Primates set to meet in Dublin, with a few absentees
Episcopal News Service. January 24, 2011 [012411-01]
Matthew Davies
As the primates of the Anglican Communion prepare to meet Jan. 25-30 near Dublin, Ireland, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has said she is "deeply grateful that we may begin to focus on issues that are highly significant in local contexts as well as across the breadth of the Anglican Communion."
But according to the Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, secretary general of the Anglican Communion, at least seven primates have indicated they will not be attending the meeting at the Emmaus Retreat & Conference Centre because of Jefferts Schori's presence and recent developments concerning human sexuality issues in the Episcopal Church.
Jefferts Schori is one of 38 primates in the Anglican Communion and represents the U.S.-based Episcopal Church at Primates Meetings. In 2006, she became the first woman to be elected as leader of an Anglican Communion province.
"In all we do, we seek to recognize the face of God wherever we turn, realizing that the body of God's creation will only be healed when all members of the body of Christ are working together," Jefferts Schori said in a statement e-mailed to ENS.
Kearon, speaking in a Jan. 23 interview with BBC Radio Ulster's Sunday Sequence program, said that "seven or possibly eight" primates have turned down the invitation to attend the Primates Meeting "as part of an objection to the Episcopal Church and other developments," but that they have "reiterated their commitment to the communion and the archbishop of Canterbury in their writing to me."
Other primates may not attend the meeting due to reasons of health, diary commitments or major issues in their provinces, such as flooding in Australia and the referendum on independence in Sudan, Kearon said.
Central to the mission of the Episcopal Church, Jefferts Schori said, are "issues of serving our brothers and sisters, offering good news for body, mind, and spirit … The Episcopal Church is urgently focused on rebuilding in Haiti, seeking increased ways to bring good news to the poor in indigenous communities, inner cities, and expanding and depopulating rural areas in all the nations in our province."
"Across the globe, in partnership with Anglicans and others, we seek to serve the least of these, bringing light in the midst of darkness, peace in the midst of war and violence, and hope in the face of devastating natural disasters and the growing reality of climate change," she added. "We own our domestic responsibility to change our habits and ways of life that contribute to environmental damage and destruction."
Jefferts Schori told ENS that she looks forward "to greeting many old friends at the Primates Meeting in Dublin, and to meeting those who have been elected in the past two years."
Word that some primates were planning to boycott the meeting first came in October 2010 with reports that Archbishop Ian Ernest of the Indian Ocean had written to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams outlining certain conditions that would guarantee his attendance.
Then in November 2010, the archbishops of Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and West Africa, said in a joint statement that they would "join with other primates from the Global South in declaring that we will not be present."
The statement also was signed by deposed Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan, who now serves as archbishop of the conservative Anglican Church in North America, a coalition of groups and individuals that have left the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, as well as those that were never members of those two provinces.
A Jan. 21 statement posted on the Global South Anglican website cited issues related to the agenda of the meeting, saying that the primates had been given "hardly any timely and intentional prior consultation and collegial engagement of all concerned (or at least as many as reasonably possible) in preparing for the meeting to ensure certain degree of significant and principally legitimate outcome to hold and move the communion together."
Acknowledging that some primates had urged postponement of the meeting "until adequate ground work has been done," the statement said that the meeting is "almost pre-determined to end up as just another gathering that again cannot bring about effective ecclesial actions."
Archbishop Fred Hiltz of the Anglican Church of Canada has said that reports that some primates with more conservative theological views are planning to boycott the meeting "does nothing to model for the church what it means to try and live with difference. To simply say 'I refuse to come' is anything but exemplary of the office and ministry to which we are called."
It's not the first time that Anglican leaders have intentionally stayed away from a communion-wide meeting. Five Anglican primates, four from Africa and one from South America, boycotted the 2008 Lambeth Conference and instructed their bishops to do the same.
The agenda of the upcoming Primates Meeting will be determined by the primates themselves, Kearon explained in the Jan. 23 interview. "They've been asked to examine the big issues facing the communion and that in itself follows a request from a number of them after the last Primates Meeting that we actually devote a meeting [to] what the big issues are."
Kearon also emphasized that the Primates Meeting is not a decision-making body. "It is a body which issues guidance and indicates direction," he said. "It has a lot of moral authority based on the fact that it is composed of primates but it isn't a body that votes on resolutions, it doesn't have that kind of procedural or constitutional nature."
In early January, the Anglican Communion News Service published two prayers for the Primates Meeting, one from Archbishop Thabo Makgoba of Southern Africa and another from Archbishop Philip Aspinall of Australia.
Primates are the senior archbishops and presiding bishops elected or appointed to lead each of the 38 autonomous provinces of the Anglican Communion. They are invited to the Primates Meetings, which are held every two or three years, by the archbishop of Canterbury to consult on theological, social and international issues.
The Primates Meeting is one of the three instruments of communion in the Anglican Communion, the other two being the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference of bishops and the Anglican Consultative Council, the communion's main policy-making body. The archbishop of Canterbury, as primus inter pares, or "first among equals," is recognized as the focus of unity for the Anglican Communion.
Each province relates to other provinces within the Anglican Communion by being in full communion with the See of Canterbury. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams calls the Lambeth Conference, chairs the meeting of primates and is president of the ACC. Kearon serves as secretary to the instruments of communion.
In some Anglican provinces the primate also is called archbishop and/or metropolitan, while in others the term presiding bishop -- or as in Scotland, primus -- is used.
The united ecumenical churches of North India, South India and Pakistan are led by moderators, who also are invited to the Primates Meetings by the archbishop of Canterbury.
The Primates Meeting was established in 1978 by Archbishop Donald Coggan (101st archbishop of Canterbury) as an opportunity for "leisurely thought, prayer and deep consultation."
Since 1979, the primates have met in Ely, England in 1979; Washington, USA in 1981; Limuru, Kenya in 1983; Toronto, Canada in 1986; Cyprus in 1989; Ireland in 1991; Cape Town, South Africa in 1993; Windsor, England in 1995; Jerusalem in 1997; Oporto, Portugal in 2000; Kanuga, United States in 2001; Canterbury, England in 2002; Brazil, May in 2003; London, England in October 2003; Newry, Northern Ireland in February 2005; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in February 2007; and Alexandria, Egypt in February 2009.
The provinces and primates of the Anglican Communion are listed here.