This was a pretty amazing article summarizing the goings on of the just-finished Lambeth Conference 2022, and charting the course for worldwide Anglicanism going forward... https://americananglican.org/lambeth-2022-diary-hope-and-a-future/ Yesterday the Lambeth Conference of Bishops travelled by bus to Lambeth Palace for a day of planting one tree and discussing the proposal to create a worldwide “Anglican Communion forest.” I find it remarkable that the issue of the authority of the Scriptures, over which our Anglican Communion is divided, was given only two hours on Tuesday in contrast to an entire day to plant a tree and address climate change. That fact alone speaks volumes about the dysfunction in the Lambeth-driven Anglican Communion, but there have also been hopeful moments that help pivot us from all that is wrong with the Anglican Communion towards what a post-Lambeth Communion could look like in the days ahead. A HOPE AND A FUTURE FOR A NEW AND EMERGING COMMUNION OF ANGLICANS During the Global South Eucharist in the morning, a visible lifting of spirits occurred, and I watched as the room filled with worshipping African, Southeast Asian Anglicans, along with bishops from South America, North America, and the UK. I lost count after 120 people entered the auditorium to sing African praise choruses, hear simple and powerful teaching from a South African archbishop, and take Holy Communion together from bishops in Southeast Asia and North America. It was a picture of the face of this new faithful remnant emerging within the Anglican Communion. At the heart of this new Communion is humility, repentance from our sins, and a call to obedience to God’s Word. Archbishop Tito Zavala of Chile reminded us of this in his homily on the power of sin from Psalm 51. He reminded us how sin “turns our minds and hearts to tolerate what is wrong,” and how we can overcome it through the blood of Jesus Christ and repentance. We were called to repent on behalf of those leaders in the Anglican Communion who disobeyed, and continue to disobey, God’s Word on marriage and sexuality. We were invited to search our own hearts so that we may repent, recover the joy of forgiveness, and be empowered to minister out of that joy. What might this new and emerging global “Communion within the Communion” of Anglican churches look like? I had additional conversations with three primates/archbishops of the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans (GSFA), all of whom sit on the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) Primates Council as well. You can listen to my interviews with them here on our latest Anglican Perspective Podcast. There were three hints of what this new and emerging Communion will look like: A COMMUNION OF ANGLICAN CHURCHES THAT WALKS TOGETHER ON THE BASIS OF A COMMON CONFESSION OF FAITH, UNDER THE ULTIMATE AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE, AND WITH DISCIPLINE FOR THOSE DIOCESES AND CHURCHES WHO DISOBEY GOD’S WORD All of the archbishops agreed that the number one problem leaving LC2022 is the unresolved divisions between Anglicans who follow what the Bible says plainly about human identity, human dignity, creation, marriage, and sexuality— and those Anglican who do not. They are disappointed by the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury who tolerates sin (“he will not call sin, sin”) and will not discipline it. They are frustrated that the Communion structures failed to provide any mechanism for addressing disobedience to Anglian teaching, and specifically Lambeth 1.10 (1998) in what is certainly an “ecclesial deficit”. Even though these Global South Anglicans represent the overwhelming majority of Anglicans, they feel themselves a minority, “a faithful remnant” because of the power imbalance that western and largely white Global North Anglicans exercise over them through the structures and processes hedging this Lambeth Conference of Bishops. After the failure to even vote on the authority of Lambeth Resolution 1.10 (1998), for which they came to make a stand, they feel the rest of the program of bible study, fellowship, and “sharing of points of view” is meaningless. They affirm that they may be gathered together, “but we are not walking together,” no matter how many times the Archbishop of Canterbury proclaims otherwise. The Bible is not the ultimate authority in this Anglican Communion gathering. Western Anglican leaders here have interpreted the Bible by reading it through their own culture (eisegesis) rather than reading it in its plain and grammatical sense, understanding its words in the context of the whole of scripture and then applying it to the culture in which one lives (exegesis). As one archbishop says, “We cannot mix culture with Christianity; we must separate culture from Christianity and then let the Bible speak to the culture.” In the words of para 1.5 of the Cairo Covenant (2019): “The authority of the Scripture is its Spirit-bestowed capacity to quicken the Church to truthful speech and righteous action. We reject therefore the hermeneutical scepticism that commits the Church to a near-infinite deferral of decisions on matters of faith and morals.”