Posted Tuesday 22 January 2008
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has launched the official programme for Lambeth Conference 2008, ‘Equipping Bishops for Mission’. Here is an extract from Dr Williams’ statement:
“I’d like to start by putting this year’s Lambeth Conference in some kind of context by saying a brief word or two about how it got started. The first Lambeth Conference was called by Archbishop Charles Longley in 1867 - partly, as it happens, in response to a crisis about the limits of diversity allowed in the Anglican churches around the world; so there’s nothing so very new about a Lambeth Conference meeting in a climate of some controversy.
“But the important new fact about the Anglican family of churches at that point was that it was a time when non-English and indeed non-white influences were for the first time making a real impact in the Communion, and needed to be celebrated and affirmed. Not only did the Canadian Church contribute strongly to the thinking around the Conference; it was also attended by the first black Anglican bishop, Samuel Crowther from Nigeria, who had been made a bishop just three years earlier.
“It was a moment when there was a real acknowledgement that a worldwide Church had to find ways of sharing its challenges and its triumphs - and some aspects of its decision-making.”
Further Information
Read the full statement on the Archbishop’s website.
Category: Anglican Communion
