Lambeth, 1948

In Canterbury's high-vaulted Cathedral, a fanfare of trumpets cracked the chilly air. On either side of the choir stood 314 bishops, in full Episcopal regalia. Down the center aisle came a solemn single file: a black-robed verger, a crucifer, church dignitaries in black and scarlet, the tanned, white-topped "Red Dean" of Canterbury, 14 archbishops and finally the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury himself. The choir, in soaring descant, sang the words of Psalm 122--"I was glad when they said unto me: let us go into the house of the Lord."

"Guidance" Only. So, with churchly pomp & ceremony, began the eighth Lambeth Conference. After the opening service at Canterbury last week, the conference moved to London. There, for the next five weeks, the bishops of the Anglican Communion will meet in the historic library of Lambeth Palace. The prelates should have much to say to each other; thanks to World War II, it has been 18 years, instead of the usual ten,* since they last met. But it will be some time before the 20,000,000 communicants and the public at large know what they have said. All sessions are closed to the press: only after the conference ends (on Aug. 8) will an official report summarize Lambeth's conclusions.

The first Lambeth Conference, called in 1867 at the suggestion of the Canadian church, alarmed conservative Anglicans, who feared that the assembled divines would lay down some ecclesiastical laws. But Lambeth Conferences have never been anything but consultative; the resolutions passed are not binding on the churches. But the moral and spiritual authority of some 300 bishops and archbishops makes Lambeth's "guidance" weighty indeed.

The program for this summer's conference is divided into five main subjects: the Christian Doctrine of Man, the Church and the Modern World, the Unity of the Church, the Anglican Churches, and Questions Referred to the Conference. Under these headings, the assembled prelates will discuss such varied subjects as the new Church of South India (TIME, Oct. 13), the merger proposals between the U.S. Episcopalians and Presbyterians, liberalization of the divorce canon, the doctrinal bases of Anglican unity with other churches.

Gratitude & Devotion. Most colorful visitors at the opening last week were the Russian and Eastern Orthodox representatives--bearded patriarchs like Archimandrite Vitaly of Russia, Archbishop Panteleimon of Greece and Metropolitan Germanos, Greek Orthodox exarch for Western Europe. Largest national block is the 78 bishops from the U.S. led by Presiding Bishop Henry Knox Sherrill. Many of the Americans brought wives & children along (their billeting, in universities and private homes, has been the special concern of Mrs. William Temple, widow of the late Archbishop of Canterbury). While the bishops deliberate in Lambeth Palace, their wives will have a conclave at High Leigh, a large country house near London.

The Archbishop of Canterbury welcomed the bishops last week in words that many an Anglican will remember: "Our communion is no longer English or British or Anglo-Saxon . . . But it is still called the Anglican, the English Communion; and though the word is no longer altogether appropriate for this diverse family of autonomous churches, yet it bears witness to a truth of the past and to a truth of the present . . . Every one of the churches here represented traces its ancestry back to the church of these islands, and so to Canterbury and to St. Augustine ... To that tradition of Christian experience which by the circumstances of history has come to bear the name of Anglican, we are united in a common loyalty of gratitude and devotion ... By its nature it looks beyond itself to seek that visible unity of the Church of Christ which has been lost and is to be re-won."

*Dates of previous Lambeth Conferences: 1867, 1878, 1888, 1897, 1908, 1920, 1930.

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