The Learning from Lambeth

OK — now I'm back at work, what is clearer to me as a result of Lambeth?

1. The sheer scale of our communion in global terms. It was immensely moving to meet colleagues from around the world — Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Darfur — and learn directly about the human and gospel dimensions of their lives. Most moving was the experience of being in a huge congregation saying the Lords prayer together in over a hundred languages. Quoting a Tanzanian brother, God’s Word speaks to each of us in our own language as the people we are, where we are. I was often reminded of Max Warren’s saying “It takes a whole world to know Christ.”
   So? Get to know and prioritize time for the world Church
2. The experience of African led Bible studies in community was fantastic. Some of the more academic English felt it wasn’t quite their cup of tea. It was mine. I am ashamed at the comaratively modest amount of time I have spent down the years in teams and groups studying the scriptures personally together. Business always seemed more important. If only I had seen that corporate study of the scriptures was our business, I might have prioritised things rather differently!
   So? Direct, personal, corporate Bible study could be given a greater place in the engine room of our decision making processes.
3. Indaba is a considerable discipline that takes a while to master, but it’s worth it. We are so inculturated into parliamentary methods and tactics, with winners and losers, as the way to make decisions. Indaba is slower, and requires a higher order of listening skills. Imagine, say, the last General Synod, without all the locker room intrigue, hysterics and theatricals. I am still haunted by a Japanese colleague, who had needed continuous translation, thanking the group in broken English for “the beauty of being listened to.” It brings no glory to God that the same would be very improbable feedback from many of our church meetings.
   So? Be more aware about the negative effects of parliamentary processes on people, and work for more patient, open, mutual, emotionally inteligent ways of deciding things together.
4. Rowan’s big Lambeth strategy seemed to be about committing to personal and corporate holiness, and alowing our plans to grow out of that. I have no grand overarching command and control strategy for Bucks. Here’s my strategy: Grace through Faith — strive to become the kind of people God needs us to be, and he will show us, on the ground, what needs doing and, more importantly, how to do it. As we step out, with authenticity, in faith we grow; as we shrink back, our visions get bogged down in fear and trivial pursuits. Therefore, as well as looking outward, centering our team processes in Scripture and being rigorously self-critical of our methods, we will be richly rewarded by God as we prioritise faith over fear, realism over fantasy, personal and spiritual excellence over mediocrity.
   So? We need more Faith, more realism, more holiness!

US Virus — Global Sneeze

As a different world order unfolds, I was intrigued at Lambeth by the way US dissidents have been driving heavy contention in the Anglican Communion — not only content, but style. 30 years ago, it is said, the then TEC Presiding Bishop realised the domestic argument over women’s ordination was a gone coon, but worked to boost the primates’ process to build reinforcements from the rest of the world to relieve the fort back home in the end. That is exactly the modus operandi we have been observing consistently since the mid nineties over gay issues. An open-source, non-Imperialistic, loosely structured organization is terrifyingly vulnerable to entryism and manipulation. Et voilà!

Pinocchio can swear blind that there ain’t no strings on him, perhaps he actually believes it, but, oh boy, just look at the length of his nose. The style, as much as anything else, is the real give-away. To triangulate this observation beyond the Anglican world, I noticed a comment by Brian MacLaren about US Evangelicals and the neocon Religious Right, and how they made exactly the nexus that the Barna Group has observed to be so disastrous for the image of US Evangelicals among Mosaics, even those in Evangelical Churches:

A lot of us feel that we’ve watched large sectors of our Christian community in the U.S. engage in several decades of divisive, ineffective, and downright counterproductive political engagement. At best, many attempts at engagement have been superficial, simplistic, and subject to binary thinking where one or two wedge issues easily distinguish the “good guys” from the bad. At worst, we’ve watched too many of our fellow Christians slip into a “culture war” mindset where neighbors became enemies to be defeated and silenced, not loved as we love ourselves. In addition, we’ve watched too many members of our faith communities be manipulated by cynical politicians who knew what tune to play to get people of faith marching obediently in their parade.

Hippo Birdy 2 this

What about taking in a conference this summer, I wonder? I’m off to Chicago for the Willow Creek Leadership Summit, on the day this blog is one year old. In that time, for the record, Google Analytics tells me it’s had 103,747 views as a result of 58,446 visits from 23,838 absolutely unique visitors. These stats remind me of the Life of Brian where he tells the crowd “you’re all individuals!” and they respond “we’re all individuals!” apart from one lone voice that adds “I’m not!” As I leave the country, reflecting on all the challenges revealed at Lambeth and elsewhere, I think of the apocalyptic guff emanating from our friends in the media and elsewhere, using a brilliant bit of inspiration from the unique and very individual Dave Walker.

Living sacrifice — Dying to Live

A lot of Lambeth has been about the hard reality of being a global church in the real world. Great joy of living together has entailed great pain arising from the demands of our conflicting cultures, in which we have received the gospel. Christ’s dark victory over this is not yet fully realised among us. Most of the time, functionally, we don't have to take other people as seriously as ourselves. These two weeks, we mostly did. We talk about living between warring factions as living sacrifice. Some Anglicans do that, literally.

The most moving part of the final service in Canterbury Cathedral was near the end. The Melanesian Martyrs of 2003 have been on many of our hearts and minds, partly because some of our chaplains were personal friends. For them, living between warring factions as a witness to peace, brought death. We were reminded of them in the opening Cathedral Eucharist, as their brothers brought us the gospel in a boat. Their names were read and we commended them to God at the end; an immensely haunting Litany of saints and martyrs was sung by fellow religious from Melanesia, carrying their names to the altar of the Chapel that keeps alive the names of saints and martys of our age at the West end of the Cathedral. As our brothers disappeared from sight, processing up the choir and past Augustine’s chair, the song hung high in the arches above us, and we were still.

May these brothers’ prayers, example and fellowship show us how to be people of peace in a world of warring factions. May they be a reality checkpoint, a sign of what it means to follow Christ, inspiration for our journey.

Indaba process parting shots

Before the final plenary, I just wanted to capture one or two comments from my final indaba group. Whatever document there is to be will have been produced now, and it will not please everyone. I would guess the only way forward will be to try and grasp things on a meta level; to affirm what we do know. We are committed to staying together as a global communion, and to working it out locally. Other optons include split or centralise and keep the lid on the discussion. Neither of those options strike me as fantastically discipled or honest. Nous verrons.

So, in closing off the indaba process disquiet was expressed about the lack of closure (something I can live with in an open ended process). What comes out of this conference is us, as renewed disciples. The authority of the output will come from the fruit of the Spirit, and the capacity of this commitment to being together to spread virally. Powerplays and politics won’t build the kingdom anyway.

The fact is, one brother pointed out, we are exactly where Rowan promised we would be in the letter of invitation we all received. We have decided, said another senior brother, to sit closer to God and give each other space for true understanding and honest resolution. It is a recall to basic gospel principles. Jesus didn’t start a political movement or issue books of rules — he made friends.

Finally, in a gracious moving contribution which expressed serious reservations about the Covenant process and its possible development, another bishop celebrated the glory of learning how to be the friends Jesus called us to be, and said that the great gift of this assembly had been the beauty of istening to each other.

So the next time people come out of your PCC or synod meeting saying it was glorious, and its true beauty was that of listening lovingly to God in one another, youll know that the spirit of this assembly has begun to infect your PCC or synod! After 30 years of Church meetings, more of that going on, in itself, would be a pretty damn amazing outcome...

Lambeth: The answer?

With the advent of the rains for which some have been praying, there’s a sad feel around everything today. I’ve noticed one or two on the edge of tearfulness, as Bible Study groups meet for the last time. There is some concern about whether we’ve got The Answer. This is particularly so among the English. As people of the middle ground, we like to think we’ve got the answer to most things, and very irritating it is, sometimes, for the rest of the world! The reflection document will be an interesting read — all the drafts are publicly available on the conference website, I believe, so anyone who wants can see how it’s shaping up.

One comment haunts me. A wise Jamaican suffragan said “What we gotta fix is our attitudes.” The highlight of the sparsely attended and very tedious sexuality hearing was a Tanzanian brother who pointed out that Homosexuality is in no way a gospel issue, but one of “ethics and leadership.” The anger that stewed and bubbled around this is to do with our own cultures and contexts, our fears and anxieties, not the topic. This conference has demonstrated how much greater our community in Christ is than those who would tear us apart.

And, make no mistake, there are ambitious and egotistical lobby group people out there, exploiting the situation hard, lobbying, manipulating — wittingly or unwittingly doing the Devil’s work. Someone spoke yesterday of some man with a blue press tag in the Keynes concourse, not gathering information, but lobbying hard and handing out party literature. This is the work of the Devil. You know it by its fruits — mistrust, irreconcilable anger, strife, emulations. The hallmark of the Enemy’s activity is accusation, half-truth, innuendo, sectarianism — all the works of the flesh named in Galatians. We cannot stop the Enemy’s activity, but we can identify it by its fruits and be wise about its source.

So we gotta fix our attitudes. God has been informing and healing them, and we have been able to taste here a bit of what it would feel like to be a healed community. Another phrase in my mind is from the part of the Joseph story in Genesis where he says “God let these bad things happen to you, but for good.” The rabbi drew it to our attention, and it’s a curiously compelling soundbite that has intrigued me ever since I first bashed through the story in Hebrew, word by word, as a student at Cambridge.

Is that the answer? It’s one answer. I’m just off to say goodbye to my bible study group, which will not be easy without tears. Liberal, Conservative, black, white, one in Christ. It won’t be easy. It’s gotta be done. We couldn’t fix our attitudes; but God did — now it’s over to us. Go home and think different. Model love. Be led by the Spirit. See how that changes things.

View from Stewards’ enclosure

A rollicking good evening with the Stewards, a team of 50 young people from around the world. They have looked after us here incredibly cheerfully and capably. Four of them, from the Indian Ocean, England, South Africa and USA gave us the benfit of their particular wisdom. With great poise and precision, they outlined some observations and hopes for the Church and the world. They saw themselves as the Church of now, not the future, and were keen to live for Christ and change the world.

For all the frustrations of staying awake through the long hours and herding episcopal cats all day, they were powerfully made aware of what a glorious global fellowship the Anglican communion actually is. Even if it is what Tolkein called “a quest on the edge of a knife” it was onvious to them that this one body functions on the basis of freedom and love, not compulsion. Bishops talked, a lot, in hundreds of languages, not because they had to, but because they were invested in each other’s lives and calling, and disciples of Christ.

Penny, hoping to be ordained, looked on her time stewarding this event as good practice for being a particpant in 30 years time. Someone who had done 2 conferences this way was in the room. Will it be here to be part of? That is obviously up to God. The Kingdom is far, far more significant to God than the institutional Anglican Communion in itself. Who can say what our lives will be? But this has been an unforgettable experience for us all, and a world without the capacity to gather such a diverse spectrum from 130 nations in unity, in Christ, on the basis of love not imperialism and compulsion, would be a far poorer place.

Beware the Words of Weasels

A rather fun conversation before lunch involved trying to explain various senses of the term “orthodox” which is beginning to do the rounds of some quarters of the communion. Properly, of course, it refers to the Holy Orthodox Churches, whose agreed designation it has been since the 11th Century at least. Now it’s beginning to be used with a slight curl of the upper lip as a badge of rigid right wing conformity to type.

With all such terms, even “Christian” or “Methodist,” you have to ask “who says you’re / they’re one of those?” If the only answer is, “I do, along with my close compadres,” you can be pretty sure you're being sold a pup. Similarly there are words like “revisionist” which seem to play the same role in right wing parlance that “fundamentalist” does in left wing banter. You can pretty much bet your bottom dollar that they are merely hostile name-calling, no more. If you hear them used, you can just ask the person using them to put their brain into gear and try and articulate what or who they really mean, and on what basis.

The only way to stay sane and be courteous is to pass a rigid self-denying ordinance that “I will only use of other people designations they use of themselves.” This could helpfully be supplemented by a simple Bart Simpson Blackboard resolution: “I will not hi-jack other people’s labels to spite my enemies.” If all that came out of this Lambeth were a few people resolving along these lines, that would be grief to the weasels, and joy to the world.

Lambeth — The Real Deal

As the Lambeth Conference 2008 group photographs go out, the true picture is emerging — drawn by Dave Walker, cartoonist in residence. We’re all there, in gruesome detail. Having Dave around has given a real sense of proportion to the conference, and some contact with outer reality. Dave’s presence has greatly blessed us., more than he will ever know, perhaps.

Hard engineering by Indaba

Today brought two indaba sessions on the Covenant, a subject which I have to admit I have always seen as rather top-shelf. Our group included a senior leader in the covenant process, so it was a real test of whether the indaba method can produce serious work on hard and technical subjects.

Pretty much everyone spoke, and it was noticeable that they were listening carefully to each other and interacting. Nobody could simply switch off the subject. Although there were strong and well established views among some group members, one or two speakers gladly owned up to shifts in their positions induced by listening to other peoples’ contributions. There was no grandstanding, name calling or “point of order” timewasting. The expert input in the group was treated with tremendous respect, but not put on a pedestal. One new creative way forward was generated within the group, to go back into the process. We were well led and enabled, but the leader did not have to exert any heavyweight refereeing skills. I have to say the sessions were tiring, but far more engaged, drawing in a far wider group of people, than I expected.

As to the result we could all see the purpose of having a covenant as a positive basis for communion apart from history or habit. We felt the appendix that has been designed to give it effect seemed far too legalistic for most of us. Some Churches would find it profoundly incompatible with their order. We could see why some felt it was very important to have something hard. We were as yet undecided as to what or how, but there was a clear sense of the theological, social and legal parameters within which the drafting group would thus have to work.

A success? I think everyone felt they had been taken seriously, and once we could see where the real sticking points were, it was remarkable how the group almost instinctively collaborated to develop a solution, rather than cobber others with their individual positions. It was also interesting how people did not tone down their expression to the mediochre, but showed great freedom and clarity around their deepest convictions. I was also impressed by the way in which, when Scriptural inputs happened, people showed great humility and desire to be corrected if there was anything they had misunderstood in the text — a great desire to get beyond soundbites, and use the knowledge of the group. Nothing in the democratic nature of the group compromised respect for our expert contributor, especially because his graciousness and willingness to engage in a non-defensive way were notable. Negatively, I'd have to say this way of working takes more getting used to than I thought it would, to get the best out of its possibilities. I’d be fascinated to see this kind of technique used in other Church contexts, now we have begun to get the hang of how it works.

Love bombed by a Lord Bishop

I spent some time this morning being buttonholed by enthusiastic people trying to push copies of Michael Nazir-Ali’s latest book at me. The first time round I tactfully declined, already having a large bag of promotional materials. The second time, I explained I really didn’t want one, given the way in which +Michael’s words have been twisted in and by the media to make him a less than helpful voice on the ground in many of my Muslim majority areas. I also explained how much I would have preferred his voice in person than in print. The third time round, I was in a hurry, did the Anglican thing, and caved in. I’ll look forward to reading and perhaps even reviewing his book here, sometime after this conference.

Someone at lunch said of it “Remaindered — already?” “No, no,” I said. “Very odd, then,” said my companion. “How extraordinary to sit twenty miles up the road, refusing to talk with the rest of us, but choosing instead to address us in print.” I understood, of course. I tried to explain that Love has many languages, and remote control bombing people with paperbacks from twenty miles away is just one of them.

Our conversation petered off the subject of +Michael, and into tales we all had of teenage children who had gone off in a sulk and could only be brought back into the family, sometimes after many years, by remaining open to them, whilst refusing to be carried away into angry responses by their childishness, lest any of us say things we would later regret.

On to the Sexuality hearings — the lowest attended of any so far, by a fair old way... and at the microphone as I speak, it’s 11 UK, North American bishops and 2 from the rest of the world. If it doesn’t rain I may go off for a run...

Hitting the wall or breaking through?

Things could well be getting what our Caribbean friends call Crucial. Yesterday afternoon’s meeting to share creative ways forward felt rather stuck, with three potential ideas nobody seemed to much want developed in detail. It was OK, but essentially consisted of the same old win/lose thinking from the same old people, the vast majority US or UK. It’s a grim thought but without the indaba process we could have been spending two weeks like this.

This experience does at least establish that we can’t make anything different without thinking different, which was pretty obvious, I suppose.

We’re not quite there yet I realise. Bad experience of old methods certainly vindicates the organisers’ decision not just to re-run the 1998 process. Another bishop said to me today that, actually, to get 650-odd incompatible people from 130 countries to listen to each other and communicate together, breaking bread as Christians, and praying through their problems without rancour or the smack of top-down authoritarianism, is in itself a reasonably unusual thing to happen in today’s world.

The indaba process seems to have been honoured. I was talking to our listener today, and he was telling me about comparing notes between the indaba groups for sympathetic resonance, then crystalising the widest held strong convictions into the document. It’s not every English bishop’s cup of tea, but it certainly gives voices to the voiceless, and may well beat Westminster Custard Pie fighting as a basis for real progress.

Here, for example, is a blog entry from George Packard, that is more wonderful the more I reflect on it:

If the Anglican Communion would just turn over their troubles to my 40 member indaba group everything would be fine. We had a break through as an American female bishop likened our church to siblings arguing in the back seat of the family car. There was a murmur of final understanding since there had been a wonder if those Episcopalians were coming unglued. No, just poking each other the way kids do. "But we stay together and that's what makes unwanted boundary crossings by South American and African bishops so confusing." She said.

I was re-playing that fateful day in Minneapolis in 2003 in my mind when we confirmed Gene Robinson's consecration and how no one gave much of a passing thought to how this news would impact anyone in this room. Some have been beaten and called members of "the gay church" in cultures where sympathizers like that were stoned, others have died...not because of Gene but because dioceses have rejected the HIV-AIDS assistance from the American church's tainted money.

The conversation--for the Americans and the Canadians--had real remorse in it: we acted without care for the greater family and we were deeply sorry. I'm not saying the consecration wouldn't have happened but the hurt of disregard for them--which was plain and evident--would not have been there.

Then Bishop Michael of Sudan continued as he said that his church was only getting used to thinking about homosexuals now with that he composed a prayer right on the spot emphasizing his point. After the entreaty to "Our dear Lord" it was as sensitive a summary of their uncertain lives in his land that I had ever heard. We were silent. (I wonder if this Lambeth is about where had hoped the 1998 meeting would have been in the appreciation of basic gay lives and rights.)

The bishop went on to say that we had to give he and his people some time; elevating gay persons into leadership positions of authority was confusing to him and his congregations. "Can't a baptized person get into heaven without you making him a bishop for awhile?" He had us there. As he was speaking I wasn't sure if the nods were in sympathy or agreement. It seemed like both and it came about as there was an acceptance of North American remorse.

The atmosphere in the room had changed. Said our facilitator, "We seem to arrived at a special level of trust." And that seemed to hold true for the heretofore stilted conversations about the Covenant too, that code of conduct we have all been dreading. Now, there was a growing consensus around the things which make us an affirmed, communion of churches in search of a grace-filled process which would come to the rescue when we get out of sorts with each other. It had been the meanderings in recent years for the right venue to discuss this which has been so maddening.

The vast majority of us in the middle, if you like, are now looking to the people who have more absolute ideas, left and right, to raise their game. If a few of them manage to do that, as well as having invented another way of decision making that takes every voice more seriously than our run of the mill synods and councils, we could achieve a significant breakthrough.

Rowan: a word from the Sudan

I was immensely struck by Ruth Gledhill’s refreshingly self-aware account of a conversation today with a Sudanese Bishop here at Lambeth:

I met a bishop from Sudan. The Sudanese caught the attention of the world early on in the conference with their statement that Gene Robinson should resign.

“What are you planning to do now?” I asked the good bishop, meaning what cunning strategy did they have devised to make things go their way at Lambeth.

He looked at me thoughtfully.

“Now, we are planning to get on a train and go to London and go shopping with our eyes.”

I was not to be deterred.

“How has the Archbishop of Canterbury done here? What do you think of him?”

His eyes lit up.

“The Archbishop of Canterbury is like a saint. We are so impressed. We have never known anyone quite like him. He has had all these important people here, the Coptic archbishop, the Orthodox, the Chief Rabbi, all these Cardinals. Every time he puts them on the podium and lifts them up above himself. It is as if he is saying, listen to these people before you listen to me. Oh he is such a leader. He is a true Christian. He is so humble. His witness has been so powerful. That is the message we are taking back to Sudan.”

I have to say I have been moved, almost to tears at times, by stories from the Sudan in Indaba and elsewhere. Here are people whose faithfulness is tested every day by official and unofficial persecution, war, poverty, injustice and hardship. They have also been very clear that they value the Communion, and do not want to break it up. They have also absolutely clear in standing up for what they see as Biblical standards against Western interpretations. How those principles can be put together is something we have to work out; and how to offer the good bishop and his colleagues real solidarity.

I should also say that this bishop’s words about Rowan were echoed by a conversation I had last night with some of the stewards who have been looking after us, and had been similarly struck.

Lambeth: Rabbit in the Hat?

Some people, understandably, look to Lambeth for a magic blueprint. I don’t see this happening:

1. There’s a process for Covenant and another for Windsor follow-up. Both are out for consultation. If Lambeth gazumps those processes, we really will be in a fix. We need to stick to the paths to which we’ve committed.
   
2. Lambeth 1:10, much discussed is not gong to be revisited because it does represent something cebtral to where the vast majority of Anglicans in the world actually are. Some will like this and some won’t but that’s the fact.
   
3. If we produce a toolbox for people to rebuild communion, the law of unintended consequences means it will be used in various ways. Nice Bishops will use the tools to fix the shed. Some touchline lobby groups will use the hammer to smash the windows, and go round poking their enemies in the eye with the screwdriver. These people have already worked merry hell in the communion, by strring up contention, sowing mistrust, and whipping people into their own foreign powergames. Best develop toolboxes slowly and deliberately, not here over the next day or so.

So what is emerging? I’ve spent the morning in a fantastc indaba, freindly, respectful, clearly focussed on the hard stuff, but good humoured. It’s illegal to discriminate against gay people in Los Angeles. It’s illegal not to in places homosexuality is a capital offence. Whatever we say, there are villages in Sub-Saharan Africa where the one generator runs a satelite TV set which will instantly beam the results, chewed about by Western Media, into the homes of the people. Local bishops then have to pick up the consequences, sometimes in the face of violent persecution.

Brian MacLaren challenged us to try and work the issues before us missionally, rather than as problems in machine age dogmatics. A lot of talk so far has been essentially about how the ship is running, rather than where the ship is going.

1. We are the bridgehead of a renewed humanity in Christ, organs of the Body of Christ. Maximus the Confessor speaks of the Church as an enfleshing of Christ in the world. But how?
   
2. African voices here tell me that God’s word is addressed to people through the Sciptures as they are where they are. Therefore, to quote the late Max Warren, “It takes a whole world to know Christ.”
3. Our priority, thus, has to be Christ, whom we have to value and represent more than the cultural wrappings with which we received him. Vincent Donovan’s percetion, as an RC missionary among the Masai in the 1960’s, was that it is futile and non-incarnational to start from the centralised dogmatic end. Rather faith had to be built among people from the other end, with great cultural sensitivity. That’s how Jesus worked; from street level up, not Jerusalem down. We need to work as Jesus worked.
4. How? One great controversy of the 1860’s at Lambeth I was polygamy on the mission field. It took until 1978 for the Lambeth conference to express trust in missionary dioceses to call this one correctly in their own circumstances. Today’s communications and the speed of cultural change among us do not give us 100 years to develop trust among us around our own cultural mandates as we enflesh the Incarnation. We could, of course, simply split. That is the way of the world. Or we can challenge that way of the world, by distinguishing first from second order clearly, and choosing to walk together, different as we are.
   

Wisdom of the Solomons...

... voice of the martyrs? Still searching for the pick of original voices to inform our thinking, I came across an engaging and interesting contribtion by Terry Brown, Bishop of Malaita, Province of Melanesia, to the Hearing on Lambeth Reflections Draft, yesterday. This province has seen martyrs this century, seven Melanesian brothers killed by a sectarian warlord in 2003. This province has a consistent and honourable record of Christian witness and maryrdom, going back to Bishop Patteson. +Terry says:

I was confirmed in The Episcopal Church, by a black bishop of Massachusetts. I was made deacon and ordained a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada, in the diocese of Fredericton, a Loyalist diocese, by a bishop whose ancestors ran away from the American Revolution because they distrusted liberalism, political and otherwise.

I was consecrated a bishop in the Church of the Province of Melanesia, a global south diocese, where all the Millennium Development Goals score about 3 out of 10, even though we are great dancers.

And to make matters worse, my own sexuality is "dodgy". I live in and am a part of all four worlds -- The Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada, the Church of Melanesia and the pained world of gay and lesbian laity, deacons, priests and bishops.

Yet I am a bishop of a diocese that is full of life and has had much growth. In my last 12 years as bishop, I have confirmed 10,000 candidates. The diocese is deeply involved in evangelism, education, medical work, liturgy and peace and reconciliation.

My life as a bishop in all four worlds is possible only because of my faith in Jesus Christ. I had a conversion experience in which I felt deeply loved by God. That, the Eucharist, the life of Christian friendship and community, and Scripture, have sustained me through thick and thin.

From my perspective, do I have any suggestions for the text of the final Reflection?

“Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you.” There are many other competing kingdoms, do not bow to them.

As much as is in you, try to maintain communion and friendship with all, whether inside or outside the church, however deep the disagreement.

Reject the Puritan option. We are Anglicans, not Puritans.

Exercise restraint and urge others to do so, whether locally or globally. Not everything has to be said or written about.

Be very careful in using typologies to classify people, theologies and churches. We are all the children of God, redeemed, with all of creation, by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

If you have not done so, accept all the gay and lesbian people in your midst, in all their complexity, pain and celebration.

Finally, let the conversations (even debate) continue. Television has finally come to the Solomon Islands, so we now have the privilege of seeing BBC interview both Gene Robinson and Greg Venables. In our case, I do not think the church will thereby collapse. But in other situations, that may not be the case, and the endless talking to the media of both may be destructive. That is my final suggestion -- remember that whatever you say publicly in this wired age, will go to every corner of the world. Honesty and prudence are both Christian virtues. We need to learn to balance them.

Thank you.

How Anglicans use the Bible

I have not met anyone here of whom it would be true to say simply that they do not believe in the Authority of Scripture. How we believe in what kind of authority are other questions. Here are some indications of the ways a group of us form five continents, in Indaba, saw our distinctively Anglican use of the Bible. How are we, as Anglicans, “formed by Scrpture?”

• The Word of God is a person, not a text. In Islam, for example, the Qu’ran is a privileged untransalteable text. For Christians Scrupture has authority as it is interprteed and applied, not as a simple absolute. We are very resistant to idolatry; idolatry of the book, idolatry of reason, idolatry of tradition. All three are resources for the Spirit, not totems or weapons against other children of God. We need to interpret the Scriptures through the icon of Christ.
  
• We take the text very seriously in itself, in all of its subtlety, richness, occasional divergence and uncertainty. We begin with what it means in its own terms and historical context. So we establish the Sctipture we transmit and guard, distinguishing it carefully from our response. For example, in the Early Church women were to wear hats and be submissive so as to win their husbands for Christ. How would a woman in any of our various contemporary cultures behave so as to reflect Christ to her spouse and wn them? Absolutizing wearing hats in itself is a superficial and inadequately contextualized response to this text.
  
• We then go on to take an honest view of our real world circumstances. Scripture speaks directly to each person, as who they are and where they are. Therefore we need to be aware of our own cultural spectacles as we read, before we try and inculturate any meaning we believe we can derive from the text. The Holy Spirit inspires a process of recognition and sympathetic resonance, by which Christ speaks to us where we are, and as the people we are.
  
• Our Church community and communion that hold us accountable to the Scriptures, as this process is prayerfully pursued in fellowship. If you want to know what we believe, and how the Scriptures form us, worship with us.
  
• There has tendency in the post-enlightenment West to erect Reason into an absolute, or even idol. Even Conservative Anglicans sometimes mine the scriptures for soundbites or notions, then extract them from their context and absolutize them in a way that can even compromise basic principles of Christian discipleship. Sometimes (as in prosperity theology) one element is isolated against others in a distorting way. It is the whole counsel of God we must seek, distinguishing clearly between the use of our mind as a tool for discernment, into which God can speak, and any tendency to engage in merely rationalist discourse, Conservative or Liberal.
  

Rowan Williams: rabbit in the hat?

Much interesting discussion this morning about Rowan’s address last night. He laid out exactly what the position is, in terms of our people see each other from both sides of the divide. All I’d want to add is that the vast majority of people here are on neither side of a divide, but somewhere in between. Both in capturing the content of the various positions, and in his method, he seemed to have caught matters exactly correctly.

Under the surface I also took his method as a good one to copy, where you only speak of others using terms they would use of themselves, putting yourself in their position. This makes a refreshing change from some of the hostile suspicion and namecalling that has taken place, which is in itself unworthy of the people concerned.

Our group this morning felt we needed to begin with reality. We can all fixate on “if only’s” — if only the US bishops hadn’t proceeded, if only Lambeth 1998 hadn’t been so mismanaged and poorly led, if only the Nigerians had come. All this is fantasy. The Chief Rabbi’s holy pragmatism was a better starting point. Rowan is inviting us to be more humble, to listen, to repent, to enlarge our hearts. This means dying to our fantasy rallying points and hostile preconceptions, so that we attain a state of reality, responding to the call to life of the Lord who called Lazarus to life. If, on the other hand, we just cant let go of that stuff, then we stay in the tomb. The life of Anglicanism does not depend on the institutional wellbeing of Anglican structures, which will plainly have to morph, bend and perhaps even break. It’s a simple spiritual choice, really.

To think of Rowan as some master-technicial whose job is to develop some bolt-on solution, like perpetual motion or nuclear fusion, is a cop-out. What he can do is

1. to put us back in touch with the healing resources of Scripture and core Christian tradition
2. cast honest and godly visions,
3. bring home to people the realities of what they are really saying,
4. model the processes he commends,
5. scope the realities of this passing world for us, but also those of a world which will never end.

All these things he is dong trasparently honestly and effectively. Those who seem to prefer authoritarianism, sour puritans or fantasy Romanists, don’t know what a big opportunity we’re being given to get real, and so to see God revealed (as in Galatians text at the beginning of the retreat) in us...