The Bishops at Lambeth

In Canterbury's 700-year-old cathedral, more than 300 bishops of the Anglican Communion knelt five rows deep on a crimson carpet to receive the blessing of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Bowed under the weight of his damask robes and overshadowed by a huge silver cross, Geoffrey Francis Fisher intoned: "We humbly beseech thee that thy Holy Spirit may lead into truth thy servants the bishops gathered together in thy name. Grant them grace to think and do such things as shall most tend to thy glory and the good of thy holy church." Thus last week opened the ninth (since 1867) Lambeth Conference, which every decade brings together the world's Anglican bishops. This year's attendance: 72 Church of England bishops from Great Britain, 90 Episcopal bishops from the U.S., and the remainder from the Anglican Communion throughout the world.

Before last week's opening service began, the invited dignitaries from other churches entered the cathedral in solemn procession--among them Alexandrian Archimandrite Parthenios Coinidis, Armenian Bishop Bessak Toumayan in his tall black hat, white-hatted Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Pitirim of Minsk (Cyprus' Archbishop Makarios had been invited by Dr. Fisher, but to everyone's relief failed to turn up). Then came the overseas bishops of Canterbury's jurisdiction--the Anglican colonies and provinces. The procession showed the Anglicans' racial diversity. Among 32 members of mission dioceses, there were nine black bishops from West Africa, four Japanese bishops, eight from India-Pakistan-Ceylon, a Maori from New Zealand.

Down to Work. After a social series of garden parties, tea parties and a boat trip on the Thames, the bishops this week will move into the raftered hall of London's red-turreted Lambeth Palace (the Archbishop of Canterbury's residence) and buckle down to work. Though the conference, strictly closed to outsiders, has no official, binding force on the Anglican churches, the bishops know that their decisions will carry considerable weight.

First topic on their agenda: THE HOLY BIBLE, ITS AUTHORITY AND MESSAGE. So far has the pendulum swung from literalist respect for the authority of the Bible, the bishops feel, that even some professing Christians are tending to look upon it as a collection of fairy stories. To combat this tendency, the bishops hope to educate the public to interpret Biblical statements and events in terms of the thought forms of the people who wrote the Scripture down. Said one bishop: "The Bible mustn't be thought of as the Koran is thought of. It hasn't got the personal authority of the word of Mohammed behind it, but its every word is illuminated by the Holy Spirit. This idea we must get across once again, and if we can, people may understand that the Bible can help them deal with many of today's problems by guiding them in the way the problems should be approached."

Also high on the agenda is THE RECONCILING OF CONFLICTS BETWEEN AND WITHIN NATIONS. Said one bishop: "the H-bomb will come under discussion, but I doubt if we shall come out 100% against it. After all, death from an H-bomb is no different from death by a bow and arrow. The bomb itself is neither good nor evil. It's something like the Industrial Revolution. And as for its alleged genetic aftereffects, think of the havoc wreaked on future generations through malnutrition and so on after Gustavus Adolphus had stormed across Europe."

The Church's Chance. Birth control and the problem of overpopulation is expected to be the biggest issue in the discussion of THE FAMILY IN MODERN SOCIETY. The bishops will probably come out in favor of birth control education. In the words of the preliminary report, "Christians may give support to any government deciding to encourage family planning in conjunction with efforts to raise the standing of living."

What the bishops have to say on these and other matters will be attentively followed, even in near-empty-church England. Wrote Britain's Reynolds News: "This coming month will provide an opportunity to test what has almost become a new Christian dogma of our time: that though very few go to church, everyone is interested in what the churches are doing . . . This is the church's chance. . ."

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