As the primates of the Anglican Communion prepare to meet Jan. 25-30 near Dublin, Ireland, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has said she is "deeply grateful that we may begin to focus on issues that are highly significant in local contexts as well as across the breadth of the Anglican Communion."
But according to the Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, secretary general of the Anglican Communion, at least seven primates have indicated they will not be attending the meeting at the Emmaus Retreat & Conference Centre because of Jefferts Schori's presence and recent developments concerning human sexuality issues in the Episcopal Church.
Jefferts Schori is one of 38 primates in the Anglican Communion and represents the U.S.-based Episcopal Church at Primates Meetings. In 2006, she became the first woman to be elected as leader of an Anglican Communion province.
"In all we do, we seek to recognize the face of God wherever we turn, realizing that the body of God's creation will only be healed when all members of the body of Christ are working together," Jefferts Schori said in a statement e-mailed to Episcopal News Service.
Kearon, speaking in a Jan. 23 interview with BBC Radio Ulster's Sunday Sequence program, said that "seven or possibly eight" primates have turned down the invitation to attend the Primates Meeting "as part of an objection to the Episcopal Church and other developments," but that they have "reiterated their commitment to the communion and the archbishop of Canterbury in their writing to me."
Other primates may not attend the meeting due to reasons of health, diary commitments or major issues in their provinces, such as flooding in Australia and the referendum on independence in Sudan, Kearon said.
Central to the mission of the Episcopal Church, Jefferts Schori said, are "issues of serving our brothers and sisters, offering good news for body, mind, and spirit ... The Episcopal Church is urgently focused on rebuilding in Haiti, seeking increased ways to bring good news to the poor in indigenous communities, inner cities, and expanding and depopulating rural areas in all the nations in our province.
"Across the globe, in partnership with Anglicans and others, we seek to serve the least of these, bringing light in the midst of darkness, peace in the midst of war and violence, and hope in the face of devastating natural disasters and the growing reality of climate change," she added. "We own our domestic responsibility to change our habits and ways of life that contribute to environmental damage and destruction."
Jefferts Schori told ENS that she looks forward "to greeting many old friends at the Primates Meeting in Dublin, and to meeting those who have been elected in the past two years."
Word that some primates were planning to boycott the meeting first came in October 2010 with reports that Archbishop Ian Ernest of the Indian Ocean had written to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams outlining certain conditions that would guarantee his attendance.
Then in November 2010, the archbishops of Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and West Africa, said in a joint statement that they would "join with other primates from the Global South in declaring that we will not be present."
Primates are the senior archbishops and presiding bishops elected or appointed to lead each of the 38 autonomous provinces of the Anglican Communion. They are invited to the Primates Meetings, which are held every two or three years, by the archbishop of Canterbury to consult on theological, social and international issues.
The Primates Meeting is one of the three instruments of communion in the Anglican Communion, the other two being the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference of bishops and the Anglican Consultative Council, the communion's main policy-making body. The archbishop of Canterbury, as primus inter pares, or "first among equals," is recognized as the focus of unity for the Anglican Communion.
Each province relates to other provinces within the Anglican Communion by being in full communion with the See of Canterbury. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams calls the Lambeth Conference, chairs the meeting of primates and is president of the ACC. Kearon serves as secretary to the instruments of communion.
By Matthew Davies, editor and international correspondent of the Episcopal News Service
