On the importance and future of the Anglican Communion
The Visit of Bishop Anthony Poggo
It is with great pleasure that we look forward to welcoming this weekend Bishop Anthony Poggo, the Secretary General of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) and Anglican Communion Office (ACO). While primarily with us to preach on Sunday, we could have no better expert to give us also an overview of why the Anglican Communion matters so much as the overarching Anglican frame within which we exist as members of the Province of the Anglican Communion which is the Episcopal Church of the United States.
Bishop Poggo will also help us to understand better why there is so much discussion around the world of how the Communion’s structures can best be reformed. The need for such a review stems from the call to “walk together to the highest degree possible” in the future, despite the painful facts of profound disagreement on major questions of morals and doctrine. The aim of the proposed changes is to try and avoid fractures and to “accommodate differentiation patiently and respectfully” by God’s grace, in order to achieve and sustain this.
Such a goal places at center stage the need to be able to disagree respectfully and to accommodate the differing views on the most contested matters, while the potentially lengthy process of reception is lived through. Only thus, can the highest level of unity possible actually be preserved in the face of practical diversity. The hard mechanics of what this will require in operational terms lie at the heart of the proposed revisions to the way the structures of the Communion can work best –which the ACC is currently addressing.
And here it is important to note that this latest stage in seeking to address the Anglican Communion’s long unfolding crisis is itself a response to what was ultimately the failed Windsor Report and subsequent process (See note below).
Currently the ACC has put forward a very important set of concrete proposals for the Communion (known as the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals). This it was tasked with devising the ACC 18 (the eighteenth full meeting of the ACC as a body which usually convenes every three years). This task devolved upon the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO) whose mandate is to help the Anglican Communion remain united despite deep disagreement (especially over sexuality, and who can appropriately exercise sacerdotal and episcopal ministry and authority) by modifying both how the Communion describes itself and how and by whom leadership should be exercised.
The stated intent was not to create a new confessional or central authority, but to preserve the “highest degree of communion possible” while acknowledging that some provinces do not presently recognize one another fully. In more detail it was proposed that the locus classicus description of the Anglican Communion produced by the 1930 Lambeth Conference should be modified and that the status of enjoying Anglican identity should be largely separated from being in Communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury and relate more to shared inheritance, mutual service, common counsel. A broader shared leadership across the Instruments of Communion was also proposed, so that leadership better reflects the worldwide Communion with a rotating presidency of the Anglican Consultative Council and a stronger role for the Primates’ Standing Committee in convening major meetings in place of the Archbishop of Canterbury who would no longer convene or set the agenda of the Lambeth Conference.
Theologically, the proposals seek to be rooted in the four marks of the Church as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic and it is proposed that on this basis Anglicans should speak truthfully about real division, and then find the institutional strength to allow forms of differentiation where necessary, while seeking at least a level of visible unity adequate to avoid actual institutional fracture.
After an initial round of consultation, a 2026 supplement has revised parts of the original plan ahead of their prospective presentation to the coming meeting (ACC-19) to be held later this year in Belfast. Notably, the idea of a formal rotating ACC presidency has devolved into a more collegial sharing of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s former ministry with the regional Primates in a manner that could eventually lead to a more formal conciliar structure.
Clearly there are many and very large issues here of great moment for our future as Episcopalians and Anglicans and I look forward to the light that Bishop Poggo will cast upon them!
All are welcome both on Sunday and at the wider Monday presentation after the 9:00 a.m. Choral Matins on 4th May.
Further notes:
The origins and role of the Anglican Consultative Council
The ACC was itself constituted by the decennial Lambeth conference of the world’s Anglican bishops and came into first reality in 1969. It was designed to meet more frequently than the Lambeth Conference and to assist in the work of the Communion. It has always been consultative rather than legislative or juridical and enabled thus to advise, coordinate, and encourage common action on the part of the provinces that make up the wider Communion, each of which is constituted in its own right legally.
Each province sends a delegation, of usually two or three representatives, drawn from episcopal, clerical, and lay orders to form a representation which gives largely equal voice to the provinces even though some may have 20 million or more members while others have merely thousands. The Anglican Communion Office in London, serves as its permanent secretariat and supports the wider Instruments of Communion which thus far have comprised the Lambeth Conference which called the ACC into being, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primates Meeting, and the ACC itself.
The Windsor Report and Process
The Windsor Report’s main recommendations were to strengthen Communion-wide accountability and to contain the crisis about human sexuality through a set of moratoria, expressions of regret, and tighter common structures.
In practical terms, it proposed an Anglican Covenant, stronger support structures around the Archbishopric of Canterbury, and a moratorium on actions that had intensified conflict (such as the consecration of bishops in same sex relationships).
The report recommended adoption of an Anglican Covenant to make explicit the “loyalty and bonds of affection” binding the churches of the Communion. It also proposed a Council of Advice for the Archbishop of Canterbury and commended a stronger Communion framework, including discussion of a “communion canon,” to prevent unilateral action by provinces.
Where conflict made local oversight difficult, the report proposed limited and delegated pastoral oversight suggesting that such arrangements should be mutually agreed, aimed at reconciliation, and used only in cases of extreme breakdown of trust rather than as a normal alternative jurisdiction.
In short, the Windsor Report and subsequent Windsor Process sought to preserve communion by combining restraint, repentance, and stronger common discipline. Its vision was therefore of the provinces acting progressively less alone, but rather through the exercise of an autonomy enjoyed within a conscious sense of interdependence and mutual accountability – perhaps thus embodying in institutional terms the way in which Christians are individually called to live out their faith in community rather than separately and solipsistically.
Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO) is a permanent commission of the ACC charged with the threefold mission to 1) deepen the bonds between Communion’s 42 member churches and Provinces; 2) to advise the Instruments of Communion and member churches on doctrine and church structure; and 3) to ensure that ecumenical agreements are consistent with the Anglican inheritance.
On the Windsor Report of 2004 and subsequent Windsor Process See
https://www.anglicancommunion.org/resource/windsor-report-reception-process
The Windsor Report of 2004
https://archive.org/details/windsorreport2000000unse
The prior Virginia Report
The Virginia report : the report of the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission : Lambeth Conference 1998, July 18-August 9, Lambeth Place, Canterbury, England