Anglican Mainstream

By George Conger, The Church of England Newspaper

The 2007 Primates Meeting will devote four hours to a discussion of the Episcopal Church and its response to the Windsor Report, the proposed agenda emailed to the Primates states.

The agenda for the meeting, seen by many as a the final shoot out between the Communion’s disparate factions, schedules 16 official sessions broken down into four Bible Studies; three sessions devoted to the Episcopal Church’s response to the Windsor Report; three administrative meetings, and six single issue sessions spread over four days at a seaside hotel near Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Whether the Primates will follow the London-crafted programme is unknown. The agenda for the 2005 meeting in Northern Ireland took on a life of its own, and the leaders of the Global South coalition of Primates anticipate a similar metamorphosis this year.

US Presiding Bishop Katharine Schori will be granted two of the three sessions devoted to the Episcopal Church to respond to criticisms it had not honoured the recommendations of the Windsor Report.

Other sessions include a briefing on the work of the Covenant Design Group led by Archbishop Drexel Gomez, Primate of the West Indies; a session on the 2008 Lambeth Conference; a discussion of Theological Education led by Archbishop Gregory Venables, Primate of the Southern Cone; and a discussion of the Millennium Development Goals resourced by Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of South Africa.

One session will be devoted to the “Listening Process” envisioned by the 1998 Lambeth Conference. That committed the Church “to listen to the experience of homosexual persons” and assured them “they are loved by God and that all baptised, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ.”

The resolution also reaffirmed the traditional Christian belief in the parameters of sexual behaviour of faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman and abstinence for those unmarried. Archbishop Peter Carnley, the former Primate of Australia and chairman of the Panel of Reference, will brief the Primates and respond to primatial criticisms the Panel has been dilatory in its work. Established as a “matter of urgency” by the 2005 Meeting, the Panel has released recommendations on petitions received from the Diocese of Forth Worth and from traditionalist congregations in the Canadian Diocese of New Westminster. Petitions from the Dioceses of Florida and Lake Malawi are currently under review.

The Primates will also travel to the Cathedral Church of Christ, also known as the Cathedral of the Universities Mission in Central Africa, in Zanzibar. In deference to the theological divisions within the Primates’ ranks, the Cathedral service will be a choir office. A daily Eucharist will be held at 12:15 during the week, but these have been designed as optional services, as the members of the Global South coalition stated in their September communiqué from Kigali they would not break bread with the American Presiding Bishop.

Dr Williams has also invited three members of the American House of Bishops to address an extra-curricular session. Bishop Christopher Epting, the Presiding Bishop’s Deputy for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations and the former Bishop of Iowa, Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, the Moderator of the Anglican Communion Network, and Bishop Bruce McPherson of Western Louisiana, president of the Presiding Bishop’s Council of Advice, will address the state of The Episcopal Church.

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