The Lambeth conference starts this week. How many of you have heard of it? How many really know what it is? There is one thing I can predict with absolute certainty. The press, the secular press, will misrepresent what it is and what it does. They don’t know what it is; most Episcopalians don’t know what it is. And, of course, many in the press are looking for a juicy story and will generate tumult whether it exists or not.

The Lambeth conference has only been around about 150 years, not long by church standards. A brief history of the Lambeth conference recently appeared in Episcopal Life. I’ve made copies for you if you’re interested. It is a gathering, at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, of all of the bishops who serve in the various Anglican churches throughout the world. (I’m pretty sure it used to be just diocesan bishops; but now I think it is more or less all active bishops.) Bishop Lee has written a pre-Lambeth letter to the Diocese of Chicago. Copies of that are also available. I’m going to be away the next few weeks. I want to say two things. One is: don’t be anxious about Lambeth or press reports. They are sure to be inaccurate and overblown. And, while the discussions the bishops will have are important, Lambeth is not a legislative body. Please remember that. Whether Lambeth has any influence at all on the Episcopal Church will be for the Episcopal church to decide in due time and according to due process. And, for us, due process involves more than bishops.

Second, I want to talk a little bit about Anglican identity. You’ll read a shorter version of these comments in the next Evangelist. During Lambeth I expect that the word "Anglican" will be prominent in headlines and conversations. "Anglican" is a tricky word, because it means different things to different people. When it is used casually, confusion almost invariably results.

The basic root of the word "Anglican" simply means "related to England." Anglophiles are people who are enthusiastic about things English: afternoon tea, corgis, or beefeaters. When we speak of "Anglican churches," we mean all of the various national churches that trace their heritage through the Church of England. These churches are scattered across the globe, primarily in areas where the British Empire once flourished. They are now independent, autonomous churches with their own systems of governance. Some have retained the word "Anglican" in their names, e.g., The Anglican Church of Canada. Others have not. In the days following the American revolution, enthusiasm for things English was not a popular position, so the American offspring of the Church of England avoided the term "Anglican" and took the name Episcopal. We are still fully Anglican by heritage and always will be. The Anglican Communion is just this collection of churches whose heritage is Anglican. It is not a formal body with any system of governance. No person or body has the power to govern the Anglican Communion. The individual churches govern themselves.

Issues become muddier and richer when we start to speak of "Anglican identity." Identity is more than just lineage. Identity is important; but identity is personal. Think about a family. A group of siblings all share the same heritage, whether they acquired that heritage through genetic lineage or the sharing of family stories or both. Siblings all share the same family heritage, but the ways they identify themselves as members of the family can vary greatly. One child might be proud of his immigrant grandfather and identify with his courage and see himself as following in that tradition. His sister, for whatever reason, might be uncomfortable with her immigrant or ethnic background, but cherish the family tradition of music making, become a musician, and see herself as the heir to that part of the family’s heritage. So it is when we speak of "Anglican identity." Different individuals and different national churches will feel that identity differently and will see themselves as claiming different strands of the Anglican family history.

And because identity is personal, I want to share some of those qualities of our Anglican heritage that I personally treasure. You need not necessarily share my feelings. These are just some of the particular aspects of our Anglican family history that I value and identify with, features which can be traced to our roots in the Church of England. I’m not talking specifically right now about this parish or really even the American Episcopal Church. I’m looking at things I have inherited from our Anglican origins in the early Church of England.

First. From its beginning, the Church of England was a church united and bound together by common worship. From the earliest decades of the Church of England in the 1500’s, we have been a church of diverse theological perspectives who choose to stand and kneel side by side and say the same words of prayer together. What we hold in common, literally in our hands, is a book of worship, the Book of Common Prayer. That is how Queen Elizabeth held the church together in the very fractious early days. And it is still the glue that binds us. Worship. What we value most highly as our common practice is worship.

Second, the Church of England is a church of the Reformation. It is a misconception to think that Henry VIII’s marital difficulties are the only thing that separates us from the Roman Catholic Church. Those may have precipitated the administrative establishment of the Church of England, but the Protestant reformation was percolating in England just as it was in Europe, and the convictions of the Reformation permeate our church. Two of those Reformation principals are important to me. First, the conviction that God is, and should be, accessible to everyone. The church hierarchy is not a gatekeeper, controlling access to God. The prayers and the Scriptures are offered in the language of the people. The church facilitates and encourages, but does not control, the relationship between God and God’s people. Using more contemporary language we would also say that the ministry of all the baptized is recognized and celebrated. The clergy of the church are not the only minister; all the baptized share that vocation. That perspective grew out of the Reformation. Second, a church of the Reformation is a church intentionally willing to reform. Surely a church born out of the process of reformation is a church that accepts as positive the process of reformation. And, hopefully, is a church that is still reforming, reformable.

Finally, I value the balanced perspective on theological authority traceable back to the understanding of the English theologian Richard Hooker (1554-1600). We talk about it in several ways. It is a balance that courageously seeks the truth of the faith in the tension between extremes (the Via Media). In the early days of the Church of England the two poles were Roman Catholicism and some of the more extreme forms of Protestantism. But the approach is general. Seeking truth in the tension between extremes. That does take courage and vision; it is easy to be an extremist. Hooker spoke also of a balance in the sources of authority through which God speaks. God speaks equally in the voice of Scripture, in the historical teaching of the Church (tradition) and the divine gift of human reason and experience. Hooker’s three-legged stool. It is hard to topple a three-legged stool. Scripture, church tradition, human reason. We find God continuing to speak to us in the balanced conversation between these different voices of authority.

There are other rich strands to our Anglican heritage, and other people might identify more with those. That’s what makes this Anglican family interesting. But these things—a valuing of common worship, the Reformation principal that unites God directly with God’s people, and a balanced view of theological authority—these are part of the Anglican heritage that I value and identify with and make me proud to be an Anglican.