Wrestling with Windsor

By Daniel Webster

It is no small task. Any decision on the part of the U.S. Episcopal Church regarding the Windsor Report will likely change the Anglican Communion as we know it.

It is no small task. Any decision on the part of the Episcopal Church USA regarding the Windsor Report will likely change the Anglican Communion as we know it. Any decision by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglican Consultative Council, the 38 Anglican primates [the bishops who are in charge of Anglican geographic provinces], or the 2008 Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops could change the very nature of the Anglican Communion.

When the House of Bishops meets in Salt Lake City, Utah, later next month, they will address the Lambeth Commission on Communion's report of last October. They may issue a statement but there will be no decision. That will not likely come until the 75th General Convention at Columbus, Ohio in 2006 – if then.

The recommendations of the report are being discussed throughout the world. Bishop Carolyn Tanner Irish recommended in October that parishes in the Episcopal Diocese of Utah enter into dialogue amongst themselves about the report. The bishop also issued a letter to parishes registering her concern over the profound changes to the Anglican Communion that appear to be within the report's recommendations.

Bishops meeting here January 12-13 will be considering a formal apology to other members of the Communion for the consecration of Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire and the acknowledgment of blessings of same-sex covenant relationships. Bishop Irish and Utah's deputation to General Convention 2003 voted unanimously for the resolutions that allowed those two actions.

The bishops will also be discussing the recommended moratorium on consecrating as bishop any openly gay candidate who is living in a sexual relationship. Geographical integrity of diocesan boundaries also will likely be on their agenda.

What may take up most of their time is the proposal of the Lambeth Commission for an “Anglican Communion Covenant.” If implemented, it appears to require all provinces within the Communion to sign a covenant agreement spelling out membership within the Communion and outlining actions of discipline or expulsion for churches not adhering to the agreement.

In an Advent letter to the Anglican primates , Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, appeared to urge serious consideration of this agreement. “The Windsor document sets out a possible future in which we willingly bind ourselves closer together by some form of covenant.  I hope we will see virtue in this,” Williams wrote. “No one can or will impose this, but it may be a creative way of expressing a unity that is neither theoretical nor tyrannical.”

Some are saying that this membership covenant, more than anything else in the report, marks a sharp turn away from traditional Anglican polity. Bishop Irish's letter to congregations on Oct. 20 said the “Report contains proposals about a more centralized structure of governance in the Anglican Communion, and in turn the possibility of tighter doctrinal norms. These proposals, if adopted, would truly change Anglicanism as we have known it.”

The Report's suggestions are far worse, writes the Rev. Canon Marilyn McCord Adams in the English newspaper Church Times , Oct. 22. “So far from a way forward, this proposal is pernicious,” writes the Oxford University professor of divinity. “It brings us too close for Anglican comfort to the coercive and authoritarian structures of Rome.”

“The authoritarian tone of the Windsor Report is further sounded in its demand that both sides compromise their integrity for the sake of unity and the common good,” writes Adams.

The choice for Episcopalians may come down to honoring the commitment to gay and lesbians that they are full members of the church and be excluded from the worldwide Anglican Communion, or exclude gay and lesbian persons from full participation in the church to remain in global federation of Anglican churches.

It would appear ECUSA is being told: If you wish to remain in the Communion, you must stop consecrating openly gay priests as bishops of the church and cease any further blessing of same-sex covenant unions. The choice for Episcopalians may come down to honoring the commitment to gay and lesbians that they are full members of the church and be excluded from the worldwide Anglican Communion, or exclude gay and lesbian persons from full participation in the church to remain in global federation of Anglican churches.

“But staying together as a Communion is bound to be costly for us all,” wrote Archbishop Williams in Advent. “To be in the church at all obliges us to try and discern the difficult balance between independence and responsibility to each other, and to face the dangers of causing others to stumble (Mark 9:42, Romans 14),” he wrote Nov. 26.

“We must never make the survival of the Anglican Communion an end in itself,” said former Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie in his opening address to the 1998 Lambeth Conference. “Exclusiveness is not a characteristic of the City of God,” Runcie said.

The pendulum of Anglicanism has swung throughout its 460-year history. Who holds sway at any given time has depended on politics, power, and control and the interpretation of the via media – the middle way. That pendulum has produced its share of martyrs for this or that expression of what Anglicanism really, truly is.

Anglicanism also has a history of splintering. The Church of England departing from Rome, the Episcopal Church in the new USA severing its ties with the Church of England and the numerous “continuing churches” that have left ECUSA, are all part of our particular expression of Christ's church.

This is another defining swing of that pendulum in the history of the Anglican expression of Christianity.

The Rev. Daniel J. Webster is director of communications for the Episcopal Diocese of Utah. A media veteran and peace activist in the church, he writes a regular online column for The Witness . Dan may be reached by email at dwebster@episcopal-ut.org .