Lambeth 2020: Conference or council?

The future of the Anglican Communion – currently riven by opposing ideologies – hangs to a significant extent on the success or failure of the Lambeth Conference that will gather for the fifteenth time in July 2020. The Archbishop of Canterbury will convene the bishops of the Communion in Canterbury for worship, study and discussion. At the end of the day, the conference may address a teaching message to the Church and to the world. But the Lambeth Conference will not take any decisions intended to bind the Communion as a whole or any of its member churches. The Lambeth Conference does not have the constitutional authority to legislate for Anglicanism, but brings the bishops together to confer. But where does that leave the Lambeth Conference in relation to the 2,000-year history of councils and synods of the Church? How does the Lambeth Conference relate to the great conciliar tradition of Christianity? This article argues that Anglicanism is a form of conciliar, reformed Catholicism and that the Lambeth Conference is an expression of non-hierarchical, non-coercive conciliarity