St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Beverly, Massachusetts

An Imagined Conversation on the Lambeth Commission with the Rev. Ian T. Douglas, Ph.D.

Conversation Partner: So what is this thing called the Lambeth Commission that I keep hearing so much about?

Ian Douglas: The Lambeth Commission is a group of church leaders from around the Anglican Communion whose work it is to consider the nature of communion within Anglicanism today and suggest ways that Anglicans the world over can live together given the diversities, differences and difficulties that exist amongst us. And that is no easy task for the Anglican Communion is the second most widely distributed body of Christians in the world today with 75-80 million members spread across 38 regional or national churches (known as Provinces) in 164 countries! We literally span the breadth of the world’s cultures, languages, contexts, and aspirations. Figuring out how we get along with the incredible diversity and differences that we embody is a Herculean task.

Oh, I thought it was a commission called to solve the problems of sexuality, specifically the difficulties around homosexuality that exist in Anglicanism.

It is true that the presenting issue that precipitated the need for the Commission is the conflict across the Anglican Communion related to the place of gay and lesbian people in the Church. More specifically, the election and consecration of The Rt. Rev. V Gene Robinson, an openly gay man living in a life-long committed relationship with another man, as Bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire in The Episcopal Church has become a cause of grave concern to many in the Anglican Communion. But concerns over human sexuality are not limited to the Bishop of New Hampshire or The Episcopal Church only. For example the Diocese of New Westminster (in and around Vancouver) in the Anglican Church of Canada has taken steps to bless same-sex unions and this too has caused problems for some churches around the Anglican Communion.

So am I correct in understanding that the Lambeth Commission is not going to make any pronouncements about human sexuality?

I think so. The Commission’s brief is about the nature of communion across Anglicanism and not human sexuality. But let’s not fool ourselves; concerns over human sexuality are the backdrop on which the questions of communion are being played out. We need only look at some of the documents submitted and testimonies presented to the Commission to see that human sexuality, and homosexuality in particular, are the presenting issues.

OK, I get it; this commission will be dealing with church things like order, authority, and what it means to be an Anglican today, and not sexuality per se. That’s why sometimes I see the Commission referred to as the Lambeth Commission on Communion?

You got it.

So where did this commission come from anyway?

The Commission was a direct result of an emergency meeting of the primates of the Anglican Communion at Lambeth Palace on October 15-16, 2003. But questions related to the nature of communion in Anglicanism were also raised at the Lambeth Conference of 1998.

Wait a minute now. This is way too much Anglican inside jargon. What is all this talk about primates and Lambeth stuff? Can you explain?

Sorry, sometimes I forget that Anglican insider-language is not shared by all people. I do apologize.

Please let me explain further. The primates are the heads of the 38 churches in the Anglican Communion, sometimes known as Archbishops, Presiding Bishops, Moderators or Metropolitans. Great differences exist, however, across the Anglican Communion as to the role, authority, and power of these primates in each of their own churches. In the Episcopal Church we have an elected Presiding Bishop, the Rt. Rev. (or Most Rev.) Frank Griswold who presides over the House of Bishops (thus the title Presiding Bishop.)

So why were these primates at Lambeth Palace, and where and what is Lambeth Palace anyway?

I’ll take your second question first. Lambeth Palace is the historic residence and administrative offices of the Archbishop of Canterbury located on the southern bank of the River Thames in central London. In other words, it is the headquarters of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams.

The primates were called to Lambeth Palace immediately after the decision of the August 2003 General Convention of The Episcopal Church giving consent to Bishop Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. This emergency meeting was called by Archbishop Williams so that the heads of the churches in the Anglican Communion could discuss the fact that for the first time an openly gay man living in a life-long committed relationship with another man was to become a bishop in Anglicanism. As I said the meeting occurred in mid-October 2003, and as you might imagine it was a pretty tense and difficult meeting.

You say that this was an emergency meeting, do the primates meet otherwise?

Yes the primates of the Anglican Communion have been meeting regularly since 1979 for counsel, common prayer, bible study and Eucharist fellowship. For most of the last twenty-five years these meetings have occurred every couple of years or so, but beginning in 2000 the primates have been meeting annually. The person who presides over what has come to be called the Primates Meeting is the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Oh so this primates thing is a relatively recent phenomenon in Anglicanism. I hear so much about the primates-this and the primates-that that I thought that their meeting has been around for centuries. But even if the Primates Meeting is a relatively recent phenomenon in the Anglican Communion, the primates gathered together do have great authority don’t they?

Depends on what you mean by authority. Yes, of course, the coming together of the heads of the churches in the Anglican Communion is an important fact of our common life as Anglicans and there is symbolic authority in that. In addition the Primates Meetings have initiated significant inter-Anglican ventures like Communion-wide initiatives in theological education and the combating of the scourge of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. But no, the Primates Meeting cannot tell any one church in the Anglican Communion what to do, although they do occasionally pass resolutions or issue communiqués and pastoral letters.

OK, if the Primates Meeting can’t tell any one church in the Anglican Communion what to do than of course the Archbishop of Canterbury can, right?

I’m afraid not.

What? You mean the Archbishop of Canterbury is not some kind of an Anglican pope?

That’s correct. He is known as the primus inter pares or "first among equals." As such he is the titular head but not the canonical (or legal) head of the Anglican Communion.

So what does that mean? Does he have authority or not?

I’m afraid I’m going to have to sound very Anglican here and say that he does and he doesn’t.

Come on, either the Archbishop of Canterbury has authority or not. What do you mean when you say: "he does and he doesn’t?"

The role of the Archbishop of Canterbury, as the historic first bishop in the Church of England and thus in Anglicanism, has the power of recognition and invitation.

What does that mean?

Technically speaking, to be an Anglican means to be "in communion" with the See of Canterbury, or in other words: recognized as being in relationship with the Archbishop of Canterbury. If you are not "in communion" with Canterbury then you would have a difficult time saying that you are an Anglican.

Now there is that communion word again. What does communion with Canterbury look like in reality?

Former Archbishop of Cape Town and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu once described the Anglican Communion as Christians who like to meet (or something like that.) Now there is a lot of wisdom in Archbishop Tutu’s words, for communion at its most basic flesh and blood (dare I say incarnational) level is the coming together of Christians in common prayer and fellowship and the sharing of the Eucharistic feast as sisters and brothers in Christ. Now there are very many different ways that Anglicans come together to share such communion from the Primates Meeting we have mentioned but also in: the Lambeth Conference of Bishops, the Anglican Consultative Council, Anglican Congresses, inter-Anglican commissions and committees, as well as various official and unofficial networks across the Communion. In many of these relationships, recognition by the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury is the key factor determining who is invited to what meetings.

The current Secretary General of the Anglican Communion has described the Archbishop of Canterbury as a kind of hub in a wheel to which all of the churches of the Anglican Communion are connected like spokes. The Communion as a whole is the wheel that rolls along in service to God’s mission. That’s not a bad image, I think.

So you see the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury does have the authority of recognition and invitation with respect to who is or is not in communion with the See of Canterbury. But no, the Archbishop of Canterbury has no legal authority over any one bishop, or anyone else for that matter, in any church around the Anglican Communion (save of course for his home church, The Church of England.).

I’m beginning to understand now. You are trying to give me a larger context in which I can place the Lambeth Commission. But it sure does seem like a pretty messy way to run a worldwide family of churches.

Correct on both accounts.

Now you’ve mentioned other inter-Anglican bodies like the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council, Anglican Congresses, commissions, committees and networks. Can you say a little more about these before we return to the specifics of the Lambeth Commission?

Sure, as long as we remember that the important thing about all of these different entities is not much so much what kind of organizational structure or mandate each might have but rather that they all are expressions of ways that Anglicans come together as sisters and brothers in Christ to serve God’s mission in the world.

The Lambeth Conference is a meeting of the bishops of the Anglican Communion that happens every ten years at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The first one occurred at Lambeth Palace (hence the name the Lambeth Conference) in 1867 and was called by the Archbishop of Canterbury to wrestle with some sticky issues around what one Bishop Colenso in South Africa might have been advocating and teaching at the time. Since then the Lambeth Conference of bishops has been meeting every ten years (except during the World Wars) for counsel, common prayer, bible study, and Eucharistic fellowship. Like the Primates Meeting, the Lambeth Conference has no legal authority over any one church in the Anglican Communion, but reports and resolutions passed by the Bishops do have power as representing the mind of the bishops gathered together. It is up to each church in the Anglican Communion to do with such pronouncements as they see fit.

The Anglican Consultative Council is a representative body of all the churches of the Anglican Communion made up of lay people, priests or deacons, and bishops from each church in the Anglican Communion. The Council meets every three years for (and I know I am beginning to sound like a broken record here) for counsel, common prayer, bible study, and Eucharistic fellowship. Like the Lambeth Conference and the Primates Meeting, the ACC (as the Anglican Consultative Council is known) has no legal authority over any one church in the Anglican Communion, but reports and resolutions of the ACC are important for the common life of the Communion. One key difference between the ACC and the Lambeth Conference and Primates Meeting is that the ACC is the only incorporated body of the Anglican Communion and as such has legal status as a charity and fiscal entity for the Communion. I frankly like the fact that the closest thing the Anglican Communion has to an "official agency" is made up of both lay and ordained leaders.

Now there are other ways that Anglicans "meet" in the words of Archbishop Tutu. There are the Anglican Congresses of 1908 in London, 1954 in Minneapolis, and 1963 in Toronto, where hundreds of lay and ordained leaders (once again lay and ordained) from each church in the Anglican Communion came together to see how Anglicans around the globe could better serve God’s mission in the world. You might recall the great vision for Anglican mission "Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ"(or MRI for short) that resulted from the 1963 Anglican Congress. MRI gave Anglicanism a vision for mutuality in mission that has carried the day for the last five decades. Now a fourth Anglican Congress (or Anglican Gathering as it is being called) is planned for Cape Town, South Africa in July of 2008. And, as in the past congresses, this Gathering will be composed of a majority of lay people and will focus on what we Anglicans can do to make God’s saving and reconciling love known in the world. In my opinion the 2008 Gathering could be one of the most important events in the life of the contemporary Anglican Communion as it galvanizes us to faithful and united service in God’s mission.

Finally there are a wide variety of both official and unofficial commissions, committees, and networks across the Anglican Communion that also embody different forms of common life and witness. Lay and ordained people serve on all of these bodies. At the official level, there are four "standing commissions" in the Anglican Communion variously called into being by one or more of the regular gatherings of the Lambeth Conference, the ACC, or the Primates Meeting. Current commissions are: the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission, the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations, the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Mission and Evangelism, and the newly created Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Telecommunications. These commissions meet approximately once a year, report to the regular meetings and gatherings of the Communion such as the ACC and the Primates Meeting, and their commissioners are broadly drawn from churches throughout the Anglican Communion. In addition to these standing commissions there are various other "official" consultations, working groups, and networks across the Anglican Communion such as, but not limited to: the International Anglican Liturgical Consultations, the Anglican Communion Task Group on Theological Education, the Anglican Peace and Justice Network, the International Anglican Family Network, the International Anglican Women’s Network, the Network for Interfaith Concerns, and the Anglican Indigenous Peoples Network. The work of all of these inter-Anglican commissions, consultations, working groups, and networks, is facilitated through a modestly staffed and financially strapped Anglican Communion Office located in London. A General Secretary and various program directors staff the Anglican Communion Office. In addition to this London based staff there is an Anglican Observer at the United Nations in New York that represents the concerns of the Anglican Communion at the UN.

OK, enough already with structures of the Anglican Communion.

Sorry. I got carried away. Shall we return to the Lambeth Commission then?

That would be good. Let’s see now, as I understand it the Lambeth Commission was called into being by the Archbishop of Canterbury (that invitation thing again, right?) to help the Anglican Communion find its way forward with what "communion" means, specifically in these strained times given the different perspectives on homosexuality across the communion.

That’s correct.

Now is the Lambeth Commission a "standing commission" of the Anglican Communion or does it have some other status. And who is on it anyway?

The Lambeth Commission is not a "standing" body but is rather a kind of task force with a specific mandate and a specific time frame to accomplish its task. More specifically the Commission is to report its findings to the Archbishop of Canterbury (in a written format) by the end of September, 2004. At that point the Commission will have competed its work.

As to membership, the Commission is made up of 17 individuals that come from 14 different churches of the Anglican Communion. The Commissioners are lay-people, priests, bishops and archbishops who are women and men, theologians and theological educators, lawyers and scholars. The Commission is also served by two staff people. In many ways it is a broadly based and diverse body that is quite representative of the differences and diversities that exist in the Anglican Communion.

The Commission is chaired by the Most Rev. Robin Eames, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. Archbishop Eames is a most seasoned leader, being the longest serving primate in the Anglican Communion and having previously chaired both an earlier inter-Anglican commission that dealt with women’s ordination, as well as the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission. I must add that Archbishop Eames has had a lifetime of working for reconciliation in difficult circumstances given his leadership in trying to resolve the ongoing conflict in Northern Ireland. That having been said, I have heard Archbishop Eames note that chairing the Lambeth Commission has been one of the most difficult assignments he has ever had.

Is there someone from the Episcopal Church on the Lambeth Commission?

Yes, The Rt. Rev. Mark Dyer, previous bishop of Bethlehem in Pennsylvania and now on the faculty at Virginia Theological Seminary. Bishop Dyer has extensive experience in inter-Anglican affairs having served (among other things) as The Episcopal Church’s bishop member of the ACC, the editor of the report of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, and a previous member of the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission.

So how has the Commission been doing its work?

The Commission has met three times since it was called into being in late 2003. The first meeting took place at Windsor, England in February 2004 where the commissioners established their working style and also heard formal papers delivered on different perspectives on the questions of communion before them. In addition the Commission openly sought input from any person or group in the Anglican Communion who cared to weigh in on their mandate. The second meeting of the Commission was in June 2004 at the Kanuga Conference Center in North Carolina. It was at Kanuga that the Commission heard testimony from Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold and other leaders of The Episcopal Church on the state of The Episcopal Church today. At Kanuga the Commission also heard from leaders in The Episcopal Church who dissent from the actions of the 2003 General Convention. The last meeting of the Commission took place at Windsor again in September 2004. It was at that meeting that the Commission had to wrestle with the mighty task of producing their report. I must add that in all of their work together the Commission has pursued the highest degree of confidentiality. At the same time the Commission has communicated widely on items that they could share and many important papers of the Commission are posted for the world to see at: http://www.anglicancommunion.org/ecumenical/commissions/lambeth/index.cfm#news .

I believe you when you say that the Commission has worked in strict confidence but didn’t I hear that some newspaper in London had an inside scoop on what the Commission is going to say, and more specifically that the Commission is going to recommend that The Episcopal Church be suspended from the Anglican Communion.

Ruth Gledhill, the Religion Correspondent for the London Times did write an article just before the last meeting of the Commission at Windsor. Her article said that the draft report of the Commission did in fact call for a suspension of The Episcopal Church from the Anglican Communion. Now I respect Ms. Gledhill as a fine reporter and she seems to have reported correctly about previous Anglican commissions so I don’t want to criticize her story. But I think it is important to qualify the story somewhat by saying that whatever report was brought to the final meeting of the Commission that that report, at best, was a draft and we do not yet know what the Commission did with that draft and/or what the conclusions of the final meeting of the Commission are.

So are you saying that the news that the Lambeth Commission is calling for a suspension of The Episcopal Church is untrue.

I’m not saying that. All I’m saying is that we do not yet know what the Lambeth Commission is going to recommend in its report.

But suspension is not out of the question?

I guess nothing is out of the question. But I’m waiting to see the final report before I jump to any conclusions. There are so many rumors floating around (on both sides) that I do not want to make matters more confused or add to the ugly polarization that exists.

OK but can we play "what if"?

I’m not in the prediction business but I guess we can look at some of the possible options before the Commission.

Alright, what are they?

Well there are some in the Anglican Communion (and this position is even found in some of the posted submissions on the website of the Commission) that want The Episcopal Church to be thrown out of the Anglican Communion and some other body in the United States recognized as the faithful successor of Anglicanism in this country. I personally somewhat doubt that the Commission is going to recommend this since such a position does not exactly build up communion but rather pits Christians against each other in fights over orthodoxy and who is in and who is out.

Then there are some who say that the Commission will simply slap The Episcopal Church on the wrist and that in time all of this fuss over human sexuality will subside (just like, they say, the difficulties over women’s ordination have.) I think this position is equally ill-informed and does not take seriously the depth of anger and hurt that some around the Anglican Communion harbor towards The Episcopal Church for our decisions at the 2003 General Convention. Of course all of this is complicated by the realities of globalization and the fact that the political, economic, and military dominance and unilateralism of the United States as the sole mega-power in the world today does not sit well with those who are less powerful than we.

So you do not think The Episcopal Church will be thrown out of the Communion nor do you think we will get off with a slight reprimand?

First of all it’s important not to make the work of the Lambeth Commission only about The Episcopal Church. Yes it is true that recent decisions we have taken have made questions about the nature of communion more urgent. This is especially true with some churches in the Anglican Communion stating that they are in some sort of impaired communion with The Episcopal Church. But remember that the mandate of the Lambeth Commission is to suggest ways by which the churches of the Anglican Communion can maintain the highest degree of communion as well as what the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury is in such.

Now if you really want me to hypothesize what the report might look like, my guess is that it is going to be a substantial document of eighty pages or so that deeply considers questions related to the nature of communion. I think it will be impossible to avoid the presenting circumstances caused by The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of New Westminster in the Anglican Church of Canada. So I would not be surprised if we come under some kind of severe criticism and rebuke. What that means for our day-to-day life in the Anglican Communion, I’m not about to say and I don’t think anyone knows for sure. On the other side, I do not think the Commission will recommend any immediate radical departure from the historic understandings of jurisdictional authority in the Anglican Communion.

Now what do you mean by that?

I guess I don’t expect the Commission to come up with some radically new form of the Anglican Communion. Of course I could be very wrong. I have been before.

I guess I’m not going to get a direct prediction out of you.

I’m afraid not.

OK, if you do not want to predict what’s in the report, can you at least say what will happen to the findings of the Lambeth Commission? Given our earlier discussion about the nature of the Anglican Communion today as a family of churches that meet, what is going to happen to the report?

Well first of all the report will go to the Archbishop of Canterbury in early October for his prayerful consideration. Next the report will be considered by the Standing Committee of the Primates Meeting (since the Commission was called for by the primates) when it meets jointly with the Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council in London on October 16-18.

These are new ones. What are all these Standing Committees?

The Standing Committees of the Primates Meeting and the ACC are made up of regional representatives from both bodies that consider matters of planning and agenda setting for their respective meetings, specifically the next Primates Meeting in February 2005 and the next meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in June 2005. The Standing Committees often meet at the same time in a Joint Standing Committee Meeting to consider items of mutual interest before both bodies. I would assume that one of the items to be considered at their next Joint Standing Committee Meeting in mid-October 2004 will be the report of the Lambeth Commission.

You’ve got to be kidding. You mean the report of the Lambeth Commission will need to be considered by both the Primates Meeting and the ACC next year.

Need to? That’s hard to say. Do I expect that both the Primates Meeting and the ACC will consider the Lambeth Commission Report in due time? Yes, I think so.

And to complicate matters even further, remember that no inter-Anglican body can force any church in the Anglican Communion to do something one way or another. Thus any recommendations of the Lambeth Commission that have been vetted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primates Meeting, and the ACC might also be taken up by each church in the Anglican Communion within their own polity and decision making processes.

Yikes! So you are saying that the conflicts over human sexuality in the Anglican Communion are not going to be solved next month with the release of the Lambeth Commission report.

I seriously doubt it. That is not to say that what the Lambeth Commission comes up with is not important. It is. But the work of the Commission is a part of a much larger discussion of what it means to be a faithful Anglican in the world today.

Doesn’t sound easy to me.

No one said it was easy being an Anglican. But even given all of these difficulties and ambiguities I believe that it is perhaps the most exciting time ever to be an Anglican Christian.

Oh come on now. An exciting time to be an Anglican?

Yes. I believe the Anglican Communion has never been at such an important time in our life together and the possibilities have never been better for us to serve God’s mission in the world as mutually responsible and interdependent sisters and brothers in Christ.

You keep on talking about God’s mission? What’s up with that? What do you mean "the possibilities have never been better for the Anglican Communion to serve God’s mission in the world?"

If I may paraphrase the Catechism in the Book of Common Prayer: "God’s mission, the missio Dei (in which the Church is called to participate) is to restore all people and all creation to unity with God and each other in Jesus Christ." God’s mission is about reconciling and renewing the world in the promise of new life in the risen Christ.

That sound’s pretty esoteric to me. Can you bring this down to real life?

Sure. In the last decade or so the churches of the Anglican Communion have been able to work together in some pretty incredible ways to spread the healing, reconciling love of Jesus in this hurting and broken world. The Decade of Evangelism (although sometimes dismissed here in the United States) proclaimed the Gospel in manifold new ways around the world where it had never been heard before. The international debt-relief legislation passed through the United States Congress during President Clinton’s administration (lifting the burden of billions of dollars of debt for the poorest countries in the world) would not have happened without the combined witness of Anglicans the world over following the Lambeth Conference of 1998 and the leadership of the Washington Office of the Episcopal Church. And today, governments and non-governmental organizations around the world, such as the United States Agency for International Development, the World Health Organization, and UNAIDS, all agree that the Anglican Communion (with our incredible network of schools, clinics, and hospitals in the parts of the world most ravaged by the scourge of HIV/AIDS) is perhaps the single best resource in the world for education, prevention and palliative care to combat this modern-day plague.

I guess when you look at the Anglican Communion from that perspective, we do have quite a bit going for us, and it’s not all doom and gloom.

Yup. I like to call it: seeing the Anglican Communion from God’s perspective.

You know, I’ve said on many occasions: "The devil is not stupid." The devil will use any means possible to distract us from serving God’s mission of reconciliation in the world. The more we are fighting internecine battles over human sexuality in the Church (as important as such discussions are) the less we will be looking beyond ourselves to do what God wants us to be about in the wider world. In fact, I take the growing vociferousness of the battles in the church as confirmation that the Anglican Communion has never been in a better position to do great things for God in the world. I believe that the increasing vigor with which we beat up on each other in the Anglican Communion today is directly equal to and opposite of the possibilities before us to be agents of God’s reconciliation in the world globally. Like I keep saying: "The devil is not stupid."

Well, that’s a different spin.

It’s not spin; it’s my prayer. For I fundamentally believe that the only way forward for the Anglican Communion in these difficult, but exciting, times is to be a community of Christ’s love bound together in common prayer serving God’s mission in the world beyond ourselves and our church problems. That’s what I pray for anyway, and I invite you to do the same.

Maybe I will.

Thanks for the conversation. It was a pleasure talking with you.

Thank you.

The Rev. Ian T. Douglas, Ph.D. is Professor of Mission and World Christianity at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is a member of the Inter Anglican Standing Commission on Mission and Evangelism as well as the Design Group for the 2008 Anglican Gathering and Lambeth Conference. He serves as a Consultant to the Presiding Bishop and House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church on matters relating to global reconciliation.