Lambeth

Lambeth (pronounced lam-bith)

(1) A south London suburb, the location of Lambeth Palace, the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

(2) A slang term for the hierarchy of the Church of England.

The name Lambeth embodies hithe, a Middle English word for a landing on the river.  Lambeth Palace has for some eight-hundred years been the official London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury.  It sits on the south bank of the Thames, a quarter mile (400m) south-east of the Palace of Westminster, which contains the houses of parliament, on the opposite bank.

Rowan Williams (b 1950; Archbishop of Canterbury 2002-2012) and Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022) chat at Lambeth Palace.

The Lambeth Conference

The Lambeth Conference is a (nominally) decennial assembly of bishops of the Anglican Communion convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury.  There have been fourteen Lambeth Conferences, the first in 1867.  The Anglican Communion is an international association of autonomous national and regional churches, not a governing body and the office of Archbishop of Canterbury is in no way analogous with the Roman Catholic Pope.  The conferences serve a collaborative and consultative function and are said to express “…the mind of the communion" on issues of the day. Resolutions passed at a Lambeth Conference are without legal effect, but can be influential.

Conferences were never the pure and high-minded discussions of ethics, morality and theology some now appear to believe characterized the pre-modern (in this context those held prior to 1968) events.  Agenda and communiqués from all conferences have always included the procedural, administrative and jurisdictional although in recent years, they’ve certainly reflected an increasingly factionalized communion rent with cross-cutting cleavages, first over the ordination of women and of late, homosexual clergy.  During the 1998 conference, Bishop Chukwuma (b 1954) of Nigeria attempted to exorcise "homosexual demons" from the soul of Nigerian-born Richard Kirker (b 1951), a British priest and general secretary of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement.  Recalling probably Ephesians 4:32 or perhaps the more cautionary Matthew 6:15, Kirker forgave him.

The spirit of Kirker notwithstanding, at this point, the disagreements seem insoluble.  The poisonous atmosphere at, and in the aftermath of, the last conference in 2008 did not enhance the image of the church and a typically Anglican solution to avoid a repetition in 2018 seemed to have emerged.  In 2014, in answer to the suggestion he had cancelled the 2018 conference, Archbishop Justin Welby (b 1956; 105th Archbishop of Canterbury 2013-), in a statement worthy of any of his predecessors, responded by stating, "As it hasn’t been called, it can’t have been cancelled."

A communiqué issued after the primates' meeting in January 2016, noted the bishops had accepted the archbishop’s proposal the fifteenth conference should be held in 2020.  However, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was in March 2020 decided to postpone the conference to the summer of 2021 but the virus proved elusive and by July, the delay had been extended to 2022.  The first epistle of Peter has been chosen as the biblical focus for the conference, the theme of which is said to be what it means to be “God’s Church for God’s World”.  The apostle Peter wrote this epistle to give comfort to Christians suffering persecution from non-believers, hoping to encourage them to live pure lives despite their vicissitudes.

#lambeth got tagged in Lindsay Lohan's political commentaries on the dramatic night of the Brexit referendum in 2016.  She was a part of Team %remain.  

Peter didn’t sugar-coat the message (1 Peter 4:12-19), making it clear that for Christians, suffering is actually a participation in the sufferings of Christ and is an occasion for rejoicing, helpfully adding that in the midst of the suffering, the Holy Spirit rests upon those who are suffering, this being a great consolation.  He further explains that God uses suffering to purify the Christian community, God's household.  God uses the abuse that pagans unjustly heap on Christians to prepare his people for the return of Christ and warns people not to be surprised at the fiery ordeal that will come upon them as followers of Jesus.  Actually, they should be both grateful and happy and thus glorify God, for if they share in Christ’s sufferings it means they will also share in his glory.

In a world beset by fire, flood, pestilence and plague, 1 Peter seems a good theme to loom over a Lambeth Conference.  Whether or not Christians beyond the Kent conference rooms will long note the message, it probably will resonate with Archbishop Welby’s predecessor, Rowan Williams (Baron Williams of Oystermouth, b 1950; 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, 2002-2012).  During his tenure at Lambeth, Dr Williams probably felt more ignored than persecuted by non-believers, finding the internecine squabbles of the believers in the Anglican factions rather more tiresome.  Declaring the problems in the church “insoluble” he seemed not unhappy to be leaving Lambeth to return to his study and write about Dostoevsky.  A generous spirit, he will have wished his successor well.