Anglicans intensify relations with independent evangelical churches

The Anglican Communion is intensifying its relationships with the growing independent evangelical church movement, according to the President of the World Council of Churches.

Speaking last Friday, the day Anglican bishops were discussing relationships with other churches at the Lambeth Conference, Dame Mary Tanner said the ecumenical movement had been "puzzling" in terms of how to relate to new fast growing churches as they "often don't have a structure to which you can relate".

She said: 'We are becoming much more aware of who isn't around the table with us and how we can make a more inclusive table. If you look at local councils of churches in this country, churches in a particular town, they are often very aware of this and trying to draw people into a wider table. That's true also of our national ecumenical institutions."

She pointed to the new movement at the international level, the Global Christian Forum, which embraces Pentecostal, evangelical movements with the Roman Catholic Church, and other Christian bodies "without the classical agenda of the ecumenical movement which is centred around the full visible unity of the church', said Tanner.

In addition to more than 650 Anglican bishops, this year's Lambeth Conference includes 75 ecumenical guests who are attending as official representatives of other churches or as personal guests of the Archbishop of Canterbury and who are participating fully in the conference. At previous Lambeth Conferences ecumenical guests were merely present as observers.

Tanner said the bishops welcomed this new approach: "I hear from our own bishops how enormously grateful they are for the presence of other Christian traditions with us. Their visible presence among us is a sign of our Anglican commitment to the visible unity of the church."

Speaking about some of the on-going tensions within the Anglican Communion, she said that other churches were "watching us with great interest to see what happens".

She added, "We have come so far in the ecumenical movement that our ecumenical partners will understand that there is no such thing any longer as a unilateral action. What one church does affects the others."