Every time a church body meets it comes up with a statement, justifying the meeting and the accompanying expense. Sometimes the statement is grandly called a “communique” as if saying it in French makes it more official. I am sure that all of you eagerly seize upon these statements, with their neatly bulleted and outlined sentences, knowing that the publication of each is bringing the kingdom nearer. No?

Then praise the Archbishop of Canterbury for turning the 2008 Lambeth Conference away from being a deliberative legislative body and into a retreat for bishops to learn how to be better bishops (although, in the words of a senior retired clergyman of my acquaintance, the Lambeth Conference has always had a simpler purpose: “The Lambeth Conference is a teach in for Bishops who have stopped reading books. They come to Lambeth, go to Wipples and get kitted out with the latest Episcopal gear and then go home and retire.”)

The first Lambeth Conference was called to deal with a doctrinal crisis in the now world-wide Anglican Communion. In 1853 a methodical mathematician called John Colenso was consecrated bishop of the new diocese of Natal. Someone didn’t do their research, because it soon emerged that Colenso had radical (for then!) ideas about polygamy, heathenism and the proper interpretation of the Old Testament. The Bishop of Cape Town attempted to depose Colenso, then excommunicate him. The Privy Council in London got involved and complicated matters further. There ended up two bishops in Natal, the Bishop of Natal (Colenso, who remained in communion with the Church of England even if excomunicate from the church in South Africa) and the Bishop of Maritzburg (who was in communion with the Bishop of Cape Town). It was a mess: if I am in communion with you, but not with him, will I be in communion with her, who is in communion with him, but not with you? Positions were assumed and attitudes were struck. Samuel John Stone, the curate of Haggerstone in London, even wrote a polemical hymn attacking Colenso and supporting the actions of the Bishop of Cape Town:

Though with a scornful wonder
men see her sore oppressed,
by schisms rent asunder,
by heresies distressed;
yet saints their watch are keeping,
their cry goes up, “How long?”
and soon the night of weeping
shall be the morn of song.

The Bishop of Cape Town, despairing of this mess, called in 1860 for a synod of the colonial bishops. The Canadian Church agreed in 1865. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Longley, was a cautious man, and it wasn’t until 1867 he invited the colonial bishops to a meeting at his London home, Lambeth Palace: the first Lambeth Conference. It was not a great success: 76 bishops attended for the four day meeting (four days! After a voyage to London of weeks for some of the bishops!); the Archbishop of York refused to attend, concerned that this impinged upon the authority of Parliament. As one historian said:

It ended after only four days of meeting without any great accomplishments, but its great achievement was simply to have met. [(!)]¹

Which isn’t entirely fair. Longley was wise enough to recognise the true nature of the Anglican Church and the more profitable way for such meetings to behave: “Longley insisted that the meeting was a conference not a synod: no declaration of faith was to be made nor were canons to be enacted.”² — a lesson not heeded by subsequent Archbishops.

A second Lambeth Conference, held in 1878, meant, according to Anglican custom, that we have always done things this way, and so a third was inevitable. It was at the third conference, held in 1878 that the strange beast that is the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral was discussed.

To understand the C-LQ we have to take a step back and introduce William Reed Huntington (1838-1909), the Rector of Grace Church, New York. Reed Huntington was a great man in the history of the Anglican Communion, an inheritor of the great theologian saints such as Anselm and Hooker. He realised the doctrine when correctly understood and articulated, was the great engine of evangelism and mission. In 1870 he wrote a book The Church Idea which deserves to be much better known outside the Episcopal Church:

If our whole ambition as Anglicans in America be to continue a small, but eminently respectable body of Christians, and to offer a refuge to people of refinement and sensibility, who are shocked by the irreverences they are apt to encounter elsewhere; in a word, if we care to be only a countercheck and not a force in society; then let us say as much in plain terms, and frankly renounce any and all claim to Catholicity. We have only, in such a case, to wrap the robe of our dignity about us, and walk quietly along in seclusion no one will take much trouble to disturb. Thus may we be a Church in name, and a sect in deed.
But if we aim at something nobler than this, if we would have our Communion become national in very truth, - in other words, if we would bring the Church of Christ into the closest possible sympathy with the throbbing, sorrowing, sinning, repenting, aspiring heart of this great people, - then let us press our reasonable claims to be the reconciler of a divided household, not in a spirit of arrogance, but with affectionate earnestness and an intelligent zeal.

And the curious path Huntington took to achieve this role as the reconciler of a divided house was to set out exactly what united all those who called themselves Anglican, so that we can press onward to find out exactly what unites all those who call themselves Christian. Huntington’s path to unity had four points, hence “Quadrilateral”. By 1886 the Quadrilateral had got itself on to the agenda of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church at its meeting in Chicago. It was heartily endorsed. It was then passed over the Atlantic to the meeting of the Third Lambeth Conference. Again it was endorsed as the irreducible basis of all that we hold in common as Anglicans. Thus it became the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral.

Four points, in four sentences, and 108 words.

The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral

(Resolution 11 of the Lambeth Conference, 1888)

1. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as “containing all things necessary to salvation,” and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith.
2. The Apostles’ Creed, as the baptismal symbol; and the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith.
3. The two sacraments ordained by Christ himself — Baptism and the Supper of the Lord — ministered with unfailing use of Christ’s words of institution, and of the elements ordained by him.
4. The historic episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of his Church.

There was a elegant simplicity to this formula, which proved to be very effective for some years, especially in cementing the unity of the disparate churches throughout and beyond the British Empire which had some historic connection with the See of Canterbury:

There was no mention of England, Anglicanism, the Reformation, the Thirty-Nine Articles, or the Book of Common Prayer.³

But there are also (were also) very serious problems caused by the formula. To work out what those might be, think ecumenically.

1. Frederick Shriver in John E. Booty, Stephen Sykes and Douglas A. Knight, eds., The Study of Anglicanism, (SPCK, 2nd rev ed. 1998), p. 195. [↩]
2. J. R. Garrard, ‘Longley, Charles Thomas (1794–1868)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [↩]
3. Mark Chapman, Anglicanism: A Very Short Introduction, (Oxford VSIs, 2006), p. 121 [↩]