The Windsor Report into the future of the Anglican Communion tries to strengthen Canterbury's role, but it may not be enough to keep the Church together
I remember the day when the Anglican dispute over homosexuality turned from a theological disagreement to a divisive brawl. It was a sunny August day in 1998, and the 750 bishops from the worldwide Communion were gathered on the Kent University campus for the Lambeth Conference. That afternoon they were to vote on a resolution on human sexuality - a tiny part of the three-week agenda and yet one that would unleash extraordinary displays of anger, hatred and disgust.
I was drinking tea on a bench outside the press centre with Ruth Gledhill of The Times when we heard a commotion outside the assembly hall. Richard Kirker, who ran the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, had come up against the Rt Revd Emmanuel Chukwuma, the Bishop of Enugu in Nigeria, who was wearing a placard declaring homosexuality to be the work of Satan. In front of hastily gathered television cameras, the bishop lifted his arm and loudly prayed for healing for Kirker. Bracing himself against what he saw as an assault, Kirker accused the Nigerian of spiritual bullying.
The pictures told a story of cultural as well as religious differences. A Western man with a file of carefully phrased press releases under his arm flinched from the wagging finger of an African bishop in purple shirt, clerical collar and knitted tank top, whose large cross - tangled with a plastic conference badge - swung around his neck. What these two men had in common was a belief in Christ. But that was where it stopped, not where it began.
The resolution that was passed by the Lambeth Conference that afternoon declared homosexual practice to be incompatible with Scripture. The Church, it was agreed, could allow neither same-sex weddings nor the ordination of non-celibate homosexuals. There was an ugly triumph among traditionalist bishops as they spilled out of the hall. Liberal bishops who had voted against the resolution were defiant and angry.
How could the Anglican Communion go forward from this? The lack of respect, understanding or desire to hear the other point of view spelled trouble. And trouble there was, culminating in the decision by the Episcopal Church of America (Ecusa) a year ago to ignore the views of the majority of its Anglican brothers by consecrating Gene Robinson, a non-celibate homosexual, as bishop in New Hampshire. The diocese of New Westminster in Canada has similarly flouted Anglican policy by declaring the sanctity of gay weddings and performing them without regard to the Communion.
On the traditionalist wing there has been mounting hostility. A number of bishops have trespassed on to liberal bishops' dioceses to take charge of their flock. One bishop in Uganda has undermined the authority of the Ecusa Primate, Bishop Frank Griswold, by declaring himself the Episcopal leader of three parishes in Los Angeles.
And there has been abusive language on both sides. The Dean of Sydney, Phillip Jensen, speaking at a recent meeting in Derbyshire of conservative evangelicals, accused the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, of theological prostitution. Dr Williams is thought to be close to liberal positions on homosexuality while resisting Robinson's consecration for the sake of Anglican unity.
He should resign, said Jensen to applause and cries of Amen. That's theological and intellectual prostitution. He is taking his salary under false pretences.
Into this fine mess comes the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland, the Most Rev Robin Eames, who has seen his fair share of hostility in Northern Ireland. He was made chairman of the 16-strong Lambeth Commission with the daunting task of producing a unanimous report on the future of the Communion in 12 months.
And he did it. This week the Windsor Report was released at a cramped press conference in St Paul's Cathedral crypt. There are 126 pages, 50 of which are appendices, for the Anglican Communion to ponder.
So why wasn't he bullish as he slapped the finished report on the table? In his gloomy foreword Dr Eames describes talk of schism and realignment as portraying a Communion in crisis. The report describes the illness in a Church where two sides have become engaged in a tit-for-tat stand off. It even compares the state of the Communion with political disasters in the world where each side now accuses the other of atrocities, and blames the other. The depth of feeling on both sides of the homosexuality debate has introduced a degree of harshness and a lack of charity which is new to Anglicanism, he notes.
The 164 countries and 79 million members of the Anglican Communion are held together by so-called bonds of affection. There is no curia in Anglicanism and its provinces are autonomous, meaning they are able to make their own decisions so long as it does not undermine the Communion. In an effort to hold it together, Dr Eames and his commission, who met twice in Windsor and once at New Carolina in the United States, have sought to strengthen and explain these bonds without altering the structures of the Communion.
Reading it for the first time, I was struck that this was not so much a report about homosexuality but about how Anglicans can get along with each other and survive, regardless of the conflict. It reads at times like a worthy marriage guidance book.
The report is not a judgement. It is part of a process. It is part of a pilgrimage towards healing and reconciliation, wrote Dr Eames. A large majority of the submissions received by the commission have supported the continuance of the Anglican Communion as an instrument of God's grace for the world.
So with this slightly hesitant premise of let's try and make a go of it the report recommends clarifying the place of the instruments of unity - the Archbishop of Canterbury, the 10-yearly Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates' meeting. The report calls for a council of advice which will support the Archbishop of Canterbury and ensure that he does not feel exposed and left to act entirely alone. It asks whether the Lambeth Conference, which gathers all the bishops and archbishops once every 10 years, should be granted a magisterium, a teaching authority of special status, which would enable it to define and update Anglican teaching.
The report also suggests drafting an Anglican covenant that would formally declare the bonds of affection holding the Churches together. Such a covenant - and I dread to think how many years it would take to draft - would prevent Churches doing their own thing without regard to other provinces. But the report adds hastily that any covenant would not be binding and could be altered in the light of changing circumstances.
It also recommends appointing an Anglican Communion liaison officer to each diocese, whose job would be to report to the archbishop in their province any actions that threaten the Communion. The primate of that province would then decide whether to consult the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Unlike the Catholic Church, where the Pope has authority and powers to control and exclude dissidents among his cardinals and bishops, the Archbishop of Canterbury has no formal authority outside his Kent diocese and can do nothing more than advise. Although the report takes a step towards reinforcing the archbishop's role by giving him a council of advice, it cautions against forming any kind of central curia for the Communion.
The Lambeth Commission gets down to the nitty-gritty in the last section when it asks those in the Episcopal Church of America and the diocese of New Westminster in Canada to express regret for the trouble and pain they have caused in taking actions incompatible with Communion. It asks for a similar act of contrition from those traditionalist bishops who have intervened in provinces other than their own. It calls for a moratorium on all same-sex unions and ordinations of non-celibate homosexuals and condemns those in Canada and the United States who allowed irregular services in violation of the bonds of Communion. And it calls for those who are unwilling to express regret to withdraw from any representative functions in the Communion.
The language is unusually emphatic for an Anglican report. We believe that to proceed unilaterally with the authorisation of public rites of blessing for same sex unions is?in breach of the legitimate application of the Christian faith as the Churches of the Anglican Communion have received it, the report notes, adding: Because of the serious repercussions in the Communion, we call for a moratorium.
Dr Eames described the report as an agenda for relationships rather than a judgement on sexuality issues. And like a marriage counsellor for people close to separating, if not divorcing, he makes clear how precarious the union is. There remains a very real danger that we will not choose to walk together, says the report's conclusion. 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.
Will the Anglican Communion embrace the Windsor Report? On the liberal wing, the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement - which was in the eye of the storm six years ago - applauded the general tone of the report which is aimed at healing and reconciliation. And Archbishop Griswold also responded with an apology, albeit
conditional, for the negative repercussions of Bishop Robinson's ordination (he did not apologise for the consecration itself).
But the question is how the African, Asian, and South American bishops - who dominate the Lambeth Conference and shepherd the majority of the Communion's members - will react. Will they be satisfied that bishops who do not observe the moratoriums will be excluded from meetings and councils? If past responses are anything to go by, I'd say no.
But six years on from the explosive dispute at the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Communion has been handed a mandate for survival. The Windsor Report calls for prayer, generosity and goodwill. It does not seek to bridge the gap between those who believe homosexual sex is sinful and those who regard it as part of God's Creation. But it does ask Anglicans to love one another. And that may yet prove too much to ask.
Victoria Combe is a religious affairs journalist.
The Windsor Report is a step towards maturity
Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham
NO POPE, no Curia, no hierarchical decision-making structure - how do we Anglicans manage - and I mean manage? How do we get things done? How do we maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace? That is the issue addressed by the Windsor Report, despite the shrill chorus of those who think we were really talking about sex and are now cross because we didn't say what they wanted to hear.
The report is a necessary and urgent step in the Anglican Communion's path towards ecclesiological maturity. The global Anglican Church has existed for a long time with an ad hoc structure; now the commission is clear that it is time to go deeper, to work out in more detail what our Communion means and how it can function properly.
The presenting issues of New Hampshire and New Westminster, and of invasive episcopal actions in response, made the question urgent, but we tried not to let the shape of our thinking be distorted by those particular questions. We have tried to look further ahead, to see how the Anglican Communion might take forward God's mission in the world in decades to come.
The report is in four sections: the recommendations in section D only make sense when sections A, B and C have been fully understood. It is in those earlier sections that we find the elements which will enable our ecclesiology to grow to maturity, neither collapsing into the muddle of a loose relationship of detached bodies nor squeezing into the brittle security of a tight, top-down authoritarian structure.
Section A sets out the biblical and theological basis of ecclesiology. The Church exists in Communion with the Triune God, and receives from God the gift of unity and communion, and the call to radical holiness, as key elements in its essential task of witness to Christ and to God's ultimate purposes. Anglicans have relished the way in which this mutuality has sustained vulnerable parts of the Communion at times of crisis - for instance, during the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.
We have developed ways of making difficult decisions. Member Churches have recognised, until recent events, that on contentious matters no province can go it alone; but on some issues (women bishops, for instance) the Lambeth Conference and the other instruments of unity - the Anglican Consultative Council, the Primates' meeting, the Archbishop of Canterbury himself - have given a green light for - provinces to make their own decisions, thus creating space for a diversity which does not threaten the overall unity. The fact that this did not happen in the events of New Hampshire and New Westminster is what has precipitated the current crisis.
Section B explores the ecclesiological issues thereby raised. We make a fresh attempt to articulate what the phrase the authority of Scripture actually means: it must indicate the authority of God somehow exercised through Scripture.
The heart of the report, for me, is its exploration of three key concepts: autonomy, subsidiarity and adiaphora. Autonomy, we argue, does not mean (as many imagine) that each province is free to do what it likes in all matters. Autonomy implies a limited authority, much as the freedom of my fist stops where the freedom of your nose begins. This begs the question of how we can tell which issues do affect the larger family. But it is important to recognise that some issues can and do, and that only when they do not can things be decided at the local level.
This leads to subsidiarity, the principle that matters should be decided as close to the local level as possible. The New Testament offers a rich interplay between the Church as the single family of all Christian people, transcending space and time, and the Church as the local expression of
that one body. Subsidiarity is a way of making sure that the latter is never ignored in favour of the former, while recognising that there are many times when local decisions must reflect the mind of the whole Communion.
Subsidiarity is also closely correlated with adiaphora, the Pauline principle that some matters are things indifferent, about which Christians can disagree without dividing the Church. For Paul, this included eating or not eating meat offered to idols, and observing or not observing special holy days (the key passages are Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8-10). We all agree that there are some, perhaps many, things on which we can agree to differ without breaking Communion. The key question is, how do we know which issues these are, and who is to say? The vital point is that we cannot beg this latter question. We cannot simply say, with so many, I just think we should agree to differ, and should make room for diversity of opinion. We would not say that (to take a ridiculous example) about a suggestion that we should give up reading the Bible in church and read the Koran instead. To propose that a particular course of action should be considered adiaphora is just that, a proposal, which must be tested and weighed. Only when all relevant parties are agreed that the matter is indeed indifferent can the principle of subsidiarity come into play, and the issue be decided in different provinces or local Churches.
These are the principles upon which our ecclesiology can grow to maturity. Section C applies them to the instruments of unity, suggesting ways in which their role can be clarified and enhanced. There are proposals to establish a council of reference to assist the Archbishop of Canterbury, and an Anglican covenant which would function, not so much as a body of international canon law, but as an agreed framework for maintaining the highest degree of communion and for working through problematic questions and decisions. This possible covenant is a characteristically Anglican way forward, allowing both for local autonomy and coherent and responsible worldwide communion.
Only in the light of all this can the recommendations of section D be understood. The Anglican Communion does not currently possess structures that would allow for
formal punishments, whatever that might mean. We have asked instead for expressions of regret from those Churches that have acted precipitately without going through the established procedures of providing the rest of the Communion with a reasoned and biblical explanation for their actions. This includes both New Hampshire and New Westminster, and also those bishops who have intervened in other dioceses and provinces, in contravention not only of Anglican custom but of the Nicene decree on the subject. We have asked all parties to refrain from any further actions of the same kind. If the Archbishop of Canterbury and the primates accept and implement these recommendations, and if the various bodies in question respond positively, there is a good chance that we shall be able to grow towards that maturity in Christ, and that mutual support and rich communion, through which we shall be able the better to take forward God's mission to the world.
Tom Wright is a member of the Lambeth Commission that produced the Windsor Report.