Event · 1998

Lambeth Conference 1998

The once-a-decade meeting of Anglican bishops from around the world, held in Canterbury in 1998, best known for Resolution I.10 on human sexuality.

History

Causes

The Lambeth Conference has met roughly every ten years since 1867. The Archbishop of Canterbury invites the bishops of the Anglican Communion, and their resolutions carry moral weight but no legal force: each province governs itself. That arrangement, a fellowship of self-governing churches held together by shared worship and the see of Canterbury, is what 1998 put under strain (see Episcopal Polity and Conciliarity).

Two shifts made sexuality the flashpoint. The first was demographic. By the 1990s most Anglicans lived in Africa and Asia, and their bishops arrived in Canterbury in larger numbers and better organised than at any earlier conference. The second was a run of decisions in North America. Some Episcopal Church dioceses were already ordaining openly gay clergy, and the 1996 heresy trial of Bishop Walter Righter for ordaining a partnered gay deacon ended with the court ruling that the church had no “core doctrine” forbidding it (Walter C. Righter, secondary).

Bishops of the global South answered in advance. Meeting in Kuala Lumpur in February 1997, they issued the Kuala Lumpur Statement on Human Sexuality, which held that sexual relations are to be expressed only within the life-long union of a man and a woman in marriage and urged provinces to “reach a common mind, before embarking on radical changes to Church discipline and moral teaching” (Kuala Lumpur Statement, 1997). Resolution I.10 would later name that statement.

Proceedings

The thirteenth conference met at the University of Kent in July and August 1998, presided over by Archbishop George Carey. It drew 749 bishops, eleven of them women, the first women bishops ever to attend (Lambeth Conference, secondary). Their presence followed on from decisions such as the Church of England’s 1992 vote to ordain women as priests, and in Resolution III.4 the conference approved the Eames Commission’s report on women in the episcopate, “recognising the ongoing, open process of reception” (Fulcrum, secondary).

Human sexuality was assigned to a subsection of the section “Called to Full Humanity.” Its draft was cautious: it affirmed marriage, called for continued study, and asked the church to listen to gay and lesbian people. On the floor, African and Asian bishops pressed for a firmer text. An amendment declaring homosexual practice “incompatible with Scripture” and stating that the conference “cannot advise the legitimising or blessing of same sex unions nor ordaining those involved in same gender unions” passed 389 to 190. The amended resolution then passed 526 to 70 with 45 abstentions (Lambeth Conference, secondary; Christianity Today, 1998). An amendment from Bishop Michael Bourke kept a commitment to “listen to the experience of homosexual persons.”

The debate was bitter. Outside the hall, Bishop Emmanuel Chukwuma of Enugu tried to exorcise “homosexual demons” from Richard Kirker of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, who was handing out leaflets. The incident became the conference’s most reported image (secondary).

The conference passed many other resolutions, on poverty, international debt, the environment and interfaith relations, and discussions there on microcredit led to the charity Five Talents. These drew little notice next to I.10.

Aftermath

Within days, bishops who had voted against I.10 issued “A Pastoral Statement to Lesbian and Gay Anglicans”, released by Bishop Ronald Haines of Washington. It had 146 signatures, including eight primates, by 8 August 1998, and later reached 182. “We apologize for any sense of rejection that has occurred because of this reality,” it said.

The resolution did not stop the provinces it was aimed at. In 2002 the Canadian Diocese of New Westminster authorised blessings of same-sex unions. In 2003 the Episcopal Church consented to the election of Gene Robinson, a priest in a same-sex partnership, as Bishop of New Hampshire; he was consecrated on 2 November (Gene Robinson, secondary). Traditionalist primates said both acts defied I.10.

The Communion’s response was the Windsor Report (2004), chaired by Archbishop Robin Eames. It took no position on homosexuality itself but asked for moratoria on consecrating partnered gay bishops and on authorising same-sex blessings, and treated I.10 as the Communion’s standing teaching (summary, secondary). The moratoria did not hold.

Conservatives then built their own structures. The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) met in Jerusalem in June 2008, a month before the next Lambeth Conference, and issued the Jerusalem Declaration. Its clause 8 affirms “the unchangeable standard of Christian marriage between one man and one woman as the proper place for sexual intimacy.” Four primates (Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda) boycotted Lambeth 2008. The Anglican Church in North America was formed in December 2008 and recognised by GAFCON in April 2009 (Anglican realignment, secondary).

Influence

I.10 became the reference point for every later dispute. In 2016 the primates restricted the Episcopal Church’s role in Communion bodies for three years after it authorised same-sex marriage. At Lambeth 2022, which issued “calls” rather than binding resolutions, Archbishop Justin Welby said the validity of I.10 was “not in doubt” while acknowledging that many provinces had moved away from it. When the Church of England approved Prayers of Love and Faith for same-sex couples in 2023, ten Global South primates declared impaired communion and said they no longer recognised the Archbishop of Canterbury as first among equals (Homosexuality and Anglicanism, secondary; Anglican realignment, secondary). The pattern resembles the United Methodist Split, where a global church divided along similar lines.

Key ideas and contributors

Marriage as the norm for sexual relations. The resolution, “in view of the teaching of Scripture,” upheld faithfulness in lifelong marriage between a man and a woman and abstinence for the unmarried (official text in the Lambeth 1998 resolutions archive of the Anglican Communion Office; online link not confirmed). Its supporters read this as a restatement of the Traditional Marriage Ethic grounded in Genesis 2:24 and Jesus’ words in Matthew 19:4–6.

Homosexual practice “incompatible with Scripture.” This phrase, added on the floor, did the most work. Its supporters pointed to Romans 1:26–27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9–11. The leading voices were African and Asian bishops, with Western evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics who shared the view.

Pastoral care and listening. The same resolution called on Anglicans to minister “pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation,” to condemn irrational fear of homosexuals, and to listen to gay and lesbian people (Resolution I.10). Angela Tilby later argued that the Bourke amendment’s “listening” was the conference’s real legacy, since it shaped the Church of England’s Living in Love and Faith process (Church Times, 2022, secondary).

Communion-wide teaching. By declining to “advise” blessings or ordinations, the resolution claimed to speak for the whole Communion. Traditionalists later treated it as the Communion’s settled mind, a test of whether provinces were still walking together; this is the sense in which the Windsor Report and GAFCON both invoked it.

Key controversies

What authority a Lambeth resolution has. Lambeth has never been a legislature. Progressives argued that I.10 was advice that provinces could weigh and set aside. Traditionalists replied that a province acting against the clear and repeated mind of the Communion breaks the bonds that make it a communion at all. This dispute about Authority proved more divisive than the sexual ethic itself, because no Anglican body had the power to settle it.

How to read Scripture. The resolution’s wording assumed that the biblical texts settle the question. Affirming Theology argues that those texts address exploitative or idolatrous acts rather than faithful same-sex partnerships, and that the church has revised its reading before. Traditionalists answer that every biblical text on the subject points the same way and that the Sexuality and Marriage teaching is tied to the creation of male and female (see Scripture and Inerrancy).

North and South. Western critics sometimes portrayed the vote as the work of culturally conservative African bishops, and some made remarks about African Christianity that were widely condemned as patronising: Bishop John Spong apologised after characterising African views on the Bible as “superstitious” (Worldwide Faith News, 1998). African bishops answered that they were holding to what Western missionaries had taught them, and that the charge treated their judgment as less than equal. Stephen Bates’s A Church at War: Anglicans and Homosexuality (2004, Archive.org) gives a journalist’s account of these tensions.

Listening versus deciding. The resolution both decided the question and called for continued listening. Progressives argued that a church cannot listen honestly after it has fixed the answer. Traditionalists argued that listening was meant to be pastoral, not a path to revising teaching. The Church of England’s later moves under Living in Love and Faith turned this tension into the Communion’s next crisis.

What remains unresolved

I.10 has never been rescinded, and the Archbishop of Canterbury reaffirmed it as recently as 2022. Yet several provinces bless or marry same-sex couples, and the provinces most committed to I.10 have built structures outside Canterbury’s reach. The deeper open question is the one the resolution exposed: whether a worldwide communion of self-governing churches can hold a common teaching at all when it has no means of enforcing one.