In a recent Substack essay, The Rev. Chris Hill adds his voice to those making an important point: the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) has a structural problem. Our system for changing the Constitution and Canons gives too much control to a few committees and not enough to the people who are supposed to deliberate together.
As most readers will know, I wrote about this in a piece for Mere Orthodoxy, arguing that ACNA’s structures need reform if we want real accountability and conciliar leadership. Then, just this weekend, I was elected by my diocese to the Provincial Council. This makes the issue feel more urgent and less theoretical. The Provincial Council is supposed to be where the church’s major decisions are made, but under the current process, it sounds like very little ever reaches the floor for open discussion. Even worse, it is almost impossible under current conditions for the Provincial Council itself to lead the way in shaping the Canons.
Across the Province, people are starting to notice this. Whatever disagreements we may have about theology or practice, there’s a growing consensus that the system itself is broken. The frustration many of us feel isn’t simply about individual leaders or moral failures—it’s about the shape and dysfunction of the structure. We’ve built a process that makes change nearly impossible, concentrating control in ways that don’t fit a conciliar church.
Before any proposal to amend the canons or constitution can even be considered, under current practice it goes through a chain of internal reviews by the College of Bishops, the Executive Committee, and the Governance Task Force (now called the “Provincial Constitution and Canons Committee”). You can see this clearly in the official flowchart of the amendment process below.
Canon I.10.2 actually requires that amendments be “approved by the College of Bishops before being presented to the Provincial Council.” Interpreted charitably, this whole process is meant to preserve good order and consistency. In practice, though, it functions as a bottleneck: a small number of people can decide, behind closed doors, which ideas ever make it to the floor for open deliberation.
This article attempts to lay out three things: (a) what’s wrong with the current structure, (b) what a healthier one would look like, and (c) how we can get there within the rules we already have.
(a) What’s Wrong Structurally
The way ACNA changes its Constitution and Canons isn’t transparent, and it isn’t truly conciliar or representative, either. Most people in the Province don’t realize how hard it is for an idea even to make it onto the agenda for debate, much less get a vote. The process is slow and full of barriers that favor the status quo.
If you look again at the official amendment flowchart, you can see the problem right away. There are at least eight steps before anything reaches the Provincial Council for consideration. These steps aren’t set out in the Constitution itself but have become the standard practice. A proposal passes through the Constitution and Canons Committee, then the College of Bishops, then the Executive Committee, followed by rounds of “public review.” Only after all that can it be presented to the Council. In theory, this is supposed to protect good order. In practice, it allows a small number of people to stop any change long before it reaches the floor.
That control isn’t evenly shared. The College of Bishops and the Executive Committee both have formal opportunities (under current practice) to review and comment on proposed changes, and the Constitution and Canons Committee, whose members are appointed rather than elected, manages the process. None of these groups are directly accountable to the Council in this work, and none are required to publish their deliberations or reasons for rejection. This means proposals can be quietly delayed, edited, or dismissed without anyone knowing who decided what, or why.
The result is that the Provincial Council, which the Constitution names as the church’s primary governing body, isn’t free to legislate. By the time something reaches the Council, it’s already been filtered and reframed for an up-or-down vote. There’s almost no room for genuine debate or amendment from the floor. And because the Council meets only once a year, whatever doesn’t get through the bottleneck has to wait another twelve months before it can even be reconsidered.
This structure doesn’t just waste time; it harms the culture of leadership and governance. It encourages people to work around the system instead of through it. It gives the impression that real decisions happen elsewhere, in smaller rooms with the same people who already have power. That’s not healthy for a church that claims to be conciliar and governed by clergy and laity together.
It’s important to be clear about what the problem isn’t. It’s not necessarily that our bishops are acting in bad faith, or that our committees are made up of the wrong people. I assume most are doing their best with the structure they’ve inherited. The problem is that the structure itself doesn’t reflect the principles we say we believe in. A conciliar church should make decisions through open deliberation and not backroom deals.
When our processes concentrate control instead of sharing it, and when the people elected to represent the church can’t even bring forward a proposal for discussion, something basic has gone wrong.
(b) What It Should Look Like
A healthier system would be simpler and more transparent about who actually has authority. It would trust the Provincial Council to do the job it was created to do: make decisions for the Province in a representative and conciliar way. And it would stop treating the Council as a formality that only approves what has already been decided elsewhere.
At its core, this means the Council should function as a true deliberative body, where bishops, clergy, and lay delegates all have a real voice in shaping and voting on the laws of the church. In the long term, that requires revising Canon I.10.2, which currently prevents any constitutional or canonical amendment from reaching the Council without the prior approval of the College of Bishops. That canon effectively turns the bishops into a pre-legislative gatekeeper. It should be amended so that the College’s role is advisory rather than determinative—so that bishops can speak into proposed changes without controlling whether they are ever seen.
The same principle applies at the Provincial Assembly, which meets every five years to ratify constitutional and canonical changes. The Assembly now functions as a single, mixed body. Over time, it would be healthier for the Assembly to vote by two orders—Clergy (including bishops) and Laity. And the Assembly should be structured so that both houses must agree for a constitutional or canonical change to pass. That model fits long-standing Anglican practice. It preserves the episcopal role but sets it within the life of the whole church rather than above it. (Bishops would still retain their traditional authority to guard doctrine, but that authority would apply only to questions formally defined as doctrinal, not to matters of governance or policy.)
Transparency also matters. Every member of the Provincial Council (with the requisite support) should be able to submit a proposal for open debate and a recorded vote. That doesn’t mean every idea must be wise or well-crafted; it means that no idea should die unseen. Under Canon I.10.2, genuine deliberation is often blocked before it begins. In a reformed system, proposals would be posted publicly ahead of time, sponsors identified, and debate guaranteed on the floor rather than filtered through committees.
(c) How We Can Get There
Change is possible, but only if we distinguish between what can be done now and what requires canonical reform.
First, the Provincial Council can make immediate improvements through its own standing rules. The Constitution allows the Council to determine its rules of order, and those rules can make its work far more transparent. The Council could, for example, require that all agenda items and committee reports be published publicly, that voting results be recorded by name, and that any ten Council members (as Canon I.1 already allows) can place an item of business on the agenda for discussion. These steps would not alter the canons, but they would make the Council’s existing authority visible and accountable.
Second, to restore the Council’s full legislative role, Canon I.10.2 itself must be amended. That change would transform the College of Bishops’ current pre-approval requirement into an open advisory review, ensuring that episcopal counsel is heard but not decisive. Only then could constitutional and canonical amendments come directly to the Council floor for debate, where bishops, clergy, and laity deliberate together as the Constitution envisions.
Third, once the amendment process is opened, the Assembly’s voting structure should be revisited. Moving to a two-order system (Clergy and Laity, counting bishops among the clergy) would restore classic Anglican balance. It would affirm the episcopal office while embodying the principle that the church is governed by clergy and laity together.
None of this is about diminishing bishops or multiplying bureaucracy. It’s about recovering the conciliar integrity our Constitution promises but our current canons impede. Canon I.10.2 is the hinge: once it changes, genuine legislative life can flow through the Council and Assembly again. Until then, procedural reforms can at least make the process more transparent and the people’s frustration more visible. This is a necessary prelude to renewal.
Conclusion
Everyone knows something isn’t working here. The longer we leave the structure as it is, the more dire our problems will become.
But this isn’t beyond repair. ACNA can govern itself well—if we choose to do so. We say we are a conciliar church, where bishops, clergy, and lay people learn to listen to one another and to discern together. It’s time to make that true in practice.
This is true, but it’s also true in the sense that “I’m Just a Bill” from Schoolhouse Rock is a true telling of the legislative process.
The fact of the matter is that diocesan synods sometimes have little say over who is elected to Council or Assembly. I’d need to go check diocesan canons, but in my previous diocese, these elections were controlled by the nominating committee and formally presented by standing committee, and the bishop sat on both. Frequently, possibly 90% of the time, there was a single nominee. Very Soviet. You could nominate someone from the floor; but that required meeting a deadline six weeks prior to synod so the committee could vett the “from the floor nominee.”
Functionally, the bishop can veto a reform-minded nominee before they are even nominated.
Matt, thanks for this helpful musing. We needed somebody to say it!
Years ago there was a cartoon published in Christianity Today depicting a balding man in a clergy collar seated at the head of a table. It look very much like a vestry meeting. The caption read "This is a theocracy... and I'm Theo."
The ACNA didn't exist yet. But the cartoon perfectly captured the governance ethos you so perceptively describe as existing in the ACNA, which has existed since our founding, The secretive, closed process by which matters of importance are hidden from open discussion and decision will change. The main question is whether it will change through open, transparent processes or will it erupt from future catastrophe.
Let us all pray for the former. And thank you, Matt.