Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Archbishop says summit ended in 'glorious failure'


The Archbishop of Canterbury has conceded that ACC-14 in Kingston, Jamaica was a “failure” that disappointed many Anglicans across the Communion. However, the meeting of the Anglican Communion’s fourth ‘instrument of unity’ had been a “glorious failure” that saw the Anglican Communion rise from its “deathbed” to address its own shortcomings, Dr Rowan Williams said in his closing presidential address on May 11.

It was unhelpful to establish criteria for success or failure for Anglican meetings, Dr Williams told delegates to the May 2-12 meeting in Kingston, Jamaica said, as there was “no absolute measure for achievement. In critical times – small things might be large achievements. Our willingness in certain areas to act as one and to discover more deeply how we pray as one is, by God’s grace and gift, for no other reason, an achievement,” he said.

At ACC-14 “we got up every morning, we prayed every morning, read Scripture, we affirmed our will to stay in relation, we’ve done some planning,” he noted, adding that significant progress had been made in forming an Anglican relief and development network, committing the Communion to evangelism, endorsing the recommendations of the Windsor Continuation Group (WCG), and “we even agreed on the substance of the covenant and the time scale of that work.”

Predictions of the demise of the Communion were unfounded. “If someone diagnosed as terminally ill has prayed and planned and given new evidence of energy and life from their deathbed to begin new things we might just possibly question the diagnosis of a terminal outlook,” he said.

More here-

http://www.religiousintelligence.co.uk/news/?NewsID=4427

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