Lambeth Again
I guess I first heard about the Anglican Communion and the Lambeth Conference when I was about 10 years old, from my Uncle Howard, a lay reader in the Diocese of Rhode Island. As he did what he did at the Cathedral in Providence, he could be expected to know about such things, unlike us Massachusetts mill town folks to whom the bishop in far-off Boston was about as remote a figure as we could imagine.
The image of Lambeth that comes to mind is news photos of oddly-garbed clerics with knobbly knees (gaiters were in style), smiling benignly at each other, and discussing topics of limited interest to the world at large. (I have no recollection of what the issues were in 1948.) I was taught that Lambeth was not a legislative body, that it did not make decisions that were binding on the Church of the Ascension on Rock Street, or even St. Stephen's (which most folks thought was much too high and ought to be brought down a peg).
Lately, however, confused by some folks who very insistently maintain the opposite, I felt I needed to double check my recollections.
I went first, of course, to the website of the Lambeth Conference itself. And there, right in the midst of a history taken from Who Are the Anglicans? edited by Charles Henry Long, I found the following:
It was made clear at the outset that the conference would have no authority of itself as it was not competent to make declarations or lay down definitions on points of doctrine.
Sounds clear enough to me, but in search of further "clarity" I found a 1998 essay by Edward Norman entitled "Authority in the Anglican Communion". It contains the following:
What of the authority of Lambeth Conferences? As a source of doctrinal definition they can easily be eliminated from the quest, since they have disclaimed any such authority from the start. Bishop John Henry Hopkins of Vermont, later Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal church, and a scholar fully informed about the procedures of the early Church, had in 1851 suggested an Anglican General Council, but neither he, nor subsequent exponents of some kind of international body, envisaged the determination of doctrine as among its powers. The English bishops, operating within a persistent atmosphere of erastianism, had anyway to be extremely cautious of any clerical assembly which exercised effective powers independently of statute law. At the start of the first Lambeth Conference in 1867 Archbishop Longley made it clear that the gathering was a conference and not a synod, and that its resolutions would be purely declaratory - they would have only the influence of recommendations. That has remained the position to this day: the resolutions of Lambeth Conferences only have effect if enacted by synods in each constituent Church of the Communion.
"Resolutions of Lambeth Conferences only have effect if enacted by synods in each constituent Church of the Communion."
Yes, that's what I've thought all these years.
So how do we get to this sort of thing:
There was no questioning at our meeting of the fact that the 1998 Lambeth Resolution 1.10 remains the standard of teaching on matters of sexual morality for the Communion. . . A readiness by the leadership of The Episcopal Church to live by that same formal standard of teaching on these matters which applies elsewhere in the Communion is perhaps the first and most important step in the way forward.
So Lambeth resolutions, by declaration of the Conference itself, "have only the influence of recommendations" but they also constitute "the standard of teaching" which all constituent churches are bound to obey -- or else.
Perhaps that makes sense to some folks, but I'm a bear of very little brain, and I just can't seem to get my mind around it. It looks to me like a shell game.
But that's not all that confuses me:
The primates have "recommended" certain unprecidented changes in the Episcopal Church's polity, namely the appointment of a "primatial vicar" responsible to an outside "Pastoral Council". The Episcopal Church has not yet agreed to being essentially placed in receivership and indeed, given the central role of General Convention in our polity, many believe it's simply impossble to agree. The discussion has only begun.. But not to worry. The Communion will proceed, we are assured, "with a spirit of generosity and graciousness." Oh, and by the way, nominations for the members of the Council are due by Friday, 16th March.
And , we are also assured,
To address these requests to the American House of Bishops is not to ignore the polity of The Episcopal Church, but . . .we cannot wait for another General Convention for further clarification.
I see. To ignore the polity of the Episcopal Church is not to ignore the polity of the Episcopal Church.
If anybody went on like that in the mill town of my youth, he would have been told, politely, but firmly, that he was "full of old prunes".
But I don't suppose we can say that, can we?
Ted M.
March 5, 2007
