Letter to the editor : African provinces's Lambeth boycott does not mean they have left Anglican Communion

Notes: "I was dismayed to read in the Journal of the primate’s apparent eagerness to "unchurch" the provinces of Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda for their refusal to attend the Lambeth Conference on a matter of principle (“Provinces absent from Lambeth have left Communion: primate,” December 2022, p. 1). Non-attendance at Lambeth does not and never has been understood as signalling the withdrawal of a national or diocesan church from the Anglican Communion. Indeed, my own bishop, Bishop Anna Greenwood-Lee of the diocese of British Columbia, decided not to attend the conference, citing principled and practical reasons for doing so (see the June issue of Faith Tides). Has she, in the primate’s view, “indicated by [her] non-participation that [she has] separated from the Anglican Communion”? Ultimately, it is not the job of primates of predominantly white, declining churches to tell the primates of thriving, majority-Black churches what their actions do or do not indicate. In the midst of our precipitous — not to say terminal — decline, it seems we in the Anglican Church of Canada still have not learned the lesson of ecclesiastical humility that Providence is so evidently trying to teach us". [Text of entire article.]

Subjects: Lambeth Conference, 2022; Anglican Communion - Membership; Same sex unions - Religious aspects - Anglican Communion - Africa; Conflict management - Religious aspects - Anglican Communion; Nicholls, Linda (Linda Carol), 1954-