Second Anglican Consultative Council to Meet
Diocesan Press Service. August 1, 1973 [73179]
The Rev. Canon Donald E. Becker
(Note: This story was received too late for release in advance of the ACC meeting and is sent for background information. The essential information appeared in DPS release #72196, dated Nov. 30, 1972.)
DUBLIN, Ireland -- The Most Reverend and Right Honorable Arthur Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, will call the second Anglican Consultative Council to order at the Church of Ireland Training College, Dublin, on July 17, 1973.
This Council will have in attendance approximately 60 bishops, priests, and lay persons, from Anglican churches and provinces around the world.
As was the case with the first ACC which was held in Limuru, Kenya, in late February and early March, 1971, white Anglicans will be in the minority.
Membership of the Council is determined by the size of the province or national church represented and ranges from one member for the smaller provinces to three members of the Council from larger Anglican churches.
"The decision to set up the Anglican Consultative Council was made during the 1968 Lambeth Conference," according to the Rt. Rev. John Howe, Secretary of the ACC. " The proposal was approved by the Anglican Provinces in October, 1969. The main function of the Council is to promote co-operation between all churches of the Anglican Communion and between them and the rest of the world, Christian and secular," reports Bishop Howe.
The Council's members will represent approximately 50 million baptized members of the 22 Provinces of the Anglican Communion.
The agenda for this second meeting has been somewhat tightened up over that of the first. It was felt by those participating and observing the first meeting in Kenya, that the scope of the materials was so very broad as to preclude adequate discussion of concerns and implementation of proposals.
The broad categories of study include:
Unity and Ecumenical Affairs . . . which will deal with various international conversations amongst various communions as well as the plans for union throughout the world;
Church and Society . . . one of the heavily overloaded areas at ACC I. This section will be restricted to, a) Education for Social Justice; b) Consideration of a Memorandum from the Church of the Province of South Africa on the World Council of Churches Program to Combat Racism;
Order and Organization of the Anglican Communion . . . to include the nature of the ministry; the great problems faced in marriage discipline, especially, as one African delegate put it at ACC I in Kenya, " The sequential polygamy of the Western world and the simultaneous polygamy in some of the developing countries. " Included in Order and Organization will also be proposals for new Anglican Provinces and a report on the Liturgy.
The fourth section will be on Mission and Evangelism, bringing to the Council's attention "Salvation Today; Manpower and Money in the Anglican Communion; and Mutual Responsibility."
The Council's findings are meant to be guidelines for a better relationship of Anglican provinces with each other, and of the whole Anglican Communion with other branches of Christendom.
The late Rector of Trinity Church, New York City, the Rev. John Heuss, delivering the Hale Memorial Sermon at Seabury-Western Seminary, Evanston, in October, 1965, stated that the Anglican Communion is a series of autonomous provinces with little communion and only a nominal sort of tie through the Prayer Book and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
He said, "We need to become ecumenical with other Anglicans." In a measure, Anglican Consultative Councils I and II, and succeeding Councils are seeking to do this.
Those who will represent the Episcopal Church, U.S.A., are the Presiding Bishop, John E. Hines; Mrs. Harold C. Kelleran, Professor of Pastoral Theology at Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria, Va., and Chairperson of the Overseas Review Committee for the House of Bishops, and Vice-Chairperson of the Anglican Consultative Council, March, 1971; and The Rev. W. G. Henson Jacobs, of Brooklyn, New York.