The Anglican Consultative Council
Diocesan Press Service. November 17, 1970 [91-7]
Bishop John Howe, Executive Officer of the Anglican Communion
The Anglican Church, with some 45 million members spread around the globe, has no constitution but shares a great deal in common. One common feature is that each of the twenty or more member Churches of the family is autonomous -- the list runs Australia, Burma, Canada, Central Africa, England, and so on to West Indies. The very real affinity and common life within this diverse family owes much to a habit of consultation. For a century Lambeth Conferences have been the characteristic major consultation. That Conference meets only once in ten years and is of bishops only. Something more nimble and available is needed in a world of contemporary pace and pressure. In 1968 the Lambeth Conference itself proposed what we hope will be the answer: the Anglican Consultative Council. In 1971, from 23rd February to 5th March, the new Consultative Council meets for the first time.
It will meet in Limuru, Kenya. This in itself is significant. The meetings are not a Lambeth or London fixture, but will be held in different countries over the years. This helps to make it clear that membership of the very international, inter-racial Anglican family is shared by everybody on equal terms. This basic characteristic of the new Council is ensured in other ways too. At a Lambeth Conference, because all the bishops come, some Churches have more than ten times as many representatives as others. On the Consultative Council a few big Churches have three members and all the rest two each. As a result, whereas at the last Lambeth Conference the North Atlantic and Australasian countries provided 75 per cent of the members, at Limuru they will provide less than 50 per cent. Nominations for the Council are not yet quite complete, but it is clear that half the individual members will be "European" and half "non-European. " This looks more like a family gathering.
What else is new? The members are not only bishops. There will also be clergy and lay people, men and women. Each Church will choose its own. In addition there are six co-opted lay members, two of whom are women and two are people under 28. If some of that is not quite in the tradition, it does not follow that traditional and deeply valued Anglican patterns are being nudged out. The great patterns of Anglicanism have developed within the relationship to Canterbury. The Archbishop of Canterbury is a member of the Council in his own right, and its president. He will always be in the chair for the first session of its meetings. For the rest the Council will elect its chairman.
The Council will meet every other year and its elected Standing Committee in the intervening years. This should provide a continuity in the affairs and thinking of the Anglican Communion which previously has been lacking, and which can be of the first importance. Change and development are rapid in the contemporary world, not least in the things that concern the Church -- human society, theology, ecumenics, political ethics.
But in such a world context, the new Council can look small and rather frail. It is small; and its usefulness remains to be proved. There are 55 members. The frailty in its structure lies in there being only two or three members from each Church -- a slender feedback to the parent bodies. The smallness can be a strength, however, because it facilitates fluent discussion in Council sessions rather than set-piece debates; it is less ponderous, and makes financially possible a desirable frequency of meetings. How adequate the feedback to the Churches becomes will probably be decided by the hard test of the quality of work the Council achieves. So the members for the first three or four meetings carry a special responsibility.
Some apprehension has been expressed that the creation of this Council might indicate that the Anglican Communion is increasingly preoccupied with itself at a time when ecumenicity should be in the forefront. This would be a disaster but the danger is not great. Of the stated functions of the Council three out of eight are ecumenical. Other Churches, it is hoped, will be grateful for an Anglican Church that can respond to some of their questions more quickly. Among the observers at Limuru will be representatives of the World Council of Churches and the Vatican Secretariat for Unity; and on the agenda the title of Committee I is "Unity and Ecumenical Affairs. "
The full shape of the agenda is not yet known. In part it will derive directly from the work and resolutions of the 1968 Lambeth Conference. In part it will consist of items referred to the Council by member Churches, and subjects they wish to have discussed. Their wishes will be known nearer the date of the meeting. Subjects that are virtually certain to be on the agenda include the major reappraisal of mission in the Anglican Communion called for by the Lambeth Conference Resolution 67 (d); union negotiations and ecumenical policies; women priests, racism, the Church and society, the size of dioceses, world poverty, marriage discipline, and -- surely -- finance.
Having said that, one must go on to say the Council has no authority to compel any- one to do anything. The Council is consultative, and its role is to recommend and guide. This is an Anglican method -- a family method, and anything else would be foreign and ineffective in the Anglican Communion. But with little doubt we, and other Christians, are reaching a point where free discussion and debate are not enough. There must be freely accepted determination, too, that discussion must intend a positive result, intend agreement on a policy which can be put into effect.
Plainly the Council has no easy task, nor has it an unimportant one. In setting up the Council the Lambeth Conference described its work as being to enable Anglicans to "fulfill their common inter-Anglican and ecumenical responsibilities in promoting the unity, renewal, and mission of Christ's Church." (Lambeth Conference Report, p. 145). Also it is "to serve as needed as an instrument of common action" (p. 46). Thus the Council is cast for a role which includes developing guide-lines for the Anglican Communion. It will still rest with each member Church to decide whether it will follow them. There, again, the critical factor is likely to be the quality of the work the Council does, once it has got into its stride.
And so, in February 1971, the members will gather from the corners of the globe in Limuru, Kenya, for the first meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council. Limuru is rather remote, which should make work easier, is too near the equator to know whether it's in front or behind; and is 7000 feet up, which may or may not have any significance.