Lambeth diary: Anglicans in turmoil

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The Lambeth Conference has opened in Canterbury amid predictions that the Church cannot avoid a final split over the issue of homosexual bishops.

BBC correspondents at the conference will be recording their thoughts over the next few weeks, as debate on the vital issues facing the Church unfolds.

ROBERT PIGOTT : 16 JULY

Gay US bishop Gene Robinson is not on the guest listThe Lambeth Conference has for more than a century knitted together a disparate Church scattered across the world.

Rarely can the Anglican Communion have been in so much need of healing, and rarely can its once-a-decade summit of bishops in Canterbury have presented so little prospect of providing it.

The Communion has been in crisis since the liberal Episcopal Church in the United States ordained Gene Robinson - an openly gay priest - as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.

The rift in the Communion has grown steadily wider, and seems increasingly likely to be permanent.

Rival council

But the 2008 Lambeth Conference, where discussion might have resulted in consensus, was blighted before it began.

Traditionalist Anglicans - angry with the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams for inviting American bishops who helped ordain Gene Robinson - held their own rival conference in Jerusalem.

Most of them - a group constituting about a quarter of Anglican bishops - are boycotting Lambeth.

The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans launched in Jerusalem last month also said it was abandoning the traditional view of attendance at the Lambeth Conference as a symbol of membership of the Communion.

Some traditionalists have openly questioned Dr Williams' authorityWorse still for Dr Williams, the group said it no longer regarded him as the leader of the Communion, and it appointed its own rival council of archbishops.

Their chief complaint against Dr Williams has been that he has done too little to discipline the American Church for ordaining Bishop Robinson, or the Canadian Church for allowing same-sex relationships to be blessed in church services.

They wanted the conference to exclude the Americans and to come to binding decisions about the limits of acceptable behaviour.

Instead the conference seems intent on avoiding difficult debate. After bishops have arrived in Canterbury - some to be greeted in the Cathedral Close by Dr and Mrs Williams - they will go immediately on retreat, spending the next three days sequestered in the cathedral.

Each day of the three-week conference will begin with Bible study, before groups limited to 40 hold discussions which will carefully skirt the contentious issue facing the Communion.

Only at the very end - after a two-week "cooling-off period" - will they talk about sexuality, and even then there will be no vote, and no resolution.

Collision course

The organisers clearly believe it is one of those situations where less is more. But traditionalists believe the conference cutting its losses and simply avoiding deeper disagreement represents a lost opportunity.

One of them contrasted Lambeth 2008 with the last conference 10 years ago. He suggested that there were preliminary meetings and a suitcase full of documents to read in 1998, but this time almost nothing. Some traditionalist bishops have reflected on the old story of the tent, and whether it might have been better to have had Bishop Robinson safely inside it

Lambeth 1998 did produce a decision - the resolution 1.10. It declared active homosexuality to be incompatible with the teaching of the Bible.

One result was to galvanise conservative evangelicals. In a tradition that had been dominated by a live-and-let-live approach to sexuality, suddenly a definite orthodoxy had been created.

Some might say that family gatherings do best to leave some awkward issues undiscussed, and that Lambeth 1.10 is what can happen when that advice is ignored.

It was a "ruling" that placed traditionalists on a collision course with the North American churches and led them into uncompromising opposition to what they regard as a liberal campaign to change the character and beliefs of the Church.

However this year's emphasis on listening inside the Conference won't stop people talking outside it.

A calendar of "fringe events" is already filling up, and a colourful cast are ready to enact the drama.

Chief among them is Bishop Gene Robinson himself. Left off the guest list, he's in Canterbury anyway, and will be at the "gay picnic" scheduled for Sunday.

Some traditionalist bishops have reflected on the old story of the tent, and whether it might have been better to have had Bishop Robinson safely inside it.