It is the primates, not the Archbishop of Canterbury, who are directly responsible for granting official status to a new Anglican Communion province. That responsibility is spelled out under section 3 of the constitution of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC).
The constitution explains that a new province may be admitted “with the assent of two-thirds of the primates of the Anglican Communion.”
Assuming that at least two-thirds of the primates of the Anglican Communion do consent to the formation of another province in North America when they meet in February, it is likely that the matter would come before the ACC when it meets in Jamaica next May.
The ACC was formed following a resolution of the 1968 Lambeth Conference,which discerned the need for more frequent and more representative contact among the churches than was possible through a once-a-decade Lambeth Conference of bishops. It first met in Limuru, Kenya, in 1971.
Section 2 of the ACC constitution describes the reasons for the ACC in more details. These include but are not limited to:
· “To facilitate the co-operative work of the member churches of the Anglican Communion.
· “To share information about developments in one or more provinces of the Anglican Communion with the other parts of the Communion and to serve as needed as an instrument of common action.
· “To advise on inter-Anglican, provincial, and diocesan relationships, including the division of provinces, the formation of new provinces and of regional councils, and the problems of extra-provincial dioceses.
· “To develop as far as possible agreed Anglican policies in the world mission of the Church and to encourage national and regional churches to engage together in developing and implementing such policies by sharing their resources of manpower, money, and experience to the best advantage of all.
· “To keep before national and regional churches the importance of the fullest possible Anglican collaboration with other Christian churches.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury alone decides which bishops will be invited to attend the Lambeth Conference.
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2 Comments
I am deeply disappointed that you chose to quote only half of the sentence about admitting new provinces, which reads in full: "With the assent of two-thirds of the Primates of the Anglican Communion, the council may alter or add to the schedule."
Contrary to the conclusions of the writer of this article, it is crystal-clear that it is only the Anglican Consultative Council ("the council") that may alter the list of provinces. It is also clear that the Council requires the assent of two-thirds of the Primates to ratify any such action. This sounds like a well-balanced division of powers, which I would assume was its intent.
I sincerely hope that your selective and misleading quotation in this non-attributed article is not also indicative of the way you quote the Bible.
Tom+
I, too, confess to not understanding the use in this article of the section 3 of the ACC's Constitution. It seems to me more helpful to look at the resolutions of ACC-1, specifically Resolution 21.
I confess to also being a bit surprised by TLC's reporting here. It seems like a rather poor reading of the section in question. New membership in the ACC is not the same as provincial membership in the Anglican Communion; furthermore, altering the schedule of ACC meetings is not the same as altering provincial membership. Nonetheless, TLC is an excellent resource, and I continue to support it.
Best,
Benjamin Guyer