ACC-14 Day Three: The Anglican Communion Covenant and Uganda’s right to choose its delegate

Anglican Mainstream
May 4th, 2009

Excerpt:
The second issue, not unrelated, is the issue of the seating of the clerical delegate for the Church of Uganda. The Church of Uganda has oversight of a number of clergy and parishes in the United States. The Archbishop of Uganda selected one of these clergy to be part of the Ugandan delegation to ACC, as an expression of its sovereign right to choose who represented it, and partly to give a voice to those orthodox in the USA whose voice would otherwise not be heard in the councils of AAC 14. Canon Kenneth Kearon informed the delegates on Saturday night and the press on Monday lunchtime that during the roll call of the delegates the status of the Ugandan clerical delegate, Rev Philip Ashey, a priest of the Church of Uganda since 2005 living in Atlanta, had been challenged and Mr Ashey was not allowed to take his seat.

The Church of Uganda has issued a press statement on this matter ( see here ). At the press conference Canon Kenneth Kearon was pressed about the legitimacy whereby the sovereignty of the Church of Uganda in choosing its own delegate was denied. It was drawn to his attention that in 1999, at the ACC-11 in Dundee, the Episcopal Church in the USA was represented by a Bishop Mark Dyer who had retired in 1995. Canon George Conger writes: "The ACC’s constitution at section 4.d says: ‘Bishops and other clerical members shall cease to be members on retirement from ecclesiastical office.’ I asked John L Peterson, in my capacity as a reporter for the Church of England Newspaper, why Bishop Dyer was being seated at the meeting, when the constitution said he was not eligible to be seated. Canon Peterson said that the ACC left it to the member churches to determine who would be their representatives and placed the onus on the sending church to conform with the rules. My commentary would be, in 1999 the ACC (in the person of John L Peterson) said the member churches could pick whom they wanted to send, even if they weren’t eligible. In 2009 the ACC is now saying the member churches are not free to pick their members, even if the delegate is eligible under the rules laid down by the ACC.”

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