Or is that the Non-Story of the Year? A Tale of No Shows? Or - as Time Magazine puts it, rather sadly, really, - a "Canterbury non-Tale?" Here's Time on the #4 Story of the Year:This year's edition of the once-a-decade gathering of the bishops of the world-wide Anglican Communion in Canterbury, England, was anticipated for years as the likely venue for a final smackdown between American and European liberals and the poorer, more populous conservatives. The main flashpoint in an ongoing theological clash: the election in 2003 of an openly gay bishop in the U.S. But the Lambeth Conference's planners turned the gathering into a non-binding conversation-only affair, many conservatives boycotted it, and the Communion staggered on like a push-me-pull-you in opposing directions. Meanwhile, U.S. conservatives continued to defect from the Episcopal Church.
What was the #1 story? That it's not God that's on our mind, it's the Economy, stupid. And that's, of course, the problem.
1 comment:
One problem with all the criticism of Lambeth 2008 for not "doing anything" is that keeping the parliamentary format of previous conferences would not have made anything more "binding." It would have simply reiterated what had been said in 1998 and people would have ignored it again.
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