wfn.org | Anglican Consultative Council holds hearing on human sexuality

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ACNS 1889 · 19 September 1999 · Dundee [ACC-11/24]
Hearing on Human Sexuality
A STATEMENT BY THE CHAIRMAN
Members of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) meeting this week in
Scotland have today shared in a unique experience of testimony and witness.
A group of gay and lesbian Christians have shared with us their own story
and pilgrimage. As the ACC is a representative gathering of the world wide
Anglican Communion, the reaction to such testimonies is broad and diverse.
The whole area of human sexuality is complex, personal and comes wrapped in
cultural understandings. Speaking for myself, I come from Tanzania in
Africa, and from a church which holds the traditional teaching on human
sexuality and marriage.
I am thus grateful for this hearing today as it is consistent with the
communion we share and the nature of a consultative body such as the ACC.
Listening to everyone and to each other is a cardinal principle of
consultation and communion. Hence, the call from the 1998 Lambeth Conference
that there should be a listening process with church members who are
homosexuals has begun today. Today's sharing has provoked in me and in many
of us the desire to pray for one another remembering that we are all
children of God in need of redemption and the freedom found in our
relationship with the Risen Christ and in our fellowship with each other.
As part of the response to the Lambeth Conference resolution, the Archbishop
of Canterbury, in consultation with the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal
Church of the USA, has initiated a consultation between bishops representing
all shades of opinion within the Communion. The first gathering of the group
will take place in November in New York.
The Rt Revd Simon Chiwanga
Bishop of Mpwapwa
Chair, ACC