Grieving the Anglican Communion: English Primacy and the Anglican Consultative Council

Posted on February 21, 2023 
Filed under Anglican Communion, Church of England, Global South

“After the high drama of the Church of England’s General Synod, we had one day to wash and repack before flying to Ghana for the eighteenth plenary meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC-18), hosted by the Province of West Africa.

It was like being evacuated from the battlefield to a temporary sanctuary, where the artillery bombardment is hushed, wounds can be bandaged, and the foot soldiers of rival armies lay down their weapons for mutual refreshment and embrace. Eight days of Anglican bliss, while all around us the Communion implodes. …

The Anglican Communion has been in choppy seas for several decades, but the bishops of the Church of England are now driving it directly towards the rocks. If they do not change course, then what can be salvaged from the imminent wreckage? At the ACC we worked gallantly, with cheerful smiles, trying to believe it was ‘business as normal’, but all the time aware that the epoch-changing statement from the primates of the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) would be waiting for us when we returned home.”

– At Psephizo, Andrew Atherstone reflects on the meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council last week and the seismic shift taking place in the Anglican Communion.

He points out,

“Global South provinces have now seized the initiative to establish firebreaks between themselves and the Church of England. Emergency action is needed, if the riches of the Anglican Communion are not to be squandered forever.”

Andrew Atherton is Latimer Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and biographer of Justin Welby.