21 evangelical bishops in the Church of England have written an open letter to the Church of England Newspaper urging their fellow Anglican bishops around the world to attend the Lambeth Conference. The signatories include NT Wright, Bishop of Durham, but not bishops Nazir-Ali of Rochester or Benn of Lewes – nor for that matter Broadbent of Willesden, as far as I know the only bishop so far to comment on this blog (but I have no idea of Broadbent’s position on this issue).

I have not actually seen the open letter, which is not in the CEN’s free online daily edition. But I have read the CEN report as republished by Anglican Mainstream and others, with extracts from the letter. In one of these the bishops write:

We urge you therefore to take the long route, waiting for God to work through the processes that are already in train and praying for him to work his purposes in us and through us together.

That is, they are asking their fellow conservatives in the worldwide Anglican communion to abandon their boycott, which they at least implicitly consider a short cut, and take a long route via the Lambeth Conference.

But the problem with taking long routes is that they don’t always lead to the intended destination. This one is at least starting off in what a direction which seems completely opposite to the one which the evangelical bishops want to go to. Continue reading →