Who is setting the agenda at Lambeth?

http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/2008/06/30/who-is-setting-the-agenda-at-lambeth/

[Anglican Mainstream] 30.06.08--Readers of this column have been misled. On May 23 in my column, I stated that while there will be fewer resolutions at the 2008 Lambeth Conference, there would be some. In fact, I was quoting the Archbishop of Canterbury in his January press conference. In answer to a question from Ruth Gledhill of The Times, he said quite categorically that there would be resolutions.

In April, when the Presiding Bishop of the USA had her own Lambeth Conference press launch, she was joined by one of the Lambeth designers, Professor Ian Douglas of the Episcopal Divinity School. To exactly the same question, they reassured their audience that there would be no resolutions whatsoever. In fact, the format of the conference, with its Indaba groups expressly ruled out resolutions. No motions, or items of business could come from these 40-strong groups.

I assumed then that the Archbishop of Canterbury was right and that the Presiding Bishop of the USA was wrong. After all, this is the Archbishop of Canterbury’s conference. He invites the bishops, welcomes them to Canterbury, hosts and presides over the Lambeth Conference.

So I decided to phone the communications director of the Anglican Consultative Council to investigate this considerable disparity between ‘there will be resolutions’ and ‘there will be none’. He explained that the design of the Lambeth Conference simply didn’t allow for resolutions and that this had been the intention of the design group. He didn’t know anything about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s statement in January, but suggested that perhaps the Archbishop meant that in circumstances of emergency, a declaration of war, for example, the Conference may issue a ‘house resolution’.

I still wasn’t convinced that this explained the contradiction and decided that only Lambeth Palace could settle matters. After several days, the press officer did resolve it. In fact, there would be no resolutions at the Lambeth Conference, the Lambeth Design group’s work had now completely ruled this out.

I’m left wondering who is in the driving seat at the Lambeth Conference the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Presiding Bishop of the USA, Lambeth Palace or the Lambeth design group?