PB Responds to Lambeth Boycott

Five Anglican Primates, according to ENS, four from Africa and one from South America, have publicized their intentions to boycott the 2008 Lambeth Conference in a letter responding to a group of English bishops who had urged them to attend the once-a-decade gathering.

Archbishops Peter Akinola of Nigeria, Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda, Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya, Henry Orombi of Uganda, and Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone -- who make up five of the 38 Anglican Primates -- told the 21 English bishops that they would not attend Lambeth in protest to the invitations extended by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Episcopal Church's bishops. Akinola, Kolini and Orombi had all previously announced that they intended to boycott the conference.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori is saddened by the primates' decision not to attend Lambeth and responds,

"The gathering will be diminished by their absence, and I imagine that they themselves will miss a gift they might have otherwise received," the Presiding Bishop said. "None of us is called to 'feel at home' except in the full and immediate presence of God. It is our searching, especially with those we find most 'other,' that is likely to lead us into the fuller experience of the body of Christ. Fear of the other is an invitation to seek the face of God, not a threat to be avoided."