Lambeth Calling*

 *This is not one of my sermons but reflects my response to all-things Anglican. Read on...

One of my favorite hymns in The Hymnal 1982 begins:

Christ is made the sure foundation,

Christ the head and cornerstone,

chosen of the Lord and precious,

binding all the Church in one;

holy Zion’s help forever,

and her confidence alone.

Upon this stanza of Hymn #518, I would hope, I would think, I would pray that all of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus could agree. I would especially think that the bishops gathered from across the Anglican Communion could accept these lyrics and live into this understanding. 

How we get there is not as important as the fact that we do get there and see this as the essential truth from which we can live and move and have our being.

If only this were the only work of the bishops at Lambeth to make Christ and our commitments to walk in the way of Jesus, and love as Jesus taught us to love each other. Maybe we could all get along.

But that is not what is happening. And while I am saddened, I am not surprised.

The last time there was a Lambeth Conference it was 2008. Then Archbishop Rowan Williams invited all the bishops to England… except for one: Bishop Gene Robinson of my home diocese of NH. He was too outwardly and unashamedly gay for this gathering. Bishop Gene went to England and did a bunch of fringe events. But he was not allowed to go to tea with Queen or participate in the Indaba listening sessions because bishops from the Global South would have been uncomfortable with his presence.

So there was listening, and talking, and praying, and sharing about LGBTQ+ Christians, but the one figurehead of LGBTQ+ Christianity was not included in the official conversation.

And while the bishops did their best to keep things controlled, the Holy Spirit continued to blow through the provinces of the Communion, moving and shaking things up. Another attempt to control the Spirit came in the form of the Anglican Covenant, a document that aimed to put into a type of ecclesiastical time-out those Churches which discerned the valuable gifts brought to the Church from the LGBTQ+ community, including supporting our right to be married. The Covenant failed miserably, most notably in the Church of England where it had originated with Archbishop Williams. Shortly thereafter, the Archbishop announced he was going back to what he was better at: being a theological scholar.

In the meantime, over the past decade, The Episcopal Church in this country, the Canadian Anglican Church, Scotland, Wales and a myriad of other Churches in the Anglican Communion had all arrived at a place of seeing that LGBTQ+ people could form loving, covenantal relationships. We could preach the Gospel. We did belong in the church and fighting over such matters was a distraction from the main point: to love and serve God and one another.

By this time, we had already had our nasty, bitter break ups with those who didn’t accept LGBTQ+ Christians and they had already formed their own cathedrals and Towers of Babel under the “Anglican” Church of North America and GAFCON. ACNA had tried to get The Episcopal Church voted off the Anglican Communion island and had failed. The Lambeth Conference stalled; the GAFCONites held their own rival global meeting in Jerusalem. And then COVID hit, and the Lambeth Conference was forced to delay meeting until this year.

That’s a summation of the past fourteen years of what I call the “Anglican Angst.”  With a new Archbishop, Justin Welby, there would maybe be a chance for the bishops to get back to Christ as the sure foundation and reason for the Church to exist. Groups of bishops have been meeting with each other over Zoom. All seemed to be going well.

Then there was the news that while LGBTQ+ bishops would be allowed to attend Lambeth (yay!) their spouses were explicitly excluded (boo!) Again, this was to accommodate the comfort level of those bishops from the Global South who don’t accept marriage equality. A small step for Lambeth; a trip and fall for humankind, but whatever. 

The decision of many of the Episcopal Church bishops was to go and continue to stand for “all the sacraments for all the baptized.”

But then…as so many of them were boarding airplanes to Europe… a 58-page document dropped from the Archbishop of Canterbury titled “Lambeth Calls.” It covers ten subject areas. The bishops were to read it and be prepared to vote either “Yes” or “Yes, but with more study” to the various “calls.” Under the title “Human Dignity” there were statements condemning colonialism and past imperial actions of the church…and…oh, by the way, “the Anglican Communion is of one mind” that marriage is for a man and a woman and that homosexuality is not compatible with Scripture.

Remember: the bishops are only allowed to say, “Yes” or a “Yes, but.” There is no “No” or “Hell NO!” option.

The language of this proposal comes straight out of a 1998 resolution called Lambeth 1.10. Our Episcopal Church, and others, have rejected this stance and, in fact at our recently concluded General Convention in Baltimore, we have moved decidedly in the direction of full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in the church. So to suddenly have this dropped on our bishops for a "Yes" or "Yes, but" vote is offensive and wrong.

And the plot thickens: one of the members of the group that helped draft the Human Dignity Lambeth Call is the openly gay and married Bishop Kevin Robertson of Canada. According to a post he put out on Facebook, his study group never discussed Lambeth 1.10 as they crafted that particular call. Imagine the shock and betrayal he must have felt to discover this tucked away on page 31 of a 58-page document.

If the working group of bishops didn’t know it was in there, then who did?

Did someone let Judas into the printing press?

I am a black-shirted priest, not a purple-shirted bishop, serving a small congregation in Southwest Georgia. But unless there is a means for bishops to raise objections and get that language amended out, I would hope our diocesan leaders and Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church would consider their peace returned to them, shake the dust of this dirty deed off their feet, and refuse to participate any further in this conference.

Lambeth may have called. But the province they have reached is no longer interested in debating human sexuality.