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Changes in the daily schedule may help bishops in their unique vocation
As with so much in the Anglican Communion these days, there is no shortage of aggrieved parties in the runup to Lambeth. The provinces of Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda have chosen to absent themselves. Bishop Gene Robinson has not been invited, although he will be a regular presence in Canterbury. Several other bishops have not been invited, including those consecrated by African primates to serve breakaway congregations in the United States.
Instead of meeting in plenary session, bishops will gather in "indaba" groups (this Zulu word, the conference website explains, "refers to a small group that gathers, without time pressures and constraints, to 'chew over' important issues"). I welcome that change, to the extent that it gives greater voice to bishops who do not speak Robert's Rules of Order as a second language or who are shy. The same change leaves me worried for my fellow journalists, who tend not to be admitted to a room when bishops gather in anything more intimate than a plenary session.
Of course, the Lambeth Conference exists first and foremost for bishops, not for the journalists who write about bishops. Still, because conference organizers are welcoming reporters on site, I do hope they will show greater trust than they did 10 years ago. I hope this year's conference will allow journalists to do what they do best: function as observers who capture the mood of an event by describing what they see and hear firsthand.
Expecting journalists to make do with a daily press briefing, or trying to restrict their interviews only to those arranged through the media office, is worthy of a government bureaucracy but not of a church. Trying to control reporters' access to bishops, and thus to the heart of the event, increases the odds that reporters will cover pseudo-events, such as Nigerian Bishop Emmanuel Chukwuma's loud prayer in 1998 over the Rev. Richard Kirker, then-director of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement. To call this encounter an "attempted exorcism" is to overstate both its duration and its intensity.
I must wonder, both as a journalist and a Westerner, whether this Lambeth Conference will manage to adjourn without approving any resolutions or issuing so much as one mind-of-the-house statement. I believe it would be naive to think that no liberal bishop will try to move the conference leftward on Scripture or on sexuality. Some conservative bishops, in contrast, have sent confusing signals about what they hope to see. When bishops talk about being isolated voices of biblical orthodoxy, or of attending Lambeth as if it is an agonizing journey along the Via Dolorosa, it's hard to guess what they want. Would a reaffirmation of the 1998 conference's stand against blessing same-sex couples suffice? Would they prefer that the conference live down to dire predictions of the Anglican Communion devolving into decades-long chaos and disunity?
Despite my jaded tone about the Lambeth Conference, I am thankful for its existence. It provides an opportunity for Anglicans around the world to remember that God has drawn us, in the Archbishop of Canterbury's memorable words at Lambeth 1998, into solidarities not of our own choosing. It gives our bishops occasion to take counsel together and to discern what being Anglican means amid the competing truth claims of 21st-century life. It represents 20 days in which Anglican bishops, who are called by God to a unique form of leadership, make themselves available to the greater leadership of the Holy Spirit.
May the Holy Spirit's presence be evident this summer at the Lambeth Conference, and may we be astonished by what transpires.
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