ARCIC

New sources in Lambeth Palace Library

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The Lambeth Palace Library annual review for 2016 details its new accessions and completed cataloguing, and as in previous years I pull out some highlights for the period since 1945. They include:

(i) amongst the papers of the archbishops, recently catalogued are papers from a series of meetings of the primates of the worldwide Anglican Communion, from 1981 (Washington, D.C), 1983 (Nairobi), 1986 (Toronto), Cyprus in 1989 and in Northern Ireland in 1991. There are also four meetings of the Anglican Consultative Council included in the series. Given the stresses in the Communion that have emerged into plain view in the 1990s and since, these papers will be key to understanding the pre-history of those disputes.

(ii) also catalogued are papers from the second phase of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) beginning in 1983, as are papers for the Roman Catholic section of the Council on Foreign Relations;

(iii) the CFR papers relating to the Russian Orthodox church are now also catalogued, covering the period from 1931 to 1981;

(iii) as a biographer, also of particular interest to me is a file of correspondence between Robert Runcie and the author of a rather indiscreet biography of him, Humphrey Carpenter; the book caused a minor sensation, much to Runcie’s discomfort.

(v) scholars of Anglican evangelicalism will be very grateful to see the completed cataloguing of the papers of Michael Harper, ecumenist and leading figure in the charismatic movement. The papers extend from 1961 to 2003.

They may all be found through the Library’s archive catalogue.

New sources at Lambeth Palace Library, 2014

peterwebsterLeave a comment

Some twentieth century highlights from the latest Report of the Friends of Lambeth Palace Library:

(i) a note on the cataloguing of the papers of John Stott, funded by Stott himself and his executors. There’s more on the LPL site, and on their blog when the cataloguing was finished.

(ii) newly catalogued files from the Council on Foreign Relations, including key dialogues between Anglicans and Roman Catholics. These began before the Second Vatican Council; became the Joint Preparatory Commission (1967), and in turn the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC). The papers touch on many of the most difficult issues of the time, including ‘mixed marriages’

(iii) amongst the papers of the archbishops, the series reaches 1983, and Robert Runcie’s view on nuclear weapons and his visit to China as part of a delegation of the British Council of Churches.

(iv) the papers of Joseph McCulloch, rector of St Mary-le-Bow (London) and instigator of the weekly public debates in the 1960 and 1970s known as the Bow Dialogues.