page_title: Lambeth Conference
section_title: Fourteenth: 2008
hierarchical_section_title: Lambeth Conference / Conferences / Fourteenth: 2008
caption_attribution_description: Icon of Melanesian Martyrs at Canterbury Cathedral
context_page_description: The Lambeth Conference is a decennial assembly of bishops of the Anglican Communion convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The first such conference took place in 1867.
  As the Anglican Communion is an international association of autonomous national and regional churches and is not a governing body, the Lambeth Conferences serve a collaborative and consultative function, expressing "the mind of the communion" on issues of the day. Resolutions which a Lambeth Conference may pass are without legal effect, but they are nonetheless influential. So, although the resolutions of conferences carry no legislative authority, they "do carry great moral and spiritual authority." "Its statements on social issues have influenced church policy in the churches."
  These conferences form one of the communion's four "Instruments of Communion".
context_section_description: Presided over by Rowan Williams
  Around 670 bishops present
  The fourteenth conference took place from 16 July to 4 August 2008 at the University of Kent's Canterbury campus. In March 2006 the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, issued a pastoral letter to the 38 primates of the Anglican Communion and moderators of the united churches setting out his thinking for the next Lambeth Conference.
  Williams indicated that the emphasis will be on training, "for really effective, truthful and prayerful mission".  He ruled out (for the time being) reopening of the controversial resolution 1.10 on human sexuality from the previous Lambeth Conference, but emphasised the "listening process" in which diverse views and experiences of human sexuality were being collected and collated in accordance with that resolution and said it "will be important to allow time for this to be presented and reflected upon in 2008".
  Williams indicated that the traditional plenary sessions and resolutions would be reduced and that "We shall be looking at a bigger number of more focused groups, some of which may bring bishops and spouses together."
  Attendance at the Lambeth Conference is by invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Invitations were sent to more than 880 bishops around the world for the Fourteenth Conference. Notably absent from the list of those invited are Gene Robinson and Martyn Minns. Robinson was the first Anglican bishop to exercise the office while in an acknowledged same-sex relationship, and Rowan Williams said it was "proving extremely difficult to see under what heading he might be invited to be around", drawing criticism. Minns, the former rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, was the head of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, a splinter group of American Anglicans; the Church of Nigeria considered him a missionary bishop to the United States, despite protest from Canterbury and the U.S. Episcopal Church.
  In 2008, four Anglican primates announced that they intended to boycott the Lambeth conference because of their opposition to the actions of Episcopal Church in the USA (the American province of the Anglican Communion) in favour of homosexual clergy and same-sex unions. These primates represent the Anglican provinces of Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda. In addition, Peter Jensen, Archbishop of Sydney, Australia and Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester, among others announced their intentions not to attend.
  The Global Anglican Future Conference, a meeting of conservative bishops held in Jerusalem in June 2008 (one month prior to Lambeth), was thought by some to be an "alternative Lambeth" for those who are opposed to the consecration of Robinson. GAFCON involved Martyn Minns, Peter Akinola and other dissenters who considered themselves to be in a state of impaired communion with the American Episcopal Church and the See of Canterbury. The June 2008 church blessing of Peter Cowell, an Anglican chaplain at the Royal London Hospital and priest at Westminster Abbey, and David Lord, an Anglican priest serving at a parish in Waikato, New Zealand, renewed the debate one month prior to the conference. Martin Dudley, who officiated at the ceremony at St Bartholomew-the-Great, maintained that the ceremony was a "blessing" rather than a matrimonial ceremony.
  In 2008, the seven martyred members of the Melanesian Brotherhood were honoured during the concluding Eucharist of the 2008 conference at Canterbury Cathedral. Their names were added to the book of contemporary martyrs and placed, along with an icon, on the altar of the "Chapel of the Saints and Martyrs of Our Times". When the Eucharist was over, bishops and others came to pray in front of the small altar in the chapel. The icon stands in the cathedral as a reminder of their witness to peace and of the multi-ethnic character of global Anglicanism.
caption: Icon of the Melanesian Martyrs at Canterbury Cathedral
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