Anglicans who are struggling at the front line in the battle to turn back gender-based and family violence can take comfort.

As of this morning, they know they have absolute, unequivocal support from their leaders in the Anglican Communion.

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[Bishop Matthews]…stressed that it was not the work of IASCUFO to promote the Covenant, but rather to monitor its reception.

“As we have sought to do that,” she told delegates in Auckland, “I have often thought that the document people discuss and the actual Anglican Covenant are two different documents.

“One is the document that people have in their mind and the other is the Anglican Communion Covenant on paper….”

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Starting every day with Eucharist and Bible Study from now on. The Bible Studies are prepared by a team of scholars from this diocese and they are working with 2 Corinthians. Today we had 2 Corinthians 3: 1-6. I find it very moving to be part of a small group of 6 people from all over the globe sharing our faith journeys by considering the Scriptures each day.

Then we moved on to our final workshop with a Network. I chose the Peace and Justice Network in which we were asked to list the issues in our country. We heard about war, internal fighting, interfaith strife, destruction of environment by transnational companies, lack of drinkable water, and many other problems. This network is now resetting its agenda for future work. After morning coffee, we changed our seating to be in regional groups, to listen to the work of the Anglican Alliance. The alliance was formed by the ACC three years ago at the meeting in Jamaica. It is headed by Sally Keeble, a very able person with background in development and government.

Read it all and check out the Anglican Church of Canada ACC blog for other material.

The members of the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Auckland, New Zealand, today expressed their concern, compassion and prayers for all those caught up in the impact of Hurricane Sandy. Members heard of the scale of lives lost in the Caribbean, in the eastern USA and Canada, and of the devastation wrought in the wake of the hurricane
Condolences were expressed to the Anglican Province of the West Indies, the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada and the Diocese of Cuba.

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While there is much to commend in this message on the extravagant love of God, the world’s desperate need to know this love and our need to share his love with the world, the message was confusing. Was the Archbishop of Canterbury suggesting that everyone will be saved by the mysterious love of God which embraces all from the beginning? Would this not be offensive to those who reject Jesus Christ and his way, to be co-opted against their will? And how does this square with our identity as Anglican followers of Jesus Christ, who in the same Gospel of John makes it clear that he alone is the way, the truth and the life and that salvation is through Him alone? (John 14:6)

Currently, the work of the Anglican Communion appears to be driven by a new, non-Biblical global ethic that focuses on the needs of communities rather than the person and power of Jesus Christ. As I have written recently, the work of the Anglican Alliance on economic empowerment continues to focus on the secular development of skills for “inclusion,” “consultation and governance,” “protection of vulnerable people,” and “principles of financial planning”– all from their report today, all very worthy efforts and all utterly lacking in any Biblical and universal truths rooted in the person and power of Jesus Christ.

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While the ACC is not due to discuss the current status of the Anglican Covenant until Oct. 31, a document handed out today shows that nine provinces have made a final decision on the covenant with one rejecting the covenant, six accepting it as is and two making modifications as part of their acceptance….

The U.S.-based Episcopal Church is one of eight provinces sorted into Category B, which is described as including provinces that have made “partial decisions” about the covenant.

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Archbishop Rowan Williams believes the Anglican Communion needs to change its approach to mission. He also thinks young Anglicans will lead the way ”“ which is why he was so excited about a book launch in Holy Trinity Cathedral on Sunday.

The Communion’s mission maps were drawn, Dr Williams said, “largely by men, largely by ordained men over 55, and largely by ordained men over 55 with a slightly paler complexion than the average Anglican”.

And then, in a gesture of delight, he swung the book high over his head to launch a brand-new road map: “Life-Widening Mission ”“ Global Anglican Perspectives” by seven young Anglican leaders.

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In his opening speech to the 15th meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion celebrated the depth, richness and variety of the worldwide Anglican family.
Speaking at the first plenary session of ACC15, the Canon Kenneth Kearon told delegates assembled in Auckland’s Holy Trinity Cathedral, that Anglicanism at its best “reaches out to those with whom we differ, recognising that together we will come to a deeper and far richer understanding of God than any of us could do on our own or if we only share the company of like-minded people.”
“Each of us will, I hope, bring of our best to this meeting, but what each of us brings will at best represent an incomplete apprehension of the gospel of God; the fullness of our faith will only be expressed when together with our fellow Christians we seek to ”˜give an account of the faith that is in us’ (1 Peter 3:15).

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has thrilled his New Zealand followers on what will be his last international engagement as the head of the Anglican Church.

The Most Reverend Rowan Williams – the 104th in a line which goes back more than 1400 years to Saint Augustine of Canterbury – today preached to some 1300 people at the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Auckland’s Parnell.

The Anglican Consultative Council, which is chaired by Dr Williams, began its two-week New Zealand meeting in Manukau yesterday. It is the biggest and most influential international Anglican gathering ever to be held in this country, the church said in a statement…

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One of the early Christian Fathers of the Church, Clement of Alexandria, says at one point that human love is always tending to slip back into the love of what is common among people.

But there’s nothing, he goes on to say, there’s nothing in common between God and the world.

So God’s love for the world is extraordinary. Without cause, absolutely free, absolutely, overwhelmingly unreasonable.

And that’s the kind of the love we are invited to become part of.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams gave the sermon at today’s beautiful opening eucharist for the ACC-15 meeting at Auckland’s Holy Trinity Cathedral.
Speaking on the Gospel reading, John 15:17-27, he said we all needed to remember that while the world around us is a place where love is conditional, Jesus punctures that view of love.” He said that the challenge for the Church is rethinking love & belonging. “We are to create more belonging with those who don’t belong…” he said. “The church is whatever in us says ‘yes’ to the reckless love of God, that reaches out in mission.”

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After a rousing Maori welcome to TelstraClear Pacific Events Centre in Manukau, New Zealand, Archbishop Rowan Williams’ responded by celebrating thanking his hosts and celebrating the place of the Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia in the Communion’s past and present.

He asked the assembled gathering to pray “for a Pentecostal experience [for the ACC], that divided tongues of fire will touch us all in the days ahead, that we shall learn to listen to one another’s languages and experiences and insights with all the enthusiasm and eagerness with which we would listen to God’s own word.”

He went on to promise that ACC-15 would in turn pray that the “experiments” of the country of Aotearoa New Zealand and the Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia “will be marks and signs of work of the Holy Spirit in the world today and be signs of hope for a world in which by God’s purpose and by God’s promise one of these days all the islands will rise and sing.”

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“It is your Church, your home, ask for the best of your best of your pastors and teachers” with those words the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams concluded an extraordinary morning of welcome at the TelstraClear Pacific events Centre in Manukau, New Zealand. The response was to a question posed by a young person who was participating in a youth forum where questions were addressed to the Archbishop, Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori the presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church and Archbishop Thabo Makgoba the Primate of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.

Dr Williams along with the Anglican Consultative Council delegation who are meeting in Auckland, New Zealand, had arrived at the centre for a powhiri – a Maori welcoming ceremony. A significant part of the morning event was a youth forum where questions ranged from Dr Williams’ favorite biblical passage to church attitudes towards women, same sex marriage, what shoes God would wear, and whether it was fun to be Archbishop.

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The first thing the Archbishop of Canterbury will face at …[today’s] Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) opening ceremony will be a guttural challenge from the young people of this country.

On entering the Telstra Events Centre in Manukau, Dr Rowan Williams and ACC members will be greeted with a wero (challenge) from a young Maori Anglican brandishing a taiaha (spear).

Welcome to Aotearoa, Archbishop; we do things differently here.

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Get ready for a once in a lifetime event.

That’s what Auckland Anglicans were hearing in the leadup to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s visit, and the meeting in the Parnell Cathedral of the Anglican Consultative Council.

This, they were being told, was the first and last chance for Kiwis to see and hear Dr Williams, and the only chance most would ever get to sample the ACC.

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The Anglican Communion Office’s Director for Communications, Jan Butter, shared with the committee the planned ACC-15 communications resources (videos, news and feature articles, podcasts, etc.) and channels (Social Media, the Anglican Communion News Service, etc.) which he hoped would “allow Anglican Communion members not in Auckland to feel involved in the meeting and related events such as the opening welcoming ceremony.”

The Standing Committee also reviewed and then welcomed a code of conduct concerning discriminatory behaviours, harassment and sexual harassment prepared by Anglican Communion Office staff for use at all official Communion meetings.

Speaking about the code of conduct, Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Canon Kenneth Kearon said having such a policy was not a response to any particular problem but rather was a “modern reality” and an important move to ensure all attendees and staff felt safe. He added, “We recognise that this document may have to evolve in the light of experience.”

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A seven-year effort to create a new “covenant” to hold the worldwide Anglican Church together may come close to an end at a historic meeting starting in Auckland tomorrow.

The global Anglican Consultative Council comes three months after the New Zealand and Polynesian province voted against accepting a clause that would penalise any church refusing to defer a “controversial action” such as ordaining gay priests.

Two of the other 37 provinces have also voted against the clause.

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La Provincia Anglicana del Cono Sur ”“ the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone ”“ has endorsed the Anglican Covenant.

Meeting in Asunción, Paraguay from 3-11 November 2011, the provincial executive committee and the province’s House of Bishops endorsed the inter-Anglican agreement that sets the parameters of doctrine and discipline for the Anglican Communion.

In a statement released on 20 Dec 2011, Bishop Frank Lyons of Bolivia stated the province believed the covenant was a “way forward” in the midst of a difficult time when “certain provinces” were proposing “novel ways of Christian living” that rejected “Biblical norms.”

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The Archbishop of Canterbury’s ban on American participation in the Anglican Communion’s international ecumenical dialogues remains in place, a spokesman for the Anglican Consultative Council reports.

However, the addition of an American Episcopalian to the delegation to the third Anglican”“Lutheran International Commission (ALIC) meeting in Jerusalem last week was not a violation of the ban on participation in ecumenical dialogue of those who propagate views contrary to the church’s teachings on human sexuality, the ACC says.

A spokesman for the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) tells The Church of England Newspaper that the communiqué misstated the status of the American member of the Anglican team. The Very Rev. William Petersen, Provost and Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Bexley Hall Seminary in the United States, was a “consultant not a member of ALIC. The reference to him in the communiqué as a member was incorrect,” ACC spokesman Jan Butters said.

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The end of conciliarism, which accords with the practice of the early church, is to be regarded as tragic. The Anglican tragedy, like its medieval counterpart, may be seen as stemming from the reluctance of the central authority to relinquish or even dilute its control. This reluctance is not necessarily a matter of perversity, however. To be sure, the reluctance of Anglican Communion Office, instanced by their keeping the ACC in line in Jamaica, has seemed motivated by a desire to avoid offending TEC, which provides much of their funding. But from their perspective TEC’s financial support may appear essential for the proper functioning of the Communion. They have seemed concerned also to avoid alienating the liberal wing of the Church of England. But this may be not just out of ideological predisposition. It may also reflect a belief that the CofE could not afford the resulting exacerbation of its divisions.

To Archbishop Rowan himself, with his brilliant mind, deep learning, and winning personality, such considerations may have less application. The explanation in his case may lie more in his espousal of a theology militating against closure on any issue, and thus supportive of the inclinations of the Anglican Communion Office, as of the interests of TEC, by default. Charles Raven, in his 2010 book Shadow Gospel: the Theology of Rowan Williams and the Anglican Communion Crisis, made an impressive case to this effect. As for Rowan’s adherence to such a theology despite all his sophistication, being essentially an academic, without secular or even significant parish experience, perhaps limits his awareness of the outside world.

If, then, there is to be a revival of Anglican conciliarism, it will have to come not from the Instruments in their now compromised state but instead out of churches of the Global South, together with their Western allies. These churches have laid a basis for it already in Gafcon, their conference in Jerusalem in June 2008. There the Spirit was clearly at work, producing conciliarly the extraordinary Jerusalem Declaration. So far, despite the South-to-South Encounter in Singapore in April 2010 and the CAPA meeting in Uganda last August, the Global South leaders have not followed up on it. But by absenting themselves from the Dublin Primates’ Meeting and thereby sealing its irrelevance, they have taken on a responsibility to do so. For the sake of conciliarism and of Anglicanism itself, they need now, in American terms, to step up to the plate.

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….behind the scenes conversations between Dr. Williams and the primates remain on-going, CEN has been told. While reservations and supplies have been laid on by the ACC staff for the 38 primates and the Archbishop of York to meet at the Emmaus Conference Centre outside of Dublin, it is not clear how many primates will attend the gathering.

In 2008 Dr. Williams called the bluff of the Global South bishops and declined to honour their request to postpone the Lambeth Conference, due to their objections to the presence of the US and Canadian bishops. As a result a majority of African bishops sat out the every ten year meeting of the communion’s bishops.

In his Oct 7 letter, Dr. Williams warned the primates of the substantial “damage” to the communion a boycott of the meeting would entail. Whether he can find a synthesis between the opposing camps within the communion, offering suggestions as to ways the primates could meet together without actually having to meet together, remains unclear.

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In his Oct 14 press release, Canon Kearon said “I have not received a response” to this request for “clarification” from the Southern Cone.

Canon Kearon’s claim, however, is at odds with Bishop Venables’ memory, as he reports having had two telephone conversations with Canon Kearon and one with Dr. Williams about this issue.

Bishop Venables further stated that he told Dr. Williams and Canon Kearon in the three conversations that he could not give a definitive answer to Canon Kearon’s letter until after the meeting of the Southern Cone standing committee.

A spokesman for the ACC confirmed that Canon Kearon had indeed “followed up with two phone calls” his June letter to Bishop Venables. However, the secretary general had “received no clarification as to the current state of his interventions by mid July as requested,” ACC spokesman Jan Butter said.

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In sum, I see the Lambeth Conference as the only real continuity into the future; Canterbury as a possible, if hoped-for, resource for the future; the Primates’ Meeting as giving way to some alternative Global South-oriented gathering of episcopal leaders that can move matters forward into the future in a provisional way (which may involve several decades); and the ACC as altogether finished. And this is perhaps all the Communion needs at the moment: we are learning to be less demanding of immediate solutions; more patient with less structured relations; more open to a future that does not depend on institutional sturdiness, but on God’s provisions and leading; less trusting in an ecclesial politics of maneuver and control; more joyous in the face of the Cross and the Resurrection. And in the course of such learning, individual Anglicans and their congregations are going to be drawn into new forms of witness, ones they perhaps never imagined, in a sense more globally bonded because less tethered to structures whose strength lay in local orderings we have now outgrown.

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[My second reason for being uneasy]…is due to the outcome of the discussion groups on the blessing of same-sex unions. The “indaba” process was very well run, and it did allow everyone to speak and be heard. However, I do not feel that my own voice and most of the voices in my discussion group were recorded. I had the feeling that there was an orchestrated effort to avoid public controversy. As a consequence, there really was no likelihood that a decision would be made. The final resolution seems to say that the local option is allowed for pastoral reasons, but we are nevertheless going to refrain from legislating anything. My fear is that our reluctance to commit ourselves has left The Episcopal Church even more isolated in the Communion….

Read it all (pages 5 and 7).

Concerns that the Anglican Consultative Council will be subject to UK and EU equality laws following its formation as a British imited company are misplaced, the London-based instrument of communion’s legal advisor, John Rees, reported on August 11.

“I share the unease of many religious people about the impact of this British [equality] legislation,” Canon Rees said in a statement released by the Anglican Communion News Service, “but it is not right to say that the restructuring of the ACC will have altered its position” under the legislation.

Critics of the transformation of the ACC from a British charity to a limited corporation have voiced concerns over the ratification process and the powers given to the ACC Standing Committee by the new constitution. In a paper released last month, the conservative-leaning Anglican Communion Institute (ACI) offered a lengthy critique of the newly formed corporate entity, and noted that whether by accident or design, the ACC
was now subjecting itself to UK and EU equality laws on homosexuality.

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Although we have written before of our concerns over the substance of the new Articles of Association of the Anglican Consultative Council, until now we have said little about our concerns over the procedures followed by the Anglican Communion Office in managing the development of these Articles. Others voiced complaints and we remained hopeful that the ACO would respond to these complaints with transparency and by providing satisfactory answers. This has not happened.

We are dismayed that the Communion Office is either unable or unwilling to provide even the most basic information to those who have raised serious concerns: what information was provided to the provinces; when was it provided; and what was their response. An amendment of the constitution is a significant action by an organization, especially one subject to legal duties. Maintaining this information is the most basic level of diligence required of an organization’s secretariat. The lack of transparency and public accountability throughout this process is one of the most regrettable episodes of Communion life in recent years.

Our concerns are only heightened by information suggesting that the ACO may not have followed advice given to it on the necessary procedures for adopting the new Articles. In November 2008 Robert Fordham of Australia, then a member of the ACC standing committee and the “convenor” of its “sub-committee on Constitutional Issues,” addressed the Joint Standing Committee on the status of the new constitution and “what steps have to be taken at this stage.” He advised that the revised draft of the Articles needed to be submitted to the provinces for ratification at that time. He noted that after ACC-13 had approved a draft of the new Articles in 2005 the ACC’s legal advisor, Canon John Rees, had held “extensive discussions” with the UK charity commission and had engaged in “considerable work” to produce a new draft for the February 2008 JSC. At that meeting in February 2008, the JSC then amended the draft further before approving it. Mr. Fordham then states:

The next and final step is to circulate the Constitution in this new format to each of the Member Provinces of the Communion to seek their ratification. For the new Constitution to come into effect support will be required from two-thirds of the 39 Provinces.

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The new ACC constitution also attempts to impose diversity criteria on the primates in selecting the primates’ standing committee. They are to “have regard to” diversity between regions and sexes in appointing their members. The new constitution also infringes on the traditional prerogative of the Archbishop of Canterbury to appoint members of Anglican commissions by giving the ACC authority to establish these commissions. It is significant that at last December’s meeting of the ACC’s standing committee it considered measures to regulate the governance of the Lambeth Conference and the frequency of Primates’ Meetings.

The fourth concern is that the new constitution reduces the role of the member churches in the ACC. In addition to redefining the ACC for legal purposes so that the members appointed directly by the member churches are no longer part of the legal entity, the new constitution also eliminates the requirement that amendments to the constitution be ratified by the member churches.

The last concern raised by ACI is that the new constitution appears not to be consistent in important respects with the new Anglican Communion Covenant, completed only last December. The Covenant not only reflects the traditional understanding of the ACC as the body composed of the members directly appointed by member churches; it also defines a Communion that recognizes “the central role of bishops as guardians and teachers of faith,” that has four coequal instruments retaining their historic independence and control of their own memberships, and that is not subject to a central executive authority like that into which the ACC standing committee is evolving.

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