A group that includes bishops, rectors and canons from the Episcopal Church has agreed to work in a partnership to organize and secure funding for a pan-Anglican congress in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2007.

Sponsored by the Primate of Southern Africa, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, the 2007 gathering is modeled on a proposal developed by the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) for a meeting that was to have been held concurrently with the 2008 Lambeth Conference. That gathering, also scheduled to be held in Cape Town, was cancelled due to lack of funds.

In an address to the annual convention of the Diocese of Long Island, Bishop Orris G. Walker, Jr., said the gathering will be “for all orders of ministry” and “will focus on the mission and ministry of the whole church.”

Bishop Walker said that Archbishop Ndungane had also invited the Bishop of Washington, the Rt. Rev. John B. Chane; the Rev. Canon John L. Peterson, former ACC secretary general and now canon for global justice and reconciliation at Washington National Cathedral; the Rev. Canon George W. Brandt, Jr., rector of St. Michael’s, New York City; the Rev. James Cooper, rector of Trinity Church Wall Street; the Rev Canon Harold T. Lewis, rector of Calvary Church, Pittsburgh; the Rev. Canon Frederick Boyd Williams, rector of the Church of the Intercession, New York City; and Canon Diane M. Porter, deputy for Episcopal administration in the Diocese of Long Island.

The “scope, attendance, venue” and dates of the pan-Anglican Congress will be determined at a planning committee meeting in Cape Town at the end of January, said Canon Lewis. Funding issues also remained to be finalized, according to another member of the team.

The Rev. Canon Gregory Cameron, ACC deputy general secretary, said staff from the ACC and Lambeth Palace have been assisting the planning committee, “offering advice and suggestions,” but the 2007 congress was “not an Anglican Communion event.”

The 2007 Cape Town congress would become the fourth Communion-wide assembly of lay and ordained leaders. Previous Anglican Communion events occurred in London in 1908, Minneapolis in 1954 and Toronto in 1963.

Discussion about holding a congress organized by the ACC began in 1993 at ACC-9 in Cape Town. Work on the Congress continued in 1999 at ACC-11 in Dundee, Scotland, and in 2002 at ACC-12 in Hong Kong, which requested “the Archbishop of Canterbury to give consideration to ways in which such a congress might be held in association with the next Lambeth Conference in Cape Town in 2008.”

However, in December 2004, a “Lambeth Conference Design Group” appointed by Archbishop Rowan Williams recommended canceling the congress, and holding the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury. “Funding constraints” prevented a 2008 gathering according to the Rev. Ian Douglas, who is professor of mission and world Christianity at the Episcopal Divinity School and a member of the design group.

Prof. Douglas told The Living Church he welcomed the news of the 2007 Congress, saying he was in favor “of as many opportunities as possible for Anglicans from across the Communion to come together, as it builds understanding and a common commitment to God’s mission for the Church in the world.”

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