The Latest on the Lambeth Conference Crisis

The Lambeth Conferences are the largest gatherings of anglican bishops, and are held only once every 10 years. The last conference held in 1998 hotly debated the issue of homosexuality in scripture. The fourteenth conference is schedule to take place this summer (July 16 - August 4).

But numerous conservative anglican bishops plan to boycott it.

CWNews reports:

The Anglican bishops of Uganda have announced that they will not take part in the Lambeth Conference, the worldwide meeting of the Anglican hierarchy that will take place at Canterbury in July.

Archbishop Henry Orombi said that the Ugandan bishops were joining their colleagues from Nigeria and Rwanda in a boycostt of this year's Lambeth Conference because of profound and unresolved disagreements with other Anglican leaders over the ordination of an openly homosexual American bishop. The installation of Bishop Gene Robinson in New Hampshire was an act of "flagrant disregard" for existing norms within the Anglican communion, he charged.

While this not may seem like a big deal to someone living in the West, the fact remains that Nigeria constitutions over 10% of the worldwide members in the Anglican communion (and growing). You can read the full text of the letter the Nigerian archbishop submitted to Lambeth here (scroll down). Note Paragraph 6:

"The Church of Uganda, by this decision, wishes to reaffirm our commitment to the resolutions of the 2006 Provincial Assembly and Resolution 1.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, which, in substance, denounced homosexual practice and called upon the Church to remain faithful to the Holy Scriptures."

Guess which side I'm taking on this one.

The UK Times reports than Kenya and Rwanda are also expected to follow suit, as is Sydney, Australia. It seems to this (admittedly-uninformed) observer that the Anglican communion is crumbling in Africa, and at least one anglican bishop in the U.S. would energetically agree with that assesment. I'm sure there are others.

Those bishops who are not attending Lambeth this year are holding a "rival" conference in Israel this June (so, a month in advance of Lambeth), which is being called the "Global Anglican Future" Conference. This whole situation reminds me of the councils and anti-councils of the Christian middle-ages, and as I recall, those normally didn't help matters much in the short term.

The archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has been doing his best to hold Lambeth together. He has, for example, not invited Gene Robinson, the openly gay bishop of New Hampshire who was ordained in 2004. Well, this does not appear to have been enough, at least to the conservative African bishops.