Sunday evening, July 20, 2008 ------ To the Clergy and People of the Diocese of Alabama:

Greetings from Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference. Bishop Sloan and I are well-ensconced in Canterbury and the conference is off to a fine beginning. We spent the first days in retreat in the cathedral with the Archbishop offering several rich addresses on our faith and ministry as bishops in the church. We had this holy and beautiful place all to ourselves for hours of prayer, meditation, and quiet conversation with one another. It was spiritually invigorating and an excellent way to begin the Lambeth Conference.

Today we celebrated a festival Holy Eucharist in the cathedral with some 650 bishops and countless spouses and guests present and many ecumenical partners. The Missa Luba sung by the choir of men and boys was splendid and dancers from Melanesia in native dress danced the Gospel procession with brilliant singing and reverence. The Bishop of Colombo, Sri Lanka preached a wise sermon about the challenges before the Anglican Communion. He was honest about the problems we face and passionate about the need for us to stay together for the sake of the Gospel. Citing the parable of the wheat and the tares (one of my personal favorites) he noted that Jesus said that the two must grow together and that they share the same soil. As a communion he suggested that we must renew our commitment to self-scrutiny, standing naked before God and examining the log in our own eye not just the mote in our neighbor's; that we must renew our commitment to unity in diversity, an Anglican hallmark for centuries; and that we must renew our prophetic voice, both as a voice for the voiceless and to call to account those who abuse power. He reminded us of William Temple's great words that the 'church is the only institution that exists for those outside' and concluded saying that we must give all our energy toward offering Christ's abundant life for the others.

In the afternoon we turned to the work of the conference, which will focus on renewing our Anglican identity and resourcing one another for our ministry as bishops in the service of God's mission. In his presidential address the Archbishop described the 'indaba' process as a new way for us to consult one another about the issues before us and present a written record of our conversation to the wider church. There will be no formal resolutions. These conversations begin tomorrow and will conclude at the end of next week. Tomorrow we will address Anglican identity and in course there will be reviews of the proposed covenant and other timely topics.

I urge you to review the reports of Lambeth published regularly by the Episcopal News Service on the church's website and those posted on the website of the Anglican Communion. I especially recommend to your reading the Archbishop's address today. There are many voices here and many points of view, not always represented comprehensively on various agenda- based websites and in the public media. The two above-mentioned sites are readily accessible and reasonably balanced, I believe.

There is a very good and positive spirit among us, thanks be to God. I sat in the great choir today with several bishops from New Zealand, wonderful persons of faith and spirit. We are blessed with a remarkable and gifted communion of churches and a rich legacy of faith and mission since St. Augustine came to Canterbury in 597. It is a sacred trust indeed.

We have much difficult work to do together in the days to come. It is all about the renewal of the Anglican Communion in trying times. By the grace of God we will do our best to preserve and renew the mission and fellowship entrusted to us. We count on your prayers and assure you of ours daily from this holy place.

A verse from one of our final hymns in the cathedral today is a fitting conclusion for this word from Canterbury: