Lambeth Conference 2018 cancelled in ongoing gay clergy issue

The worldwide Anglican Communion’s next Lambeth Conference, scheduled for 2018, has been cancelled for the first time in its history.

A gathering of Anglican bishops from around the world which takes place once a decade, the cancellation, which is indefinite, is due to ongoing division over the gay clergy issue.

The 2008 conference was marred by a significant boycott over the same issue.

According to the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in the US, Most Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and titular head of Anglicans worldwide was "very clear that he is not going to call a Lambeth until he is reasonably certain that the vast majority of bishops would attend".

Primates

She said the next Lambeth Conference “needs to be preceded by a primates meeting at which a vast majority of primates are present” and that “as he continues his visits around the [Anglican] communion to those primates it’s unlikely that he will call such a meeting at all until at least a year from now or probably 18 months from now. Therefore I think we are looking at 2019, more likely 2020, before a Lambeth Conference.”

She also said the format of the next Lambeth Conference will be different from 2008 with the spouses’ conference eliminated “because of scale issues and regional contextual issues.

Bishops’ spouses fill very different roles in different parts of the communion and the feedback from the last one was that it did not serve the spouses particularly well,” she said.