Lambeth Conference

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The Lambeth Conference is a ten-year assembly of all Anglican bishops .

General

It was named after Lambeth Palace , the London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury , where the conference took place up to and including 1968. Since 1978 she is on the Canterbury campus of the University of Kent held, because it is possible during the summer vacation that all bishops can stay together for the duration of the conference at the same place in the student dormitories of the university.

Due to the precarious situation of the Anglican Community (see below), the conference planned for 2018 has been postponed to 2022.

history

The meeting took place for the first time in 1867 and over the decades has developed into one of the four instruments of unity in the Anglican church world.

The May 2007 invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams , to the 2008 conference stated:

"... the Lambeth Conference has no 'constitution' or formal powers; it is not a formal Synod or Council of the bishops of the Communion ... ".
(German for example: "... the Lambeth conference has no statute or official powers, it is not an official synod or assembly of the bishops of the community ...".)

The idea of ​​such a conference was first recorded in an 1851 letter from John Henry Hopkins , Bishop of Vermont , to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The specific reason for the first meeting, however, was an urgent letter from the Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada to Archbishop Charles Thomas Longley in 1865. In this letter, the Anglican residents of the British colonies in North America expressed their concern that new decisions by the Privy would be avoided Council could lead to different canonical rules in the Church of Canada than in England and Ireland . The Canadians feared that they would be forced “to drift into the status of an independent branch of the Roman Catholic Church ”. For this reason, they asked Longley to convene a "national synod of bishops of the Church of England at home and abroad," which should meet under his leadership. After consulting with both houses of the Convocation of Canterbury , Archbishop Longley agreed and called all the bishops of the Anglican Communion (then 144 in number) to a meeting in Lambeth in 1867.

Many Anglican bishops, including the Archbishop of York and most of his suffragan bishops , had such great doubts about the purpose of such a meeting that they refused to attend. Dean Stanley did not allow Westminster Abbey to be used for the closing service, giving the reason that the meeting was only a partial meeting. The effect of their measures is uncertain, and moreover, they are characterized by "the presence of prelates who do not belong to our church".

In his opening address, however, Archbishop Longley stated that the meeting did not intend to take on "the functions of a general synod of all churches in full communion with the Church of England", but merely to discuss "matters of practical interest and to put what we think fit in decisions that may serve as a sure guide for future action ”. The resolutions of the Lambeth conferences were never considered synodal decrees, but their weight grew from conference to conference.

76 bishops accepted the Primate's invitation to attend the first conference, which was held in Lambeth on September 24, 1867, and lasted four days. The meetings were not open to the public. The Archbishop opened the conference with a speech; consultations followed. Committees were set up to report on specific issues. Resolutions were passed and an encyclical letter was written addressed to the faithful of the Anglican Communion.

All subsequent conferences are opened in Canterbury Cathedral , where the Archbishop preaches from the See of St. Augustine , before deliberations continue at Lambeth Palace, on the Canterbury campus since 1978 . After five days of deliberation and the establishment of committees, the meetings are suspended for two weeks. This is followed by a further five days of meetings to receive the reports from the committees, take decisions and write an encyclical letter.

Chronology of the conferences

  1. First conference (September 24-28, 1867)
  2. Second Conference (July 2-27, 1878)
  3. Third Conference (July 3-27, 1888)
  4. Fourth Conference (July 5-31, 1897)
  5. Fifth Conference (July 6 - August 5, 1908)
  6. Sixth Conference (1920)
  7. Seventh Conference (1930)
  8. Eighth Conference (1948)
  9. Ninth Conference (1958)
  10. Tenth Conference (1968)
  11. Eleventh Conference (1978)
  12. Twelfth Conference (1988)
  13. Thirteenth Conference (July 18 - August 9, 1998)
  14. Fourteenth Conference (2008)

The fifteenth conference should have taken place in 2018, according to the ten-year cycle. But strong tensions within the Anglican Community in dogmatic and moral theological issues (especially with regard to the admission of women to ordinations , the attitude towards homosexuality and the blessing of same-sex couples ) led numerous bishops to declare that they would not or will not attend another Lambeth conference wanting to participate only under certain conditions (clarifications in advance of the conference). As the fourteenth Lambeth Conference in 2008 had already been boycotted by around a quarter of the member churches of the Anglican Communion after the Episcopal Church in the United States of America had ordained a gay priest, Archbishop Justin Welby , Archbishop of Canterbury, decided in 2014 not to convene the fifteenth conference for 2018. In 2020, the year 2022 was named as a possible date for the fifteenth Lambeth Conference to be made up.

literature

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Kevin Kallsen: Lambeth Conference canceled. September 30, 2014, accessed July 13, 2020.
  2. ↑ Lambeth Conference Announcement: The Lambeth Conference reschedules to 2022 , July 9, 2020, accessed on July 13, 2020.