via ANGLICAN COMMUNION NEWS SERVICE

FROM THE WEEKLY BULLETIN OF
ST MARTIN IN THE FIELDS, LONDON
9 AUGUST 1998

The Acts of the Apostles tell us about Lydia, a woman who sold fine purple cloth and who was devout. Her sales figures would have been soaring had she been present in Canterbury over the last few weeks, given the number of Bishops and the Lambeth Conference. We too have felt their presence in London; they have been welcomed to the Palace and floated in a boat ride down the Thames, they have even turned up in church as well as capturing our media headlines.

They have managed to provoke extremes of anger and gladness within me as I have observed and listened to their conversations. I have found myself profoundly disagreeing with some of their conclusions, especially when they dismissed whole sectors of human experience. I equally have been moved to tears, such as when listening to Geralyn Woolfe, the recently consecrated Bishop of Rhode Island, USA. She was interviewed with shaven head, following therapy for breast cancer speaking of her experiences of human and divine vulnerability.

Despite all my attempts to dismiss Lambeth as a 'waste of money' or a 'talking shop', I realised that what Bishops said and stood for mattered. They matter because they are physical reminders of the universal and global fellowship of the church whose horizons are far broader than even the horizons of St Martin's. Secondly, they are reminders that Anglicanism is based on principles of conciliarity, not collegiality or uniform coherence. Our structures, ethos and way of local life are mirrored in our Communion. Belong to each other for mutual counsel and the sharing of insight. We are bound to the real, sharp discipline required to seek the mind of C in a church which has to be untidy if it is to be anyway related to real human life. Projection of our own anxieties or our requirements for answers or affirmation on to father/mother figures, in the end, is not the way to maturity in Christ.

• Return to Louie Crew's collection of materials on the Lambeth Conference.
• Louie Crew's Anglican pages.
• Louie Crew's home page.
• Send mail to: lcrew@newark.rutgers.edu

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