Gay Bishop Gene Robinson wasn't invited to the Anglican conference in Canterbury, but is in England this week. ALASTAIR GRANT/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The next 16 days in Canterbury, England, will test the power of the center

Date published: 7/16/2008

THEY SAY the 600 Anglican bishops who converged today on Canterbury, England, plan to do a lot of Bible study. That's good news.

If ever there was a time to focus on on the essentials of faith, this is it.

Of course, Bible study won't be making the headlines at the Lambeth Conference, the 16-day, once-every-decade meeting of the leaders of the world's third-largest Christian community. The sparks will come from the Anglican Communion's debates over homosexuality.

What's at stake, you may ask? What difference do the nuanced statements of bishops from South Africa to South Carolina make to the folks who sit in the pews and those who don't?

Quite a bit, it turns out. The struggles of the Anglican Communion, which includes the U.S. Episcopal Church, will go a long way toward setting a tone for how people of all faiths deal with issues of lifestyle and biblical interpretation.

That's a role the Episcopal Church has played in this country for more than two centuries. In many parts of the world, Anglicans have helped bridge differences between Roman Catholics and Protestants.

And there's a broader issue at stake, too: how people go about reconciling passion with humility.

You won't have any trouble finding the passion that surrounds Lambeth. The archbishop of Nigeria, along with a couple of hundred other bishops, is boycotting the conference in protest over the liberal views of the U.S. and Canadian churches on issues of human sexuality.

Meanwhile, the openly gay bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson, who was conspicuously not invited to the conference by the archbishop of Canterbury, has settled on the English sidelines. Having handled his rejection with grace, Bishop Robinson stands ready for any media availability that may come his way.

With such high-profile players, it might be difficult to find the humility at Lambeth--the acknowledgement that none of us may have quite captured "the truth," the awareness that faith may be a life's journey, not a dogmatic yea or nay.

Of course, the doomsayers are out in force. That's hardly surprising, given the church's recent tumult. The Diocese of Virginia finds itself engaged in costly litigation with a handful of conservative congregations that have left the diocese, along with their property.

But I'm hoping that one of the results of this Lambeth Conference will be a renewed effort to reconcile passion and humility. Maybe that's why I like to think of myself as a "radical centrist."

Contradictory, you say? Not really.

It's possible to be radical and passionate about the fundamental beliefs that unite us. It's also possible to believe in the power of the center to pull together those on the left and right who may be tempted to say "our way or the highway."

The next 16 days in Canterbury, England, will tell us a great deal about how powerful that center will be in an age of polarization.

Ed Jones: 540/374-5401
Email: edjones@freelancestar.com

Date published: 7/16/2008

Most recent reader comments: