I saw Bishop Chane and his wife Karen, and chatted with Bishop Tom Ely of Vermont on the telephone. They have been impressed with the conference’s opening retreat, led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, which concludes today at noon. Conversations among bishops, they say, are earnest and collegial. They seem to be having a good experience, and to be mildly surprised by that.
The bishops and stewards who set up blogs before the conference have been conscientious in keeping up with the discipline of regular posts. Here are some of the day’s highlights.
The Rev. Jim Simons has deep ties to the theological right. And yet he and the parish he serves as rector have decided to remain within the Episcopal Church in spite of the likelihood that his diocese (Pittsburgh) may decide to attempt to leave. He lays out his reasons for staying in a letter to his congregation.
The primates who are expected to serve on the Primate’s Council of the GAFCON movement have issued a response to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s concerns about the GAFCON communique and a critique of the present form of the proposed Anglican Covenant has also been posted.
There appear to have been some developments in the Virginia court cases regarding the property being claimed by the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia and the Anglican District of Virginia (part of the CANA convocation associated with the Anglican Church of Nigeria).
Uganda was unique in that none of the bishops of that part of the Communion were attending. Today there’s news that Nigeria’s lone bishop, thought to be in attendance, has returned home.
Over the past couple of days there have been a number of stories about the “The Lambeth Reader” papers. These were distributed to the bishops attending the Lambeth Conference, but not made available to the larger public. Copies of the documents have been passed along to reporters covering the conference. The Church Times blog has some extended quotes in its overnight coverage.
My concern for the Lambeth Conference is that a critical mass of reporters—or perhaps just a handful of influential ones—will deem the conference a failure if it does not produce the sort of stories that they want to write, that they will say so repeatedly in the pages of their papers or on their blogs, and that this perception will become reality.
The Rev. Canon Marilyn McCord Adams, of Christ Church, Oxford gave a paper at the recently completed Modern Churchpeople’s Union Conference. In the paper she highlights the history of the current covenant process and its status right now, showing it to be a structural and diplomatic attempt to solve a theological problem.
Rowan Williams said that his own prayer and hope for the Conference “is not that after two weeks we will find a solution to all our problems but we shall as I have written more than once in some sense find the trust in God and one another that will give us the energy to change in the way God wants us to change.”