Anglican Church League, Sydney
News Supplement:


A Letter to the Participants and Invited observers attending the Group of Primates meeting held in Kampala from 16th to 18th November 1999


As we come to the end of this consultation together, we thank God for our fellowship with you in our Lord Jesus Christ. We deeply respect your devotion to Christian truth and commitment to mission and service. We also hear and understand what you have told us about examples of abandonment of Anglican teaching, discipline and practices in the provinces from which you come. We share your distress on account of the damage and harmful results of these increasingly serious developments.

We declare our solidarity with you first of all in prayer. Together we have seen that God's Church is healed only through God's grace, mercy and power. We assure you, too, that among us are those ready to respond to specific and urgent situations which may arise in the months before the Primates' Meeting in Portugal from 23rd to 28th March. Parishes and clergy under threat because of their loyalty to the Gospel and to Anglican standards must be supported and we will play our part in such support.

At the forthcoming Primates' Meeting we will inform our colleagues of the intolerable situation that you and others like you are facing. We will carefully document and commend a proposal to this meeting which, we believe, will address the problems in our Communion caused by misuse of autonomy and innovations exceeding the limits of our Anglican diversity. In this we will be acting upon Resolution III6(B) Lambeth '98. We will be seeking agreement on and the progressive implementation of effective measures to ensure a return to historic standard for ordination, moral and marriage disciplines where in our communion these have been notoriously breached. Our endeavor here accords with Lambeth Resolution I.10.

We are aware that until orthodox Episcopal oversight is restored in all dioceses there will be serious restriction upon mission and acute difficulties in pastoral care. As a clear goal we aim for such resolution. For its realization we will take all the measures available consistent with our obedience to Christ, submission to the authority of Scripture and according to our ordination vows. We seek to share your pain but cannot promise to eliminate it.

We have greatly valued this second consultation. Our representatives have formally visited ECUSA. We see no immediate need for setting up a third consultation on this scale. Be assured of our sharp awareness of this discord that directly affects our churches as well as yours and our determination to find and follow Christ's way ahead. Brothers and sisters pray for us as we do for you.

Yours in Christ,

The Most Rev E. M. Kolini, Rwanda 
The Most Rev Dr Livingstone Mpalanyi-Nkoyoyo, Uganda 
The Most Rev Patrice Byankya Njojo, DR Congo 
The Most Rev Samuel Ndayisenga, Burundi 
The Most Rev Moses Tay, S. E. Asia 
The Most Rev Donald Mtetemela, Tanzania 
The Rt Rev Massassel B. Dawidi, representing the Sudan 
The Rt Rev Peter Njenga, representing The Most Rev David Gitari of Kenya 
The Most Rev Maurice Sinclair, Southern Cone of America

 


The following Lambeth resolutions were not attached to the letter, but they are listed here for clarity since they are mentioned in the letter. You can read the resolutions in full at http://www.lambethconference.org

Lambeth Resolution III6(B): Resolution III.6 Instruments of the Anglican Communion

 

This Conference, noting the need to strengthen mutual accountability and interdependence among the Provinces of the Anglican Communion,

(a) reaffirms Resolution 18.2(a) of Lambeth 1988 which "urges that encouragement be given to a developing collegial role for the Primates' Meeting under the presidency of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so that the Primates' Meeting is able to exercise an enhanced responsibility in offering guidance on doctrinal, moral and pastoral matters";

(b) asks that the Primates' Meeting, under the presidency of the Archbishop of Canterbury, include among its responsibilities positive encouragement to mission, intervention in cases of exceptional emergency which are incapable of internal resolution within provinces, and giving of guidelines on the limits of Anglican diversity in submission to the sovereign authority of Holy Scripture and in loyalty to our Anglican tradition and formularies;

(c) recommends that these responsibilities should be exercised in sensitive consultation with the relevant provinces and with the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) or in cases of emergency the Executive of the ACC and that, while not interfering with the juridical authority of the provinces, the exercise of these responsibilities by the Primates' Meeting should carry moral authority calling for ready acceptance throughout the Communion, and to this end it is further recommended that the Primates should meet more frequently than the ACC;

(d) believing that there should be a clearer integration of the roles of the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates' Meeting, recommends that the bishops representing each province in the Anglican Consultative Council should be the primates of the provinces and that

i. equal representation in the ACC from each province, one presbyter or deacon and one lay person from each province should join the primates in the triennial ACC gathering;

ii. an executive committee of the ACC should be reflective of this broad membership, and;

iii. there should be a change in the name of the Anglican Consultative Council to the Anglican Communion Council, reflecting the evolving needs and structures to which the foregoing changes speak;

(e) reaffirms the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury as a personal sign of our unity and communion, and the role of the decennial Lambeth Conference and of extraordinary Anglican Congresses as called, together with inter-provincial gatherings and cross-provincial diocesan partnerships, as collegial and communal signs of the unity of our Communion.

 


Resolution I.10 Human Sexuality

This Conference:

(a) commends to the Church the subsection report on human sexuality;

(b) in view of the teaching of Scripture, upholds faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union, and believes that abstinence is right for those who are not called to marriage;

(c) recognises that there are among us persons who experience themselves as having a homosexual orientation. Many of these are members of the Church and are seeking the pastoral care, moral direction of the Church, and God's transforming power for the living of their lives and the ordering of relationships. We commit ourselves to listen to the experience of homosexual persons and we wish to assure them that 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;

(d) while rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture, calls on all our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation and to condemn irrational fear of homosexuals, violence within marriage and any trivialisation and commercialisation of sex;

(e) cannot advise the legitimising or blessing of same sex unions nor ordaining those involved in same gender unions;

(f) requests the Primates and the ACC to establish a means of monitoring the work done on the subject of human sexuality in the Communion and to share statements and resources among us;

(g) notes the significance of the Kuala Lumpur Statement on Human Sexuality and the concerns expressed in resolutions IV.26, V.1, V.10, V.23 and V.35 on the authority of Scripture in matters of marriage and sexuality and asks the Primates and the ACC to include them in their monitoring process.

Note: The resolutions referred to in subsection (g) of this resolution are set out in the appendix to this document.

 


Anglican Church League, www.acl.asn.au