A group photo of the delegates to the 18th Anglican Consultative Council held at the Accra Marriott Hotel, Accra, Ghana. Feb. 12-19, 2023. Photo: Neil Turner/Anglican Communion Office

[Episcopal News Service] The Anglican Communion may be poised for a reset, at least concerning the archbishop of Canterbury’s leadership role.

Two proposals, which will be taken up next year by the Anglican Consultative Council, or ACC, would adjust how the worldwide communion’s 42 autonomous, interdependent provinces relate to each other.  The proposals, if adopted, would de-emphasize the Church of England and the archbishop of Canterbury as a “focus of unity” while elevating more geographically diverse leaders for the global network of Anglican and Episcopal churches.

These proposals were developed partly in response to longstanding theological divisions between some of the provinces, and it remains to be seen whether the proposed changes could mend what some conservative bishops have described as their “impaired” communion with provinces like The Episcopal Church that are more progressive on issues of LGBTQ+ inclusion.

The underlying goal is to maintain Anglican unity while allowing member provinces to stay true to their theological beliefs when they differ, said Bishop Graham Tomlin, who chairs the Anglican body that drafted the proposals.

“It is important to still remain committed to one another,” Tomlin, a Church of England bishop, told Episcopal News Service in a Zoom interview. He said his commission’s proposals “take serious the depths of our divisions but also take serious the call to unity that we find within the Gospel.”

Tomlin’s group, the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order, or IASCUFO, issued a 44-page report in December 2024 detailing its Nairobi-Cairo Proposals, named for the cities where they were drafted.

The first proposal offers an updated statement of what binds the 42 provinces to each other: “shared inheritance, mutual service, common counsel in conference, and historic connection with the See of Canterbury.” That final principle’s wording differs slightly from the Anglican Communion’s existing definition, which since 1930 has required member churches to be “in communion with the See of Canterbury,” commonly understood as the Church of England.

The second proposal seeks to broaden and diversify the leadership of three Anglican Communion bodies known as the “Instruments of Communion” – the ACC, the Primates’ Meeting and the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops. The archbishop of Canterbury is considered a fourth Instrument of Communion.

Under these changes, the archbishop of Canterbury would no longer serve as the ACC president; the presidency instead would rotate among leaders from the Anglican Communion’s five regions. The archbishop of Canterbury also traditionally has convened the Primates’ Meeting and Lambeth Conference; those bodies would be newly convened by the Primates’ Standing Committee.

Such changes “would add a welcome and overdue diversification to the face of the Instruments of Communion,” the IASCUFO report said. “The leadership of the Communion should look like the Communion.” The report added that Anglican leadership should reflect “the identity and ideals of the Anglican Communion in a post-colonial era.”

The Rev. Ranjit Mathews, one of three Episcopal Church representatives to the ACC, told ENS that he sees the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals as a positive step forward in inter-Anglican relations, particularly the acknowledgement that the face of the Anglican Communion is becoming more global than it was a century ago. An increasing number of Anglicans now live in what is known as the Global South – Africa, Asia, South America.

“I think the proposals are catching up to the reality of what the communion looks like,” said Mathews, who serves as canon to the ordinary of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut.

At the same time, many of those Global South provinces are pushing for structural changes to the Anglican Communion because their conservative leaders do not agree with the theology, doctrine and practices of more progressive provinces on human sexuality and other issues. Although most Global South provinces have pressed their objections in person at the ACC, Primates’ Meeting and Lambeth Conference, a few provinces’ bishops have refused for years to participate in any such gatherings attended by leaders of The Episcopal Church and other provinces that have consecrated gay and lesbian bishops and blessed or married same-sex couples.

In February 2023, theologically conservative Anglicans amplified their calls for structural changes after the Church of England’s General Synod endorsed a plan to offer same-sex blessings in England’s churches.

Days later, the ACC convened its latest meeting in Accra, Ghana. Then-Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, in his opening remarks, responded to the growing tensions by called for greater egalitarianism in how the Anglican Communion’s 42 provinces relate to each other. The Instruments of Communion “have never had either doctrinal or ethical authority, but they have moral force,” Welby said, and he asserted that they continue to offer “the way forward in mutual help where country comes after obedience to God.”

Later in the meeting, ACC members from 38 provinces, including The Episcopal Church, adopted a resolution on “good differentiation” that endorsed efforts “to explore theological questions regarding structure and decision-making to help address our differences in the Anglican Communion.”

After the ACC concluded its meeting, conservative archbishops issued a letter rejecting the continuation of the archbishop of Canterbury’s historic leadership role in the worldwide communion as the “first among equals.” In opposing the Church of England’s decision on same-sex blessings, they said they would “expeditiously meet, consult and work with other orthodox primates in the Anglican Church across the nations to re-set the Communion on its biblical foundation.”

Welby has since resigned over his handling of an unrelated scandal. The challenge of maintaining Anglican Communion unity is likely to remain a top priority when his successor is chosen, a process that is now underway.

In the meantime, IASCUFO is preparing its Nairobi-Cairo Proposals for presentation to the ACC at its next meeting, to be hosted by the Church of Ireland in June and July 2026. The commission did not specifically intend its proposals to address the concerns of the Global South bishops, Tomlin said, though the changes may allow all provinces to find ways to stay connected despite their differences.

“What we propose is not trying to solve the problems of the communion,” Tomlin told ENS. “What we are proposing is a structure that might give an opportunity for the communion to hold together while those problems work themselves out over time.”

Initial reactions to the proposals, however, have not dispelled uncertainty about the provinces’ ability to “walk together,” as Welby had encouraged them to do. Conservative bishops have expressed less interest in maintaining unity than in doctrinal conformity, based in their interpretation of Scripture as condemning homosexuality.

“We cannot walk together in sin,” South Sudan Archbishop Justin Badi said in a June 2024 address to the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches, or GSFA, which he chairs. “Unless there is repentance by those who have gone astray, we cannot have unity at the expense of God’s life-giving truth.”

Though Badi spoke while the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals were still in development, the GSFA has not softened its position since the proposals’ release. They will be reviewed by the GSFA’s Faith & Order Commission to develop a response consistent with members’ shared beliefs, Badi said in a March 2025 message.

“In contrast to the IASCUFO recommendation of an ‘ecumenical’ pattern of Communion relationships,” Badi said, the GFSA “recognizes that the ‘fellowship of Christ’s religion’ requires the discernment of truth from error, of that which is according to Christ and that which is contrary to Christ.”

Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe has been more receptive to the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals, which he thinks could help strengthen the Anglican Communion in its shared mission. “These relationships across the communion could be world-changing,” Rowe said in an interview last month with The Living Church for its podcast.

The proposed changes “give us some really interesting things to think about,” Rowe said. “I really think the proposal of sharing primacy in a post-colonial context is really interesting, what that might mean and what’s the role of the ACC going forward. I think this is good work.”

Mathews, the Episcopal Church ACC member, expressed similar hope in his interview with ENS, including that all 42 provinces may return to the table to discuss the Anglican Communion’s future.

“I always hold out hope that members and member churches might come back and realize what a gift the communion is,” Mathews said. The proposals may not resolve any doctrinal differences, but “I still think it’s a movement forward.”

“The Episcopal Church is still going to show up as we are,” he continued. “How do we continue to extend hands to folks who do not agree with us or do not share an understanding around theology?”

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.

A group photo of the delegates to the 18th Anglican Consultative Council held at the Accra Marriott Hotel, Accra, Ghana. Feb. 12-19, 2023. Photo: Neil Turner/Anglican Communion Office

[Episcopal News Service] The three Episcopal members of the recently concluded 18^th Anglican Consultative Council returned to their home dioceses this week encouraged by their experiences developing closer relations with Anglicans around the world through their shared mission in Christ.

About 110 members from 39 Anglican provinces attended the Feb. 12-19 meeting in Accra, Ghana, for prayer, worship and discussions of the operations, ministries and mission of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The communion is made up of autonomous, yet interdependent churches that all have historic roots in the Church of England.

The Episcopal Church was represented by Maryland Bishop Eugene Sutton, the Rev. Ranjit Mathews, the Diocese of Connecticut’s canon for mission, advocacy, racial justice and reconciliation, and Annette Buchanan, a lay leader in the Diocese of New Jersey and former president of the Union of Black Episcopalians.

In a joint Zoom interview with Episcopal News Service on Feb. 17, Sutton, Mathews and Buchanan discussed some of the week’s highlights, as well as notable actions taken by ACC-18 and their expectations for The Episcopal Church’s future engagement with other Anglican provinces.

“The emotional high point of this week was the visit to the slave castle,” Sutton said, referring to ACC-18’s trip on Feb. 15 to Cape Coast Castle. The site once served as a headquarters for British involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. Enslaved Africans were held in dungeons at the castle with squalid, overcrowded conditions and little ventilation, until they were boarded onto ships destined for North and South America and the Caribbean. Anglican worship services were conducted in a church over the dungeons.

“That has really highlighted at this ACC issues of oppression, racial injustice, reconciliation and reparations,” said Sutton, himself a descendant of slaves. He said he later affirmed on the floor of the ACC meeting, “the gospel proclaimed by those slave owners is not that Gospel that I know, and we know.”

Sutton, Mathews and Buchanan also took the lead in drafting with other ACC members a resolution that was approved on Feb. 18, the last business day of this meeting, that outlined some of the themes evoked by the Cape Coast Castle visit.

The resolution “laments the widespread historic involvement of the church in the transatlantic slave trade” and “recognizes the visit to Cape Coast Castle and the ensuing reconciliation service serves as an invitation to deeper historical investigation, education and theological reflection across the Communion.” In adopting the resolution, the ACC also called on the provinces to work with the Anglican Communion Office “to devise a program of work that seeks to address past damage and combat modern manifestations of this evil.”

Buchanan said she would like to see the ACC further help Anglicans around the world who are not familiar with such historical examples of oppression and racism “to wrestle with this issue and come up with resources for the rest of the [Anglican] Communion.”

At the meeting in Ghana, Buchanan said she was able to share stories with other ACC members of how The Episcopal Church has worked to confront its own historic complicity in systems of oppression in the United States, such as slavery and its legacy and segregation. Those stories have elements in common with some of the stories that other ACC members shared about their struggles against colonialism, Buchanan said.

“That thread of colonialism still exists in our context” in The Episcopal Church, she said, “and the good news for us is we recognize it and are working through it.”

Another prominent resolution adopted by ACC-18 called for development of proposals to embody “good differentiation” between the provinces that disagree theologically on issues of human sexuality. The conservative leaders of some provinces in what is known as the Global South, mostly Africa, Asia and South America, have suggested that the persistence of impaired relations over those issues will require structural reforms to the four Anglican Instruments of Communion.

Despite the evidence of such tensions on the sidelines of this ACC, Mathews said he was impressed by the collegiality he experienced interacting with ACC members from other provinces. Their churches’ differences over LGBTQ+ inclusion did not hinder their engagement with each other.

“We are 39 provinces here that are visibly different in so many different ways, and yet we have tangibly worked together, in fits and starts, on the issues of the day,” he said. “That is the beautiful thing about the communion.”

The Episcopal Church’s delegation—Maryland Bishop Eugene Sutton, Annette Buchanan, a lay leader from the Diocese of New Jersey, and the Rev. Ranjit Mathews, the Diocese of Connecticut’s canon for mission, advocacy, racial justice and reconciliation—to the 18th Anglican Consultative Council poses with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby on Feb. 14 in Accra, Ghana, where the Feb. 12-19 meeting is underway. Photo: Neil Turner for the Anglican Communion Office

The ACC is one of the four Instruments of Communion and the only to include laity. The others are the Primates’ Meeting, the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops and the archbishop of Canterbury, known as a “focus of unity.” Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has faced intensifying criticism from conservative Anglicans this month after the General Synod of Church of England, which Welby leads, voted to endorse a plan to allow blessings of same-sex unions while stopping short of approving same-sex marriage rites. Welby said he personally will not offer the blessings.

Some Global South leaders raised similar issues at last summer’s Lambeth Conference as they pursued ongoing criticisms of The Episcopal Church and other provinces that have welcomed LGBTQ+ people more fully into the life of their churches.

Welby indicated at ACC-18 that he was open to reform proposals, saying in his Feb. 12 opening address that he “will not cling to place or position as an Instrument of Communion. … I hold it very lightly, provided that the other Instruments of Communion choose the new shape.”

In response to a question from ENS, Welby clarified at a Feb. 17 news conference that he did not say he was planning to step down. “I wanted to open things up to different ideas, and they will take quite a long time,” he said.

Welby, who is 67, will reach the compulsory retirement age of 70 in 2026.

A group of conservative archbishops, through an alliance called the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches, responded on Feb. 20 by saying they rejected the continuation of the archbishop of Canterbury’s historic leadership role in the worldwide communion and would advocate to “re-set the Communion on its biblical foundation.”

Impaired relations were most noticeable at ACC-18 by the absence of members from the provinces of Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda. Those three have not participated in the Instruments of Communion for at least 15 years because of their objections to some provinces’ ordination of openly gay and lesbian clergy and adoption of marriage rites and blessings for same-sex couples.

ACC actions are not binding on member provinces, though it and the other Instruments of Communion have expressed a commitment to “walk together” despite provinces’ theological and doctrinal differences.

Sutton said the issue of human sexuality “was really a small part” of the ACC’s official business last week in Ghana, with more significant emphases on issues like climate change, environmental justice and church planting. He looks forward to sharing his experiences with fellow Episcopal bishops when they gather in Alabama in March at the next House of Bishops meeting.

“We need the Anglican Communion, the Anglican Communion needs us, even when it’s hard,” Sutton said. “Especially this Instrument [of Communion]. The ACC is worthy of our support.”

Mathews agreed. “We see more of the Gospel when we have everybody at the table,” he said.

The variety of liturgies at ACC-18 offered a notable example of how the experiences of Anglicans around the world can enrich Episcopalians’ understanding of the faith, Buchanan said. “There’s so much information that can flow both ways,” she said. “There’s so much more we can learn from the larger church.”

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and  editor  for Episcopal News Service. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.

Earlier this week, Maggie Swinson, a lay canon of England’s Liverpool Cathedral, was elected unopposed as chair of the council; and Anglican Archbishop Hosam Naoum, bishop of the Diocese of Jerusalem, was elected unopposed as vice chair of the council.

Hosam’s election created an additional vacancy for ordinary members of the council, resulting in the need to elect six people from eight nominated candidates.

The six newly elected members of the council are:

• The Rt. Rev. Mugenyi William Bahemuka
  The Province of the Anglican Church of Congo
• The Rev. Inamar Correa de Souza
  Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil
• The Rev. Tsz Leung Billy Ip
  Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui
• Andrew Khoo Chin Hock
  The Anglican Church of the Province of South East Asia
• Aishi Sama Drong
  The Church of Bangladesh
• The Rev. Wendy Scott
  The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia

The newly elected chair, vice chair and ordinary members join the one remaining standing committee member whose term of office continues: Joyce Haji Liundi, a lay representative of the Anglican Church of Tanzania; Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, as president of the Anglican Consultative Council; and five primates chosen by their fellow-primates to represent the five Anglican Communion’s regions:

• Americas
  Archbishop Linda Nicholls
  Archbishop of Canada
• Africa
  Archbishop Jackson Ole Sapit
  Archbishop of Kenya
• Middle East and South Asia
  Bishop Azad Marshall
  Moderator of the united Church of Pakistan
• Oceania and East Asia
  Archbishop Philip Richardson
  Primate (Tikanga Pakeha) and Archbishop of the New Zealand dioceses in the Anglican Church of Aoetearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia
• Europe
  Archbishop John McDowell
  Primate of All Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh

The Rev. Inamar Correa de Souza’s term extends her term of office on the standing committee: she had previously been co-opted to fill a casual vacancy. She will serve until her term as a member of the Anglican Consultative Council comes to an end at the end of ACC-19.

The new standing committee held a short meeting on Feb.18 and is expected to hold its first full meeting at Saint Andrew’s House – the Anglican Communion Office in London – in September.

Justin Welby Archbishop of Canterbury poses for a photo with the Resolutions Committee on Day 5 of the 18th Anglican Consultative Council in Accra, Ghana, on Feb. 16. Photo: Neil Turner for ACO

[Episcopal News Service] Does your local Episcopal church celebrate the feast day of Hannah Grier Coome on Feb. 9 or Rota Waitoa on May 22? Likely not, since those church saints are venerated by the Anglican provinces of Canada and Aotearoa, respectively, and are not included on The Episcopal Church’s official calendar of saints.

Episcopalians, however, in addition to celebrating their own saints, will be able to learn about and celebrate historical religious figures from across the Anglican Communion under a plan endorsed this week by the Anglican Consultative Council. All 42 Anglican provinces, including The Episcopal Church, will be invited to submit names and biographies to be included in a worldwide Anglican Communion calendar.

At the 18^th ACC meeting, taking place Feb. 12-19 in Accra, Ghana, members also accepted a report scrutinizing localized experiments with “virtual” Eucharist during the pandemic, and they discussed the Anglican Communion’s commitments to fighting climate change and raising up Indigenous voices.

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby spoke in favor of the plan for an Anglican Communion calendar on Feb. 16, saying it was a “very timely” proposal, since discussions are taking place in his own province of England about how to “make our calendar more diverse.”

Likewise, The Episcopal Church in recent years has considered ways of expanding its calendar of saints to include more women and people of color. The 80^th General Convention in July 2022 voted to add Bishop Barbara Harris’ consecration date to the calendar, marking her significance as the first female bishop in the Anglican Communion. Bishops and deputies also approved a plan to give the church more flexibility to add names to its volume of Lesser Feasts and Fasts while encouraging “the local development and commemoration of days of optional observance.”

The outlines of an Anglican Communion Calendar were drafted by the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation, which highlighted its work in a report to ACC-18. About 110 ACC members are participating from 39 worldwide Anglican provinces, including three members from The Episcopal Church.

The Anglican liturgical group described its proposed calendar as “a collection of gifts from the member churches of the Communion and sister churches of other traditions.” The Christians to be included on the calendar “showed authentic marks of holiness.” Candidates would be people already are commemorated on provincial church calendars but who may not be widely known in other parts of the world.

Coome, for example, founded Canada’s Anglican Sisterhood of St. John the Divine in 1884, according to a sample calendar prepared as part of the report. And in New Zealand, Waitoa, ordained in 1853, is know as the “first born” of Maori clergy.

It wasn’t clear when such an Anglican Communion calendar would be finalized, or which names might be submitted for it from The Episcopal Church’s calendar of saints.

The International Anglican Liturgical Consultation also generated a report on the controversial practice of virtual Communion, in which some priests and Christian denominations have raised the possibility that the bread and wine can be consecrated remotely, such as through Zoom, instead of among a physically gathered community of baptized Christians.

Virtual Eucharist has never been explicitly allowed as a liturgical option within The Episcopal Church, and a June 2020 discussion by the House of Bishops suggested there were strong feelings among the bishops against endorsing the concept or even experimenting with it.

The report submitted this week for the ACC’s consideration summarizes the challenges faced by congregations and worshippers in the early days of the pandemic, when in-person worship was suspended. Online services became a common alternative to abstaining from collective worship altogether.

“There seems to be a consensus that online services of the word and prayer are, if less than ideal, not objectionable. Such services can be lay-led and have provided important continuity through the pandemic,” the report says.

Incorporating the Eucharist into online services can prove more problematic, raising questions about the legitimacy and propriety of remote consecration of the bread and wine. “Anyone with a sense of Anglican history will realize at once that the likelihood of agreement on these questions is low,” the Anglican liturgical group says, though it ultimately concludes that it is necessary for consecration to happen in the physical presence of a priest.

“We do not believe the concept of remote consecration to be consistent with Anglican theology and practice, and therefore it should not be recommended,” the report says. “Where a Eucharist with an in-person congregation is livestreamed to enable those who are not able to be physically present to be included within the worshipping community, the use of bread and wine at home should not be encouraged.”

– David Paulsen is an editor and reporter for Episcopal News Service. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.

As vice chair of the Anglican Consultative Council, Naoum also will serve as vice chair of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion. This comprises the Archbishop of Canterbury, as president, five primates elected to represent the regions of the Anglican Communion, a chair and vice chair, and seven members elected by members of the ACC.

Elections for six other members of the Standing Committee were scheduled to take place Feb. 17. The election had been planned for five members of the Standing Committee, but Naoum’s election as vice chair creates an additional vacancy among the ordinary members.

Naoum is bishop of the Anglican diocese that covers the countries and territories of Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. It is part of the Anglican Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East. Later this year, Naoum will become primate of the province when Archbishop Michael Lewis, bishop of Cyprus and the Gulf, steps down. Naoum also is secretary of the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem, the leading ecumenical group of senior Christian leaders in the Holy Land.

Naoum is well known throughout the Anglican Communion. Prior to becoming archbishop in Jerusalem, he served as dean of Saint George’s Anglican Cathedral in the city and welcomed pilgrims from all over the world to the land of Jesus’ birth.

“I am absolutely delighted that I have the confidence of the ACC to be the vice chair,” Naoum said. “This is a humbling, of course, opportunity as well as a great privilege to be able to serve and continue serving on the Standing Committee but in a different capacity. I will do all that I can as a person, as a bishop and as a member to foster unity within the Anglican Communion.”

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby commented: “Archbishop Hosam has been a friend for many years since he was dean of Jerusalem. His deep spirituality, his calmness and his love for the church around the world makes him eminently suitable for this position. We are very blessed in the ACC that many who could have stood for this position would have received an equally warm welcome.”

Bishop Anthony Poggo, secretary general of the Anglican Communion, said: “I am thrilled that Archbishop Hosam Naoum has been elected as vice chair of the ACC. He brings with him a wealth of experience since he has been a member of the Standing Committee from 2019 to date.

“During this time, he was a member of the committee that reviewed the Anglican Communion Office. He was also on the recruitment panel for the new secretary general. He was a member of the subcommittee that planned for ACC-18 and is chair of the Resolutions Committee. He brings with him wealth of experiences to this role.”

Naoum will succeed Maggie Swinson as vice chair. Swinson, a lay canon of England’s Liverpool Cathedral, was elected chair of the ACC on Feb. 16.

The Anglican Communion is made up of 42 independent, yet interdependent national and regional churches. As ACC chair, Swinson also will chair the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion, which includes the archbishop of Canterbury, who serves as president, five primates elected by region, a vice chair and seven members elected by members of the council.

Swinson also is charted accountant and company secretary in private practice. She has served as vice-chair of the ACC since her election in Lusaka, Zambia, at the 16th meeting of the council in 2016. During that time, she chaired the Inter Anglican Finance and Administration Committee, led the group which implemented the Anglican Communion Office structure review, chaired the panel for the appointment of Bishop Anthony Poggo as the new secretary general, and attended the Lambeth Conference as an observer.

“I believe the key challenges for the ACC are in taking forward the mission of the communion to serve the Kingdom”, she said. “Developing a governance structure which better reflects the instruments whilst maintaining the key voices of laity and non-episcopal clergy. Developing a financial model which reduces reliance on member contributions and increases sustainability and enabling all Provinces to continue to find a place within the communion in spite of their differences.”

Commenting on Swinson’s unopposed election, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said: “I have worked with Canon Maggie for many years and she has faithfully served the church – both the Church of England and the Anglican Communion in many ways. I am delighted that her gifts will continue to be shared with the Communion as the new chair of the Anglican Consultative Council and the Standing Committee.”

Poggo, said: “I am delighted that Canon Maggie Swinson has been elected, unopposed, by the ACC as chair. This is in recognition of and a vote of thanks for her work in her previous role as vice chair of the ACC, a role she has been in since her election in Zambia in 2016.

“In her role as vice chair of the ACC and chair of the Inter-Anglican Finance and Administration Committee, she has worked superbly and has been an asset to each of the committees. As secretary general, I look forward to working with her as she takes on this new role as chair.

“I know she will continue to guide the standing committee and the ACC as we journey together into the next phase and season.  We assure her of our prayers as she takes on this  role.”

News of her election has been welcomed in her home Diocese of Liverpool, where Warrington Bishop Beverley Mason, said: “I am so delighted to hear of this appointment. Maggie brings years of experience of serving the Church of England nationally and locally as provides a vital lay perspective.

“She brings immense experience, wisdom and insight to the Anglican Communion, and is so well-placed to take on this extra responsibility. In these challenging days, Maggie will play a vital role in listening to and ensuring voices are heard across the communion.

“In Liverpool, we are very proud and give the assurance of our prayers for Maggie and the work of the ACC.”

Swinson assumes the chair at the end of the ACC-18 meeting and serves for the next two meetings. She succeeds the Most Rev. Paul Kwong, the former archbishop of Hong Kong, whose term of office has come to an end. Elections for vice chair and five other members of the standing committee will take place later this week.

From left, Archbishop Cyril Kobina Ben-Smith, primate of the Church of the Province of West Africa, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Archbishop Howard Gregory of the West Indies share their their thoughts on visiting one of the cells at Cape Coast Castle in Ghana used to hold enslaved people before they were loaded onto ships to be taken to the Americas on Feb. 15. Photo: Neil Turner for ACO

[Episcopal News Service] Anglican Consultative Council members from 39 provinces, including The Episcopal Church, paused their week of business sessions in Ghana to spend Feb. 15 visiting Cape Coast Castle, a United Nations World Heritage site where centuries ago enslaved Africans were held before being loaded onto ships bound for colonies in North and South America and the Caribbean.

Leading the visit, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby was joined by Archbishop Cyril Kobina Ben-Smith, who is hosting this ACC meeting as head of the Province of West Africa, and West Indies Archbishop Howard Gregory, who is a descendant of African slaves.

Deeply moving to visit the former British slave castle on Ghana's Cape Coast today, with my brothers the Primates of West Africa and the West Indies.

Transatlantic slavery was blasphemy; the Gospel calls us to repentance, and to striving for freedom and justice for all. pic.twitter.com/ZR1l2YZFQY

— Archbishop of Canterbury (@JustinWelby) February 15, 2023

Cape Coast Castle was built in the 1650s and passed through Swedish, Danish and Dutch possession until becoming a headquarters for British colonial administration in the 1660s. Africans were taken from their homes and held in dungeons at the castle, with squalid, overcrowded conditions and little ventilation. It was one of 50 castles on Africa’s west coast, 39 of them in Ghana, that served as points of embarkation for slave ships. An estimated 12 million to 25 million Africans passed through Ghana’s ports to be sold across the Atlantic as slaves.

The ACC members’ visit to the castle “was a reminder that the abomination of transatlantic chattel slavery was blasphemy: Those who imprisoned men and women in those dungeons saw them as less than human,” Welby said in written remarks released after the trip.

“It is to the Church of England’s eternal shame that it did not always follow Christ’s teaching to give life. It is a stain on the wider church that some Christians did not see their brothers and sisters as created in the image of God, but as objects to be exploited. Our response must begin on our knees in prayer and repentance. … But our response does not end there. We are called to transform unjust structures, to pursue peace and reconciliation, to live out the Beatitudes in big ways and small.”

Annette Buchanan, one of The Episcopal Church’s three ACC members, said in a phone interview with Episcopal News Service that her visit to the slave castle brought her “renewed grief and despair over the millions of lives that were lost during the transatlantic slave trade.”

Buchanan is a lay leader in the Diocese of New Jersey and a former president of the Union of Black Episcopalians. She had visited the Cape Coast Castle several years ago on a personal trip aimed at learning more about her African heritage. This visit, for her, “kind of reopened a wound.”

“I was again shamed and, honestly, appalled,” she said, “about the role of our Anglican Church with regard to the transatlantic slave trade, and especially galling was the fact that the Anglican Church built a church on top of the slave dungeon. While the enslaved people were beneath crying out in agony, starving, [Anglicans] were having a church service.”

The Episcopal Church’s delegation—Maryland Bishop Eugene Sutton, Annette Buchanan, a lay leader from the Diocese of New Jersey, and the Rev. Ranjit Mathews, the Diocese of Connecticut’s canon for mission, advocacy, racial justice and reconciliation—to the 18th Anglican Consultative Council poses with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby on Feb. 14 in Accra, Ghana, where the Feb. 12-19 meeting is underway. Photo: Neil Turner for the Anglican Communion Office

Maryland Bishop Eugene Sutton, also as a descendant of slaves, recalled his own earlier visit to the Cape Coast Castle, when he was moved to tears by the relic of slavery’s horrors. During this second visit as a member of ACC, his reaction was different.

“This time there were tears,” he told ENS, “but my dominant feeling was anger, not really anger at white people. It was anger at the church.” Hundreds of years ago, the Anglicans who worshiped over the slave dungeon may have said to themselves they were following the Gospel of Jesus, “but I don’t recognize this gospel that I saw today” at the castle.

“So my anger was at the church, and how did we screw up the Gospel so much that it allowed persons to dehumanize, enslave and oppress others and think that was OK?”

The Rev. Ranjit Mathews, The Episcopal Church’s clergy member on the ACC, said he appreciated Welby’s sincere response to the visit. “The archbishop obviously was deeply moved and understood how the Church of England was complicit in that,” Mathews told ENS by phone.

But Mathews also lamented what appeared to him to be missed opportunities to deepen the discussion about this tragic history, which is shared by many of the Anglican Communion’s 42 provinces. Mathews, the Diocese of Connecticut’s canon for mission, advocacy, racial justice and reconciliation, previously served as The Episcopal Church’s Africa partnership officer from 2013 to 2017 and had visited Cape Cost Castle twice before in that role.

“I wonder about that connection that could have been made, to just see the picture in a broader, deeper and more theologically enhanced way,” he said. “It could have been a part of something even deeper formatively because of the significance of it. … It should be not just symbolic, but in essence we’re transformed by it.”

In Cape Coast Castle #ACC18 visited the grave of Philip Quaicoe (1741 – 17 October 1816). Taken as a child to England by @USPGglobal to be educated, he was the first African to be ordained in @churchofengland. The Royal African Company employed him as the chaplain at the Castle. pic.twitter.com/OsXC1pltDd

— Graham Usher (@bishopnorwich) February 15, 2023

Buchanan, Sutton and Mathews each said they were surprised that quite a few ACC members from other provinces were learning many of the details of the transatlantic slave trade for the first time. That contrasts with experiences in the United States, where the story of the slave trade is better known, looming over the country’s early history while underpinning the continued legacy of systemic racism in American society today.

After touring the castle, ACC members and other Anglican leaders attended a Service of Reflection and Reconciliation at the nearby Christ Church Cathedral, followed by a tree-planting event to support the new Anglican Communion Forest Initiative.

Very proud of Michelle Nyanyiba Green Anglicans rep for West Africa leading the tree planting with the Archbishop of Canterbury in Kamusi Diocese#acc18 pic.twitter.com/AuM5olwzeG

— Green Anglicans (@Greenanglicans) February 15, 2023

Welby also previously was joined in London recently by Ben-Smith and Gregory, his fellow archbishops, for the dedication of an exhibit at Lambeth Palace about the historic links between the Church of England and chattel slavery. On Feb. 14, the ACC members heard a presentation on that research project and the Church of England’s new £100million fund to “address some of the past wrongs” tied to its complicity in slavery.

The ACC is meeting Feb. 12-19 in Accra, Ghana’s capital, for prayer, worship and discussions on the operations, ministries and mission of the worldwide Anglican Communion, which is made up of autonomous, interdependent churches that all have historic roots in the Church of England. This is the 18^th meeting of the ACC, which convenes about every three years. Each Anglican province may appoint and send up to three members to ACC, typically a bishop, another clergy member and a lay person.

ACC-18’s tour of Cape Coast Castle comes six years after Presiding Bishop Michael Curry led an Episcopal delegation to Ghana for a reconciliation pilgrimage organized by Episcopal Relief & Development. On that trip, Curry and other Episcopal leaders traveled from Accra to northern Ghana and visited the site of the Pikworo Slave Camp, which estimated 500,000 enslaved people passed through between 1704 and 1805.

The Episcopal pilgrims in 2017 also visited Elmina Castle. At sites like Elmina Castle and Cape Coast Castle, enslaved individuals were held in dungeons, standing and sleeping in their own excrement, before their captors loaded them onto ships bound for the Americas and Caribbean. The Church of England and The Episcopal Church both were complicit in the slave trade, with many Episcopalians owning slaves and profiting from the slave trade and its ancillary trade in goods and raw materials like rum, sugar, molasses, tobacco and cotton. The Portuguese, the Dutch and the British, all at one time or another, occupied the castles and controlled the transatlantic slave trade.

Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807 and in 1834 declared owning slaves illegal. U.S. President Thomas Jefferson in 1808 signed a law prohibiting the importation of slaves, but slave ownership continued until 1865 and the passage of the 13th Amendment.

– David Paulsen is an editor and reporter for Episcopal News Service. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.

The Episcopal Church’s delegation to the 18th Anglican Consultative Council — Maryland Bishop Eugene Sutton, Annette Buchanan, a lay leader from the Diocese of New Jersey, and the Rev. Ranjit Mathews, the Diocese of Connecticut’s canon for mission, advocacy, racial justice and reconciliation — poses with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby on Feb. 14 in Accra, Ghana, where the Feb. 12-19 meeting is underway. Photo: Neil Turner for the Anglican Communion Office

[Episcopal News Service] The Episcopal Church’s representatives to the Anglican Consultative Council participated Feb. 14 in a discussion on the challenges of maintaining – and, in some ways, restoring – unity among the worldwide Anglican Communion’s 42 provinces at a time of stark divisions over human sexuality and marriage equality.

About 110 representatives from 39 of those provinces are in Accra, Ghana, this week for the 18^th meeting of ACC, one of the Anglican Communion’s four Instruments of Communion and the only to include laity. The other three are the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops, the Primates’ Meeting and the archbishop of Canterbury, an office known as the “focus of unity.”

During presentations originating from small table discussions about a report on unity, faith and order, Annette Buchanan, a lay leader from the Diocese of New Jersey, expressed concerns about the Anglican Communion’s structural power dynamic that gives greater weight to the voices of bishops and other clergy over lay voices.

“No one asked the laity when you were at Lambeth what issues would be the priority issues,” Buchanan said, addressing the two bishops who were leading the session.

“No one asked the laity whether or not gender-based issues or LGBTQ issues were the priority. … The voices of the majority are not being heard. Those who are in the hierarchy have instruments whereby they discuss issues with each other, and there is no input [from lay leaders]. And so, this becomes a matter of power, status, control.”

Buchanan’s reference to the Lambeth Conference connected the issue of lay priorities to the divisions that were on display at that conference held late last July and into early August in Canterbury, England. Some conservative bishops, mostly from provinces in Africa and Asia, sought to amplify their criticisms of The Episcopal Church and other provinces that have welcomed LGBTQ+ people more fully into the life of their churches, however, it was not evident that such criticisms reflected the daily concerns of the parishioners in the conservative bishops’ provinces.

Bishop Graham Tomlin of the Church of England, who serves as chair of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order, thanked Buchanan for asserting the important role of lay leaders. “It’s a really helpful reminder to us to make sure that voice of the laity – which of course is here in the ACC but not in the other instruments – is heard in the bit of work that we do as well.”

The Anglican Communion is made up of autonomous, interdependent churches that all have historic roots in the Church of England. There is no central decision-making body in the Anglican Communion. Provinces retain authority to make decisions for themselves while coming together at ACC about every three years for prayer, worship and discussions on the future of the Anglican Communion.

Each Anglican province may appoint and send up to three members to ACC, typically a bishop, another clergy member and a lay person.  Buchanan, a former Union of Black Episcopalians president, is joined in Ghana by Maryland Bishop Eugene Sutton and the Rev. Ranjit Mathews, the Diocese of Connecticut’s canon for mission, advocacy, racial justice and reconciliation, representing The Episcopal Church.

Tomlin led the afternoon session Feb. 14 along with Bishop Paul Korir of Kenya. In presenting their report on behalf of the Commission on Unity, Faith and Order, Tomlin and Korir stressed that the structure of the Anglican Communion has evolved and may continue to evolve to accommodate differences among provinces while fostering unity around core faith beliefs.

The commission’s members, Korir said, “quickly agreed that all Anglicans, indeed all Christians, are called by God to consider carefully and prayerfully what communion, “koinonia,” means. That is to consider the nature of the fellowship that we share in Jesus Christ.” The commission’s report and recommendations included a proposal to study the Anglican Communion’s current structure and report back to ACC in three years on possible paths forward.

“We hope to be able to speak directly to some of the present impairments in the life of the Anglican Communion,” Korir said.

Such impaired relations were made plain at this in-person meeting by the absence of three Anglican provinces. Leaders of the provinces of Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda have not participated in the Instruments of Communion for at least 15 years because of their objections to some provinces’ ordination of openly gay and lesbian clergy and adoption of marriage rites and blessings for same-sex couples.

Last week, the Church of England’s General Synod endorsed its own plan to bless same-sex unions for the first time while stopping short of condoning same-sex marriage. A group of conservative Anglican leaders known as the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches responded by saying that the Church of England’s actions call into question Welby’s ability to uphold the archbishop of Canterbury’s role as a “focus of unity.”

The Rev. Joseph Bilal, an ACC member from South Sudan, rose to say that he thinks one of the roots of impairment is a breakdown in the ability of Anglicans to listen openly.

“In which way could we be able as [the] Anglican Communion to listen to one another and also act in a way that it doesn’t affect another?” Bilal said. That “is one of the biggest struggles that I have.”

The Rev. Ranjit Mathews, The Episcopal Church’s clergy delegate to the 18th Anglican Consultative Council, speaks during a Feb. 14 discussion. Photo: Neil Turner for the Anglican Communion Office

Mathews, The Episcopal Church’s clergy member on ACC, said he appreciated Bilal’s point about the importance of listening.

“If we look around this room, this is the beauty of our communion, the diversity,” Mathews said. “Any sort of unity should not be weaponized or seen as coercive, but if we can live and truly be who we are and if the quality of our listening can go deeper, I think that’s the invitation and our vocation as the communion.”

Senzo Mbhele, the lay member from the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, shared that his table’s discussion had focused on how core Christian beliefs transcend denominational, provincial and cultural differences.

“When we approach the throne of heaven one day, there’s no way God is going to say, ‘well done, my good and faithful Anglican.’ He will say, ‘well done, my good and faithful servants.’ And he will not differentiate between black or white, Global South or North,” Mbhele said.

At the same time, he warned that the work toward unity through faith may not overcome existing power imbalances. “The more we work together with different people, one of the dangers is that the more powerful will then suppress the cultures that are weaker, in whatever sense.”

The Rev. Andrew Atherstone, an ACC member from the Church of England, echoed such concerns while turning the focus on his own province.

“England always likes to think of itself as first … sort of first among equals,” Atherstone said. “Is that really appropriate in the new communion or whatever shape it might be? Some work on that from your group would be appreciated.” (The archbishop of Canterbury, who also heads the Church of England, often is considered the historic “first among equals” in the Anglican tradition.)

Tomlin acknowledged that his commission will have to consider the future of “the Anglican Communion in a post-colonial world.”

Delegates to the 18th Anglican Consultative Council participate daily in small table discussions. Photo: Neil Turner for the Anglican Communion Office

Actions of ACC are not binding on the member provinces, though Tomlin said in his introductory remarks that the provinces may better serve their shared mission by joining together.

“When we serve others in the name of Christ together, that is so much more powerful as a witness than when we do it alone,” he said.

Later in the day, ACC members considered their first set of resolutions, including the one on “good differentiation” submitted by the Commission on Unity, Faith and Order. The resolution “affirms the importance of seeking to walk together to the highest degree possible and learning from our ecumenical conversations how to accommodate differentiation patiently and respectfully,” and it tasks the commission with developing proposals for the ACC to review.

After additional discussion by ACC members, the resolution passed with a show of hands.

– David Paulsen is an editor and reporter for Episcopal News Service. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.

Poggo, from the Province of South Sudan, took over as secretary general last September, succeeding Archbishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon. “I was grateful to Archbishop Josiah for the time that we were able to spend together before I assumed office,” Poggo said. “I learned a lot from his knowledge and wisdom.”

The ACC also redefined the term “vulnerable adult,” as used in its official guidance to member churches. Proposing a resolution, the Malaysian lawyer Andrew Khoo, representing the Church of the Province of South East Asia, explained the change: “in the earlier guidelines that had been previously approved we had a three-point definition of what constitutes a vulnerable adult,” he said. “We have added two more points which deal not so much with the inherent disability of a particular person but situational circumstances a person is placed in,” such as a natural disaster or war.

The resolution also encourages member churches and agencies to use and implement the International Anglican Safe Church Commission Charter and Guidelines; and asked for the development of resources on the theology of safeguarding.

Several people spoke in support of the resolution in the small debate that followed. The Rt. Rev. Graham Usher, bishop of Norwich in the Church of England, said: “This is everyone in this room’s responsibility.” He called on ACC members to be “a leader in our own provinces in this whole area because we will only solve these issues and protect the most vulnerable in our church communities if we all take responsibility.”

And he also delivered a message to the men in the room, saying: “it is us, as men, who are the perpetrators of so much sexual violence, of abuse of power. We need to be the change we want to see and model that in our communities.”

Ethel George, a lay representative from the Anglican Church of Melanesia,  endorsed the call for new theological resources, saying: “people in our communities would be more receptive to any resources that are faith-based.”

Archbishop of Canada Linda Nicholls, urged members to support the resolution, saying: “we’ve been talking [during the meeting] about the witness of the church, and I come from a province where the witness of our church has been deeply, deeply damaged by a history of not being a safe place because we participated with the government in residential schools for indigenous peoples where sexual and physical abuse occurred in some or many of those schools. And we continue to pay the price.”

She said that seeking a world of “repentance and reconciliation and healing” would take generations. “If we do not get this right, if we do not make our churches places that are safe for children, for women, for men, for vulnerable adults of every kind, then we have failed the primary gospel imperative to love your neighbor as yourself.”

Nicholls said that implementing the charter was “very hard work” but she said that members should “say yes and then go home and do it.”

The bishop of Nairobi in the Anglican Church of Kenya, the Rt. Rev. Joel Waweru, said: “This is long overdue. It is time that we did it.”

By a show of hands, the members of ACC-18 approved the resolution:

Recognizing the priority of building a safe church throughout the Anglican Communion, the Anglican Consultative Council:

1. commits itself to making the safety of all persons in the provinces of the Anglican Communion a priority of its focus, resource allocation and actions;
2. requests the Safe Church Commission, in consultation with the Secretary General, to continue to provide safeguarding resources and training to the provinces;
3. amends the definition of “vulnerable adult” in the ‘Guidelines to enhance the safety of all persons – especially children, young people and vulnerable adults’ – within the provinces of the Anglican Communion, so that it reads:

   “Vulnerable adult means an adult who has any relationship with a church worker where there is an intrinsic imbalance of power, which is capable of being exploited or taken advantage of by the church worker to the detriment of the adult. The imbalance of power may be increased by the circumstances of the adult such as where they:

   • are ministered to in their home;
   • are dependent on one or more persons for support such as in the case of an accident, illness or birth of a child;
   • experience a life crisis or natural disaster, such as the death of a family member or loss of employment, or loss of home and possessions;
   • through poverty, war or civil strife, displacement, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender, or other social and cultural factors have a diminished ability to protect themselves from abuse; or
   • have an intellectual or physical disability, mental illness or other impairment”;
4. encourages member churches and agencies to use and implement the International Anglican Safe Church Commission Charter and Guidelines; and
5. Requests that the Commission for Theological Education in the Anglican Communion, in consultation with the Secretary General, to develop resources around the theology of safeguarding.