It has been spoken of as a setting for schism. But could the Lambeth Conference — the worldwide Anglican Communion’s once-a-decade global meeting beginning July 16 in England — be a bust when it comes to headline-making news?

That’s the way leaders of the U.S. Episcopal Church see it. There will be no grand pronouncements made or resolutions voted on, they say. The traditional Western parliamentary idea that produces winners and losers on debated issues has been scrapped for face-to-face meetings. Some of them have been baptized ”Indaba groups,” which Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has described as a Zulu term denoting “a meeting for purposeful discussion among equals.”

The Rev. Ian Douglas, a professor of World Christianity at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts who helped plan the meeting, recently told reporters at a briefing:

“I appreciate that it’s going to be a hard job for the media because there isn’t a focal point of up-down decison making, and that (much) of what’s really happening … is going to be happening in very small, very close one-on-one relationships and deep conversation.

“I  don’t envy your job. It’s going to be difficult to get ‘the story’ out of Lambeth unless you want to tell the story that as leaders come together to be better equipped in their service to God’s mission in the wider world,  not only is the Anglican Communion strengthened but God’s purposes are better fulfilled in the wider world. It’s a tough story to tell but I think it’s a story.”

The 1998 Lambeth Conference did produce news — a resolution known as Lambeth 1:10 that said homosexual practice is incompatible with scripture. That pronouncement became a major part of the splintering now going on in the worldwide church after the American branch in 2003 installed the first the first bishop known to be in an openly gay relationship in more than four centuries of Anglican history — Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

Robinson was not invited to this summer’s meeting at Canterbury though he plans a fringe presence — after he weds his long-time partner in June.

The news at Lambeth ‘08 then may be more about who doesn’t come. Already 280 conservative bishops from Africa, Latin America and Asia have said they will attend a break-away summit in Jerusalem in June to “prepare for an Anglican future in which the Gospel is uncompromised and Christ-centered mission a top priority.” They expect about 1,000 conservative Anglican leaders to attend.

Bishops from Uganda, Kenya and Australia have said they plan to boycott Lambeth, to which more than 800 bishops have been invited. Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola, a leader among the traditionalists, has said he may also skip Lambeth.

Douglas, in the briefing mentioned earlier, said the hope is that the bishops who attend the meeting in Jerusalem will also go to Lambeth. There is, he said, “no fear or concern” that the Jerusalem summit is an exclusionary Lambeth alternative.

Much of this reflects Anglicanism’s structure where federation trumps hierarchy. The Episcopal News Service noted at one point that there is no complete agreement on when any resolution passed by a Lambeth Conference becomes official church teaching. The Lambeth meetings, which date to the 19th century, do not have specific authority to require compliance with their resolutions, it said.

Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, who joined Douglas at the briefing, also has a long-term view. One of the first Lambeth Conferences well over a century ago, she said, was called “to deal with issues like bishops teaching things that other bishops found uncomfortable, and bishops wandering into other bishops’ territories and how do to we transfer clergy from one part of the communion to another.

“And we still haven’t sorted that out. The gathering will continue to wrestle with some of the challenges of living together in a compex, diverse and sometimes challenging family. That is God’s gift to use and we celebrate it,” she said at the briefing (view webcast here).

It also reflects Anglicanism’s diversity, with half of its 77 million members now in Africa, Asia and Latin America, many with conservative views on issues that go deeper than just those involving gays. In terms of numbers, the bishops organizing the Jerusalem meeting claim to represent 17 countries and 35 million followers.

The road from Jerusalem to Canterbury will be closely watched.

The light being cast on China by the coming Summer Games is far brighter than the flickering Olympic flame now wending its way across that vast country. Politics, society, human rights, the status of Tibet and even the environment have been widely discussed.

Now a window has been opened on faith and religion in a country where six decades of Communist philosophy and rule might seem to have pushed those subjects into obscurity.

In a recent report the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has analyzed available surveys, some a few years old, and concluded that 31 percent of the Chinese population considers religion to be very or somewhat important in their lives, with only 11 percent rating it as meaningless. Even the exact starting time of the Summer Olympics is rooted in Confucianism and Chinese folk religions,  the report adds, where the numeral 8 is revered for its luck and power. The games will start on the 8th day of the 8th month of ‘08 at precisely 8 minutes and 8 seonds past 8 o’clock.

This does not mean that religious affiliation is high in China. Only one in five adults has an active connection, the report says, with one of the country’s five major religions — Buddhism (by far the largest single group), Protestantism, Catholicism, Islam and Taoism. That compares to 8 in every 10 adults in the United States who claim a religious affiliation.

But a recent report from East China Normal University in Shanghai appearing in state-approved media said that about 300 million Chinese over 16 — slghtly less than a third of the population in that age group — are religious, perhaps indicating the government has given recognition to the depth of religious sentiment.

The question is whether China’s modernization brought about by its economic engine will bring religion into society in a bigger way. The report notes that Hu Jintao, general secretary of the country’s Communist Party, earlier this year told the Chinese Politburo the leadedrship should try to “closely unite religious figures and believers … to build an all-around … prosperous society while quickening the pace toward the modernization of socialism.”

Photo credits: Reuters/Bobby Yip/David Gray

A papal visit, with its weeks of build-up and intense media coverage, often seems to end with an afterglow — but very little news — once the pope and his party fly back to the Eternal City. Not so with Pope Benedict’s recent U.S. visit where, more than a week after it ended, the volatile issue of public figures, the abortion & Communion issue is making headlines.

While journalists reported that prominent Catholic politicians who support abortion rights stepped up to receive the Eucharist during Masses in Washington and New York (here’s our story and blog post), the development was little more than a footnote in the wave of coverage that washed over the visit. It was notable, however, in view of a controversy that began in 2004 when some U.S. bishops said they would deny Communion to John Kerry, then the Democratic presidential nominee, because he supported abortion rights

But during the U.S. papal Masses, not only did Kerry receive Communion but so did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani and Senators Edward Kennedy and Christopher Dodd. The conservative columnist Robert Novak wrote in the Washington Post on Monday that this “reflected disobedience to Benedict by the archbishops of New York and Washington” and did not indicate any softening of the pope’s anti-abortion position.

“The effect was to dull messages of faith, obligation and compassion conveyed by Benedict,” Novak wrote. “In his Yankee Stadium homily, he talked of ‘authority’ and ‘obedience’ — acknowledging these are not easy words to speak nowadays. They surely are not for four former presidential candidates and two princes of the church, represending Catholics who defy heir faith’s doctrine on abortion.”

On the day Novak’s column appeared, one of those two princes — New York’s Cardinal Edward Egan — posted a statement on the archdiocese website saying Giuliani had violated an “understanding” he had with him not to receive Communion because of his views on abortion rights and that he — the cardinal — deeply regretted it had happened. What Egan did not mention is that Giuliani has also been married three times — his first marriage was annulled but the second ended in divorce, which should bar him from the sacrament according to church law. Some bloggers have criticised him for this and Beliefnet’s David Gibson wondered if he ignored the divorce issue because so many Catholics are getting divorced these days but remain faithful and want to take Communion.

In reply, Giuliani’s spokeswoman said he is willing to meet with Egan but that his faith “is a deeply personal matter and should remain confidential.”

None of the public figures involved received Communion directly from the pope, but from other clergy as the Masses. But before becoming Pope, the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was reported as saying he backed denying communion to Kerry. His statement was more nuanced than that, but it has been presented in the U.S. (mostly by conservative bishops) as a refusal.

The issue of public figures and the sacrament has not surfaced in this year’s presidential nomination derby, probably because none of the remaining candidates is Catholic. But it simmers still in some places, notably St. Louis, where Archbishop Raymond Burke has raised it in various ways. When he headed a Wisconsin diocese before taking the St. Louis post, Burke said Communion should be denied some state lawmakers there who supported abortion rights. More recently he suggested Communion might be denied to basketball coach Rick Majerus at St. Louis University — a Catholic institution — who attended a rally for Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton and said he was “personally” pro-choice.

Should Giuliani not have come forward for Communion? Or are he and the cardinal making a political football out of this? And why do you think Egan avoided the divorce issue?

Priests in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Belleville, Illinois are staging a rare rebellion — demanding that their bishop, Edward Braxton, resign because of a lack of “collaborative and consultative leadership” since his installation in June, 2005.

“Because of the bishop’s lack of cooperation, consultation, accountability and transparency, it is the judgment of a great number of the presbyterate that he has lost his moral authority to lead and govern our diocese,” 46 priests — representing about 60 percent of those regularly assigned to parish work in the diocese — said in a statement issued on March 12. He should resign, they added, “for his own good, for the good of the diocese and for the good of the presbyterate.”

The priests said the problems they’ve had with their bishop were only exacerbated by a revelation earlier this year that he had used restricted funds to buy conference room furniture, vestments and other items for use in the diocesan cathedral.

Braxton issued a public apology for that in January, saying it was a misunderstanding and that he had replenished the funds from private donations. At the time he said there had been “confusion, mistrust misunderstanding, loss of confidence and even anger” and he promised a serious effort going forward on issues involving the stewardship of diocesan resources.

The priests are not the bishop’s only critics. In February, 2008, the U.S. regional superior of a women’s religious order called the Adorers of the Blood of Christ told the U.S. papal nuncio, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, that there was “grave distress among people in the diocese.”

Sister Jan Renz — whose order has a center in the diocese — said in her letter: “The climate of secrecy that surrounds committee meetings and actions within the diocese must end. Outside skilled facilitation appears absolutely necessary if there is to be a movement toward healing,” according to a report published in the Belleville News-Democrat newspaper.

“This is highly, highly unusual,” remarked Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit who once edited that order’s magazine America and is now a senior fellow at the Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center. He told Reuters that in general there has been a feeling that bishops appointed before the papacy of the late John Paul II were closer to their priests than those who came later. He also said he does not buy the idea that the newer bishops act more like chief financial officers than pastors of a flock. They have to be both, he said, or face the financial ruin of what’s been entrusted to them.

Another priest and long-time observer of U.S. Catholicism, who asked not to be quoted by name, said that while tensions between priests and bishops have increased in recent years, the Belleville situation mostly involves the personality of the bishop involved.

Braxton, whose diocese covers 128 parishes in southern Illinois, has not publicly responded to the call for his resignation.

The U.S. Episcopal Church is standing by for an initial court decision in what may be one of the biggest ecclesiastical property disputes in the country’s history. It is another tremor in the upheaval shaking the worldwide Anglican Communion, and if that weren’t enough, it has roots going back to George Washington.

A judge in Virginia is expected to issue a ruling shortly in a case he has been hearing since November involving 11 traditionalist congregations in that state that have left the Episcopal Church over orthodoxy issues, including the American-based church’s acceptance of an openly gay bishop.
 
Among the 11 are the Falls Church and Truro Church congregations, which have affiliated with the Anglican Church of Nigeria, led by Archbishop Peter Akinola. The congregations want to keep their property they said is worth at least $25 million combined. In colonial times, Washington and his father both served on the vestry at Truro.
 
The 2.4-million-member Episcopal Church claims that all church property belongs to it, and that when a congregation switches allegiance, the property is merely “abandoned.” The Virginia dispute is neither the first nor will it be the last, and the issue of who owns what has never been definitively settled in court.
 
The issue now before the judge is whether the Virginia churches are entitled to keep their property under a law written in the divisive era of the U.S. Civil War. The statute says any “church or religious society” that “divides” remains under the control of the majority, as does any property entrusted to it.
 
The law was adopted in response to numerous church splits during the 19th century before, during and after the Civil War, according to information supplied by the dissident Virginia group.
 
Both Methodists and Presbyterians successfully invoked the statute immediately after its adoption in 1867, the group said, adding that “Virginia has a long history of deferring to local control of church property, and the … statute says that the majority of the church is entitled to its property when a group of congregations divide from their former denomination and form a new one.”
 
According to Bishop Martyn Minns, a leader of the orthodox dissidents, the judge in Fairfax County, Virginia, Circuit Court has indicated he will rule either that the law can apply to the 11 churches in this case, or it may not because it would raise issues involving the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of church-state separation since the national church is involved.
 
Under any scenario, Minns told his followers recently, “this will be only one of a number of issues on which (the judge) will ultimately rule.” With appeals, the case will go one for some time.
 
The church could face an even bigger dispute in California where the entire diocese of San Joachim recently voted to bolt. Such cases will take years to resolve. 

-Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Archbishop Akinoa installs Rev. Martyn Minns)

The Episcopal Church, at the centre of internal struggles likely to re-shape the worldwide Anglican Communion’s future, is taking time to look at the past. A new permanent on-line exhibit journeys through the history of racism in America, exploring a past the church shared with much of U.S. society from the days of slavery onward.

Bringing back painful memories is deliberate. The Episcopal News Service noted in announcing the exhibit that the church’s General Convention of 1991 urged Episcopalians to conduct “a wide-ranging examination of persistent institutional racism and patterns of forgetting that had overtaken the legacy of the post civil rights period in church and society.”

“The Episcopal Church treated African Americans as a problem: Culturally and socially separated and inferior but by baptism, full and equal members of the community. The Church tried to mend this breach by ministering to black Americans separately, consecrating bishops for ‘colored work,’ funding black colleges, establishing black congregations and operating a special office for ‘Negro work.’ In short, the Episcopal church fully embraced the American ’separate but equal’ construct of race relations..,” the exhibit states.

But if some churches were also a silent partner in perpetuating racism, they also became the fulcrum for change, igniting fires for freedom in the black churches in the South during the 1960s. The new exhibit tells that story as well.

Is there a straw that will break the Anglican Communion’s back? One move that, like the gay bishop consecration that started the current crisis, can trigger a landslide that finally pushes the Communion into schism? Religion reporters are now watching each and every conference and bishop’s election to see if it will hit the tripwire.

The next flashpoint in the Anglican Communion’s struggle with gay issues looked like it could come from Chicago, where the Episcopal (U.S. Anglican) diocese on November 10 will pick a new bishop from among eight candidates, one of them an openly gay woman. The Episcopal Church promised last month to “exercise restraint” in naming further homosexual prelates. In an interview this month, its Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori (in picture at right) stressed there would be “no outcasts in this Church.”

Judging from how things look now, the lesbian Rev. Tracey Lind, who is now the dean of Cleveland’s Trinity Cathedral, may not be among the favorites vying for the post, Chicago Tribune religion reporter Manya Brachear reported on Monday.

Based on inteviews with church members who attended sessions where the candidates visited various congregations during the weekend, she wrote that the two favorites appear to be Rev. Jeffrey Lee, rector of St. Thomas Church in Medina, Washington, and Rev. Petero Sabune, chaplain of Sing Sing prison in New York state. They seemed to have connected more with the congregations than the six others, including Lind.

If chosen, Lind would be only the second openly gay bishop in Anglican history, the other being Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. If anything, the faithful in Chicago spoke more of Lind’s managerial and fundraising capabilities than they did about her sexual orientation, the report said. Those who favored Lee and Sabune emphasized their confidence and their feeling of personal connection.