wfn.org | Anglicans want to start talking with Pentecostal churches

["Lambeth98" <storm@indigo.ie>]

ACNS LC073 - 31 July 1998

Anglicans want to start talking with
growing Pentecostal churches

By Nan Cobbey
Lambeth Conference Communications

Rapidly expanding Pentecostal "emerging churches" are in the
spotlight of ecumenical discussions at the Lambeth Conference.

"I want to underline the significance of this," said Bishop
Stephen Sykes of Ely (England), vice chairman of the conference
section focussed on dialogue with other churches. 

"For the very first time [the Lambeth conference is] taking
seriously the vast quantity of Christian people who assemble in
new churches and independent Christian groups," said Bishop
Sykes. According to key research, Bishop Sykes said, "there are
480 million people who belong to Pentecostal churches or are
associated with charismatic churches in the world."

In the latest of a series of briefings this week on emerging
issues at the conference, Bishop Sykes said that for the first
time Anglicans from all parts of the Communion wanted "to
evaluate this vast phenomenon . . . and what [it] signifies for
world Christianity."

He said the bishops in the conference subsection looking at the
growth of  Pentecostalism and its ramifications "have taken a
generally positive view of our relationship with them. They have
a lot to teach us," he said. "And we have a reason to be penitent
for our failure to be more responsive to the needs of men and
women across the world."

At the same time, said Bishop Sykes, "we want to find ways of
entering into constructive dialogue with them without dismantling
our heritage."

Maintaining other ties

The new directions will not lead to a drift away from the Roman
Catholic church, the press conference heard. A reporter asked if
the growing emphasis on dialogue with Pentecostals, Lutherans and
other Protestants meant Anglicans are "going to lose more and
more the catholic side of your history?" "No!" was the immediate,
forceful reply from Bishop Christopher Hill of Stafford
(England), editor of the subsection draft report.

"There is a very long dialogue between the papacy and the
Pentecostal churches, from the 1970s onwards," Bishop Sykes
added. "So the fact that we are taking this group very seriously
means that we are following the example of the papacy."

Questioned about the impact of the conference's discussion on
homosexuality for inter-church dialogue, Bishop Jabez Bryce of
Polynesia, chair of Section Three, had an immediate and precise
answer: "The section wants to make it very clear that no province
of the Anglican Communion has changed its standing on this
matter. They still endorse the marriage between a man and a
woman. They have not changed that at all and we want to reaffirm
that in our section." 

For further information, contact:

   Lambeth Conference Communications
   Canterbury Business School
   University of Kent at Canterbury
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