Anglican Communion Primates' Meetings

The Anglican Communion Primates' Meetings are regular meetings of the primates in the Anglican Communion, i.e. the principal archbishops or bishops of each (often national) ecclesiastical province of the Anglican Communion. There are currently 38 primates of the Anglican Communion. The primates come together from the geographic provinces around the world. The Archbishop of Canterbury chairs the meetings, with the Secretary General of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) serving as secretary.

The Primates' Meeting was established by Donald Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1978 as an opportunity for “leisurely thought, prayer and deep consultation”. The first meeting was held in 1979.

Recent meetings

February 2001 meeting

Held from 2 to 9 March at the Kanuga Conference Center in the United States, topics of discussion included mission issues, poverty and debt concerns, "Canons and Communion", and the response to the global HIV/AIDS crisis.

October 2003 meeting

Following the regular primates meeting of May 2003, Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, convened an extraordinary meeting of the primates of the Anglican Communion from 15 to 16 October.

The primates gathered at Lambeth Palace in October for a series of closed meetings discussing a way forward because conflict over the Episcopal Church and the ordination of a gay bishop. The primates issued a communique at the close of the meeting.[1]

February 2005 meeting

In February 2005, Anglican Communion Primates' Meeting was held in Dromantine in Northern Ireland from 21 to 26 February. The issue of homosexuality was heavily discussed. Of the 38 primates, 35 attended. The primates issued a communiqué that reiterated most of the Windsor Report's statements, but added a new twist. The Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada were asked to voluntarily withdraw from the Anglican Consultative Council, the main formal international entity within the Anglican Communion until the next Lambeth Conference in 2008.

February 2007 meeting

The 2007 Primates' Meeting was held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, from 15 to 19 February and reviewed a draft covenant for the Anglican Communion which is in part a response to disagreements between national churches on issues of sexuality and authority.[2]

January 2011 meeting

The 2011 Primates' Meeting was held in Dublin, Ireland. It was attended by the primates of only 23 of the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion. A variety of reasons were offered for the absences. The Archbishop of the Congo was unable to obtain a visa. The primates of Mexico and Burma said that they were not well. Four primates cited other engagements: Kenya, North India, Sudan and Rwanda. The Archbishop of Tanzania offered “personal reasons” for his absence, while seven conservative primates boycotted the meeting as a protest against the attendance of the more liberal primates of The Episcopal Church of the United States of America and of Canada: namely, the primates of the provinces of the Indian Ocean, Jerusalem and the Middle East, Nigeria, Uganda, Southeast Asia, the Province of the Southern Cone in South America and the Province of West Africa.

January 2016 meeting ("Primates 2016")

The primates gathered in Canterbury in January 2016, but the gathering ("Primates 2016") was not a properly-constituted Anglican Communion Primates' Meeting, and was not officially referred to as such.[3]

List of meetings

Rowan Williams called an extraordinary meeting in 2003

References

  1. ↑ https://www.webcitation.org/6CkrXq48O?url=http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/news.cfm/2003/10/16/ACNS3633
  2. ↑ "Communiqué of the Primates’ Meeting, February 2007" (PDF). Anglican Communion. Retrieved 20 June 2015.
  3. ↑ About — Primates 2016 (Accessed 31 January 2016)
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