Anglican Consultative Council

The Anglican Consultative Council or ACC is one of the four "Instruments of Communion" of the Anglican Communion. It was created by a resolution of the 1968 Lambeth Conference. The council, which includes Anglican bishops, clergy and laity, meets every two or three years in different parts of the world.

The Anglican Consultative Council has a permanent secretariat (the Anglican Communion Office), based at Saint Andrew's House, London, which is responsible for organizing meetings of the "Instruments of Communion". The Archbishop of Canterbury is ex officio the President of the Council.

Members of the council include the Archbishop of Canterbury and a certain number of representatives of each of the Anglican provinces, depending on the size of the province.

The largest provinces are entitled to appoint three representatives, consisting of one bishop, one priest, and one layperson. Intermediate sized provinces may appoint two persons: one layperson and one ordained (either bishop or priest). The smallest provinces appoint only one person, preferably from among the laity. Additionally, the Council may co-opt up to six additional members of whom two shall be women and two persons not over 28 years of age at the time of appointment.

If the chairperson or the vice-chair of the council should be elected to this position for a term which exceeds the term of his or her appointment to the council, his or her council membership is extended until the expiration of the term as chair, while the province to which he or she belongs is entitled to make an additional appointment.

For the purposes of apportioning the membership on the Anglican Consultative Council, the large provinces are considered to be:

Intermediate-sized provinces are:

The smallest provinces include:

According to the 1968 resolution, the council has eight functions:

The 13th meeting of the ACC was concerned with the controversy surrounding the policies about homosexuality, particularly the consecration of openly homosexual bishops. A resolution to expel the American and Canadian provinces from all church bodies was rejected. An alternative resolution was passed by a vote of 30 to 28. It stated support in the Anglican Communion to condemn homosexual behavior. It also repeated the position stated at the 2005 Primates' Meeting, that the Episcopal Church (USA) and the Anglican Church of Canada needed to "voluntarily withdraw their members" from the ACC—including its "Standing Committee and the Inter-Anglican Finance and Administration Committee" until the next Lambeth Conference in 2008.

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