Participating in a Mexico City meeting of the new Anglican-Methodist International Commission for Unity are (from left) the Rev. Robert Gribben, Bishop Moisés Valderrama Gomez, Bishop Carlos Touché-Porter, the Rev. Andrés Hernández, and the Rev. Pablo Ramos. A UMNS photo by the Rev. W. Douglas Mills.

A UMNS Report
By Linda Bloom*
Feb. 4, 2009

How Methodists and Anglicans relate to one another can vary widely from country to country.

The new Anglican-Methodist International Commission for Unity in Mission, which had its first meeting in January in Mexico City, hopes to have an impact on those relationships.

According to the Rev. W. Douglas Mills, an executive with the United Methodist Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns, the new group “will look for ways to cooperate in mission, in evangelism, in service,” even as the two denominations wrestle with theological divisions.

“The big lesson from this (meeting) is that Anglican and Methodist relations around the world are very different in different regions,” said Mills, who attended the gathering at the Centro Anglicano de la Diócesis de México.

While the two communions have established relationships in some countries, such as Great Britain, Ireland and the United States, that is not the case everywhere. In Mexico, for example, “both are minorities,” he explained. “They are allied in some ways, but they also have very little contact.”

Anglicans in Mexico define themselves as not being Roman Catholic, and Methodists distance themselves even further from the Catholic church, according to Mills.

Methodists in Mexico were only recently allowed to have crosses in their churches, and many of their church buildings still do not have the trappings of “high church,” he said.

The Right Rev. C. Franklin Brookhart, Episcopal bishop of Montana, said his impression was there had been “virtually no interaction” between the two denominations in Mexico. He noted that the joint visit of the Most Rev. Carlos Touché-Porter, Anglican archbishop of Mexico, and Bishop Moisés Valderrama Gomez, Methodist Church of Mexico, to the commission meeting may have been their first encounter.

“In many ways, the commission could be a catalyst for the churches around the world to work more closely together,” added Brookhart, who has been co-chairman of the official dialogue between The United Methodist Church and U.S. Episcopal Church.

‘Variety of expressions’

The Rev. George Freeman, a commission member and top executive of the World Methodist Council, pointed out that, unlike the Anglican communion, the structure of Methodist denominations can vary from country to country. “Within the Methodist-Wesleyan family, we have a variety of expressions of how we do church,” he explained. “We’re not uniform in our governance.”

The commission can identify geographic areas “where there are regional understandings and covenants” between Methodists and Anglicans, he said, and it can study those documents to see how they might be applied elsewhere.

“I’m hoping that we realize the common ancestry that we have and that we can affirm those things that we celebrate together,” Freeman said.

Brookhart believes the commission got off to a good start after its establishment by the London Document, the report of a 2007 Anglican-Methodist International Consultation.

“We have laid out the tasks that need to be accomplished,” he explained. “We’re working to have a lot of material available for our next meeting.”

Seeking full communion

The next meeting is set for February 2010 in the United Kingdom, and Brookhart expressed hope that the commission’s work “will result in at least a much closer sharing of mission around the world. Ideally, I would look for full communion between the two bodies.”

Co-chairmen of the commission are the Right Rev. Harold Miller, bishop of Down and Dromore, Church of Ireland, and the Rev. Robert Gribben, Uniting Church in Australia. Gribben is chairman of the Standing Committee on Ecumenics and Dialogue for the World Methodist Council.

In addition to Gribben and Freeman, other Methodist commission members are Elizabeth Amoah, Methodist Church in Ghana; Bishop Thomas Hoyt Jr., Christian Methodist Episcopal Church; the Rev. Lorna Khoo, Methodist Church in Singapore; and the Rev. Gareth Powell, Methodist Church of Great Britain.

In addition to Miller and Brookhart, other Anglican members are Canon Paul Avis, Church of England; the Venerable Flavio Irala, Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil; Canon Lulama Mtanjiswa Ntshingwa, Anglican Church of Southern Africa; the Right Rev. Surya Prakash, Church of South India; and Canon Gregory Cameron, Anglican Communion office in London.

Mills and the Rev. Peter Sulston, Methodist Church of Great Britain, served as consultants for the Mexico meeting. Bishop Walter Jagucki, Lutheran Church in Great Britain, was an observer on behalf of the Lutheran World Federation.

The 500-member World Methodist Council ministers to more than 75 million people throughout the Methodist-Wesleyan family. The worldwide Anglican Communion has more than 80 million members in 44 regional and national member churches in over 160 countries.

*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York.

News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.

Audio: Doug Mills

“…primary learning was the contextualization of the relationship.”

“…Anglican-Methodist relationships are different in different regions…”

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Resources

Commission on Christian Unity

World Methodist Council

Episcopal Church (U.S.)

Anglican Communion