Provisional plans for a season of repentance and prayer across the Anglican Communion next year have been put forward by the task group established after the Primates’ Meeting in 2016. The season would be launched with the publication of a specific prayer and would run from Pentecost until late in 2019.
The group said the season would focus on individual provinces week by week. Materials to support the season will be gathered and distributed by the Anglican Communion Office.
Bishop Ian Ernest of the Indian Ocean said the season would be the Communion’s gift to a world in pain.
“We are aware of difficulties and hurts,” he said. “The world knows brokenness. The Anglican Communion has had its struggles and its brokenness too.
“So this is our response: our belief that prayer will help us to grow and to love in spite of differences. Our belief is that our differences don’t need to lead to hate but prayer can lead us to heal where relationships have been impaired.
“We know that we are called to be instruments of love and forgiveness, of righteousness and truth.”
Archbishop Justin Welby formed the task group in January 2016. Its remit is to restore relationships, rebuild mutual trust and responsibility, heal the legacy of hurt, and explore deeper relationships. It presented an interim report on its work to the Primates’ Meeting in Canterbury last October.
Bishop Ernest said the group is now working on actions that reflect its mandate to help the Communion to walk together in spite of differences. He said he hoped the season of prayer would also help build momentum toward the Lambeth Conference in 2020.
Adapted from ACNS
Matthew Townsend is a Halifax-based freelance journalist and volunteer advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct in Anglican settings. He served as editor of the Anglican Journal from 2019 to 2021 and communications missioner for the Anglican Diocese of Quebec from 2019 to 2022. He and his wife recently entered catechism class in the Orthodox Church in America.
