Motion to come before General Synod proposes rethink of primate’s role
A resolution to be considered at General Synod 2025, which begins June 23 and runs until June 29, asks the church’s governing body to examine allowing future primates of the Anglican Church of Canada to retain their roles as diocesan bishops or metropolitans.
Bishop David Greenwood of the diocese of Athabasca, the resolution’s mover, says the intention is to encourage a version of the primacy that is rooted more in the practical daily life of a local church community as opposed to one where attention is focussed on the national office of General Synod and the international Anglican Communion.
The resolution asks the Council of General Synod (CoGS) to “examine all that is necessary” to alter the church’s canon on the primacy to allow the primate the option to retain any episcopal and metropolitical offices held at the time of election to the primacy. This means General Synod—which will also be electing a new primate at its upcoming meeting—will not be directly voting on the change itself at that meeting, according to Chancellor of General Synod Clare Burns.
Currently the Anglican Church of Canada and The Episcopal Church in the United States are the only churches in the Anglican Communion where the primate is not also a diocesan bishop. In Canada, General Synod made the primacy a role dedicated to the national church in 1969, in response to a report by management consultant Edward Netten. According to the document The Evolution of General Synod produced by the primate’s commission tasked with reimagining church structures, in the late 1960s, the church was at the height of its membership in Canada, governed by a complex set of committees and groups that had grown organically during its formation. Netten recommended the primate be relieved of diocesan responsibilities as part of a drive to centralize and consolidate the church’s work across the country intended to reduce duplication of effort and expense.
The idea of returning to a model in which the primate is also a diocesan bishop has been a matter of discussion for years in the ecclesiastical province of Northern Lights, says Greenwood. He and other bishops have felt that the role of the primate as chief executive officer of General Synod, as described in the current canons of the church, implies a leadership style inconsistent with historic Anglican governance.
“Maintaining the prior diocesan role keeps the bishop grounded in the life of a diocese, the basic building-block of the Anglican Communion,” he wrote in an email to the Journal. “It avoids creating a ‘fourth order’ of ‘CEO,’ a concept which is foreign to the history of the church catholic as an organic body. A bishop presides, preaches, teaches, raises up, ordains; and needs the diocesan life to maintain that life with a degree of coherence.”
In an interview, Greenwood added that he believes the role as currently set out tends to involve the primate with the office of General Synod and national issues at the cost of their awareness of local ones. “It seems to me that the primate by the very nature of the office becomes disconnected from the people on the ground in the diocese. And I think that’s to the detriment and the health frankly, of the primate as well as the church at large.”
He acknowledges that the primate’s duties include visiting every diocese in Canada at the invitation of the local bishops. But he is skeptical that the visits are enough to form a deep enough connection to diocesan life. As it is, visits may last only a few days and afford the primate enough time to visit only a few parishes in the diocese.
As a diocesan bishop himself, Greenwood says he understands how much work goes into diocesan ministry and that it may be daunting to add that to the current responsibilities of the primacy. Per the canons currently in place, the primate is tasked with leading the church in discerning and pursuing the mission of God; exercising pastoral and spiritual leadership throughout the church; serving as president and CEO of General Synod, chair of the Council of General Synod (CoGS), the House of Bishops and the metropolitans’ meetings; being a member of all committees, councils, boards and commissions enacted by Synod, speaking and writing prophetically to the Anglican Church of Canada and on its behalf to the rest of the world; representing the Anglican Church of Canada internationally and ecumenically; having metropolitical jurisdiction over any extra-diocesan bishops; and always being an invited guest at Sacred Circle. In order to make the split portfolios manageable for future primates, Greenwood suggests primates might reduce their focus on international work in the Communion and that the requirement for the primate to visit every diocese be relaxed. The primate is not even solely in control of when and whether they visit dioceses, since they must await an invitation from the diocesan bishop, he points out.
“When I became a diocesan bishop, I tried to focus on my diocese and I don’t spend a lot of time looking outside the diocese, to be frank,” he says. “My thinking is that the most helpful focus [for the primate] is on the church of Canada, not the church internationally,” he says. Primates, in his opinion, should be thinking about what they can do to help priests, deacons and bishops across the country and how to foster representation and collaboration across regions.
By contrast, Archbishop Linda Nicholls, former primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, says she believes the connections the primate provides across Canada, internationally and ecumenically are core to the primacy’s function. During her own primacy, Nicholls was a member of the Anglican Roman Catholic Dialogue in Canada, the third Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, the Anglican Communion Science Commission and a representative for the Americas on the Anglican Communion’s Primates’ Standing Committee. These positions were in addition to her regular duties of travel across Canada and attending international meetings like the Lambeth Conference and Primates’ Meeting. Not every primate is required to have that degree of international involvement, Nicholls says. But there are elements like attending the Primates’ Meeting and the Lambeth Conference and maintaining the church’s relationships in other parts of the world like Brazil, the Philippines and the Holy Land she doesn’t believe could be cut without losing something important.
“I just think we need to be careful about what we would lose in the process—a witness to living together in profound diversity across the Communion and within the country at a time when the world is retreating into exclusive nationalism,” she says.
As for the requirement to visit each of the dioceses in Canada, Nicholls gave several speeches during her time as primate on the importance of those visits to making Canadians, especially those in remote areas, feel they were seen and heard by the rest of the Canadian church.
“I know that any time I turned up in a diocese, and especially in the smaller dioceses, people were thrilled that I was there. [And] they really feel they know the primate is their primate,” she says in an interview. That’s what makes people feel connected and feel that it’s worth sending a portion of their donations to support the church’s efforts nationally, she says. “The ability of the national church to have the resources to share with the Council of the North, or to share with the Indigenous ministries or to share with our global partners—it’s all about building relationships. And you can’t do that unless you visit … If the primate wasn’t required to do that, it would be very easy to get comfortable in whatever city [you are in] and not listen to what’s happening in Labrador or in the Arctic or in Caledonia.”
She acknowledges Greenwood’s concern that the primate cannot make it to every parish or spend as much time with any one diocese as a bishop spends with their own, but she maintains that there is value in the existing model. For one thing, the primate has usually been a diocesan bishop, she adds, meaning that while they may not be directly involved in their diocese anymore, they already have a good idea of what the on-the-ground realities look like—and parishioners, clergy and bishops are not shy about telling them more, in her experience.
“Maybe it does need to change in this way, but I just think there are some losses here that need to be evaluated.”
Further, she adds, for the primate to be both a local and a national leader would strain both the primate and the diocese which is asked to share its bishop with the rest of the country. That may be more manageable if the primate had a limited term, as many do in other parts of the Communion, she says. But currently, the primate in Canada serves from their election until they turn 70, which would lock them into the split portfolio for a term that could last from a few years to a decade, depending on their age when they start. The size of Canada and the way the church’s governance is set up here would make a primate in that position responsible for a huge country while remaining committed to their diocese—and needing to keep on top of multiple sets of church canons at once, she says. That’s something that concerned her when the current acting primate, Archbishop Anne Germond, stepped into that role on Nicholls’ retirement. Germond retained her responsibilities as bishop of Algoma and metropolitan of Ontario. Nicholls says she has done an excellent job with help from former primate Archbishop Fred Hiltz, who has taken on a share of her diocesan responsibilities, but the church, she says, should think hard before assigning someone to do that on a long-term basis.
Greenwood’s desire to change the church’s canon on the primacy is shared by one of the current candidates for the position. In a statement accompanying his candidacy profile, posted on the Anglican Church of Canada’s website, Archbishop Greg Kerr-Wilson, bishop of the diocese of Calgary and metropolitan of the province of Northern Lights, says he believes primates should keep their roles as diocesan bishop.
Like Greenwood, he believes the primacy would benefit from the primate’s being involved in the daily work of a local community. But he also told the Journal he believes the primacy has become too closely associated with the office of General Synod in recent years. The House of Bishops and even the triennial General Synod gathering have become more and more about the national office’s priorities, he says, which has left less room to consider the work and needs of local churches. Those, he says, are the real lifeblood of the church’s ministry and should not be considered a secondary priority.
From his perspective, making the primate a diocesan bishop would be a way of creating some distance between the primacy and the General Synod office, creating a less centralized model of leadership and policy-making. He suggests an arrangement where the primate might spend the majority of their time in their home diocese and one week a month at the General Synod office to check in and meet with committees. To balance the workload, he says, some of the responsibilities of international and ecumenical connection could be delegated to other bishops. The House of Bishops could allocate some time at its regular meetings to hear reports and coordinate this work, he proposes. Many dioceses already maintain partnerships with others around the world, he says, so spreading out the primate’s responsibilities might be another way to increase local involvement in church governance and reduce the resources the primacy takes up.
The question is really one of two competing models of how the primate should relate to the church, he says. The existing model emphasizes a widespread connection to every diocese in the country and to international and ecumenical partners. The one he proposes would sacrifice some of that breadth for a deeper connection to one particular region. That seems like a good trade, Kerr-Wilson says; he believes widespread visits offer a limited return on their costs.
“It’s exciting to have the primate [visit], but that’s where it ends. Whereas work that we’re seeing that has the real substantive impact in our mission and ministry is what’s going on in the diocese and parish,” he says. “So practically speaking, you’re having somebody who’s doing a job which kind of resembles publicity for the national church.”
Kerr-Wilson told the Journal he’d be prepared to take on the dual office of primate and bishop immediately if it were possible to do so.
In 2006, some bishops from Northern Lights (then called Rupert’s Land) brought the question to the House of Bishops, where Kerr-Wilson recalls many were in favour, but the issue was set aside because it was thought difficult to make the change given that a new primate was about to be elected. Now, Kerr-Wilson and Greenwood say, similar concerns might arise, but that may always be the case. If the conversation doesn’t start now, asks Greenwood, when will be a good time?
Returning to this earlier model of the primacy was among the seven conversation-starting “hypotheses” released in 2024 by the primatial commission tasked with re-imagining the church’s structures, though it is not among the recommendations of the report the commission presented to CoGS in March and will be presenting to General Synod.
Archdeacon Monique Stone, chair of the commission, agrees that this issue is a necessary part of the wider discussion on changes in church governance, though she declines to take a stance on whether the primate should be a diocesan bishop or not. But as the church figures out what functions it wants its leaders to serve, questions like the ones Kerr-Wilson raises about how centralized it should be and how many resources it can afford to allocate to each area will be critical, she says. Both perspectives—that the primate should and should not be a diocesan bishop—emerged consistently in the commission’s nation-wide consultation process and survey, she says. And both came from Anglicans of all regions, political and theological persuasions and demographics.
General Synod’s chancellor, Canon (lay) Clare Burns, tells the Journal in an email that the change would require votes at two consecutive General Synods to finalize, as making the primate a bishop would require a change to the disciplinary canons that determine who they answer to in case of misconduct. For now, however, she notes that the motion asks CoGS to explore what would be needed to make those changes, not to immediately make them. Nor should such a change be made while the primatial election is ongoing as a matter of good governance, she adds.
The primatial election will be held June 26.
