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[Back to index of May articles] Theological formation is focus of Lambeth 2008 By Jim Naughton If all proceeds according to plan, the 2008 Lambeth Conference will be "resolution light," said Sue Parks, the conference manager, during a recent visit to the Cathedral College. The Most Rev. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the conference design team intend to focus the 16-day meeting in mid-July, 2008 on issues of theological formation, she said. "We need to recover our focus on being church together in mission and to do that we need an energized and educated people of God who are clear about their faith and what it means to be Anglican," Parks said. The conference will include workshops, working groups and seminars that examine a bishop's role as a "leader and chief pastor," Parks said. "What resources do they need? What stories do they have to tell?" Many bishops, particularly those in impoverished countries "work in isolation from their peers," Parks said, and the Lambeth Conference is one of their few opportunities to discuss their work with other bishops. The conference is being planned under a cloud of uncertainty, Parks acknowledged. It is possible, that Williams will choose not to invite the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, Bishop of New Hampshire, and the bishops who consecrated him, she said. Robinson, who is gay, lives with his partner, Mark Andrews. His election to the episcopate led many provinces in the Communion to cut off relations with the Episcopal Church. Bishops John Bryson Chane and Barbara Harris were among his co-consecrators. Williams may also choose not to invite bishops who have crossed provincial and diocesan boundaries to minister to congregations who disagree with their bishops' position on same-sex relationships, Parks said. Williams will mail invitations to the conference late in 2007, she said. Planning the conference is complicated by the possibility that Robinson's adversaries may boycott the meeting if he is invited, and his supporters may boycott if he is not. "We don't want to have 2,000 beds for 1,000 people," Parks said. In a March 9 letter to the 38 primates of the Communion, Williams wrote: "The proposed focus on theological formation and development is a way of trying to encourage you to explore what are your own most important needs as individual bishops and as churches, not to impose a plan from outside." Williams said he had not heard "much enthusiasm" for revisiting Resolution 1.10 of Lambeth 1998, which declared that same-sex intimacy was incompatible with Scripture. However, he acknowledged that divisions over same sex relationships would have to be addressed at the conference. "The controversies of recent years have spotlighted the difficulties we have as a Communion of making decisions in a corporate way," he wrote, adding that the bishops would "need time to think about" ways of dealing with fissures in the Communion, especially those outlined by the Lambeth Commission on Communion in the Windsor Report. The success of the conference may hinge on getting participants to agree in advance on a means of determining "what kind of outcomes and statements the conference might look to make and how they will be arrived at," Parks said. Parks, a native of Australia, has worked for many years in the Church of England. She is a former colleague of the Rev. John L. Peterson, the cathedral's canon for global justice and reconciliation. She stopped in Washington in late March after briefing the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops on plans for the conference at its spring meeting in North Carolina. Parks has also briefed the Australian bishops and the bishops of Aoteroa, New Zealand and Polynesia. She has offered to brief every House of Bishops in the Communion, she said. "What I'm experiencing so far is an enormous amount of good will towards making things happen," Parks said. [Back to index of May articles]
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