The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



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

Letter from Lambeth, August 3rd

The Lambeth Conference concluded on Sunday, with a final plenary session and a third presidential address by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and worship in Canterbury Cathedral. This week continued in the same pattern as before, of worship, Bible study and Indaba group meetings, punctuated with hearings on the “Reflections Document” which was taking shape throughout the week. The Indaba groups, made up of the members of several of the small Bible study groups, held conversations each day, the fruits of which were reported back to the Committee charged with the final Document. As the Conference continued, drafts of this Document were distributed; at the hearings, individual delegates to the Conference could offer reactions to the drafts of the Document, which continued to be modified as discussions of additional subjects were held in the Indaba groups, and as the Committee shaped and refined the work on the basis of the feedback offered in the hearings. The final Reflections Document was also distributed on Sunday at the plenary gathering, giving each delegate a record of the conversations that were held at the Conference.

 

As I reflect on the Lambeth Conference, a number of impressions remain. In his recent Shadow of the Silk Road, travel writer and novelist Colin Thuberon writes about the ancient trade route between China and the Mediterranean world, one of the great and continuing crossroads between different peoples and cultures. As Thuberon himself travels the route he reflects on the way in which the old Silk Road through Central Asia became the means of cultural cross-fertilization, bringing influences from distant places into different contexts. Cultural purity is an illusion, Thuberon writes, and no people or society is ever really homogeneous or constant. “To follow a road is to follow diversity: a flow of interlocked voices, arguing, in a cloud of dust” (Shadow of the Silk Road).

I’m not sure how much dust there was, but Lambeth was for me that road of which Thuberon writes. It was held in England of course, but the lasting impression was far less English than cross-cultural and diverse as bishops and other participants from all over the world were brought together for common discussion and engagement in a common ministry as Christians. My own Bible study group contained three bishops from Pakistan, a place where Christians are a tiny minority in a majority Islamic culture under radical influences; a bishop from west Australia on the exact other side of the world from Tennessee; two bishops from the Church of England, where Christian roots go deep and where the Church has a high cultural profile but where society has become very secularized; and a bishop from the Sudan, where Christians have been fighting for their lives against Muslims from the north. In spite of our arguments, our diverse cultures are connected and interlocked, not least of all by the Gospel we share; if there is need for discussion, there is also the possibility for real connection and understanding in Christ, and the realization that what affects one affects all the others.

 

Today the Silk Road runs not through Central Asia but through almost every community in the world. We in middle Tennessee are no exception, and the substantial amount of diverse cross-cultural work that is being done in the Diocese of Tennessee reminds us of this truth. There is a sense of global vision and global community in our world today, and a realization that we are connected to a much larger world in which what affects one affects all. We know we cannot live in isolation. This new situation demands of Christians a like global vision and a recognition of the corresponding ancient truth of the Catholic or universal nature of Christian community. Remember, the Lambeth Conference is one of the “Instruments of Communion” that bind our global community of Christians together in a relationship of “mutual responsibility and interdependence in the Body of Christ” (from the papers of the 1963 Anglican Congress, quoted in the 2004 “Windsor Report”). It should be no surprise to find my own commitment to this global vision and to this global community of faith strengthened by my Lambeth experience.

Another impression has to do with the Indaba process itself. Remember, “indaba” is a Zulu word that describes a gathering for purposeful discussion. As we were going through the process, with a generous use of small group discussion, magic markers, and newsprint, I began to wonder if our Indaba groups differed much from modern Western “group process” exercises. I asked my Sudanese colleague about this, and he told me that they had a very similar concept in his culture. In Sudan, everyone in the village gets to voice their concerns and to say what they want to say. Then (and here is the crucial point) the village elders, having heard everyone and taken all of it into account, articulate for the community what is to be done.

 

I believe that Lambeth’s Indaba process functioned in this classic way. Lambeth produced a Reflection document that recorded for the bishops the points of view expressed; it took no resolutions and no votes were held. All were encouraged to voice their concerns, but there was no Western parliamentary process or divisive votes. Yet at the end the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his final presidential address, articulated what was clearly the common mind of the Lambeth Conference. In his 2007 “Advent Letter” the Archbishop reminded us of the true nature of the Lambeth Conference, as “a meeting of the chief pastors and teachers of the Communion, seeking an authoritative common voice”. The Archbishop was that voice on Sunday evening, outlining what was to be done and the way forward for us as a Communion.

I invite you to read his third presidential address for yourself. Having heard it and then read it through for myself, it’s clear to me that Lambeth did come to a common mind that commands very substantial support among the bishops of the Communion. As outlined by the Archbishop of Canterbury in his address, “We have quite a strong degree of support for a Pastoral Forum to support minorities, a strong consensus on the need to examine how the Instruments of Communion will best work, and a recognition - though still with many questions - that a Covenant is needed.” The last part of that statement indicates to me that there is broad commitment to the idea of a Covenant among the bishops, and that the trajectory for us as a Communion is well set.

The repetition of pleas for the continuation of the three Windsor moratoria (abstaining from same-sex blessings, from the consecration as bishop of a person living in a partnered same-sex relationship, and from the interference of bishops from one province of the Church in the life of another) are described by Dr Williams as the expression of the desire for the various parts of the Church to be able to recognize a common life in each other. This desire is frustrated when some members of the Communion engage in the practices and seem to imply that they are sanctioned by the Church as a whole. Again, the Archbishop, “Such pleas have found wide support across the range of views represented in the indaba groups. The Church in its wider life can’t be committed definitively by the judgment of some; but when a new thing is enshrined, in whatever way, in public order and ministry, it will look like a definitive commitment. The theological ground for a plea for moratoria is the need to avoid this confusion so that discernment continues together”. The Windsor Report still points a way forward for us as a global Communion.

The Archbishop indicated that he would be calling for a meeting of the Primates early next year (including, of course, those who did not come to this Lambeth), and also his intention within the next two months of seeking the specifics on the task and composition of the Pastoral Forum to help us deal with our fragmentation as a Communion in North America. The Joint Standing Committee of the Primates Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council will meet in November of this year, and the Archbishop is committed to feeding into it the various strands concerning the Windsor process, the proposed Covenant, and the Reflections Document from Lambeth.

Most importantly, the Archbishop of Canterbury challenged the bishops assembled, and challenged all of us, to see the Conference as an expression of Catholic Christianity. “This is the Catholic Church; this is the Catholic faith - a global vision for a global wound, a global claim on our service.” Our existence as a Communion has all sorts of practical implications for the world; the Archbishop held up events in Zimbabwe as a case in point, where the witness of Zimbabwean Anglicans was strengthened by their sense that they were part of a global family. Dr Williams put before us a vision of a Church that refuses to accept that “justice, human rights and public welfare could be defined differently in Zimbabwe from how they were understood everywhere else in the world”; a vision of “a church… which understands its ministry and service and sacraments as united and interdependent throughout the world”. Then continuing, “That we wanted to move in such a direction would in itself be a weighty message. But it might even be a prophetic one. The vision of a global Church of interdependent communities is not the vision of an ecclesiastical world empire - or even a colonial relic… The global horizon of the Church matters because churches without this are always in danger of slowly surrendering to the culture around them and losing sight of their calling to challenge that culture.”

 

I believe that this critical distance from our culture is crucial for us. My faith was encouraged and my hopes for the Church and for our wounded world were confirmed by my participation in the Lambeth Conference. We need to remain together, and to find ways to strengthen and deepen the fellowship we have with each other as members of the Anglican Communion. The way forward lies in a deeper engagement with each other through the proposed Covenant. I appreciate your prayers for me during this Lambeth Conference.

- Bishop John

                                                                       

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