vocation is.” I think we are being pointed to the truth that the ministry of the bishop is to gather God’s People, and to deepen the Communion we have with God and with each other. We have a responsibility as leaders to maintain connection and to deepen it as well. This will mean there are some difficult conversations ahead, conversations that are already taking place in hearings, bible study groups, and Indabas at the Conference.

- Bishop John 

Back to Bishop's Forum