Synodical Government in the Anglican Communion
ARCIC-III 2012.08.01

Protocol: ARCIC-III 2012.08.01
Author/editor(s): Linda Nicholls
Creation: 26 Mar. 2012 The date of original creation or publication, if known
OAI-PMH: Dublin Core XML
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Rights: © 2012, Linda Nicholls
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The purpose of this paper is to offer an overview of Anglican governance and decision making in order to appreciate how moral decisions are discerned and decided in an Anglican context. This will be a broad stroke presentation within which there are nuances and variations according to local practice among the Churches that comprise the Anglican Communion.

An oft repeated phrase summarizing the governance of the Anglican Church is that it is ‘episcopally led and synodically governed’. These four words pithily condense a complex web of relationships between bishops, clergy and laity at every level of the structure of the church across all areas of decision making. This is additionally complicated by nuances and difference among the churches that make up the Anglican Communion. It is hoped that the following pages will assist in understanding the relationships within which Anglican Churches individually and corporately seek to discern the will of God.

In order to consider the path for the discernment of moral decisions within the governance of the Church it will be helpful to approach it first from the perspective of history. This paper will therefore sketch the development of governance within the Anglican Communion. Appendix II includes a short paper of how a particular moral issue, the remarriage of divorced persons, has been discerned in the Anglican Church of Canada as an example of the process.