Council for Christian Unity (CCU)

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The CCU is the Church of England body which deals with its ecumenical relations. It met for 24 hour's in Woking over the 29th and 30th September to consider an agenda which included its relations with the other churches of the Porvoo agreement, the Methodist Church and it received a report on the work of a small group which has been meeting with the URC. This will hopefully lead to some significant celebrations in 2012 which will be the 350th anniversary of 'the great ejectment', when many priests were ejected from the Church of England and became independents. The meeting also spent a long time considering a document on local unity in mission which maps out almost the entire landscape of C of E ecumenical involvement. It focuses in one part on the scope of the ecumenical canons which provide the legal permission for ecumenical work at parish level. If the document is properly handled, it could go a long way towards encouraging closer working. 
From a URC point of view, though, we always have to remember that we relate also to the Church in Wales and the Episcopal Church in Scotland. Neither of these two Anglican churches are established and we already have a close relationship in Scotland through the EMU (Episcopal, Methodist, URC) statement and in Wales both churches are part of the commission of covenanting churches and the Anglican ecumenical canons are more permissive to allow non Anglican clergy to preside at eucharists outside LEPS. It's sometimes difficult for us to realise that in dealing with the Church of England we are not dealing with the whole of Anglican communion, especially in terms of its canon law.  
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