The Limits of Anglican Diversity

http://www.churchsociety.org/churchman/documents/Cman_117_4_Beckwith.pdf

[Churchman] 6 Feb 2009--This phrase, from resolution III 6(b) of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, points up an issue which has been with Anglicans since the first Lambeth Conference of 1867. That conference was called by Archbishop Longley primarily to address the controversy surrounding Bishop Colenso of Natal, whose writings on biblical criticism had led to an attempt by the Bishop of Cape Town to depose and excommunicate him: this attempt had been rejected by the law courts as ultra vires, so it was hoped by Colenso’s critics that an international conference of Anglican bishops could deal with the matter more effectively through purely ecclesiastical censures. The conference appointed a committee ‘to consider the constitution of a voluntary spiritual tribunal, to which questions of doctrine may be carried by appeal from the tribunals for the exercise of discipline in each Province of the Colonial Church’ (resolution 9). The word ‘voluntary’ is significant, and the tribunal was in fact never set up. If it had been, whether it would actually have censured Colenso for adventures in biblical criticism which many bishops have since duplicated is an open question. And as its nature would have been ‘voluntary’, nothing could have compelled him to accept its decision. Was it, then, something not worth doing? Apparently the church of the period drew that conclusion, as no action followed.