If you look at the schedule for the Lambeth conference today, the events look pretty tame: Rowan Williams is scheduled to give an address, but other than that there appears to be a lot of worship and a lot of eating.
That’s part of what will be distinctive about this year’s Lambeth conference: the focus is not on parliamentary debate or passing resolutions. (And any resolutions Lambeth passes are non-binding — Lambeth doesn’t have any legislative authority, so its resolutions are simply statements, not laws.) Instead, the bishops will be doing a lot what they’re doing today: hanging out with each other, and with God.
Over dinner tonight someone asked me what the best case outcome for Lambeth is. I think my interlocutor was expecting an legislative answer, e.g., in an ideal world,a back-room deal that keeps the Communion together will be brokered.
But I think the best case outcome may be simply that the bishops will have a good time together, that they will recall and renew friendships, and they will go home, to whatever corner of the world home is, remembering that they like each other, even when they disagree.
So actually all that prayer and eating together is not tame at all — it may be pretty revolutionary.
PS For fun pictures of folks actually arriving at the conference, check out Ruth Gledhill’s Lambeth diary.