No change to American ban, ACC says: The Church of England Newspaper, July 8, 2011 p 6.

First published in The Church of England Newspaper.

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s ban on American participation in the Anglican Communion’s international ecumenical dialogues remains in place, a spokesman for the Anglican Consultative Council reports.

However, the addition of an American Episcopalian to the delegation to the third Anglican–Lutheran International Commission (ALIC) meeting in Jerusalem last week was not a violation of the ban on participation in ecumenical dialogue of those who propagate views contrary to the church’s teachings on human sexuality, the ACC says.

A spokesman for the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) tells The Church of England Newspaper that the communiqué misstated the status of the American member of the Anglican team.  The Very Rev. William Petersen, Provost and Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Bexley Hall Seminary in the United States, was a “consultant not a member of ALIC. The reference to him in the communiqué as a member was incorrect,” ACC spokesman Jan Butters said.

The statement has since been amended on the ACC’s website to note this change of status.

Since Dr. Rowan Williams issued his May 28, 2010 Pentecost letter to the Anglican Communion, there has been controversy over how faithfully its terms have been implemented by the London-based staff of the ACC.

In his letter, Dr. Rowan Williams stated that members of provinces that were in breach of the moratoria would no longer participate in the communion’s ecumenical dialogues.  They “should not be participants in the ecumenical dialogues in which the Communion is formally engaged,” Dr. Williams wrote, leading to the dismissal of five Americans from the dialogue teams.

On June 7, 2010 ACC general secretary the Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon announced that he had written to the American participants, including Dr. Petersen “informing them that their membership of these [ecumenical] dialogues has been discontinued.”

Speaking to the press during the Canadian General Synod in Halifax last year, Canon Kearon explained that: “If they don’t share the faith and order, then they shouldn’t represent the Communion on faith and order questions.”

The Americans had been stood down as “at the very minimum to be honouring to our ecumenical partners so that they know who they are in conversation with,” Canon Kearon said.

The subsequent appointment of an American priest and a Canadian bishop whose diocese had formally instituted gay blessings to the ARCIC team was permitted, the ACC explained as the Canadian national church had not endorsed gay blessings, and the American priest—through still canonically resident in the Diocese of Chicago—was teaching in the UK.

The reappointment of one of the dismissed Americans to the ALIC, with the same role in the dialogue as before but with the new title of “consultant” further diminished the credibility and integrity of the ACC staff, one Global South leader told CEN.

At their meeting in Jerusalem, participants learned of the difficulties facing Christians in the Middle East, and Dr. Williams gave a speech urging greater Anglican-Lutheran cooperation in the region.