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February 1999

There were about 250 people present at the Conference including 12 bishops and representatives from 32 dioceses. I couldn’t count more than 8 bishops present. Perhaps some were in the closet. The Church and Wales and the Scottish Episcopal Church were also represented.

Lengthy introductions were made and notices given, which put the morning’s timetable way behind time. There was a brief moment of prayer before we began.

Anthony Priddis, Bishop of Derby, began by giving a factual, succinct report of what happened at Lambeth. Sexuality wasn’t the main focus, he said. Other issues such as international debt were an important part of the agenda, and the Bible studies and acts of worship were for him the most significant experiences. He informed us that the most conservative amendment to the sexuality resolution was passed by 389 votes to 190, a far smaller margin than the final vote.

Peter Selby, Bishop of Worcester, spoke next. He said the lesbigay people on the edge of the Conference behaved with immense dignity. The issue of sexuality swept his subject, international debt, out of people’s attention, and maybe this was the idea form some quarters. He met Duncan Buchanan and Njongonkulu Ndungane regularly during the Conference being part of the same section. He didn’t sleep well. He felt he was struggling against the spiritual rulers of wickedness and felt a profound sense of the sinister overhanging the Conference.

He felt pride in the assembling of this Christian gathering, but said that evil stalks close. He was totally and deeply ashamed of Lambeth. The final plenary session felt something like a Nuremberg rally. People around him were hissing those who voted for liberal amendments. It was a dangerous occasion. A colleague bishop in his are had said that the pain and the shame element has got worse since the Lambeth Conference, not dissipated.

Michael Bourke, Bishop of Wolverhampton, said that nothing should be allowed but a person’s natural humanity. He reflected on the Bible study by the Bishop of Ely at the Anglican Eucharist on the morning of the debate, a service based on the new liturgies. The bishop brought all the biblical big guns out, an indication of the homophobia in attitudes towards the afternoon’s debate.

The next morning’s service was a Japanese Eucharist on the feast of the Transfiguration. When the peace arrived, in the aftermath of the debate, what he felt like saying was ‘bugger off.’ Nevertheless, the service, grounded in Japan’s war experience, was about real reconciliation and the Gospel.

At Lambeth, sexuality was an undercurrent from day 1. He could only pick up crumbs of information from the sub-section. The bishops from South Africa were aware that the gay issue was the same as all other forms of discrimination. African and Asian bishops felt that it was another part of the western liberal agenda. There was a real shift of power in the communion and they didn’t want to talk about the issues. They felt the English talked about it all the time, and the Americans were acting counter-culturally in the States, so you shouldn’t talk to us a bout taking a counter-cultural line in our countries. It is a criminal offence to have sex with a person of the same gender in most African countries. The Conference was a thousand miles from knowing what listening means. There was a 3 minute limit on speeches which meant they were superficial and loaded with Biblical texts. He wondered whether putting in his clause about listening had done more harm than good, encouraging bishops to vote for the final resolution who might otherwise have been disturbed enough to vote against.

The 1988 resolution, he reminded us, was never heard of again. Also, disputes around the ordination of women issue were conspicuous by their absence.

He talked about fragments of remembered pain from Lambeth.

There was the demonstration outside Eliot Court by American fundamentalists, and the action of a group of university students in challenging the injustice and homophobia being expressed. These Christians had created an evangelical tragedy, placing obstacles in the way of the gospel for these students. The students prised human rights and personal freedom and found this use of the Bible abusive.

Few of the bishops wore the rainbow ribbons which were distributed, but after the debate, ribbons sprouted on the breasts of those employed to serve food and wait at the tables. There was a gulf between the Episcopal delegates at the Conference and the young people employed to work there, a prejudiced sensibility. They bore a courageous, silent witness against injustice.

Another bishop was asked by his wife during the Conference to find out whether Richard Holloway was gay. He was wearing a badge, bought in San Francisco - I’m straight but not narrow.

The strongest issue for Richard are the real values of the Christian Gospel. He talked about the effect of coming out as a Christian among his gay friends.

At Lambeth, an atmosphere of contempt characterised the plenary debate. Hatred is hatred, and it was freely expressed that afternoon. It was alienating for young people and painful and hurtful to gay and lesbian people. The bishops turned their backs on the instincts of the young people we most need in church. Although a bishop from African had described approval for gays as evangelical suicide, the resolution was evangelical suicide for us. He recognised there was a sincere anxiety for the safety of the church in cultures very different from our own. Simon Hoggart has written that this topic has expired in this country, except in the church.

We have a dilemma. How are we to live with the resolution and what are we to make of it? He thought the issue underlying all this was the interpretation of scripture - the scriptures as personally written by God. The inerrancy of scripture was not effectively tackled at Lambeth. The Anglican Communion has in reality long since departed from this position, ordaining women. The women’s issue has expired as well, it’s just that some parts of the CofE haven’t twigged it yet. Different cultures will generate different approaches to scripture.

There is a problem with the nature of institutions. An intrinsic conflict between the Spirit of Jesus and institutional power, an unavoidable tension, articulated in his own life. There is a necessary process of carrying the new vision of humanity through history. The great gift that was given by Jesus has to be embodied in a mechanism. Visions cannot be perfectly routinised or institutionalised. They become corrupted. People introduce routines and are better at guarding the process than the vision. The maintenance of the institution becomes the primary purpose. It becomes expedient that marginal and unpopular groups are kept outside rather than the whole people perish. The survival of the institution becomes primary. Compromises are made with truth and justice. The bishop referred to the Grand Inquisitor’s story in the Brothers Karamazov - ‘Jesus says nothing, but kisses his pale, bloodless lips.’ He too, is forgiven.

The church has an impossible task. To maintain an institution of power to preserve the memory of one who challenged power. Jesus was only interested in the lost. The 1 against the 99. The 70 x 7 degree of forgiveness. Expressed in God’s love for those outside . Jesus went after them, lived among them and died as one of them. Jesus’ way is no way to run an institution, not even the church. The church has to choose to lose 1 to save the 99. It’s no wonder the church does this, especially when our own lives are so cowardly. Speaking personally, he said he paid a small price in advocating justice for gay and lesbian people, receiving letters written in green ink and being attacked in newspaper articles. Jesus paid no attention to the relative cultural or institutional values of his time. He understood the corrupting compromises and the ethics of expediency, and forgives and forgives, unconditionally.

The church should mediate divine love unconditionally but the system will have to operate conditionally. By being church, we have to contradict the meaning of Jesus. The truth of God’s love does get through the church. There is a cruel conditionality on what institutions have, and the church throws them into hell. We proclaim a God who is all too eager to get rid of us.

A course of perfectionism is intrinsic to all religions, with their member’s insecure personalities and anally retentive characters, creating cruel systems, obsessed with the need to be right. Join us and you will be saved from the anger of God.

He came away from Lambeth angry. There was Bishop Michael Bourke’s bolted on resolution asking for listening and dialogue. But we have to try to forgive one another as well. To be honest Christians we have to allow ourselves to feel the tension. We have to live with the call to unconditionality and the inevitable compromises, the ethic of expediency. We have to learn to kiss the bloodless lips of those who would persecute us. He is moved by the endurance of gay and lesbian people in the church.

Jesus challenges those who sought to preserve the church from conflict and change. We should express the unconditionality of God, and be prophetic minorities. This is difficult for bishops who understand themselves as signs of unity. What came out of Lambeth was the struggle to understand the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jan is the rector of St Paul’s and St Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Rhode Island. She lives with her partner, Susan, and two cats. She worked for 25 years as a journalist in TV and radio and was press officer at the Lambeth Conference for the 11 women bishops.

Her talk referred to the Southern Baptists, literalists and fundamentalists in the States, the take-over of their convention and the tactics they used in that struggle. Dallas is the centre of Anglican traditionalists and conservatism.

Jan had distributed a sheet to which she spoke: