Anglican summit begins in UK with call for unity
CANTERBURY, England — Anglican bishops opened their once-a-decade summit Sunday with an elaborate worship service in the mother church of their troubled global fellowship, hearing a plea for unity despite deep rifts over the Bible and homosexuality.
In his sermon at Canterbury Cathedral, Bishop Duleep de Chickera of Colombo, Sri Lanka, said that Anglicans should focus on healing the world, not on internal differences that undermine "unity in diversity" that he called a "cherished Anglican tradition."
About one-quarter of the invited Anglican bishops — mostly theological conservatives from Africa — are boycotting the Lambeth Conference, which runs through Aug. 3.
The Episcopal Church is the Anglican body in the U.S.
"A Lambeth Conference is not a political meeting about organization or structure alone, but it is a spiritual meeting," said Archbishop Phillip Aspinall, head of the Anglican Church of Australia.
The 77-million-member Anglican Communion is a global fellowship of churches that trace their roots to the missionary work of the Church of England. It is the second-largest group of churches in the world, behind Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians.
Anglicans have long held together divergent views of Scripture and ritual. But those divisions have been widening as churches in the developing world, where strict Bible interpretation is the norm, have become the biggest and fastest-growing in the communion.
Still, bishops have described the mood of the conference so far as hopeful.
