The Anglican Communion: Where are we now and where are we headed?
A brief analysis by the Anglican Communion Institute
It is now nearly three months since General Convention ended and, with the latest letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the situation and difficult path in the months ahead is becoming clearer.
The background
The significance of General Convention cannot be downplayed. The Primates at Dromantine in February 2005 had faced requests from many in the Global South for a speedy response to Windsor .
The Primates made clear the seriousness of the situation:
We as a body continue to address the situations which have arisen in North Americawith the utmost seriousness. Whilst there remains a very real question about whether the North American churches are willing to accept the same teaching on matters of sexual morality as is generally accepted elsewhere in the Communion, the underlying reality of our communion in God the Holy Trinity is obscured, and the effectiveness of our common mission severely hindered (para 12).
But their final communiqué granted the Episcopal Church more time to respond by including the statement:
We are persuaded however that in order for the recommendations of the Windsor Report to be properly addressed, time needs to be given to the Episcopal Church (USA) and to the Anglican Church of Canada for consideration of these recommendations according to their constitutional processes (para 13).
At the press conference at the close of the meeting the Archbishop of Canterbury was clear:
'So what has happened this week means that the North American Churches have been able to hear very clearly and very directly, face to face, the challenges that are coming from the majority of the Communion. And in that way the North American Churches have been told, very clearly and very directly, about the potential costs of the decisions they have taken.The question now put, is given that cost, where do you want to put yourselves? How close do you want to be to the other Churches?’
He was even clearer when he interrupted one of the other Primates to state:
'May I jump in with a comment? The Windsor Report contains a number of specific challenges and requests of the Churches in North America . The communiqué says those are questions that we still expect both Churches to address'.
General Convention & the Communion’s response
There has been considerable uncertainty as to the adequacy of the response of General Convention. A number of statements by the Archbishop of Canterbury and Archbishop of York had already signalled concerns that it was not sufficient. However, the final decision will lie with the Primates’ Meeting in Tanzania in February. In preparation for that meeting, the Archbishop of Canterbury asked for reactions from primates and provinces to General Convention’s decisions and the Joint Standing Committees of the Primates and the ACC created a small group to advise Archbishop Rowan. This comprised two Primates who had been on the Lambeth Commission (Barry Morgan ofWales and Bernard Malango of Central Africa) and two laywomen from the ACC (Mrs Philippa Amable of Ghana and Mrs Elizabeth Paver from England ). It met in early September and the Archbishop’s letter signals the fruit of their discussions:
You will recall that the Joint Standing Committee appointed a small group of representatives from its number (two Primates and two laypeople, along with staff support) to assist me in preparing an initial response. Now that the Episcopal Church has had opportunity for detailed consideration of the requests from the Primates at Dromantine last year, based on the Windsor Report, it is important that we develop a unified and coherent response as a Communion to the situation as it is developing.
The report of this advisory group has not yet been finalised but will be available at our meeting in Tanzania next February. In the meantime, the group agrees with me that it might be helpful to offer some indication of the direction of its initial thinking.
It is clear that the Communion as a whole remains committed to the teaching on human sexuality expressed in Resolution 1.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, and also that the recommendations of the Windsor Report have been widely accepted as a basis for any progress in resolving the tensions that trouble us. As a Communion, we need to move forward on the basis of this twofold recognition.
It is also clear that the Episcopal Church has taken very seriously the recommendations of the Windsor Report; but the resolutions of General Convention still represent what can only be called a mixed response to the Dromantine requests. The advisory group has spent much time in examining these resolutions in great detail, and its sense is that although some aspects of these requests have been fully dealt with, there remain some that have not. This obviously poses some very challenging questions for our February meeting and its discernment of the best way forward.
In determining where we are and where we are headed there are now 3 clear points from this statement:
1. the Communion as a whole remains committed to the teaching on human sexuality expressed in Resolution 1.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference
2. the recommendations of the Windsor Report have been widely accepted as a basis for any progress in resolving the tensions that trouble us
3. the resolutions of General Convention still represent what can only be called a mixed response to the Dromantine requests… although some aspects of these requests have been fully dealt with, there remain some that have not.
Windsor as guide for the future
Faced with these three givens, the Windsor Report’s final paragraphs perhaps now provide us with the map to determine where we are and where as a Communion we will go over coming months and years.
156. We call upon all parties to the current dispute to seek ways of reconciliation, and to heal our divisions. We have already indicated (paragraphs 134 and 144) some ways in which the Episcopal Church ( USA ) and the Diocese of New Westminster could begin to speak with the Communion in a way which would foster reconciliation. We have appealed to those intervening in provinces and dioceses similarly to act with renewed respect[105]. We would expect all provinces to respond with generosity and charity to any such actions. It may well be that there need to be formal discussions about the path to reconciliation, and a symbolic Act of Reconciliation, which would mark a new beginning for the Communion, and a common commitment to proclaim the Gospel of Christ to a broken and needy world.
157. There remains a very real danger that we will not choose to walk together. Should the call to halt and find ways of continuing in our present communion not be heeded, then we shall have to begin to learn to walk apart. We would much rather not speculate on actions that might need to be taken if, after acceptance by the primates, our recommendations are not implemented. However, we note that there are, in any human dispute, courses that may be followed: processes of mediation and arbitration; non-invitation to relevant representative bodies and meetings; invitation, but to observer status only; and, as an absolute last resort, withdrawal from membership. We earnestly hope that none of these will prove necessary. Our aim throughout has been to work not for division but for healing and restoration. The real challenge of the gospel is whether we live deeply enough in the love of Christ, and care sufficiently for our joint work to bring that love to the world, that we will “make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4.3). As the primates stated in 2000, “to turn from one another would be to turn away from the Cross”, and indeed from serving the world which God loves and for which Jesus Christ died.
Sadly it would appear from both the incomplete and inadequate response at General Convention and the continued interventions by provinces within The Episcopal Church that the path to reconciliation proposed by Windsor has not been followed. The recommendations of the report, having been accepted by the Primates and the ACC, are not being implemented. We are, therefore, now in the situation described in the final paragraph of the report. Although sketchy, the final paragraph outlines what actions are now necessary. Although much about both their substance and timing remains unclear, the steps the Communion must now take fall into three broad categories:
(1) processes of mediation and arbitration. The meeting in New York was clearly an attempt by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the ACO to facilitate this within TEC itself. While further meetings may take place it looks increasingly clear that a purely internal mediated agreement is unlikely to be possible within TEC. The months prior to the Primates’ Meeting will undoubtedly see more attempts to mediate and arbitrate both within TEC and between TEC and other provinces, particularly of the Global South. The prognosis, however, is not good and so, in the words of Archbishop Rowan, the Primates we are likely to have to face ‘some very challenging questions for our February meeting and its discernment of the best way forward’. These will relate to the other two categories of response faced with GC’s failures.
(2) non-invitation to relevant representative bodies and meetings; invitation, but to observer status only. The Windsor Report had earlier made clear how this could occur:
110. Furthermore, it has been noted that the Archbishop of Canterbury convenes the Lambeth Conference and the Primates' Meeting, and they are both dependent for their existence on his behest. We recommend that this dependence on the See ofCanterbury remain, and indeed, that it be enhanced. At present, there is some lack of clarity about the level of discretion that the Archbishop has with respect to invitations to the Lambeth Conference and to the Primates' Meeting. This Commission is of the opinion that the Archbishop has the right to call or not to call to these gatherings whomsoever he believes is appropriate, in order to safeguard, and take counsel for, the well-being of the Anglican Communion. The Commission believes that in the exercise of this right the Archbishop of Canterbury should invite participants to the Lambeth Conference on restricted terms at his sole discretion if circumstances exist where full voting membership of the Conference is perceived to be an undesirable status, or would militate against the greater unity of the Communion.
The most pressing issue here is the question, in relation the Primates’ Meeting in February 2007, of the new Presiding Bishop elected at General Convention. Both as the representative of a province which has not chosen to walk together with the Communion and, more importantly, as someone who in her own episcopal ministry has clearly disregarded the teaching of I.10 and the requests of the Windsor Report in relation to public rites for blessing of same-sex unions, it is difficult to see how she could be granted full membership of that meeting.
There will then follow the question of invitations to the Lambeth Conference of 2008 which are due to be issued towards the end of 2007. Here (especially as a number of bishops rejected even the partial response to Windsor at General Convention and reaffirmed their commitment to a totally autonomous polity willing to disregard the wider Communion on the basis of what they believed to be God’s call to them) it is difficult to see how every American bishop with jurisdiction can be invited to Lambeth with full voting membership of the Conference. The only question is whether, and on what basis, distinctions can be drawn among American bishops.
(3) as an absolute last resort, withdrawal from membership. Again the Windsor Report hinted at how this might be effected in its discussion of the covenant and its paragraph:
120. Whilst the paramount model must remain that of the voluntary association of churches bound together in their love of the Lord of the Church, in their discipleship and in their common inheritance, it may be that the Anglican Consultative Council could encourage full participation in the Covenant project by each church by constructing an understanding of communion membership which is expressed by the readiness of a province to maintain its bonds with Canterbury, and which includes a reference to the Covenant.
The shape of this is now becoming clearer. The Archbishop of Canterbury, in his post-Convention address ‘The Challenge and Hope of Being An Anglican Today’ acknowledged that ‘there is no way in which the Anglican Communion can remain unchanged by what is happening at the moment’ and explained the effect of developing a covenant:
It is necessarily an ‘opt-in’ matter. Those Churches that were prepared to take this on as an expression of their responsibility to each other would limit their local freedoms for the sake of a wider witness; and some might not be willing to do this. We could arrive at a situation where there were ‘constituent’ Churches in covenant in the Anglican Communion and other ‘churches in association’, which were still bound by historic and perhaps personal links, fed from many of the same sources, but not bound in a single and unrestricted sacramental communion, and not sharing the same constitutional structures. The relation would not be unlike that between the Church of England and the Methodist Church , for example. The ‘associated’ Churches would have no direct part in the decision making of the ‘constituent’ Churches, though they might well be observers whose views were sought or whose expertise was shared from time to time, and with whom significant areas of co-operation might be possible.
In other words, given that there is no easy way (even were there a desire to do so) of expelling any province, ‘withdrawal from membership’ would have to occur either by a more explicit ‘walking apart’ (perhaps at GC 2009) to pursue what the American church believes is its prophetic calling in obedience to the leading of the Spirit or by the rejection of the proposed covenant, leading to departure from the common council of the ‘constituent’ churches to being ‘associated’ churches, perhaps sending observers to Communion gatherings.
This is, as Windsor says, a ‘last resort’ and the covenant process (to be taken forward under the Chairmanship of Archbishop Drexel Gomez and a major matter of discussion at Lambeth 2008) may provide time for the American church -- perhaps now in a state of varied participation in Communion councils -- to reconsider its path and instead walk together with the Communion again through agreeing to a new covenant. There can, however, be little doubt that the covenant will articulate the vision of communion found in Windsor and thus an acceptance of the constraints brought by interdependence in the body of Christ, including in relation to whatever is Communion teaching on sexual ethics.
If indeed the Windsor Report itself has mapped out the path that is in fact now being followed in terms of either reconciliation or disengagement within the Communion – and signs point in this direction – then present reflection and effort should be directed at the two important steps of 2.)and 3.) noted above: the basis upon which and process by which invitations to the Primates’ Meeting and Lambeth Conference will be given, and the shape, substance, and implementation of an Anglican Communion Covenant. It is crucial that we get these steps right and that they be pursued with clarity, charity, and faithfulness.
