Anglican Consultative Council to Meet in Trinidad
Diocesan Press Service. November 7, 1975 [75390]
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad -- The third meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) will be held at the Chaguaramas Convention Centre here from March 23 to April 2, 1976.
The setting up of the ACC was approved by the 1968 Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion, composed of 38 provinces or national churches with a world-wide membership of 46.7 million. The Episcopal Church in the U.S.A. is a member of the Anglican Communion.
Previous meetings of the ACC have been held in Limuru, Kenya in 1971, and in Dublin, Ireland, in 1973.
The ACC is a representative advisory body and has a total membership of about 60, composed of bishops, other clergy, and lay people. According to the 1968 resolution, the functions of the Council relate particularly to communication, mission, inter-Church relations, and special studies. It has no legislative authority for its member-churches.
The Most Rev. Donald Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury, is President of the ACC and Mrs. Harold Kelleran, retired professor of pastoral theology at Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria, Va., from the U.S. Episcopal Church, is chairman. The Rt. Rev. John Howe, London, is Secretary General of the ACC.
Representatives from the Episcopal Church in the U.S.A. to the ACC are the Rt. Rev. John M. Allin, Presiding Bishop; the Rev. Rustin R. Kimsey, Eastern Oregon; and Mrs. Kelleran. Alternates are Suffragan Bishop John T. Walker, Washington, D.C.; the Rev. Wilbur C. Woodhams, Europe; and Mrs. J. Wilmette Wilson, Georgia.
Background papers for each of four Sections are being prepared in advance of the Trinidad meeting. These papers will be considered in Section meetings and by the Council in full committee, with debate on each Section's proposals. Following this, each Section will write its report which will then be released to the whole Council and to the press. In a series of Plenary Sessions, which will be open to the press, there will be discussion and final amendments to the reports and resolutions from the Sections. Certain "Non-Section" matters will also come before the Plenary Sessions.
Four Sections have been planned as follows: Section I: UNITY AND ECUMENICAL AFFAIRS (including the role of the Anglican Communion and the Anglican/Roman Catholic Agreed Statement on Ministry); Section II: CHURCH AND SOCIETY (including a World Council of Churches paper on violence, with a critique by Bishop Walker of Washington, D.C.); Section III: MINISTRY (including lay, non-stipendiary, professional, and women and the priesthood); and Section IV: MISSION AND EVANGELISM (including Partners in Mission and World Christianity papers).
Non-Section matters on the agenda include ACC advice to the Archbishop of Canterbury concerning Lambeth Conferences, "upon the calling of future Conferences and on their time, place, and agenda"; Task Force on Communication report; Parallel Jurisdictions (Europe); and items concerning constitutions, finance, Anglican Cycle of Prayer, and the ACC's Secretary General's report.
Other items may be added to the agenda by primates and by reference from the World Council of Churches meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, November 23 to December 10. The report of the third meeting of the ACC will be published within two months of the close of the meeting.