I well remember Lambeth 1998, which took place a month or so after I was baptized in a college chapel in Cambridge, England. I had never heard of Lambeth–the palace, or the eponymous once-a-decade gathering of Anglican bishops. In 1998, the main issue the bishops were said to be discussing was debt relief: on the agenda was a plan to erase third-world debt within 8 years. For a brief moment, it appeared that bishops in European and North American churches were working for the common good with bishops from the developing world.

Sexuality was on the table, too. The conference passed the now-much invoked non-binding resolution known as Lambeth 1.10 which recognized “that there are among us persons who experience themselves as having a homosexual orientation,” rejected “homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture,” stated that the conference “cannot advise the legitimising or blessing of same sex unions nor ordaining those involved in same gender unions,” yet called on “all our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation and to condemn irrational fear of homosexuals.”
Also in 1998, Ruth Gledhill (who writes about religion for the London Times and who, for my money, has been providing the best coverage of all this), predicted: “the next debate threatening to disrupt the spiritual calm of the Church of England is expected to be women bishops.” That, of course, came to pass earlier this month in York, when the Church of England General Synod voted to allow women to be made bishops. (The first women were ordained to the priesthood in the Church of England in 1994, but until last week’s meeting, the English episcopacy was limited to men.)
A decade has passed — a decade full of tumult in the church. Lambeth 2008 is finally upon us. This year, no one’s talking debt relief, though relationships between churches in the developing world and churches in England, North America, Australia, and Europe are still very much at issue.
Lambeth 2008 feels almost operatic. And as in many great operas, much of the drama happened prior to the curtain’s going up. For those who don’t follow ecclesial politics, here’s a brief (very brief) rehearsal of the back story:
In 2003, the General Convention to the Episcopal Church ratified the election of Gene Robinson as bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire. Robinson became the first openly partnered, non-celibate gay bishop in the church. And then, not to put to fine a point on it, all hell broke lose. In the US and beyond, bishops, priests, and laity protested. Eventually, some Americans realigned themselves with bishops and dioceses elsewhere in the world, bishops who hold “traditional” or “conservative” views about human sexuality.
For months after the Rt. Rev. Robinson’s consecration, debate swarmed about whether the bishop from New Hampshire would be invited to Lambeth. (Really, I haven’t heard so much urgent speculation about an invite list since rush week at college.) Finally, Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, decided not to invite Bishop Robinson to sit at Lambeth. Robinson is in the UK this week nonetheless, visiting various churches and, he says, making himself available to whomever wants to talk to him.
Robinson is not the only bishop who will be absent from Lambeth. Martyn Minns wasn’t invited either. Minns was serving as rector of Truro Church in Virginia during 2003. He immediately protested Robinson’s consecration, and ultimately Minns himself was consecrated a bishop by Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola. Minns now serves as “missionary bishop” of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, “an Anglican missionary effort in the US sponsored by the Church of Nigeria.”
In addition to the two bishops who didn’t receive invitations to Lambeth, several hundred bishops, from Nigeria, England, and elsewhere are boycotting the conference, to protest the Archbishop’s failing, in their view, to sufficiently discipline the American church. Several hundred of these bishops had their own meeting last month in Jerusalem, a meeting in which they questioned the leadership of the Archbishop, and more or less called for a complete reorganization of global Anglicanism. And several Anglo-Catholic bishops in England, alienated and angered by the extension of the episcopacy to women, are rumored to be planning to skip Lambeth as well.
People are warning ominously that this may be the last Lambeth conference. I don’t mean to be blasé, here — the tensions are very real, the emotions are very high, the issues are serious. But people said the same thing in 1998: in August of that year, for example, British and Australian papers reported that an anonymous English bishop cautioned that “The Anglican Church is falling apart….I think it very likely that this Lambeth Conference will be the last; there just isn’t the glue to hold things together.”
That unnamed English cleric was wrong. Here we are finally at Lambeth 2008.
Many of the central characters are off-stage.
As for what happens when those bishops in attendance all turn up, stay tuned…