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Anglican Church of Southern Africa: Safe and Inclusive Church Commission

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2021

Rosalie Manning ,
Colette Saldanha ,
Claire Phelps ,
Chris Ahrends  and
Peter Lee
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Abstract

The process of creating a Safe and Inclusive Church (SIC) Commission within the Anglican Church of the Province of SouthernAfrica (ACSA) is not unique in the Communion. This article seeks to explore ACSA’s specific journey to date, with a view to engaging the Communion in a learning partnership. While some of the process of establishing this ministry may be unique, there are places of commonality as we jointly grapple with the call of our Lord Jesus to continue to build the Kingdom of God in contemporary times. Most specifically, this process has highlighted a need for renewal of the Church in both our theological understanding and how we organize to best serve our call to preach the Good News. These theological and structural dimensions of ‘doing church’ speak deeply into our ‘being church’ and are at the heart of why dialogue is needed as a Communion. We offer this article as an invitation to continue discerning together how best to follow and serve our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by being His Body to a broken and wounded world.

Keywords

Anglican Church of Southern AfricaAnglican Communionbuilding Kingdom of Godinclusive churchlearning partnershipministrysafe church
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , November 2021 , pp. 151 - 165
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Copyright
© The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2021

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Footnotes

1

Rosalie Manning is a Lay Canon, the chairperson of the SIC Commission and the Deputy Registrar for the Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA).

2

Colette Saldanha, Claire Phelps and Chris Ahrends are Priests for the Anglican Church of Southern Africa

3

Peter Lee is a retired Bishop for the Anglican Church of Southern Africa

References

4 Please see the Appendix, which sets out the ACSA journey that got us to this point. Act XV is also included in the Canons.

5 At present, the Register is only available from the Department of Social Development as the Department of Justice is only in the process of setting up one and slowly starting to add offenders, which means that the clearance does not have much credibility, as it is obtained from sparse data but in time this principle will have more relevance.

6 The Australian dioceses saw most of this expansion.

7 ‘A Charter for Safe and Inclusive Church’, February 2019. Available at: https://anglicanchurchsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/A_CHARTER_FOR_SAFE_AND_INCLUSIVE_CHURCH.pdf (accessed 5 May 2020).

8 ‘Principles of the SIC’, presented to Synod of Bishops, February 2019.

9 The general format of the letter sent to complainants and respondents once a complaint is assigned to an investigative team.