Cleaning Up the Playing Field: Six Resolutions for Lambeth

Feb 13, 2019 by

by Ephraim Radner, Living Church:

Andrew Goddard’s recent article on the challenges facing the next Lambeth Conference and the Anglican Communion bears careful repeated readings, especially by Communion leaders and those planning the conference. His concerns and warnings — particularly that the conference’s current ordering is likely to lead to further conflict and fragmentation — are sobering and convincing.

His suggestion of a solution is also persuasive. Goddard asks Anglicans both to accept the reality of our divided doctrinal and pastoral witness — that is, the variously broken character of our Communion — and to reorder our collegial gatherings on this basis more honestly and pragmatically. Hence, he commends the broad direction of several proposals already made by others: that there be a kind of twofold conference. First, a general and non-deliberative gathering in conference that includes all bishops across current lines of impaired communion; and then a subsequent deliberative and smaller gathering among those whose communion with each other remains more fully embodied.

I strongly agree with Goddard’s arguments and suggestions. Getting from A to B, however, is not an easy thing to do. Goddard’s radical rethink of our Communion’s common ordering may well require some time to effect. And in the meantime, there will be a Lambeth Conference in 2020 of one kind or another. In order, at least, to lay the foundation for moving in the direction Goddard and others propose, I think it behooves Lambeth 2020 at least to adopt some simple resolutions, including the following six:

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