Lambeth Commission releases report
by Anne Clarke Brown

(Below is an expanded version of an article that appears in the November 2004 Mountain Echo. Click here for links to the Windsor Report, Bishop Thomas Ely’s initial response, Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold’s response, and other resources.)

The Lambeth Commission on Communion, appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury a year ago to address how Anglicans might maintain “the highest degree of communion” in the wake of the Episcopal Church’s consent to the election of the Rev. V. Gene Robinson as Bishop Coadjutor of New Hampshire and the authorization by the Canadian Diocese of New Westminster of rites for blessing same gender unions, issued “The Windsor Report” on October 18, in London. The report had been awaited by many throughout the Anglican Communion in the hope that it might provide a way for the increasingly polarized fellowship of 38 churches to remain in communion.

The Most Rev. Dr. Robin Eames, chair of the Commission, says in his foreword to the lengthy Windsor Report that, “It is part of a pilgrimage towards healing and reconciliation.” Its recommendations are not in any way final. Rather they will require careful study and much conversation within and among the Communion’s member churches.

The report’s four major sections address the purposes and benefits of communion, the nature of the communion currently shared and the bonds that hold it together, an analysis and recommendations regarding the authority of the “Instruments of Unity” (the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting), and recommendations about maintaining communion in the context of current controversies. One appendix offers further reflections on the Instruments of Unity and a second proposes an “Anglican Covenant.”

Outlined below are some of the things the report does and does not do.

The Windsor Report does:
• commend itself for intensive study throughout the Anglican Communion;
• maintain that the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of New Westminster did not go through “procedures which might have made it possible for the church to hold together across differences of belief and practice;”
• understand communion to be a gift from God;
• call “the whole Anglican Communion to re-evaluate the ways in which we have read, heard, studied and digested scripture;”
• understand episcopacy to be “the foundational form of government within the Anglican churches;”
• understand diversity to be both a strength and a source of tension and division but also something to which there must be limits;
• “recommend that the Archbishop of Canterbury be regarded as the focus of unity;”
• recommend that the Archbishop of Canterbury have a Council of Advice;
• recommend “adoption by each church of its own simple and short domestic ‘communion law;’”
• recommend “adoption by the churches of the Communion of a common Anglican Covenant [see Appendix B of the report] which would make explicit and forceful the loyalty and bonds of affection which govern the relationships between the churches of the Communion;”
• regret that “the Episcopal Church (USA) proceeded with the consecration of Gene Robinson;”
• regret that the General Convention declared that “local faith communities are operating within the bounds of our common life as they explore and experience liturgies celebrating and blessing same-sex unions;”
• invite the Episcopal Church “to express its regret" for the pain its actions caused other members of the Communion and its desire to remain part of the Communion;”
• invite the Episcopal Church to effect a moratorium on any candidate to the episcopate who is living in a same gender union "until some new consensus in the Anglican Communion emerges;"
• recommend that “the ‘listening’ process commended by the Lambeth Conference in 1998 might be taken forward, so that greater common understanding might be obtained on the underlying issue of same gender relationships;”
• request that the Episcopal Church to explain, “from within the sources of authority that we as Anglicans have received in scripture, the apostolic tradition and reasoned reflection, how a person living in a same gender union may be considered eligible to lead the flock of Christ;”
• call on all bishops not “to authorise public Rites of Blessing for same sex unions;”
• call on bishops who have authorized such rites “to ecpress regret that the proper constraints of the bonds of affection wer breached by such authorization;”
• invite such bishops “to consider in all conscience whether they should withdraw themselves from representative functions in the Anglican Communion;”
• call for continuing study of the biblical and theological rationale for and against same sex unions;
• state that “any demonizing of homosexual persons, or their ill treatment, is totally against Christian charity and basic principles of pastoral care;”
• commend the proposals for delegated episcopal pastoral oversight set out by the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church to address concerns of dissenting congregations;
• call on bishops and archbishops who have intervened in provinces, diocese and parishes other than their own “to express regret for the consequences of their actions, to affirm their desire to remain in the Communion, and to effect a moratorium on any further interventions;”
• “call upon all parties to the current dispute to seek ways of reconciliation, and to heal our divisions;”
• express concern “that we will not choose to walk together.”

The Windsor Report does not:
• render a judgment on current controversies;
• recommend “punishment” of the Episcopal Church or the Diocese of New Westminster;
• approve a parallel Anglican jurisdiction—such as the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes—in the United States;
• address human sexuality;
• address questions of justice;
• address the prophetic role of the church.

Go to Lambeth Commission Index Page (this site)