Should Lambeth decide?

"I would like to see if we can have some suggestions coming out from this conference from where you can go from here rather than simply talking about the things we have been talking about for years." So said the Archbishop of Hong Kong in one of the few public expressions of frustration by the bishops at Lambeth. (bbc.co.uk 2 August).
While sympathizing with the feelings of frustration, we might perhaps bear in mind what happened ten years ago when formal resolutions were the order of the day.
What authority should they have? The famous Resolution 1.10 on homosexuality of the 1998 Conference has been trumpeted far and wide, and often claimed as the Anglican position on the matter. There is no justification for this, and would be no justification for more of the same. Bishops are neither delegates nor representatives of their provinces. Different provinces appoint their bishops in different ways, and as far as England is concerned the Archbishop of Uganda has recently reminded us that even the Archbishop of Canterbury is appointed by a secular government.
No doubt the internet has made it a great deal easier for churches to examine what their colleagues are doing in far distant parts of the world, and condemn practices of which they would previously have been ignorant. But the fact that we can police each other more easily does not mean that we ought to.
If decision-making powers are to be centralized, we need to be oh-so-careful about who has this new power. At present there are no democratically elected Communion-wide representative bodies. Rather than hand power to one of the unrepresentative bodies which already exist – like the Primates or the Lambeth Conference - perhaps we ought to create something new. Better still, resist the temptation to centralize and allow different provinces to do things differently.
Jonathan Clatworthy