The Episcopal

Diocese of Lexington

ACC Rep. and Executive Council Rep. 

Face Difficult Decisions

From the March Edition of the Advocate

By Kay Collier McLaughlin

             As the House of Bishops and national Executive Council consider the request of the Primates that the Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada voluntarily withdraw their members from the Anglican Consultative Council until after the next Lambeth Conference, the Rev. Robert Sessum, Rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Lexington, is in conversations around the globe, as one of ECUSA’s three elected members of the ACC, and as President of the Fourth and largest Province of the Episcopal Church.  The Rt. Rev. Stacy F. Sauls is a member of the Executive Council, and has received notice of a special call meeting of that council for Wednesday, April 13^th.

             The Anglican Communion is a worldwide assembly of churches that are in communion with the Church of England and under the spiritual oversight of the Archbishop of Canterbury.  Each member church sends representatives every ten years to the Lambeth Conference to discuss matters of mutual concern.   The Archbishop of Canterbury is Primate of All England, metropolitan of the province of Canterbury and head of the Church of England.  The Archbishop of Canterbury serves as the spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion and resides in the see city of the province of Canterbury and at Lambeth Palace in London.  The title of archbishop is also used in other branches of the Anglican Communion for bishops who have responsibilities beyond the limits of their dioceses.   The Anglican Consultative Council is a representative advisory group made up of bishops, clergy and lay people selected by the member churches of the Anglican Communion. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the president of the ACC.  The council meets every two or three years to provide consultation and guidance for the whole communion, especially on matters regarding communications, mission and interchurch relations.  It also operates the office of the Anglican Observer at the United Nations.  The Lambeth Conference is a meeting of all bishops in the Anglican Communion.  The meeting is convened every ten years by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who chairs the sessions at Lambeth Palace in London or at the University of Kent in Canterbury.  As well as maintaining relationships among the member churches of the Anglican Communion, the conference also studies questions of mutual concern and passes resolutions.  The conference has only advisory power, but its decisions do have great influence on the decisions of member churches of the Anglican Communion.  (Definitions from A Dictionary for Episcopalians: revised, expanded, updated.  John N. Wall, Cowley Publications, 2000)

             Sessum was elected to the Anglican Consultative Council in 1998 by the national Executive Council of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, and attended his first meeting of the Council in Scotland in 1999, and a subsequent meeting in Hong Kong in 2002.  Each member serves “roughly six years,” depending on whether the group meets on the two or three year schedule.  Other elected members include the Rt. Rev. Catherine Roskam, Bishop Suffragan of New York and Josephine Hicks, lay person from Charlotte, North Carolina, who is filling an unexpired term.  They join Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, Primate or chief bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America at meetings of the ACC.   The next meeting of the ACC is scheduled for June 2005 in Nottingham, England.  Since the representatives to the ACC were elected by the Executive Council, and the Presiding Bishop by the House of Bishops, those two bodies must now consider the request of the Primates.  As The Advocate goes to press, the House of Bishops is meeting at Camp Allen in Texas, and the Executive Council will meet in called session on April 13^th to decide how to respond to the request.  The Communiqué issues after the February 21-25 Primates meeting in Northern Ireland (see pg.   ) would give the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada three years—until the 2008 Lambeth Conference – to respond to recommendations of the Windsor Report.  The weeklong Primates meeting is the last for both Bishop Griswold and Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, the most vocal critic of the American Church.  The next primates meeting is scheduled for 2007.  Bishop Akinola is  to retire at the end of 2005; the next Presiding Bishop of ECUSA will be elected at the 75^th General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 2006.  Bishop Griswold’s formal statement following the primates meeting appears on page 11.

 While the official releases regarding the Primates meeting frame the gathering as “characterized by generosity of spirit” , and a determination to move toward mutual respect, later reports have described continuing division around matters of canonical and democratic process, doctrine and theology.  Archbishop Eames, Primate of All Ireland and chair of the Lambeth Commission on Communion is credited with helping the primates to consider how they might be able to conclude their meeting in unity, which resulted in the request for voluntary withdrawal by the Americans and Canadians. 

 As President of Province Four, Sessum states that it has already been announced that the major agenda item for the upcoming Provincial Synod will be the Windsor Report.  He is presently working to obtain presenters who either served as members of the Lambeth Committee or worked closely with them.

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