Presidential Address to Down & Dromore Diocesan Synod 2008

Diocesan News

Posted on 24/06/2008

[The following is an excerpt from the Presidential Address to the Synod of the Diocese of Down and Dromore on Thursday 19 June 2008 by Bishop Harold Miller. The full address may be found at http://www.ireland.anglican.org/index.php?do=news&newsid=2233.]

Let me be honest with you: I thought long and hard before deciding to go to the Lambeth Conference this year. So long and so hard that, when I detailed my thinking of the issues I have been examining to the clergy in an Ad Clerum, several said to me: ‘When we were reading it, we thought you weren’t going, but then we got to the last sentence which said you were!’ They were discerning people, and what they said made me think.

Here are some of my issues:

(i) Up to a quarter of our bishops in the Communion will probably not feel able to be at Lambeth this year. And they probably represent around 50% of our membership of the Anglican Communion. The way they see it is this: The Episcopal Church has not abided by what it was asked to do in Lambeth 1:10 and subsequently by the other instruments of the Anglican Communion. Those who consecrated Gene Robinson will be there, and (in the case of some parts of Africa in particular) the witness of the Church in their culture will be undermined by the media circus which will follow the Bishop of New Hampshire. I am deeply saddened that about 200 bishops, some from the fastest-growing parts of the Communion, will not be present. I really wish they could be there, not least because many are close friends. But they do not feel able to come, and I believe that will have certain effects:

• It will undermine to some degree the moral authority of Lambeth
• It will mean we are only a partial ‘communion’ gathered, as has happened before
• It will mean those voices cannot be heard at Lambeth.

As you know, at this very moment, many of these people are meeting at the GAFCON Conference in the Middle East, and many of us will be listening carefully at what they say.

(ii) The Nature of the Conference will be quite different. It will be like a retreat-come- training-conference and a meeting and listening place for bishops. That bothers me, even if it is the only realistic thing which can happen. Again, I ask certain questions:

• Who is doing the ‘training’ and how is it going to be ‘slanted, or is it, or will it be neutral?
• What exactly does ‘listening’ mean - when The Episcopal Church in the USA does not seem to have listened? Does it mean ‘you must keep on listening till you come round to a particular point of view?
• Is it worth the vast sums of money being expended simply to do something to keep the show on the road!

(iii) I am concerned about who has and has not been invited. Let me give you two illustrations. Bishop Robinson Cavalcanti, with the vast majority of clergy in his diocese, was removed from the Episcopal Church of Brazil because of his conservative way of thinking. I had the great pleasure of visiting one of his churches in Receife a year and a half ago while on holiday. They had been removed and came under the protection of the Southern Cone. They were vibrant, growing, warm-hearted, Christian people, totally without bitterness. But their Bishop will not be there. He, like so many others, including the theologian Jim Packer, has been ‘removed’ by an intolerant ‘liberalism’. On the other hand, the bishop of a Canadian diocese (New Westminster) cited in the Windsor Report, having applied legislation for same sex blessings in some churches in his diocese, will be there. Plus, the two or more Bishops from California who have just affirmed the same way forward these past weeks.

The actual end result is that, far from what it might appear on the media, the majority of bishops who have not been invited are not the ‘liberals’, but ‘conservatives’ who have provided alternative oversight, most of whom are based in African churches, through organizations such as CANA and AMiA.

Well, then, why go at all; why did I say ‘yes’ to Lambeth?

I must admit, it doesn’t altogether make logical sense. But I have taken the jump for several reasons:

1. I am not generally an ‘opter-out’. I believe you can only influence by being there, and I want to engage, with the people and issues concerned.
2. I want to stand in solidarity with my eleven brother-bishops in the Church of Ireland, who will be there (we have freed each other to make our own decisions); also with our link brother-bishops of Albany (Bill Love), Maridi (Justin Badi) and Southern Cone (Greg Venables) who will all be there. We send greetings from Down & Dromore to these three bishops.
3. I believe it could well be in the interest of some to destroy the Lambeth Conference as an instrument of communion, and to take away its moral authority, and I don’t want in way to be party to that.
4. I want to be involved in the one area which we know the Lambeth Conference will discuss: the proposed Anglican Covenant. I believe it is vital to get this one right if it is to be part of the healing, unifying and safeguarding of the Communion.
5. I’ve put it like this: ‘I’m prepared to give it another chance’. If I’m honest, I do not see how our Communion will, or can, hold together with people going more and more out on a limb. I am aware that such people are creating disunity within the Communion and ecumenical distress with other churches, and concern in other churches who relate to us. But I don’t want to give up hope, just yet!

In the light of all of that, I will spend three weeks in Lambeth with Liz from 15 July to 3 August (if we can survive that long!). But I have also decided to find ways of hearing the voices of those who cannot be there, and of taking those fully into account as well, and I have yet to decide on my precise level of participation.

While all of this is happening, many of you will be on holidays. Might I ask, not formally but passionately, that you pray fervently for our beloved and much valued Communion, and especially for the Archbishop of Canterbury, during those three weeks, which are bound to be pivotal in the history of Anglicanism?

+ Harold
Bishop of Down & Dromore

This article comes from the Church of Ireland
http://www.ireland.anglican.org/

The URL for this story is:
http://www.ireland.anglican.org/index.php?do=news&newsid=2233