A Conference of Anglican Leaders Confronts Deeply Divisive Issues

650 bishops attended a service in Canterbury Cathedral before the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference began.

But liberal Anglicans and Episcopalians object to what they say is not orthodoxy but a selective and highly literalist (if not literal) reading of the Bible. "The conservatives are providing their interpretation of Scripture and saying that it is not a matter of interpretation," says Frank Kirkpatrick, author of The Episcopal Church in Crisis and a professor of religion at Trinity College in Connecticut.

Equally troubling even to some conservative or evangelical Anglicans was GAFCON's proposal of a Primates' Council with the authority to recognize confessing Anglican jurisdictions, including, most controversially, new ones created in already existing jurisdictions "where churches and leaders are denying the orthodox faith or preventing its spread." That would include, presumably, all dioceses of the U.S. Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.

The Rt. Rev. N. T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham (United Kingdom) and a self-described evangelical and orthodox Anglican, has praised the "energy and vision" that GAFCON has brought to the wider Anglican Communion but objects to a Primates' Council that in his view could promote structural divisions within that fellowship.

Defenders of the GAFCON proposal counter that the Primates' Council would only create appropriately representative leadership for the majority of Communion members, who are underrepresented by the 650 bishops attending this Lambeth Conference. And it is hard to refute their claim that the 300 bishops at GAFCON represent close to 40 million members of the Communion, while the 650 at Lambeth shepherd only about 15 million (excluding the 24 million claimed by the Church of England but who are mostly nonpracticing).

Such delicate demographic realities may largely account for the format of the current Lambeth Conference, a structure emphasizing small-group discussions aimed at "transformed relationships" among Communion members rather than large sessions hammering out potentially divisive resolutions.

Defending the format against critics who say that it is an attempt to avoid tough decisions and replace substance with process, Williams in his opening speech noted that few resolutions passed by Lambeth Conferences since the first in 1867 have been acted upon. Efforts to give the Conference and the Communion more institutional authority over its member provinces have generally fallen by the wayside, Williams pointed out.

Yet Williams, often faulted for his overly analytical, somewhat obscurantist style, made it abundantly clear that he believed the GAFCON proposal to create new jurisdictions in direct geographic competition with existing ones would, if acted upon, produce a meaningless federation: "A federation of such variety that different parts of it could be in direct local competition is not really a federation at all," Williams said, "and would encourage some of the least appealing kinds of religious division." Furthermore, he warned, "a centralized and homogenized Communion could be at the mercy of powerfully motivated groups from left or right who wanted to redefine the basic terms of belonging, so that Anglicanism becomes a confessional church in a way it never has been before."

Defenders of what might be called the Anglican Middle Way, including Williams, say that the Communion has long contained conflicting strains, whether between Reformed Protestantism and Anglo-Catholicism or between more literalist readings of Scripture and more allegorical, figurative, or historical ones. Yet conservatives say that such internal pluralism was contained within certain doctrinal and theological limits that liberals have sought to tear down in recent years. And it is not only in relation to homosexuality, openly same-sex clergy, and the ordination of female priests, or even the Church of England's recent endorsement of female bishops. It is, the conservatives say, a casual disregard for all scriptural teaching, including the belief that the acceptance of Jesus is the only road to salvation.