[Lambeth Conference]
https://archives.anglican.ca/link/official5256
- Date
- 1968 August 14
- Source
- Anglican News Service
- Type
- Press Release
- Text of motion
- London, England - When 460 bishops from the world-wide Anglican Communion reconvene at the Lambeth Conference next Monday, they will begin a week of deliberations and discussions which will have a profound effect on their relationship with other Catholic and Reformed churches in the world.
- Two of the most important questions which the bishops will have to rule on are those of women in the priesthood and intercommunion with other churches.
- The 38 Canadian bishops will examine both issues in the light of their church's continuing discussion with the United Church of Canada, and a developing relationship with the Roman Catholic Church.
- This week the bishops have broken into 32 small committees to revise and redraft statements that were submitted to a plenary session last week. The decisions of the Conference are not binding on the 19 national and independent Anglican churches but have, in the past, influenced future decisions of each church.
- The bishops will be asked to pass a resolution to approve the ordination of women to the priesthood.
- Some bishops have made it known they would prefer to wait until agreement of all the churches can be obtained, but the committee, under Rt. Rev. W.W. Davis, Bishop of Nova Scotia, has stated that "this would defer indefinitely an important reforming and renewing action in the life of the church."
- During preliminary debate on the matter, several bishops suggested that approval would destroy any unity that has been achieved with the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and other churches with historic ministries. On the other side, an official observer, Dr. John Huxtable, minister-secretary of the Congregational Church in England and Wales, which accepts ordained women, called the present Anglican position "a great ecumenical barrier."
- The issue has been raised at the union commission meetings of the Anglican and United Churches of Canada, but, like intercommunion, it has remained one of the differences yet to be solved.
- The conference will also be asked to approve a resolution which would permit a church of the Anglican Communion to allow reciprocal acts of intercommunion "where there is a real will to unite between an Anglican church and some other church, or churches, whether Episcopal or not."
- It is expected that before the Anglican Church of Canada takes any action on these questions, they would be brought before a meeting of the House of Bishops with the General Synod of the church, scheduled for Sudbury in August, 1969.
- Two the three main commissions of the Lambeth Conference have suggested that the indiscriminate administration of infant baptism in the church calls for urgent reform, and it is possible bishops will be asked to give agreement to a form by which baptism could be deferred until such a time as the baptismal promises can be made personally by the candidate.
- The bishops are also expected to pay close attention to the continuing education of clergy and the training of laymen to assume greater involvement in the church.
- Subjects
- Lambeth Conference, 1968
- Ordination of women - Anglican Communion
- Davis, William Wallace, 1908-1987
- Intercommunion
- Christian union - Anglican Communion
- Ecumenical movement - Anglican Communion