ACC embraces Windsor Continuation report

Updated with final text and Anglican Communion Office press briefing:


The Anglican Consultative Council has embraced the Report of the Windsor Continuation Group. An effort to include a moratorium that would have forbidden the Episcopal Church from going to court to maintain control of its property was defeated 33-32, but the moratoria on same-sex blessings and consecration of partnered gay bishops have been approved.

(Mark Harris comments.)

In other news, Bishop James Tengatenga of the Diocese of Southern Malawi in the internally divided Province of Central Africa was elected to succeed Bishop John Paterson of Auckland, New Zealand, as chair of the council. Tengatenga was a member of the Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates Meeting and is regarded as a moderate.

Colin Coward reports that the ACC substituted the word “affirms” for the word “notes” in section b. Marites Sison has a breakdown on the voting.

Votes have also been cast to choose the next chair of the Anglican Consultative Council, but results have not been announced.

The ACC

a. thanks the Archbishop of Canterbury for his report on the work and recommendations of the Windsor Continuation Group,

b. affirms the recommendations of the Windsor Continuation Group,

c. affirms the request of the Windsor Report (2002), adopted at the Primates’ Meetings (2005, 2007 and 2009), and supported at the Lambeth Conference (2008) for the implementation of the agreed moratoria on the Consecration of Bishops living in a same gender union, authorisation of public Rites of Blessing for Same Sex unions and continued interventions in other Provinces;

d. acknowledges the efforts that have been made to hold the moratoria, gives thanks for the gracious restraint that has been observed in these areas and recognises the deep cost of such restraint;

e. asks that urgent conversations are facilitated with those Provinces where the application of the moratoria gives rise for concern;

f. encourages the Archbishop of Canterbury to work with the Joint Standing Committee and the Secretary General to carry forward the implementation of the Windsor Continuation Group recommendations as appropriate,

g. asks Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order to undertake a study of the roles and responsibilities in the Communion of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting; the ecclesiological rationale of each, and the relationships between them, in line with the Windsor Continuation Group report, and to report back to ACC-15;

h. calls the Communion to pray for repentance, conversion and renewal; leading to deeper communion.

Read the Episcopal News Service coverage.

Past Posts
Categories