Analysis: Will the Lambeth Conference bring peace to the Anglican world?

Monday, 18th August 2008
By Paul Richardson

Chou En Lai excited ridicule for saying it was still too soon to judge the results of the French Revolution but such caution is the wisest response to this year’s Lambeth Conference. This hasn’t stopped two bishops telling The Sunday Telegraph we need an ‘orderly separation’ of liberals and traditionalists or The Times declaring that Anglicans have ‘reaffirmed their mutual bonds’ or Theo Hobson moaning to readers of The Guardian that Rowan Williams has stamped his authority on the Anglican Communion and turned his back on liberalism, but the wide spectrum of comment being offered tells us the dust has still to settle.

Actually it is hard to see how there could be an ‘orderly separation’ between traditionalists and liberals because in many cases the fault-lines do not lie between provinces but within them. In America attempts are to be made in September to depose traditionalist bishops while court battles rage over church property. There is nothing orderly about this. the rest