Sunday, July 13, 2008

It's good to talk

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/articles/11703/

[The Tablet] 13 Jul 2008--The average family gathering relies on certain truths being left unspoken, carefully skirted around. As the bishops and their spouses travel to Canterbury for this decade's Lambeth Conference, which begins on Wednesday, they resemble members of a large family congregating for a wedding. All are uneasily aware that at the last such event something went wrong: things were said that should not have been said, and a row ignited that has resulted in one branch of the family staying away. Should they try to return to the old friendly atmosphere, or has a new spirit of brutal honesty made that impossible?

Until recently, few British Anglicans gave much thought to the Lambeth Conference, which (in theory) brings all Anglican bishops together once a decade. It was a reminder that Anglicanism was thriving in the colonies and former colonies. It was an insight into the exotic issues that faced native evangelists in sunnier climes. It was a way of discovering what help they needed in spreading Canterbury's light through the globe.

For those unfamiliar with the Tablet it is the publication of the English Roman Catholic Church's liberal establishment. Its liberal sympathies are evident from the tone of this article, for example, referring the the 1998 Lambeth resolution on human sexuality, the article states, "It was supposed to be a classic piece of Anglican fudge. But it was hijacked by a lobby of bishops from the developing world, which had formed in the mid-1990s, resolving to contest Anglicanism's drift to the condoning of homosexuality. This lobby influenced the final framing of Resolution 1:10, making it an assertion of orthodoxy."

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