The ACC: A spurned Instrument of Communion

From The Church Times-

NOT that long ago, meetings of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) meant something.
In 1971, at its first meeting, delegates to the Council narrowly passed a resolution that broadly approved of the ordination of women to the priesthood. That resolution gave important momentum to canonical change permitting precisely such ordinations in several Provinces, including Canada.

At a meeting in 1984, a committee of the ACC drafted the basis of what became known as the Five Marks of Mission: a definition of mission which many Anglicans have used in recent years to think about how Christians are to engage with the world. In 2005, in the midst of a fraught moment in the life of the Anglican Communion, the ACC was the body to which Americans and Canadians made genuine and searching presentations about how they understood the actions of their Churches in blessing same-sex unions and consecrating an openly partnered gay man, Gene Robinson, as bishop.

It makes sense that the ACC would be the locus for such work. It is one of four “Instruments of Communion” which help to bring order to the common life of Anglicans around the world. It is the only one of those Instruments — the others are the Primates’ Meeting, the Lambeth Conference, and the Archbishop of Canterbury himself — that includes Anglicans who are not bishops. In general, each Anglican Province sends a bishop, priest, and lay person to the ACC.

More here-

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2019/15-march/comment/opinion/the-acc-a-spurned-instrument-of-communion