Anglican Consultative Council sifts through issues from Lambeth Conference
By James Solheim, Episcopal News Service, October 15, 1999
Some of the frustrations from the 1998 Lambeth Conference of the world’s Anglican bishops spilled over to a meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) in Scotland, as it spent a dozen days in mid September sorting through issues of unity, sexuality, international debt and globalization. The theme itself, “The Communion We Share,” gave a clue to such continuing concerns.
Formed in 1968 to provide a forum to deal with pressing concerns of Anglicans worldwide, the ACC has no authority over the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion.
Limits to diversity
In an unusually blunt presidential address, Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey said that Anglicans do not live by the principle of “anything goes,” that “the constant interplay of Scripture, tradition and reason provide limits to diversity.”
As Christians struggle to share their faith with the world around them, “vigorous debate and healthy intellectual engagement” are inevitable, he said. But he repudiated unilateral action by dioceses and provinces within the Anglican Communion.
“No one has the right to take decisions that affect the whole,” he said, warning that “unilateral action which affects and impairs the whole communion…to engage in division is itself to undermine the truth.”
Pointing to the absence of Archbishop Moses Tay of Southeast Asia, who was boycotting the meeting because it was being held in “one of the most heretical provinces” in the church, under the leadership of Primus Richard Holloway of Scotland, Carey said, “We are poorer without his voice.” At the same time, the archbishop disagreed with the central thesis in Holloway’s book, “Godless Morality,” which suggests that God could be left out of the moral debate.
Holloway later said that he and Carey came from “very different theological traditions” and that “disagreement is central to the search for truth in complex areas, such as theology and ethics.”
Testimonies from gays and lesbians
In a meeting chaired by Holloway, ACC delegates listened–in closed session–“respectfully and attentively” to gays and lesbians.
The session was in response to a Lambeth Conference resolution “to listen to the stories of gay and lesbian people, and we are trying hard not to make it a divisive issue,” said Archbishop John Paterson of Aotearoa/New Zealand, ACC vice president and chair of the planning committee.
While some complained that the five presentations all advocated acceptance of homosexuality and were therefore not representative, Bishop Richard Harries of Oxford called it “a very positive step forward in the church’s dialogue on this issue.”
Keeping in step
On the last day of the meeting Carey returned to the issue of Anglican unity and authority. “We have to ask whether we are a federation of autonomous churches or an international communion which speaks with one voice. Whether we like it or not, political leaders and other church leaders look to the archbishop of Canterbury. Unless we speak together as primates and submit to one another in communion, we will lose the respect of other churches,” he said.
Carey concluded, “We must keep in step with one another. The moment the local steps out of line with the whole, the communion is threatened.” He opened the possibility that there might be times when he should be able to speak for the whole Anglican Communion on certain issues.