The Communion Partners have released a communiqué from their recent meeting at Camp Weed in the Diocese of Florida, where they discussed the implementation of B012, the Task Force on Communion Across Difference, the upcoming General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Lambeth Conference, and other matters. They write:
Along with many others, we are mindful of preparations for the Lambeth Conference, the periodic gathering of bishops scheduled for July of 2020. As Communion Partners, we pray that the Conference will lead to a strengthening of the ties of fellowship that connect the Churches of the Communion. The walking together of member Churches should properly occasion an intensification of relationship, as the Anglican Covenant recognized (Introduction, §5): to enter more deeply into the common life and communion that is Our Lord’s prayer for his visible Body on earth. Here we would reclaim, and place before our colleagues across the Communion, the inspiring desire and call of the 1920 Lambeth Conference, until the work is completed. As the bishops wrote: “Because our [Communion] has spread over the world, and still more because we desire to enter into the world-wide fellowship of a reunited universal Church, we must begin now to clear ourselves of local, sectional, and temporary prepossessions, and cultivate a sense of what is universal and genuinely Catholic, in truth and life” (Encyclical Letter). In our day, a critical part of Catholic truth and life in need of upholding and defending is the institution of Christian marriage. We pray that next year’s conference will address marriage directly and clearly, both in order to reiterate the Catholic faith and to respond wisely to pastoral questions that have arisen in a new cultural situation. As the oldest instrument of Anglican conciliarity, the Lambeth Conference remains the best vehicle for the development of a common episcope that is personal, collegial, and communal “in accountable relation to the whole Church, both local and universal” (Virginia Report 5.11).
Communion Partners is an episcopally led fellowship of individuals in the provinces of the Anglican Communion devoted to promoting deeper communion in the faith of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
The organization has formalized new governance structures at its recent meeting, choosing a convener and steering committee.
The Rt. Rev. Michael Smith (North Dakota) is the convener. Steering committee members are the Rt. Rev. Greg Brewer (Central Florida), the Rt. Rev. Michael Hawkins (Saskatchewan), the Rev. Fariborz Khandani (Athabasca), the Rev. Leigh Spruill (Tennessee), Sharon Dewey Hetke (Ontario), and Christopher Wells (Dallas).
Christopher Wells is the executive director of the Living Church Foundation.
