Episcopal Press and News
International Anglican Family Network to Meet
Episcopal News Service. February 5, 1987 [87028]
VICTORIA, Australia (DPS, Feb. 5) -- For the first time in the history of the Anglican Communion of Churches, an international Anglican gathering in Singapore in April will discuss changes to "the family" and the Church's response.
Twenty-two people from 17 Provinces of the Anglican Communion will meet April 21-25, just prior to the Anglican Consultative Council. They are members of the "International Family Network" of the Anglican Communion. The Family and Community Network is paralleled by Youth, Peace and Justice, and Development networks of the Anglican Consultative Council.
The Singapore meeting has been arranged for the International Project on Family and Community and is coordinated by the Mission of St. James and St. John, a large Anglican welfare agency, in Melbourne, Australia.
As well as four Australians, there will be representatives at the meeting from Western Samoa, the Middle East, Scotland, New Zealand, Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, West Indies, Melanesia, Canada, East Asia, Nigeria, Mauritius and Rwanda/Burundi/Zaire.
The delegates will receive first-hand reports on the six Family Project consultancies which will have been completed by then: Hong Kong, Kenya, Philippines, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
They will discuss issues of family and community life, such as sex and gender roles; family and work; tradition and change; and social, political and theological perspectives of family life in modern society.
Tasks for the four-day meeting will include writing a draft statement on the family for consideration by the Lambeth Conference preparation seminar in July 1987.
"The Family" is one of the major themes agreed to by bishops for the 1988 Lambeth Conference.
The Singapore meeting will also determine the text of a book to be published in the second half of 1987 on family ministries.