c. 1998 Religion News Service

CANTERBURY, England _ The Lambeth Conference, the once-a-decade gathering of the world’s Anglican bishops, entered its final days Monday _ the endgame of the three-week gathering _ facing more than 100 resolutions that need to be debated and voted on during the next four days.

The issues range from the bitterly divisive _ homosexuality _ to the merely controversial _ the crushing debt of Third World nations. Other significant but less headline-grabbing issues include ecumenical and interfaith relations and questions of how the diverse regions and cultures within the Anglicanism will relate to one another.

On the latter issue, for example, Latin American bishops _ 41 of the 736 bishops in attendance _ complained Monday (Aug. 3) they are being ignored at the conference.”We are like Cinderella,”Bishop Julio Holguin-Khoury of the Dominican Republic told a news conference.”We are still in the kitchen.” At the news conference, the bishops’ complaints ranged from the fact that British and North American church leaders had set the conference’s agenda to what they felt was not enough Latin music in the worship services.

On the pending business front, church leaders said most of the 108 resolutions to be dealt with are regarded as noncontroversial and have been placed on an agreed list for approval without formal debate. But if 50 bishops submit an objection in writing or, if during a plenary session on the relevant section of the conference’s work 100 bishops object, the resolution will be withdrawn from the agreed list and submitted for debate.

Surprisingly, one resolution on the agreed list is the lengthy proposal on international debt _ one of the major issues the bishops have taken up during their meeting and the issue that has generated the most controversy from those outside the church even as it appeared to have gained a strong consensus from within the the body of bishops.

Last week, World Bank President James Wolfensohn, in an impassioned and highly charged speech, sharply criticized the prelates both for what he took to be a personal attack on him during the conference’s plenary session on the debt issue as well as what he called an unrealistic proposal for simple debt cancellation.”… Insofar as the debt is concerned and as far as the (creditor) countries are concerned, there is a limit to the extent that we and they are prepared to forgive debt,”he said.”But I have said on many occasions, and I repeat it to you now: If my owners, who are the 180 countries, want me to forgive debt … I can forgive $23 billion. Why? Because the only capital I have is $23 billion.” But if the bank forgave the debt, he said, it would not be able to repay the pension funds, churches and others who have invested in World Bank bonds.

The resolution incorporates a suggestion from Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of Cape Town, South Africa, urging the United Nations to set up a mediation council to act as an international bankruptcy court. The mediation council would, among other things, ensure that debt repayments were set at levels giving human development needs priority over the demands of creditors.

The resolution also welcomes the World Bank’s Heavily Indebted Poor Country initiative project in which the bank and creditor governments will write-off or reduce loans owed to their departments for overseas development.

The resolution argues, however, that”these measures do not as yet provide sufficient release for the hundreds of millions of people whose governments are diverting scarce resources away from health, education, sanitation, and clean water”to service their external debt.

It concludes that”substantial debt relief, including cancellation of unpayable debts of the poorest nations under an independent, fair and transparent process, is a necessary (while not sufficient) precondition for freeing these nations and their people from the hopeless downward spiral of poverty”.

Six resolutions _ none on the agreed list _ tackle the vexed question of human sexuality and the legitimacy of homosexual behavior.

But none give the green light to the ordination of active homosexuals or the blessing of same-sex”marriages.” The mildest, from the panel that was charged with dealing with the issue during the conference, calls on the conference to uphold the scriptural teaching of faithfulness in marriage between one man and one woman and to express its belief that”celibacy is right for those who are not called to marriage.” But it also calls all Anglicans to minister”pastorally and sensitively”to others irrespective of their sexual orientation and to condemn homophobia along with violence within marriage and any trivialization and commercialization of sex.

The stronger resolutions seek an outright condemnation of homosexual behavior as incompatible with the gospel and, in the words of the resolution from West Africa, want it labeled”a sin which could only be adopted by the church if it wanted to commit evangelical suicide.”

DEA END NOWELL