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World Anglican meeting ends on hopeful note

By Mary Frances Schjonberg
Episcopal Life Media

Members of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) ended their May 2-12 meeting in Kingston, Jamaica with a sense of hope and commitment to the Anglican Communion, rather than, as one delegate put it, with “an answer about sex.”

And while the future shape of the communion is unclear, there was little doubt that relationships between the members of the council had changed drastically since the 2005 gathering in Nottingham, England when the Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada representatives attended only as observers following a request from the leaders, or primates, of the communion’s provinces.

“We are leaving here hopeful, and very committed to each other and very committed to the communion,” Episcopal Church lay representative Josephine Hicks said, describing the final reflections of her discernment group that met nearly every day of the 11-day meeting.

“We go home with hope,” Suzanne Lawson, lay representative of the Anglican Church of Canada, said during the final May 12 plenary.

“Almost all of us came here with very little of it. We were very worried, very burdened —some were afraid and told to come back with an answer about sex.”

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said at a closing news conference that while the gathering “hasn’t necessarily dealt with the problems that face the communion, once and for all,” it did “deepen our sense of obligation” to and with each other.

Episcopal Church clerical representative the Rev. Ian Douglas described as “absolutely real” the representatives’ “sense of understanding, and mutuality and common commitment to God’s mission, and the sense that there’s so much more that holds us to together than divides us.”

Diocese of New York Bishop Suffragan Catherine Roskam, the Episcopal Church’s episcopal representative, said that “the deep friendships and connections we make here give us hope [which] deflects from all the tension around documents.”

Two tense documents

The two documents that made representatives the most tense during their time in Kingston were the proposed Anglican covenant and the Windsor Continuation Group’s final report that includes a continuation of bans on same-gender blessings, the ordination of partnered gay and lesbian people to the episcopate, and cross-border interventions.

The covenant is proposed as a way to maintain unity amid differing viewpoints, especially on human sexuality issues and biblical interpretation.

The ACC acted on both documents May 8 after a day’s worth of often-tense debate and often-confusing votes. It postponed, by a vote of 33-30, releasing the proposed covenant to the communion’s provinces for adoption, until Section 4 (“Our Covenanted Life Together”) with its dispute-resolution process could be scrutinized and possibly revised.

In late May, Archbishop Williams and Anglican Communion Secretary General Kenneth Kearon appointed a four-member committee to consider “adjustments” to the disputed Section.

That section also has been sent to all the provinces of the Anglican Communion for comments, which are due by Nov. 13. This new committee will meet Nov. 20-21 and will make a report to the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates and Anglican Consultative Council in mid-December.

Other actions

During the May 2-12 meeting the council also:

- supported an expansion of the communion’s process of listening to homosexual persons and those who struggle with the full inclusion of such persons in the life of the church;

- endorsed a new effort to bring Anglicans together to explore various methods of biblical interpretation;

- endorsed requests to add to the Five Marks of Mission a sixth calling Anglicans to work for peace, conflict transformation and reconciliation, but with specific wording to come to the 2012 ACC meeting in Auckland, New Zealand;

- called attention to conflicts around the world, commended Anglicans’ efforts to alleviate them and reconcile opponents and called for continued peacemaking efforts, including
Israel-Palestine, the Korean peninsula and Sudan;

- endorsed an effort to develop a worldwide vision and strategy of church planting and mission, along with a working theology of evangelism and church growth; and

- called the communion to even greater environmental stewardship, carbon-footprint reduction and called for a “Season of Creation” to be “an integral part of the church’s yearly pattern of worship and teaching.

The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is national correspondent for Episcopal Life Media.