THE ten-yearly gathering of posturing Anglican twits – better known as the Lambeth Conference 2008 – is descending in farce faster than you can say Archbishop Peter Akinola.

Latest comical reports from the event, which is being boycotted by around 250 African bishops , is that the number of those who ARE attending is being kept secret, and their names won’t be divulged.

It also appears that those in attendance haven’t the foggiest idea of what’s going on at the ecclesiastical talk-fest.

According to Religious Intelligence:

For the first time in its history, the Lambeth Conference has refused to list which bishops are present, citing the 1998 Data Protection Act. Our initial inquiries last week were met with the response that a roster of bishops present would be provided once registration closed on July 20. Subsequent inquiries by the ReligiousIntelligence.com were answered by saying the list was a secret, and the reasons for keeping it secret, were secret.

After The Times reported that threats had been made against the wife of Bishop Okorocha, a ban on the names of bishops present was imposed. Security concerns were initially cited on July 22 for not providing the names, but this was later revised to say that privacy issues, not security questions, prevented the bishops from being named. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s legal advisor, John Rees, advised the conference that the Data Prevention Act that came into force in 2000 forbade release of the conference participants.

Asked to explain why all prior Anglican gatherings covered by the Act had released attendance lists, a conference spokesman said legal advice had never been sought on this matter until now.

Access by the media to the gathering of bishops is sharply restricted, and the bishops themselves have scant knowledge of what is taking place. Unlike past conferences, there is no daily newspaper and what information that can be gleaned from official channels is available only to those bishops with laptops.

Well, that’s Akinola taken care of, Dumbledore. So who else has been buggering up your conference?

Meanwhile, according to The Times:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has continued his quest for Anglican unity with a strong statement against living in sin and gay sex.

Dr Williams said:

I do not believe that sex outside marriage is as God purposes it.

And he said he remained “committed” to the Church’s official stance against gay sex, which aims to preserve Biblical norms.

Dr Williams denied that the Anglican Communion was at an end and said he did not believe the Church of England had entered the Lambeth conference as “a bleeding, hunted animal with arrows in its side” as a result of the vote on women bishops which took place at the General Synod last month.

Asked what his message was to those who had chosen not to attend the conference, Dr Williams said he was “sorry” they were not present.

I think that the great pity is that to have those voices in the discussions as we have conceived it, would have been, I think, for everybody, a healing and helpful thing, but also a difficult one.

Are we heading for schism? Well let’s see. If it is the end of the Anglican Communion I do not think anyone has told most of the people here.

He was speaking as the Church of England’s Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement distributed copies at the Lambeth Conference of his 1989 essay The Body’s Grace at the conference, in which he adopted a liberal stance towards homosexual love, arguing that the Bible did not necessarily legislate only for “reproductive sex”.