Statements

The Vocation of Anglican Communion

A statement by the Communion Partners of the Episcopal Church

June 28, 2018

As Communion Partner bishops in the Episcopal Church, we seek to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” with our brothers and sisters here at home and throughout the Anglican Communion (Eph. 4:3).  We believe that we all are joined together indissolubly by the waters of baptism, and that we all are called to share one bread and one cup in the Eucharist as the principal sign of our common faith and full communion in the Lord.  We rejoice in the fellowship that we share in Christ and pray for the movement of his disciples throughout the world, that we may learn to walk together ever more faithfully and persevere to the end.  Amen!

We write to offer a word of guidance and encouragement on various matters before General Convention, particularly the proposals about prayer book revision and the extension of trial use rites for same-sex marriage to all dioceses where civil law permits.  We wish to begin by offering a brief explanation of our self-understanding as Communion Partners.

Walking together as closely as possible with all of our Anglican brothers and sisters has at times been difficult, but since our inception ten years ago we have sought to do so by maintaining “a visible link to the whole Anglican Communion on the way to resolving important questions of faith and order.”  In step with the preamble to the Constitution of the Episcopal Church, we understand ourselves as members of a “Fellowship within the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, of those duly constituted Dioceses, Provinces, and regional Churches in communion with the See of Canterbury, upholding and propagating the historic Faith and Order as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer.”  When we were ordained, we vowed to “guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the Church of God” (BCP, p. 518).  As we understand the Episcopal Church to be part of this larger catholic whole, through our fellowship with Canterbury and the wider Anglican Communion, we have sought to walk as “communion partner” Episcopalians. As such, since the 2004 Windsor Report issued its request for three moratoria across the Communion, and as these were reaffirmed by the several Instruments of Communion, we have upheld and maintained them as normative in our dioceses.

In 2015, the 78th General Convention of the Episcopal Church made a decision to extend the sacrament of marriage to same-sex couples, by amending its marriage canon and authorizing new trial use marriage liturgies.  While recognizing the clear decision that General Convention made, we respectfully dissented in our “Salt Lake City Statement.”  There, we affirmed our commitment to marriage as a covenant between a man and woman, under the authority of Holy Scripture as guided by catholic tradition and the Anglican Communion.  We renew that affirmation today.

As we see it, the decision of the 78th General Convention should be set within a broader process of discernment within the Anglican Communion and the whole Church of God.  That means that dioceses and congregations within the Episcopal Church that conscientiously teach and practice marriage as a covenant between a man and a woman — as we understand it, the “historic Faith and Order as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer,” and the teaching of the Anglican Communion — should be given a place to flourish within the structures of the Episcopal Church, without limit of time.

Because of this, we rejoiced in 2015 at the “Communion across Difference” statement of the House of Bishops, which recognized the “indispensable” place that Communion Partners have in our church’s common life, as a witness our church needs.  We were grateful that the authorization of the 2015 trial use marriage rites provided, in this generous spirit, that we may as Communion Partner bishops keep the Windsor moratoria in our dioceses.  We have done so.

Now in 2018, we recognize that some in our dioceses have expressed deep dissatisfaction with this situation.  The Memorial submitted by the convention of the Diocese of Tennessee requested that the 79th General Convention take into account the “exclusion, competing convictions, and loss of community” experienced under the current terms of authorization for the trial use marriage rites.  We know and love many brothers and sisters in Christ in our several dioceses who share this perspective.

For this reason, we are grateful to have entered into collegial conversation with a group of Episcopal leaders who hold a progressive view on marriage and wish to find a way forward in charity and peace for all Episcopalians in one church.  We welcome and support their proposal for a “Communion across Difference” task force, so that over the next triennium and in consultation with our Anglican Communion partners, we might together seek a way forward for the mutual flourishing of all within the bounds of our historic episcopal polity.

Their proposal also provides that beginning in Advent of this year, the trial use rites for marriage authorized in 2015 will be available in all dioceses, where civil law permits. Congregations in our dioceses that have conscientiously discerned, alongside those priests who bear authority and responsibility for worship in their communities (Canon III.9.6), to extend the practice of marriage to same-sex couples (civil law permitting) would be given the right to do so by requesting delegated episcopal pastoral oversight (DEPO).

There is much to commend in this proposal.  Since it does not propose revision of the marriage rite in the Book of Common Prayer, we and those similarly-minded ones who come after us (clergy and lay alike) would be able to pattern our communities after the historic Faith and Order of the Book of Common Prayer as authorized in the Episcopal Church.  Clergy and bishops would be able to vow obedience to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of this church as set forth in its historic prayer book.  While for the foreseeable future there would continue to be other authorized marriage liturgies welcomed by the majority of congregations and dioceses, we view the 1979 BCP as an important aspect of what we need to have a lasting place to flourish within the structures of the Episcopal Church.

We also appreciate the proposal’s attempt to make room for us to flourish as bishops of dioceses in communion with Canterbury and the one Church of God.  As Archbishop Williams noted in 2007, historic catholic ecclesiology teaches that the diocese and not the congregation form the basic unit of the Church, as the whole people of God in one place is gathered around the bishop as representative of the Church through space and time. As bishops, we have vowed to “guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the Church of God” in our dioceses, ensuring that the congregations under our spiritual authority teach and practice the catholic faith as we have received it in this place.

We cannot, then, permit congregations under our spiritual care to teach and practice a form of marriage that is not authorized by Holy Scripture, by Anglican teaching, and by the great tradition of the whole Church of God.  Recognizing this fact, the proposal from our friends across the aisle recognizes that mandating access to same-sex marriage for congregations in our dioceses must mean that those congregations are in a real way no longer under our spiritual care.

This is why we recognize and appreciate the merits of the proposal.  By requiring delegated episcopal pastoral oversight of such congregations, the proposal allows Communion Partner bishops to preserve the historic teaching and practice of marriage for all those gathered in one place under his or her spiritual care.  At the same time, the proposal does not compel congregations in our dioceses to follow our solemn pastoral guidance in this matter if they understand themselves called by God otherwise, alongside the majority of the Episcopal Church.

Our guidance remains that God has created us male and female to be fruitful and multiply, so that what God has joined together no man should put asunder, and that this nuptial image seen throughout Scripture is a sacramental image of Christ the bridegroom and the Church his bride (see Gen. 1:28, 5:2; Mark 10:6-9; Eph. 5:31-32).  We hope even now that the beauty of this image, and the power of God’s own Word, would draw people to the fullness of the gospel’s teaching.  Yet, should the proposal before us pass, we would entrust in charity congregations that do not read Holy Scripture in this way to the care of other bishops in the Episcopal Church with whom we remain united in baptism.

While we cannot endorse every aspect of this proposal, we will be grateful should it help us all to continue contending with one another for the truth in love within one body.  It preserves the Book of Common Prayer as established by our church, and it preserves our dioceses for the exercising of the “historic episcopate, locally adapted” (Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral).  If our church chooses not to preserve these two institutions — the historic Prayer Book, and the historic episcopate with jurisdiction in dioceses — we would no longer have a place in this church.  With the protection of the prayer book and episcopate, we can carry on as loyal Episcopalians and Anglicans, in charity with our sisters and brothers in Christ.

The inclusion of a Task Force on Communion across Difference is of utmost importance.  Parity requires that if congregations in our dioceses must be granted delegated episcopal pastoral oversight at their request, this should be reciprocated throughout the church for Communion Partner congregations.  For them, it is not simply a matter of whether or not a conflictual relationship exists with their bishop, but instead whether the bishop whose spiritual care guides their common life is one that they understand as in full communion with the See of Canterbury, upholding and propagating the historic Faith and Order as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer.  These and other matters need to be worked out carefully and coherently for a lasting truce of God, one that will allow all of us to re-focus our energies on mission and proclaiming the Gospel to all people, as our Presiding Bishop calls us to do.

We wholeheartedly support a conversation with all stakeholders in the Episcopal Church, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and with the wider Anglican Communion in order to find such a truce of God, while preserving the current right of bishops to uphold and maintain the Windsor moratoria in their dioceses.  If the proposal before us passes at General Convention, we pledge to work within its bounds in a spirit of collegiality and friendship with all members of our church.

We hope and pray that the 79th General Convention will do all it can to promote our common growth into Christ, from whom the whole body is built up in love: Christ, who “loved us and gave himself for us” (Eph. 5:2; see 4:15-16).  We ask for the prayers of all our Anglican brothers and sisters in Christ, that we may do so as well, by the grace of God.

The Rt. Rev. Lloyd E. Allen
Bishop of Honduras

The Rt. Rev. John C. Bauerschmidt
Bishop of Tennessee

The Rt. Rev. Gregory O. Brewer
Bishop of Central Florida

The Rt. Rev. Daniel H. Martins
Bishop of Springfield

The Rt. Rev. Michael G. Smith
Bishop of North Dakota

The Rt. Rev. George R. Sumner
Bishop of Dallas

The Rt. Rev. Moisés Quezada Mota
Bishop of the Dominican Republic

Support for the Communion Partners (2018)

From “Communion across Difference,” a Statement of the Mind of the House of Bishops, at the 78th General Convention of the Episcopal Church:

• We give particular thanks for the steadfast witness of our colleagues in the Communion Partners. We value and rely on their commitment to The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. We recognize that theirs is a minority voice in the House of Bishops in our deliberations with respect to Christian marriage; and we affirm that despite our differences they are an indispensable part of who we are as the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church. Our church needs their witness.

From the “Lambeth Presidential Address” (2008), Rowan Williams, the Rt. Rev. and Rt. Hon. The Lord Williams of Oystermouth, 104th Archbishop of Canterbury:

• “… it seems to be widely agreed in the Conference that internal pastoral and liturgical care, strengthened by arrangements like the suggested Communion Partners initiative in the USA … are the way we should go if we want to avoid further ecclesial confusion …”

George Leonard Carey, the Rt. Rev. and Rt. Hon. The Lord Carey of Clifton, 103rd Archbishop of Canterbury:

• I am delighted to support the work of the Communion Partner plan, which exists to seek a solution to the breakdown in the Anglican Communion by dialogue, friendship and understanding.

The Most Rev. Valentine Mokiwa, Fifth Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Tanzania:

• The Communion Partners Plan, with its growing list of primates, bishops and rectors, is a positive way forward through the present crisis of division that we face in the Anglican Communion. As per our vow to the Windsor principles and Anglican Covenant, this allows us to strengthen a common fellowship centered on the biblical teachings of the Gospel. I am happy to offer it my support and give full respect and love to our brothers and sisters, let alone the comprehensive and objective share of ideas and views. This gives a very positive and good hope for the future of the Anglican Communion.

Global South Primates, Bangkok Communiqué (see also the “Fourth Trumpet”):

• We stand in solidarity with our brethren in the Communion Partners who have dissented from this action. We uphold them in prayer and support them in fellowship as they continue in their commitment to the evangelical faith and catholic order of the Church, as expressed in their Minority Report known as The Indianapolis Statement.

Ephraim Radner, Professor of Historical Theology Wycliffe College, University of Toronto:

• I believe that Communion Partners is, in this season, the way of solid Anglican witness to Christ’s Gospel in the United States: faithful, peaceable, steadfast, and bound to the full mission of the Anglican Communion.

The Way of Anglican Communion: Walking Together Before God

(May 2017)

The Rt. Rev. Dr. John Bauerschmidt, Diocese of Tennessee
Dr. Zachary Guiliano, Living Church Foundation
The Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto
The Rt. Rev. Dr. George Sumner, Diocese of Dallas
Dr. Christopher Wells, Living Church Foundation

Executive summary

We believe that God wills fellowship. —Lambeth 1920, “Appeal to all Christian people”
As we approach the 2020 Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Communion should take stock of its past, present, and proposed futures. This paper reflects on the nature of communion (koinonia) and mission, proposing new steps forward. It takes as its inspiration the 1920 Lambeth Conference.

In Section I, we describe how the bishops at Lambeth 1920 realized their need to face squarely the disintegration of human society and the failures of the churches in the aftermath of World War I, and also the need to recognize and articulate God’s purposes for the world and the Church. They focused on the Church’s missionary calling and the purpose of full, visible unity: to draw all of humanity into one reconciled body. A specifically Anglican vocation, linking mission and communion, can only be located within this comprehensive purpose. When the 1920 Lambeth Conference surveyed the devastation of war and the new situation before it, it did so with its eye to the spread of the Gospel that had reignited the fire of Anglicanism’s vocation, with a purpose of divine healing and consummating reconciliation. This vocation is an “adventure of goodwill and still more of faith” to which the assembled bishops believed God was calling all Christian people. Over the next 70 years, this purpose pressed the Communion’s churches forward in what the bishops of Lambeth 1920 called evolving structures of counsel and cooperation, even in the face of repeated assaults upon hope from war and disease, religious persecution, apathy, and division.

Section II explores current challenges and signs of encouragement. In our time, we have perhaps grown accustomed to the stalling of communion and increase of incoherence, due to broad disagreements among Anglicans and divisions over mission. The Communion’s center of missionary zeal has moved to African and Asian churches especially, while Western churches have languished or shrunk. The sexuality debate has served as a flashpoint, driving through an already existing wedge that divided the American church and leading to the realignment of many Global South churches in conjunction and support. Multiple factors have resulted in broken trust, bitterness, and recriminations, weakening Anglican relationships, at a time when renewed solidarity, deepening cooperation, and humble self-sacrifice are needed.

The Anglican Communion has so far proven itself incapable of wholly resolving its divisions. The Windsor Process and Anglican Covenant proposed official avenues for healing recent Communion breaches, but were sidelined. The international movement known as GAFCON has meanwhile attempted to recast the Communion’s polity, challenging accepted boundaries and relationships between Anglican churches. It is time to consider further options.

Frameworks like “family” and “federation” have come up as possible solutions to the Communion’s splintering. But families and federations also depend on truth and fellowship, and so require agreements, sacrifice, and common decision-making. As the bishops recognized at Lambeth 1920, any kind of diverse unity cannot be fulfilled if these groups are content to remain in separation from one another or to be joined together only in some vague federation. Their value for the fullness of Christian life, truth, and witness can only be realised if they are united in the fellowship of one visible society whose members are bound together by the ties of a common faith, common sacraments, and a common ministry. (“Encyclical Letter,” emphasis added)

Calls for the development of the Communion’s structures follow this tradition, and we argue (along with the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order) that structural developments are necessary. We must grasp the nettle of the Communion’s fracture. The status quo is unacceptable, and will lead only to further incoherence.

Recent events in the Anglican Communion inspire hope. Actions at the Primates’ Meeting of 2016 and ACC-16 in Lusaka, Zambia, point to a common will to seek fellowship and the bonds that sustain it — in mutual love, discipline, and service. This is the Anglican vocation: walking together, as the whole people of God, in service of the one Gospel, to the end of reconciliation. This is the pattern of life in Christ.

The Anglican search for reconciliation and for structures of common counsel has often proved elusive. 

Thus, in Section III, this paper traces historical resistance to communion, as a way of understanding and responding to the present. It notes especially the repeated desire for structures of effective “synodality,” that is, common ways of making decisions together and walking together in the service of mission. In this persistent desire, we can locate various attempts at creating structures: the beginning of the Lambeth Conferences, informal congresses, the Advisory Council on Missionary Strategy, the formation of the Anglican Consultative Council, the Primates’ Meeting, the Eames Commission and Virginia Report, the recognition of nascent Anglican canon law principles, and the proposed Anglican Covenant.

Towards the end of this section, we trace especially the Covenant process. The early draft of the Covenant structured itself into four sections, with the first three covering theological and mission-related commitments and an outline of the current “Instruments of Communion” in their shape and purpose. The fourth section shifted gears to procedural matters concerning adoption of the Covenant and dispute resolution. Since the formal dissemination of the Covenant, ten provinces have adopted it, one has accepted only the first three sections, one has rejected it wholly, and many others either deliberately delayed consideration or expressed reservations. The first three sections of the Covenant appear broadly acceptable, but to many stand in stark contrast to the juridical concerns of section four.

A basic problem sits at the heart of our common history. Having never fulfilled the impulse for consultative decision-making, the Anglican Communion has constantly fallen back upon assertions of independence, rebutted by calls for local imposition of order, without finding another way. Here, The Windsor Report’s image of synodality — literally, “walking together” — plants a seed that bears watering; the Lord, should he wish, will give the growth (1 Cor. 3:6).

Despite its critical importance, the Covenant text never mentions synodality, leaving interdependence and communion settled in an almost static way. It risks accepting the status quo without the apostolic challenge of repentance, change, and self-giving that reconciling mission in Christ embodies (see 2 Cor. 5:18-20). By contrast, synodality involves decisions to move together — directionally and transformatively. This central feature of common decision and action marks the missionary character of synods.

Section IV lays out a vision for intensified communion and synodical “walking together” amid recognized diversity. We contend that the search for a form of shared synodality coheres with our past hopes and answers the missionary call of Anglicanism as a worldwide servant of Christian unity.

“Unity in diversity” has long served as a shorthand for mission among Anglicans, incorporating a rich theology of the nations. The bishops assembled at Lambeth 1920 took note of these two poles in relation to Christian unity: “It is through a rich diversity of life and devotion that the unity of the whole fellowship will be fulfilled” (“Resolution 9: Appeal to all Christian people”). The tensions embedded in the concept were never resolved, however, and have only now had to be confronted. The related ecumenical model of “reconciled diversity” that emerged in the 1970s was meant to address these tensions in the context of wider ecclesial division that had taken root over centuries: Churches share what they can by consulting, gathering, and listening. Within the wounded communion of Anglicans, bound to the wounded Body of Christ, reconciled diversity should be seen as a necessary orientation, aiming at the goal, but not as a complete ecclesial identity.

Such a perspective permits us to imagine new possibilities built on the foundation of the Covenant already so carefully laid. Following Archbishop Rowan Williams, the final text of the Covenant urged an intensifying of Anglican bonds of affection (Intro. §5). That intensification, we believe, is in fact the commitment to synodality mentioned so many times in the past 150 years.

Applied to the Anglican Communion as presently constituted — all parties and provinces and diverse sensibilities — we propose both (1) a single reconciled mission of Anglicans “on the way to synodality” and (2) synodality itself, in two stages or stations along the road. (1) The first stage will take as its basis the Communion’s current structures and instruments, in service of shared faith and common mission, even amid fundamental disagreements that impair communion. Our ecumenical relationships set a good example here, rooted in a rich understanding of baptismal accountability. At the same time, (2) a second stage of Anglican walking together will focus on forming a new Anglican synod, as a perennial way station for those seeking more intense forms of relationship in faith, order, and mission. 

This new “synodality” will articulate the voluntary basis for common work in doctrinal, liturgical, and ecumenical mission, that is, the “faith and order” of the Anglican Communion. Those provinces desirous of walking together into synodical life should gather in a renewed congress, having as its first priority the articulation of principles of evangelical accountability and catholic structure to which Anglicans may voluntarily commit themselves. Individual dioceses and parishes within divided member churches must be permitted to embrace synodical communion in turn, according to the principle of freedom in Christ (Gal. 5:1).

Along the common road of Anglican communion, the two proposed stages or stations allow for maximal freedom in Christ. (1) All Anglican churches assenting to sections 1-3 of the Covenant can be assured that they share the creedal faith embodied in baptism, even as some will doubtless disagree on matters others deem fundamental. While such disagreements will sometimes impair communion, a generous commitment to counsel, learning, and conversion-in-relationship may continually renew a spirit of humble charity. This is a realistic and hopeful form of walking together. (2) At the same time, those Anglican churches, dioceses, and parishes prepared to give themselves over to a fuller and more intense form of synodality will be enabled to do so. Questions of doctrine, discipline, and mission may be resolved by the authority of a larger council and impairments overcome. These churches will move forward together in a special way, where hope takes the form of new self-offering for the sake of the wider Church Catholic.

If adopted, the model can resolve and regularize, in peace and mutual recognition, our painful conflicts of the past 20 years. At the same time, it can enable a transformation of the Anglican Communion as a collocation of Christians and churches that may be found, at various points, both together and at different places along the same road; Christians and churches of sometimes diverse discernments who respect and love one another enough to protect the freedom of all. Were this possible, the Anglican Communion would take a great step toward achieving its long-cherished call to solicit and serve the single unity of the one Church of Christ as a missionary gathering of the peoples of the world, convened not by human initiative but by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The way of Anglican communion: Walking together before God

1. The Anglican vocation of communion and mission

“We believe that God wills fellowship.”[1] This striking statement, from the famous “Appeal to all Christian people” of the 1920 Lambeth Conference, set forth the foundation of the Anglican Communion’s vocation and that vocation’s missionary purpose. “Fellowship” was a translation of the New Testament word koinonia, which today we tend to render as “communion.” The divine will for communion has created the one Church and given the Church her ministry, labor, and promised reward. That will has also established a special purpose for the Anglican churches of the world.

The 1920 Lambeth Conference has remained, in many ways, the theological apex of Anglican common self-description. Following the horrors of World War I, the conference realized its need to face squarely not only the disintegration of human society and the failures of the churches in its midst, but also the impossibility of changing the subject to something more congenial to the ecclesial status quo. With this realization, the deeper purposes of God in the world and the Church’s place within it were recognized and articulated with clarity. As the bishops elaborated in their inspiring Encyclical Letter:

Men to-day are tempted to despair of the world and to blame its design. But this at least we can say: the life of men upon earth was designed to give opportunities for love and nothing has defeated that design. … [God] made men for love, that they might love Him and love one another. They rejected His purpose, but He did not abandon it. He chose a nation, and made it in a special sense His own, that within it love of God and men might be cultivated, and that thus it might enlighten the world. Into that nation He sent forth His Son, both to reconcile the world to Himself and to reconcile men one to another. And His Son formed a new and greater Israel, which we call the Church, to carry on His own mission of reconciling men to God and men to men. The foundation and ground of all fellowship is the undeflected will of God, renewing again and again its patient effort to possess, without destroying, the wills of men. And so He has called into being a fellowship of men, His Church, and sent His Holy Spirit to abide therein, that by the prevailing attraction of that one Spirit, He, the one God and Father of all, may win over the whole human family to that fellowship in Himself, by which alone it can attain to the fulness of life. This then is the object of the Church.[2]

For the bishops, fellowship or communion was rooted in the unity of God, but still needed to be manifested:

The unity which we seek exists. It is in God, Who is the perfection of unity, the one Father, the one Lord, the one Spirit, Who gives life to the one Body. Again, the one Body exists. It needs not to be made, nor to be remade, but to become organic and visible. Once more, the fellowship of the members of the one Body exists. It is the work of God, not of man. We have only to discover it, and to set free its activities.[3]

Though the bishops recognized that fellowship was God’s gift, that gift was not yet made manifest to the world.

A specifically Anglican vocation can only be located within this same, comprehensive purpose, since global communion reveals the divine truth of the one Church’s missionary energies. The bishops saw this clearly in 1920: “The fact that the Anglican Communion has become world-wide forces upon it some of the problems which must always beset the unity of the Catholic Church itself. Perhaps, as we ourselves are dealing with these problems, the way will appear in which the future reunited Church must deal with them.”[4] Accordingly, the bishops set their minds to a range of challenges, national and international, particular and universal. The thread running through their deliberations was the recognition that divine and human communion is the secret of life, as God’s gift in Christ to be taken to the world.[5] The churches themselves, for all their due “differentiation,” must be connected to the one Head, Jesus Christ, and thereby joined to one another as members of one Body (Rom. 12:3-8; 1 Cor. 12:12-31; Eph. 4:11-16, 5:23; Col. 1:18).[6] If Anglican churches are independent, therefore, they are independent with the Christian freedom which recognizes the restraints of truth and of love. They are not free to deny the truth. They are not free to ignore the fellowship. And the objects of our conferences are to attain an ever deeper apprehension of the truth, and to guard the fellowship with ever increasing appreciation of its value.[7]

Together, the Appeal and Letter of the 1920 Lambeth Conference articulated a theme of Anglican ecclesial reflection that has proven both seminal and enduring.

The important work that Anglicans and Roman Catholics have accomplished together in dialogue over the last half century was drawn from this source, as some of the richest soil of contemporary ecumenical reflection. The second Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission’s agreed statement Church as Communion (1990) reiterated a version of Lambeth 1920’s sense of “the mission of communion.”[8] By 2007, an unprecedented commission of Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops, charged with implementing a common way forward, reaffirmed that “the Church is … a communion in mission. It is precisely as communion that the Church is ‘sacrament of the merciful grace of God for all humankind’ and sent into the world.”[9] At the same time, the bishops noted present Anglican disputes about sexuality, and attendant “intensified reflection on the nature of the relationship between the churches of the Communion,” as markers of “uncertainty” that must retard the formal advances previously envisioned.[10]

The idea that Anglicans have a special vocation linking mission and communion together forms the most fundamental definition of Anglicanism in the modern era. The very concept of an Anglican Communion derives from the missionary consciousness of mid-19th-century British and American labors, and became the standard description of a newly world-wide ecclesial life celebrated at the 1851 Silver Jubilee of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.[11] The gathering of the first Lambeth Conference in 1867 and the various missionary conferences and congresses that followed in its wake were all products of mission,[12] witnessing to new ways of Christian communion across the oceans. This linking of communion and mission remained conscious and deliberate over the following decades.

When the 1920 Lambeth Conference surveyed the devastation of war and the new situation before it, it did so with its eye to the spread of the Gospel that had reignited the fire of Anglicanism’s vocation, now with a purpose of divine healing and consummating reconciliation. This is that “adventure of goodwill and still more of faith” to which the bishops believed God was calling all Christian people in 1920.[13] Over the next 70 years, this purpose pressed the Communion’s churches forward in what the bishops of Lambeth 1920 called evolving structures of counsel and cooperation, even in the face of repeated assaults upon hope from war and disease, religious persecution, apathy, and division.[14]

2. Current challenges and encouragements

We have perhaps grown accustomed to the stalling of communion and gathering incoherence, as broad disagreements among Anglicans have fed both theological fragmentation and structural collapses. As early as the 1948 Lambeth Conference, Bishop Carrington’s committee issued a report warning of doctrinal and liturgical disarray in the Communion.[15] The vital, necessary connection between truth and fellowship was loosening.

The broad strokes of our recent challenges are well known. By 1978, after the irregular ordination of women two years earlier in the United States, tears were appearing in the purportedly consultative fabric of the Communion. The Lambeth Conference of that year called for study of how disparate parts and organizations of the Communion could work together more cohesively. These kinds of concerns, leading to the 1998 Lambeth Conference’s sexuality confrontation, masked deeper and longer-lasting fissures. 

The gathering of Global South Anglican leaders in Kuala Lumpur in 1997 produced a statement on homosexuality that undergirded the Lambeth Conference resolution (I.10) of the next year; but that statement forms only a brief part of a much larger document on “Scripture in the Life and Mission of the Church,” which had been the main topic of the meeting.[16] Concern over the Communion’s blurring account of the relationship between Scripture and mission had driven the gathering in the first place. The sexuality debate has served as a flashpoint, driving through an already existing wedge that divided the American church and led to the realignment of many Global South churches in conjunction and support.

The Communion’s center of energy and missionary zeal has moved from Western Anglo-American churches to African and Asian churches especially, which have seen tremendous growth since the 1960s, while Western churches have languished or shrunk. The outcome to the Decade of Evangelism, initiated in 1988, only underlined this disparity.[17] Despite the greater material resources of the West, many Global South leaders believed their Western counterparts had simply begun to lose their way. Add to that a general resistance on the part of Western Anglican leaders to learn from the younger churches and disinterest in the fruit of more than 100 years of evangelical integrity. Broken trust, bitterness, and recriminations between churches have only introduced further weakness when renewed solidarity, deepening cooperation, and humble self-sacrifice were needed.

The result of this fissure and the Communion’s inability to address it have proven intractable: the departure in different directions of many members of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada; litigation in civil courts; the formation of rival Anglican churches, and overall loss of membership in North America at more than 20% since 2001.[18] The emergence of the Anglican Church in North America as an alternative structure, aligned with the international movement known as GAFCON, has constituted a deliberate attempt to recast the Communion’s polity.[19] The Anglican Covenant proposed an official avenue for healing of Communion breaches, but was sidelined on several counts. Rather than deepening unity, the Communion suffered further fragmentation, and the Communion’s Instruments appeared weakened by struggle and boycott.[20]

From 2012-2016, as litigation in North America began to be resolved, a new situation emerged. The Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Scottish Episcopal Church moved ahead on the most controversial point of recent dispute, same-sex marriage, more or less confirming their split with many Global South churches and their western counterparts. Divisions within the Church of England over similar matters widened as well, especially after the publication of the “Pilling Report” and “Shared Conversations.”[21] GAFCON has moved ever more visibly into the UK, putting in place the means to parallel North American divisions.[22] Smaller, non-GAFCON groups have also discussed splits.[23]

Amid the swirl, frameworks like “family” and “federation” floated round the edges as possible solutions to the Communion’s splintering, on the theory that looser union might dissolve the force of antagonistic difference.[24] But families and federations also depend on truth and fellowship, and so require agreements, sacrifice, and common decision-making.[25] In the prescient words of the bishops gathered at the 1920 Lambeth Conference, the ideal of diverse unity cannot be fulfilled if these groups are content to remain in separation from one another or to be joined together only in some vague federation. Their value for the fullness of Christian life, truth, and witness can only be recognized if they are united in the fellowship of one visible society whose members are bound together by the ties of a common faith, common sacraments, and a common ministry.[26]

Repeated calls for the development of the Communion’s structures follow this tradition. For instance, the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO), argued in its 2012 paper, “Towards a Symphony of Instruments,” that the Communion should want to behave more like a church. It should want to be more church-like. It should be moving in a churchward direction. While the autonomy of the churches of the Communion must be upheld, their interdependence calls them to act together as one in the fellowship of Christ’s Church. However, the experience of mutuality in the Spirit and in the means of grace that the Anglican Communion has stood for historically and still aspires to realize cannot be sustained without a structure. A relationship of communion requires a polity — that is to say a set of properly constituted structures or instruments to facilitate the common life that the Communion has freely agreed to, instruments that will enable the Communion to carry out its common tasks.[27]

To grasp the nettle of the Communion’s fracture is to recognize the unacceptability of the status quo for the sake of the Gospel and the vocation of the Church as witness to Christ.[28]

Just here, recent Communion events and their possible trajectory inspire hope. The unanimous decision of the Primates in January 2016 to “walk together,” the “requirement” of distance from the Episcopal Church, the evocation of “Catholic unity,” and Presiding Bishop Michael Curry’s declaration that the result was “fair” all pointed to a will to seek fellowship and the bonds that sustain it.[29] They gestured toward the long road of reconciliation and mutual service through the washing of feet.[30] This renewed resolve has not been diverted, despite some ambiguity around the conduct and results of ACC-16 in Lusaka, Zambia.[31]

Reflections from the Church of England’s House and College of Bishops in January 2017 bear similar signs of promise. While commending “no change to ecclesiastical law or to the Church of England’s existing doctrinal position on marriage and sexual relationships,” the bishops recognized a need for deeper theological teaching, animated by a desire to ‘walk together,’ to use the phrase from the Primates’ Meeting a year ago, in a way that is based on a common commitment to biblical truths but recognizes our continuing disagreement with one another. We want to maintain and indeed deepen the communion we currently have with one another across our serious disagreements. …

The unity of a particular church is not something that can be detached from the unity of the Universal Church. As well as continuing and deepening communion within the Church of England … we want to listen to and learn with other churches in and beyond the Anglican Communion, seeking together the mind of Christ. …

The unity of the Church cannot be detached from our common faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and therefore from the teaching through which that Gospel is faithfully passed on. In following this approach, the Church of England would be continuing to affirm unequivocally the doctrine of marriage set out in Canon B 30, and to be able to expound it with confidence as the Church’s teaching.[32]

Walking together, as the whole people of God, in service of the one Gospel, to the end of reconciliation: this is the Anglican vocation because it is the pattern of life in Christ. Since this is so, some deeper wrestling with our historical resistance to cooperative communion and its causes is needed, as a goad to understanding and obedience. Like the blind beggar near Jericho, we would cry out for mercy and sight. Receiving both by faith, we may follow unswervingly, glorifying God (see Luke 18:35-43).

3. The search for reconciliation: Elusive synodality

Many of the dynamics of contemporary Anglican division have analogues in the Communion’s past. The great church party disputes of the 19th century not only involved the Church of England in internal division and litigation; they deeply affected the missionary efforts of Anglicans, especially through the work of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the Church Missionary Society. Concerns over scriptural interpretation, doctrinal articulation, and liturgical form distracted and drained energies, and led to splits like the formation of the Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society in 1922. These divisions sometimes bore repercussions on the ground in areas far from England or America, as new Christians were formed partly through a prism of angry dispute. Meanwhile, global conflict and suffering in the 20th century shaped all churches, some of which Lambeth conferences and other meetings sought to address. The 1920 call to ecclesial reconciliation and reunion, to a renewed communion caught up in the Christian mission, was explicitly born of these terrible times.

Even so, the claim of the 1920 Lambeth Conference that no church is free to deny the truth or ignore the fellowship remained an unresolved touchstone for decision-making. What is it that defines, expresses, and constrains such ill-conceived liberty? And how would such an ordering framework, if it existed, properly shape the missionary vocation of the Church? The Lambeth Commission on Communion, which issued the extensive Windsor Report, was still struggling to answer these questions in 2004. They are questions with which the Covenant Design Group and IASCUFO wrestled in turn.[33]

The first Lambeth Conference in 1867 originally aimed for resolution and coherence of witness, and so was widely described as a “synod” and “general council,” as modern scholars like Paul Avis have emphasized.[34] Mostly because of legal obstacles, including impediments to holding a synod in Britain outside the purview of the Crown, this language was dropped, and the conference was formally described in ways that precluded synodical authority. Yet the search continued for some wider means of coherence. Bishop George Augustus Selwyn proposed a “tribunal” at the 1867 conference, an idea that would recur. Much of the last century’s struggle in Communion organization may be understood with reference to this unmet need.[35]

Lambeth conferences, for instance, continually wrestled with the diversification of prayer books, formational practices, and ecclesial forms. The bishops always enjoined legitimate diversity of peoples, nationalities, and cultures rooted in Anglican sensibilities (even at their most imperialistically chauvinistic): a church made up of equal races and kinds, not simply subservient to an English (later, Anglo-American) mold.[36] Coherent common witness through diverse peoples was the constant refrain. Generally shared forms of BCP worship and basic theological education meant that, for decades, this difficult balance was, if not reached, at least navigated, despite conflict. But the Carrington Report of the 1948 Lambeth Conference clearly reflected that, by the mid-20th century, rapid opening to national independence, locally driven by diverse political and cultural demands and ideologies, had proven destabilizing.

Lambeth 1920’s goal of communion as a microcosm of reconciled fellowship on behalf of the larger Church and world was still sought, but with growing uncertainty. The Communion’s corporate agency, mostly in the hands of the Lambeth Conference, saw its way forward by encouraging coordination and support of mission around the world, not least in the formation of the Advisory Council on Missionary Strategy.[37] The Anglican congresses of Minneapolis (1954) and Toronto (1963) were also aimed at this goal, giving rise to a formal Communion office and secretary. Finally, the Anglican Consultative Council was formed in 1971 to facilitate and advise inter-provincial communication and action with special reference to mission and ecumenism.[38]

Consultation and authority grew from the 1970s onwards, and the cascade of worrying disputes in this period were followed by several carefully crafted processes and reports, including The Virginia Report of the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission (1997) and The Windsor Report (2004).[39] After much reflection built on a mass of informing material, both reports concluded that the voluntary “principle of interdependence” characterizes the Communion as it shares resources and gifts as well as commonly held convictions, which are articulated in its formal gatherings.[40]

The Windsor Report proposed that such a principle should be sufficient and that no “new tier of formal process, or forum” needed inventing to handle divisive matters, like the election of controversial candidates as bishops.[41] The Communion rested on “the voluntary association of churches bound together in their love of the Lord of the Church, in their discipleship and in their common inheritance.”[42] Having said this, the report strongly suggested the development of nascent Anglican canon law principles (already almost “a fifth ‘instrument of unity’”) into a “common Anglican Covenant,” and it appended a draft.[43]

The Windsor Report ended its long reflections with what has become a well-known image: “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.”[44] The theme had come up earlier, in a bit of wordplay on the etymology of synod (Gk: synodos): “the churches of the Anglican Communion, if that Communion is to mean anything at all, are obliged to move together, to walk together in synodality.”[45] The report struggled with the exact meaning of the term, but its suggestiveness was left unexplored.

After 2004, follow-up to the Lambeth Commission’s recommendations proved difficult due to now-embedded distrust, across the spectrum, of any agency responsible for pursuing the recommendations. Even so, the Primates’ Meeting seemed a plausible candidate, given repeated calls by the Lambeth Conference for the meeting’s “enhanced authority” to resolve neuralgic matters. The Lambeth Commission’s own brief originated from the primates’ having taken up, in their September 2003 meeting in London, the “‘enhanced responsibility’ entrusted to us by successive Lambeth Conferences.”[46]

Along this line, the 2007 Dar es Salaam Primates’ Meeting proposed a plan for dealing with the fall-out of splits and cross-border interventions in North America as well as the ambiguity of the Episcopal Church’s response to requests regarding its teaching and practice. The Episcopal Church should show its “readiness” to follow the recommendations of The Windsor Report, cross-border interventions from other provinces should cease, and pastoral schemes could “provide individuals and congregations alienated from the Episcopal Church with adequate space to flourish within the life of that church in the period leading up to the conclusion of the Covenant Process.”[47] None of these materialized save in tentative and desultory ways, mostly through the offices of Canterbury, who was himself coming under attack from various wings of the Communion. A Panel of Reference and Pastoral Visitors attempted to provide a kind of consultative and mediating approach to ecclesial conflicts in a way that avoided juridical demands. In the face of deep antagonism, often bound up with civil litigation, these efforts proved too little — the more as a changing landscape of civil law surrounding sexual expression, and finally same-sex unions and marriage, appeared in many countries. Disputes formerly located in Christian debate were now placed in secular spheres of judicial and legislative decision, making private conscience the familiar refuge from frustrated ecclesial counsel.

The Covenant process

One Windsor Report recommendation carried on for several years: the development of an Anglican Covenant. The Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Mission and Evangelism gave an early response in 2005, proposing a sort of covenant based on “Communion in Mission.”[48] In a way, the nine points of mission-oriented covenant built on previous Anglican discussions and values. Its scope remained ecclesiologically weak, however, offering little sense of how either “communion” or “mission” could transform broken relations — and no recognition of the history of frustrating effects on otherwise fruitful missionary labors wrought by ecclesial disarray.

Canterbury’s proposal was different: it aimed at something that could be formally assented to by provinces (and perhaps dioceses) and provide a framework of accountability and adjudication for disputes. After the Joint Standing Committee of the ACC and Primates’ Meeting commissioned a study paper on the topic, “Towards an Anglican Covenant” (2005),[49] it asked Archbishop Rowan Williams to appoint a Design Group, drawn from provincial nominations. The group met four times and produced three drafts, engaging formal responses to the work as it went along.[50] The collated responses included those deliberately gathered from bishops at the 2008 Lambeth Conference. The original draft framed itself substantively around submissions from the Global South primates, Australia, and the Church of England, while subsequent drafts accommodated a range of material received from the Communion during the process. Because of the boycott of the 2008 Lambeth Conference by many in the Global South, the Design Group lacked direct responses from the missing bishops, though some informal reactions were received, often with reference to GAFCON.

The early draft of the Covenant had structured itself into four sections, with the first three covering theological and mission-related commitments and an outline of the current “Instruments of Communion” in their shape and purpose. The fourth section shifted gears to procedural matters, proposing a framework for adoption and for sorting out disputes among covenanting partners. From the start the first three sections were broadly accepted, but debate and often strident disagreement arose about the fourth. The various drafts tried to respond to these, moving from an initial designation of the Primates’ Meeting as final adjudicator to the Joint Standing Committee. After the contentious 2009 ACC meeting, which accepted the first three sections but sent the last to a working party (that did not include the whole Design Group) for light revisions, the Covenant in its final form was sent to the Communion’s provinces for consideration and adoption. By this time, due to broad suspicion of both the ACC and the Primates’ Meeting, the joint Standing Committee came to be seen by some of its members as too compromised to carry credibly the tasks with which the final Covenant text entrusted it.

Since the formal dissemination of the Covenant, ten provinces have adopted it, one has accepted only the first three sections, one has rejected it wholly, and many either deliberately delayed consideration or expressed reservations.[51] The first three sections of the Covenant appear broadly acceptable, but to many stand in stark contrast to the juridical concerns of section four.

In the end, as in the beginning, a basic problem sits at the heart of our common history. Having never fulfilled the impulse for consultative decision-making when actual needs arose, the Anglican Communion has constantly fallen back upon assertions of independence, rebutted by calls for local imposition of order, without finding another way.

Here, The Windsor Report’s image of synodality — literally, “walking together” — plants a seed that bears watering; the Lord, should he wish, will give the growth (1 Cor. 3:6). Despite its critical importance, the Covenant text never mentions synodality, leaving interdependence and communion settled in an almost static way. The Covenant tends to see communion as simply given, a perspective that, while not wrong, risks accepting the status quo without the apostolic challenge of repentance, change, and self-giving that reconciling mission in Christ embodies (see 2 Cor. 5:18-20). By contrast, synodality involves decisions to move together — neither permissively nor aimlessly but directionally and transformatively. This central feature of common decision and action marks the missionary character of synods.

The 1998 ARCIC agreed statement, The Gift of Authority, fruitfully employs synodality as a key element of communion among Christians. As bishops and the faithful live out together their eucharistic life and mission, the decisions they work through in council order their path in service of Christ. The process as a whole is “synodical” as all “walk together,” and along this way communion is embodied. The Gift of Authority did not hesitate to describe the Anglican Instruments of Communion as “instruments of synodality,” but noted that Anglicans were still searching for the means by which wider decision-making, served by these instruments, could take place.[52] The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Primates’ Meeting are servants for a work that has not yet fully matured. In comparison with this vision, which originally motivated the Lambeth Conference, the current fourth section of the Covenant amounts to a juridical placeholder for a living process of discernment and decision that may form the basis of active mission in the world. Rather than reactivity to the inevitable challenges of communion, the Church and the churches need gracious ways and means of response to God’s call.

IV. Intensified communion and synodical walking together

In the face of current challenges in the Anglican Communion, these elements of vocation, discernment, and decision need attention. The search for a form of shared synodality coheres with our past hopes and answers the missionary call of Anglicanism as a worldwide servant of Christian unity.

“Unity in diversity” has long served as a shorthand for mission among Anglicans, incorporating a rich theology of the nations, and the phrase was used already in the great 1894 Anglican Missionary Conference in London. The bishops assembled in 1920 took note of these two poles in relation to Christian unity: “It is through a rich diversity of life and devotion that the unity of the whole fellowship will be fulfilled.”[53] The tensions embedded in the concept were never resolved, however, and have only now had to be confronted. The related ecumenical model of “reconciled diversity” that emerged in the 1970s was meant to address these tensions in the context of wider ecclesial division that had taken root over centuries.[54] Rather than a static live-and-let-live approach to ecclesial difference, the notion of reconciled diversity has had in view formal acts of deliberate reconciliation that could lead to mutual recognitions of not only sacrament and ministry but also differing churches themselves as authentic servants of the Gospel.

In more substantive versions, reconciled diversity is viewed as a “deepening process, rather than as simply a declared status.”[55] Churches share what they can by consulting, gathering, and listening. Whether actual common decision-making beyond these fundamental steps can take place is less clear. Some have hoped that this way of relating could properly describe the ideal of Anglicanism’s own family of churches. There is some merit to the suggestion, given the impasses of current antagonisms. Yet the issue of accountability hovers over the model, and ecumenical rapprochement depends on mutual accountability as much as does any stable, let alone deepening, relationship. The idea of reconciled diversity, furthermore, was fashioned for separated churches rather than for communion itself; it marks a way forward in the face of brokenness rather than an expression of wholeness. Unity is being grasped after rather than received and embraced. Within the wounded communion of Anglicans, bound to the wounded Body of Christ, reconciled diversity should be seen as a necessary orientation, aiming at the goal, but not as a complete ecclesial identity.

Such a perspective permits us to imagine new possibilities built on the foundation of the Covenant already so carefully laid. Archbishop Williams raised the possibility of modes of relation in the Communion on the basis of “intensification”: it was his own way of describing the act that might take place among member churches willing to adopt the Covenant.[56] The final Covenant text appropriated the notion when it spoke of “the importance of renewing in a solemn way our commitment to one another, and to the common understanding of faith and order we have received, so that the bonds of affection which hold us together may be re-affirmed and intensified.”[57] That intensification, we believe, is in fact the commitment to synodality mentioned so many times in the past 150 years, lately enshrined in ecumenical dialogues: churches walking together in a form of directional discernment and decision-making, the very commitment to which constitutes a primary missionary act in the world.

Intensification implies a relationship already given and embraced, now taken to another level; synodality is built on the framework of diverse churches whose reconciling purposes have, through time, given rise to a movement forward to common decision-making and coherent action. Applied to the Anglican Communion as presently constituted — all parties and provinces and diverse sensibilities — we propose both (1) a single reconciled mission of Anglicans “on the way to synodality” and (2) synodality itself. The former road or way, traversed by all together, would incorporate a continuum of ecclesial life and mission, including fundamental disagreements that impair communion.[58] The latter synod would function as a perennial way station for those seeking more intense forms of relationship in faith, order, and mission, and would include mutually accountable decision-making. All together, we could speak of a single communion of Anglicans extended in an ordered diversity[59] that protects the conscientious discernment and freedom of all its members — both those who hope for looser forms of affiliation and those seeking more intimate ties.

Practically speaking, we envision several stages or stations along this common road. The Communion’s current structures and instruments should remain in place for all, to articulate our shared faith in service of common mission, with no ready juridical means or powers of coercion, as has traditionally been the case. To be sure, this fundamental framework of Communion, having been sorely weakened, must be invested with renewed trust and good will. Just here, sections 1-3 of the Anglican Covenant, broadly agreed upon by all, conveniently articulate the urgent work of reconciliation-in-mission to which all Anglicans are called. In turn, those seeking a synodical walking together may, in effect, refashion an appropriate section 4, no longer constructed as a means of discipline but setting forth the way of full communion for those who would walk it. Henceforth, a regular synod of Anglican churches should articulate the voluntary basis for common work in doctrinal, liturgical, and ecumenical mission, that is, the “faith and order” of the Anglican Communion.

In this way, the common road of Anglican communion would include several stages:

1. All provinces will begin a time-limited process, perhaps no more than two or three years, of agreeing to sections 1-3 of the current Covenant. These three sections reflect our Communion’s broadly held commitments. Formally embraced, they can become the basis for common mission going forward.

2. Following adoption of sections 1-3, those provinces desirous of walking together into synodical life should gather in a renewed “congress,” with its three-member representation of bishop, priest, and layperson. This congress will, in its initial gathering, constitute a new synod within the Communion. Once constituted, the synod will advance along the road of common decision-making as led by God, having as its first priority the articulation of principles of evangelical accountability and catholic structure to which Anglicans may voluntarily commit themselves.

3. Individual dioceses and parishes within divided member churches must be permitted to embrace synodical communion, according to the principle of freedom in Christ (Gal. 5:1). Those who so chose could be represented at the synodical congress in the form of a common grouping.

This process will yield, at once, a more flexible and more articulated Anglican Communion. All member churches of the Communion will, on the basis of acceptance of the Covenant’s first three sections, continue to participate in the broader Instruments of Communion as they currently function. Some churches, and some dioceses and parishes of other churches, will walk together in synod — by consulting, discerning, deciding, and acting together according to mutual standards of accountability in Christ, in deference to a common vision.

Much as we seek to do in our ecumenical relationships when they function well, this model requires patience and freedom both between and within churches, so that diverse commitments can coexist and overlap on the way, pray God, to full, visible unity.[60] In the wise words of one long-time student of ecumenism:

We have decidedly to reject… relativism in relation to doctrine and creedal statements…. Yet we should nonetheless try — without being indifferent — to find a new patience with each other and for each other in this sphere; a new capacity to permit things and people who are different; a new readiness to distinguish the different levels of unity, so as to realize those elements of unity that are now possible and to leave what is not now possible in the sphere of pluralism, which can also have a positive significance. Through such divisions that cannot at present be overcome, we can time and again be a reminder to each other and bring one another to search our consciences; we very often need the call of this difference that cannot for the present be overcome so as to be purified by the objections and called back from one-sided developments.[61]

The model presumes our common baptism and common faith, bonds of communion that we dare not shirk (see 1 Cor. 12:21), while at the same time frankly acknowledging that a fullness of faith and order is not, at this point, possible.[62]

Along the common road of Anglican communion, the two proposed stages or stations allow for maximal freedom in Christ. (1) All Anglican churches assenting to sections 1-3 of the Covenant can be assured that they share the creedal faith embodied in baptism, even as some will doubtless disagree on matters others deem fundamental. While such disagreements will sometimes impair communion, a generous commitment to counsel, learning, and conversion-in-relationship may continually renew a spirit of humble charity. This is a realistic and hopeful form of walking together. (2) At the same time, those Anglican churches, dioceses, and parishes prepared to give themselves over to a fuller and more intense form of synodality will be enabled to do so. Questions of doctrine, discipline, and mission may be resolved by the authority of a larger council and impairments overcome. These churches will move forward together in a special way, where hope takes the form of new self-offering for the sake of the wider Church Catholic.

If adopted, the model can resolve and regularize, in peace and mutual recognition — in, that is, reconciled diversity — our painful conflicts of the past 20 years. At the same time, it can enable a transformation of the Anglican Communion as a collocation of Christians and churches that may be found, at various points, both together and at different places along the same road; Christians and churches of sometimes diverse discernments who respect and love one another enough to protect the freedom of all. Were this possible, the Anglican Communion would take a great step toward achieving its long-cherished call to solicit and serve the single unity of the one Church of Christ as a missionary gathering of the peoples of the world, convened not by human initiative but by the power of the Holy Spirit.[63]

V. Conclusion

The realities of an articulated communion within the missionary life of Anglicanism are deeply rooted, as we have noted, and have included overlapping jurisdictions, due to diverse missionary agencies and for the sake of flexibility in building up local work. Lambeth conferences recognized these realities as less than ideal, but accepted them as necessary since they were both the result and the instrument of missionary energies that could not be hampered by precise rules. On the ground, these flexible, often overlapping structures were less narrowly viewed. Even today, we have made room for distinct areas of culturally-defined, non-geographical episcopal supervision that overlap existing jurisdictions, as in the Canadian north among indigenous peoples or in the Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia. Arguably, the press to rationalize the Communion’s ecclesial structures into distinctly and autonomously ordered territorial provinces has sometimes short-circuited this missionary work. An articulated Communion — diverse in extended membership, with a commitment to synodical witness — holds enormous promise for resolving long-standing tensions, unblocking missionary currents, and restoring ecumenical bridges.

• Such a diversified Communion may grant its churches fundamental freedom or autonomy in recognized mission. This has long been seen as an Anglican vocation, given in the Holy Spirit: Anglicans must remain free to fan the flames of ecclesial virtue wherever they may be found, lest they be smothered.

• Just so, Anglican freedom must likewise permit the embrace of ecclesial intensification for those so called. Many Anglican churches have long desired a fullness of synodical life only to see it stymied by conflict and compulsion. Basic choices, and the permission of multiple paths, will enable clarity of purpose for all.

• Finally, synodical communion will make possible at last a representative Anglican voice in the larger ecumenical ministry to which we have long committed ourselves.

The somewhat unexpected re-gathering in 2016 of Anglican Primates issued in words of promise for reconciliation, as we have noted: “Over the past week the unanimous decision of the Primates was to walk together, however painful this is, and despite our differences, as a deep expression of our unity in the body of Christ. We looked at what that meant in practical terms.”[64] In part what it seemed to mean was a set of tentative steps involving common faith and order that took the form of articulated diversity and difference, whereby some churches would embrace these aspects of Communion counsel while others, by their own option, would not. The acceptance of this outcome by the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, despite “disappointment,” was striking: “This is the position: because we differ on a core doctrine, it would not be seen as appropriate for us to represent the Anglican Communion in ecumenical / interfaith leadership / ambassadorial relationships. Okay, that’s fair.”[65]

Fairness, in this tentative context, constitutes an inkling of the reoriented vision that a vigorous walking together implies, by the grace of God. Should the Anglican Communion countenance such a development for its own preservation and flourishing, profound patience, charity, and creativity will be required of all churches and parties for the wise negotiation of an array of organizational and canonical questions. This work must be possible for Christians determined to follow and be formed by our Lord “who came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45); who issued the new commandment that we love one another, so that everyone may know we are his disciples (John 13:34-35). And it should be possible for Anglicans who have long defended ecclesial provisionality, in the sure expectation that the Lord will prepare the way for fuller forms in his own good time. Reconciled diversity makes sense in this context, in and through the single act of reconciliation by the one who bids us follow him (Matt. 16:24). Because synodality seeks the dynamism of life with Christ, it invites the power of persuasion in Christ’s Spirit, who will move the Body of the faithful to fullness of communion, wherein all may be one (John 17:21).

Appendix: Key Terms

Reconciled diversity

Reconciled diversity is a concept that has had wide currency in both church and political spheres in the last 50 years. Nations made up of diverse groups — culturally, linguistically, ethnically —  have come to realize that nation-building cannot work if it means suppressing this diversity or demanding uniformity of culture, language, and power groups. Civil unrest and even civil war has been the result of seeking such uniformity. Instead, many countries have realized that the way to peace and development requires frameworks of common life that respect and permit distinct cultures, languages, and peoples to flourish even while these groups work together for the common good.

This political idea, still pursued in many nations, has been taken up by churches in their efforts at discovering the unity in Christ that so often seems to be obscured by division. After centuries of separation, most churches recognize today that unity — among Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and many Protestant groups — cannot mean a new uniformity of form and practice; ministries, liturgies, theologies, and habits of common life are so diverse among Christians that, like peoples within a single nation, many distinctives cannot be suppressed without denying fundamental identities in Christ. Both nations and churches can, however, find ways of living in common that go beyond mutual respect to embody shared fundamental commitments, ways of life, and forms of decision-making.

The idea of reconciled diversity among Christians reflects this calling, described in terms of the Gospel’s work in bringing together distinct persons and people in a new common life, without destroying the gifts that make each person or group particular before God. The calling itself remains the most urgent contemporary challenge to the churches today. The Anglican Communion, which is both diverse and rooted in a missionary commitment to reconciliation of all things in Christ, has a special vocation to witness to an embodied reconciled diversity as gift for all Christians and nations. This sense of Anglican vocation has been central to our identity since at least the great Lambeth Conference of 1920.

Synod

The word synod is another word for council. In the early Church the two words were often used as synonyms for the assemblies, great and small, of bishops and other church representatives that might meet to make decisions about teaching and order. In English, the two words have also been used interchangeably within Anglicanism since the 16th century. But the words themselves have slightly different emphases. Council comes from the Latin and designates a meeting where people have been “called” together, usually by some authority. Synod is originally a Greek word and means a “coming together,” or traveling along the same road (syn meaning “together,” and odos meaning “road”).

The word synod has, in recent theology, been revived partly because of this sense that church assemblies that make decisions are at best shared activities, aimed at a common journey through the world and to God. Synods are not so much about exercising authority, although they must do that; common decision-making is primarily about bringing people together and moving them along in mission. Roman Catholics and Anglicans have recently used this idea of synodality to describe the purpose of Christian unity in a concrete manner: unity is less about affections than about the Church in her diversity coming together in formal ways to decide important matters, so that the Gospel of Christ can be lived and shared. Synods reconcile diversity.

Anglicans have made use of the idea more particularly when, since The Windsor Report (2004), we have described our hopes as a Communion in terms of “walking together.” What the Communion has not yet been able to accomplish is to embody this hope in an actual synodical form of life: common and authoritative decision-making. Many had hoped that the first Lambeth Conference in 1867 would be such a synod, but because of legal issues in England especially, that hope was never fulfilled. The Communion continues to search for a formal way of stable, authoritative, mission-oriented walking together or synodality, which is the common way of Christ.

Voluntary principle of interdependence

The Anglican Communion is formally structured according to two principles. The first is known as the voluntary principle and the second as the principle of interdependence. Each derives from an early Anglican commitment to a way of life that is decided in common (“in synod”), rather than determined by laws enacted and enforced from a central office or leader. Not only are Anglican churches around the world legally independent from one another, but within each provincial, national, and local church decision-making is “corporate,” engaging through representatives the contributions of the entire body of Christ in that place.

The voluntary principle was always a missionary principle: it referred to the way that mission is done by Christians, not church offices, supported by Christian calling and motivation rather than church law. The Anglican Communion grew mostly through the work of voluntary missionary societies like the SPG and CMS, whose work was organized outside of church hierarchy or bureaucracy and enacted by individuals who gave of themselves, supported by private resources. This missionary voluntary principle is informed by the work of the Spirit and accomplished by Christian self-sacrifice, and the principle has extended to the Communion’s general sense of how its life is to be led.

The principle of interdependence, a concept made well-known at the 1963 Anglican Congress in Toronto (see “Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence,” available online), was a way of emphasizing the mutually sacrificial aspect of voluntary mission. As Christians give of themselves to each other, impelled by the Spirit of Christ, they give away aspects of autonomy and the voluntary becomes communion with others. This was a great theme of The Windsor Report.

Taken together, we can speak of the voluntary principle of interdependence within Anglicanism as a mission-oriented movement of freely offered selves and churches, one to another, for the sake of the Gospel. This reflects Paul’s exhortation to mutual submission in Ephesians 5:21. In terms of church life, it points to the work of synodality, freely making decisions together so as to walk together with Christ.

Intensified relationships

In his first Lambeth Conference address of 2008, Archbishop Rowan Williams used the language of intensification to describe the relationship of those Anglican churches that might covenant with one another. Those who adopted the Anglican Covenant, he said, would not abandon their relationship with those churches that chose not to adopt the Covenant, however they would now be in an “intensified” relationship with those churches that did adopt the Covenant, engaged in common decision-making based on common commitments. The final text of the Anglican Communion Covenant appropriated the notion (see Introduction §5). The term was borrowed from ecumenical discussions between Anglicans and Roman Catholics, who had suggested that progress in unity could be pursued in stages. Each stage would represent a more intensified relationship between the two churches — for instance, first sharing of consultation, then sharing liturgical texts, then teaching and mission, and finally bishops and higher authorities sharing common witness and life.

The idea of walking together in synodality picks up this idea of stages of intensification of relationship. Not every church of the Communion is ready or willing to walk together at the same pace. Adopting sections 1-3 of the Anglican Covenant could constitute one stage of intensification. Some churches from this group might wish to walk to another stage of intensification by committing themselves to a joint congress to frame a common synod on matters of doctrine and discipline. Finally, among these, some might desire to be a part of an ongoing synod in the heart of the Communion, and this would present yet another stage of intensifying relationship. Walking together in this way means moving into deepening or more intense relationship, at varying paces, while retaining broader relationships of Christian commitment with all.

[1] LC 1920, “Appeal to all Christian people” (Resolution 9.I), published in many places, including Resolutions of the Twelve Lambeth Conferences 1867-1988, ed. by Roger Coleman (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1992), pp. 45-48, at 46.

[2] Ibid., pp. 10-11, emphasis added.

[3] LC 1920, “Encyclical Letter,” as ch. XXII (Appendix) in The Six Lambeth Conferences, 1867-1920, ed. Randall Thomas Davidson (London: SPCK, 1929), pp. 9-23, at 12.

[4] Ibid., p. 13.

[5] Ibid., pp. 9, 11, 20. See, especially, p. 20: “Before either peace or freedom can be established in security and joy, the fires of brother-love must leap up in the hearts of the nations. This great change requires a miracle, but it is a change that can be wrought by the one spirit of fellowship, which is the Spirit of God. … The conversion of the nations is the only real hope for the world.”

[6] Ibid. p. 12.

[7] Ibid., p. 14. The Windsor Report of 2004 placed the first of these sentences at the heart of its argument, quoting them in full twice — at §86 and in the earlier footnote 31 of §74; available online: http://www.anglicancommunion.org/media/68225/windsor2004full.pdf.

[8] See ARCIC II, Church as Communion, §18: “The Church as communion of believers with God and with each other is a sign of the new humanity God is creating and a pledge of the continuing work of the Holy Spirit. Its vocation is to embody and reveal the redemptive power of the Gospel, signifying reconciliation received through faith and participation in the new life in Christ. The Church is the sign of what God has done in Christ, is continuing to do in those who serve him, and wills to do for all humanity. It is the sign of God’s abiding presence, and of his eternal faithfulness to his promises, for in it Christ is ever present and active through the Spirit. It is the community where the redemptive work of Jesus Christ has been recognized and received, and is therefore being made known to the world. Because Christ has overcome all the barriers of division created by human sin, it is the mission of the Church as God’s servant to enter into the struggle to end those divisions (cf. Eph. 2:14-18; 5:1-2).” Available online: http://www.anglicancommunion.org/media/105242/ARCIC_II_The_Church_as_Communion.pdf

[9] International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity and Mission (IARCCUM), Growing Together in Unity and Mission §17. Available online: https://iarccum.org/doc/?d=32.

[10] Ibid. §§6-7; cf. §135.

[11] Colin Podmore, “Anglican Communion: Idea, name, and identity,” in Aspects of Anglican Identity (London: Church House Publishing, 2005), pp. 26-41, traces the first emergence of the term “Anglican Communion” to the writing of Horatio Southgate, “the Missionary Bishop in the Dominions and Dependencies of the Sultan of Turkey” (p. 36).

[12] And not simply of conflict, “controversy,” “challenge,” or “pastoral issues,” as the narrative is sometimes told. See, e.g., the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order, “Towards a Symphony of Instruments” (Anglican Consultative Council, 2015), 2.1.1-4, pp. 19-20; 4.3.2-5, pp. 51-53. The emergence of “concerns” is an outgrowth of prior missionary effort and common life.

[13] LC 1920, Resolution 9.V (Resolutions of the Twelve Lambeth Conferences 1867-1988, ed. Coleman, p. 47).

[14] See Ephraim Radner, “The Anglican Communion and the 20th Century,” in Oxford History of Anglicanism, vol. IV: Global Western Anglicanism: 1914-Present, ed. Jeremy Morris (Oxford: Oxford UP, forthcoming). Cf. the chapters by Doe, Goddard, LeMarquand, and Thompson in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the Anglican Communion, ed. Markham et al. (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).

[15] LC 1948, Report IV: “The Anglican Communion,” available in The Lambeth Conferences (1867-1948) (London: SPCK, 1948), pp. 81-94.

[16] “The Second Trumpet from the South” (Kuala Lumpur, Feb. 10-15, 1997), preface and 6. Available online at Global South Anglican: http://www.globalsouthanglican.org/index.php/blog/comments/second_trumpet_from_2nd_anglican_encounter_in_the_south_kuala_lumpur_10_15

[17] See David Goodhew, Growth and Decline in the Anglican Communion: 1980 to the Present (New York and London: Routledge, 2016) for more details.

[18] From 2001 to 2014, the Episcopal Church has lost 22.8% of its members: see Jeremy Bonner, “The United States of America,” in Growth and Decline in the Anglican Communion, ed. Goodhew; Neal Michell, “New TEC statistics, What do these numbers say?” Covenant (Nov. 6, 2015); available online: http://livingchurch.org/covenant/2015/11/06/new-tec-statistics-what-do-these-numbers-say/; and the latest numbers released by the Episcopal Church, here: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/files/2014_table_of_statistics_english_0.pdf. It is difficult to calculate who went where; as Bonner notes, most seem to have disappeared. About 500,000 total left between 2000-2015, but the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) still reports only around 112,000 members. Bonner also notes the rise of secularism and general decline of the mainline, which have most negatively impacted the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the United Church of Christ. For the Anglican Church of Canada, membership as of 2007 (the last year for which numbers are available) was 545,957, marking a loss of 95,888 members since 2001 — a steep 14% decline over six years; see here: http://www.anglican.ca/ask/faq/number-of-anglicans/. The Anglican Network in Canada, part of ACNA, only reports 6,500 members.

[19] GAFCON declared itself “an important and effective instrument of Communion” in the Nairobi Communiqué of 2013, and said it “will carefully consider working beyond existing structures” to fulfil the Christian missionary calling. See also the “Nairobi commitment,” 4 and 5 within the same communiqué. Cf. “Statement on the Global Anglican Future” (2008): “[W]e do not accept that Anglican identity is determined necessarily through recognition by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Building on the above doctrinal foundation of Anglican identity [i.e. common Anglican formularies], we hereby publish the Jerusalem Declaration as the basis of our fellowship.” See Jerusalem Declaration 11, which recognizes only “the orders and jurisdiction of those Anglicans who uphold orthodox faith and practice.”

[20] See “Editorial: Ecclesiology in the Subjunctive,” The Living Church (Feb. 27, 2011), pp. 23-24; online at: http://bit.ly/2n4p3WF.

[21] See, e.g., Andrew Goddard, “Divisions Deepen in Pilling” (Dec. 4, 2013); available online: http://www.livingchurch.org/divisions-deepen-pilling.

[22] See GAFCON 2’s Nairobi communiqué (2013), sponsoring the Anglican Mission in England, online at: https://www.gafcon.org/news/nairobi-communique-and-commitment; and the GAFCON Primates Council Communiqué (Apr. 22, 2016), announcing English staff for expansion in the wake of ACC-16, online at: https://www.gafcon.org/news/nairobi-communique-2016.

[23] John Bingham, “Church of England parishes consider first step to break away over sexuality,” Telegraph (Aug. 28 2016); online at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/28/church-of-england-parishes-consider-first-step-to-break-away-ove/

[24] British media reported that Archbishop Justin Welby sought such a federation. See Daniel Dombey, “Anglicans seek looser federation to avoid church schism,” Financial Times (Sep. 17, 2015); available online: https://www.ft.com/content/4dae61f4-5d28-11e5-a28b-50226830d644

[25] See Ephraim Radner, “Reaffirming Communion: An Act of Hope,” First Things (Jan. 18, 2016); available online: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/01/reaffirming-communion-an-act-of-hope.

[26] LC 1920, “Encyclical Letter” (The Six Lambeth Conferences, 1867-1920, ed. Davidson, p. 12).

[27] IASCUFO, “Towards a Symphony of Instruments,” I.13-14, pp. 9-10.

[28] See Michael Ramsey, The Gospel and the Catholic Church, 2nd edn. (1956, 1990; reissued by Hendrickson, 2009), passim.

[29] Primates’ Meeting communiqué, “Walking Together in the Service of God in the World” (Jan. 15, 2016); available online: http://www.primates2016.org/articles/2016/01/15/communique-primates/; Gavin Drake, “Presiding Bishop Michael Curry speaks on Primates’ statement,” ACNS (Feb. 15, 2016); available online: http://www.anglicannews.org/news/2016/02/presiding-bishop-michael-curry-speaks-on-primates-statement.aspx

[30] Archbishop of Canterbury, “Presidential Address to General Synod” (Feb. 15, 2016); available online: http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/5669/archbishop-reflects-on-primates-meeting-in-synod-address-video. Cf. Neil Dhingra, “Justin Welby, liturgy, and orthodoxy in the Anglican future,” Covenant (Mar. 2, 2016); available online: http://livingchurch.org/covenant/2016/03/02/justin-welby-liturgy-and-the-anglican-communions-future-orthodoxy/

[31] Mark Michael, “‘The consequences stand,’” The Living Church (Apr. 19, 2016); available online: http://livingchurch.org/welby-consequences-stand; Zachary Guiliano, “Narratives and counternarratives: the case of ACC-16,” Covenant (Apr. 19, 2016); available online: http://livingchurch.org/covenant/2016/04/19/narratives-and-counter-narratives-the-case-of-acc-16/; Archbishop Justin Welby, “Holding together in diversity” (Apr. 29, 2016); available online: http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/5714/holding-together-in-diversity-archbishop-justin-on-the-acc-meeting-in-lusaka; Outgoing ACC Standing Committee, “Walking together: a clarification,” (May 6, 2016); available online: http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2016/05/06/acc-neither-endorsed-nor-affirmed-primates-action-six-outgoing-members-say/; Gavin Drake, “Secretary General rejects criticism over Walking Together resolution,” (May 8, 2016); available online: http://www.anglicannews.org/news/2016/05/secretary-general-rejects-criticism-over-walking-together-resolution.aspx.

[32] GS 2055, “Marriage and Same Sex Relationships after the Shared Conversations: A Report from the House of Bishops,” 2.59, 2.60, 2.61; cf. 1.23, 2.26.

[33] See “Towards a Symphony of Instruments,” I.15-21, pp. 11-16; and Paul Avis’s preparation in IASCUFO’s report received at ACC-16, “Mission Shaped Communion.” Available online: http://www.anglicancommunion.org/media/219357/A4-UFO-Reports.pdf

[34] Avis’s paper to the Lambeth Commission made this clear: “Anglican Conciliarity: History, Theology and Practice”; available online: http://www.anglicancommunion.org/media/100345/The-Lambeth-Commission-on-Communion.pdf. He has since pursued numerous related avenues in several books. Cf. Colin Podmore, “Two Streams Mingling: The American Episcopal Church in the Anglican Communion,” Journal of Anglican Studies 9/1 (2011), pp. 12-37, at 29-33.

[35] See Ephraim Radner, “The World is Waiting for Holiness” in Radner and Turner, The Fate of Communion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006). Cf. idem., A Brutal Unity: The Spiritual Politics of the Christian Church (Waco: Baylor, 2012), chs. 4-6.

[36] See Alan M. G. Stephenson, Anglicanism and the Lambeth Conferences (London: SPCK, 1978). Cf. William Reed Huntington, The Church-Idea: An Essay Towards Unity (Harrisburg: Morehouse, 2002 [1870]).

[37] LC 1948, resolution 80 (Resolutions of the Twelve Lambeth Conferences 1867-1988, ed. Coleman, p. 112).

[38] See LC 1968, resolution 69.

[39] Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission, The Virginia Report (Anglican Consultative Council, 1997); available online: http://www.anglicancommunion.org/media/150889/report-1.pdf.

[40] Compare Virginia Report 3.14-20, 3.24-3.54, 4, and 5.3, with Windsor Report §§29.1, 122, and 143. Interdependence had been forged from the Communion’s missionary work and served as centerpiece for the Toronto Anglican Congress (1963): see “Mutuality and Interdependence in the Body of Christ,” available online: http://anglicanhistory.org/canada/toronto_mutual1963.html. Unity, and “corporate obedience,” were to signal the Communion’s “coming of age” (p. 1).

[41] Windsor Report §132.

[42] Ibid. §120.

[43] See Windsor Report §§114, 117-119. As the report notes, the idea of “canon law principles” acting as a fifth instrument emerged in the 2002 Primates’ Meeting in Canterbury, after earlier considerations at Kanuga in 2001 and the launch of the Consultation of Anglican Communion Legal Advisers; see online: http://www.anglicannews.org/news/2002/04/report-of-the-meeting-of-primates-of-the-anglican-communion.aspx

[44] Ibid. §157.

[45] Ibid. §66. See also, Appendix I.5 an I.8 on implications of “enhanced” synodality.

[46] See LC 1978, res. 11; LC 1988, res. 18.2a; and LC 1998, res. III.6. Cf. Drexel Gomez and Maurice Sinclair, To Mend the Net (Ekklesia, 2001). The Virginia Report 3.50 noted that the issue remained to be explored in a satisfactory way. Cf. The Windsor Report, Appendix I.5. Archbishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon suggested a series of developments of the instruments of communion in 2013: see “Keep Canterbury Relevant” (Oct 11, 2013; http://livingchurch.org/keep-canterbury-relevant).

[47] Communiqué of the Primates’ Meeting (Dar es Salaam, 2007), §§31-33.

[48] http://www.anglican.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Covenant-for-Communion-in-Mission-2005.pdf

[49] http://www.anglicancommunion.org/media/100663/Towards-an-Anglican-Covenant.pdf

[50] See the relevant page of the Anglican Communion site for a fuller account of the history and the various draft documents and commentaries: http://www.anglicancommunion.org/identity/doctrine/covenant.aspx

[51] 10 church synods accepted it wholly: the Episcopal Church of South Sudan and Sudan; the Anglican Church of Southern Africa; Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui; the Church of Ireland; La Iglesia Anglicana de Mexico; the Church of the Province of Myanmar; the Church in the Provinces of the West Indies; the Church of the Province of South East Asia; the Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea; Iglesia Anglicana del Cono Sur de America. The Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia accepted only sections 1-3. The Scottish Episcopal Church rejected it. Two synods did not accept it but expressed commitment to the Communion: the Anglican Church of Australia (2013) and the Episcopal Church (2009). 23 provinces have not finished considering it. The inability of the Covenant to be approved by the Church of England’s General Synod, due to its narrow rejection in diocesan synods, frustrated the process globally. Two provinces noted their willingness to accept sections 1-3 but did not do so: the Anglican Church of Korea and the Church of the Province of Melanesia. Nippon Sei Ko Kai did not adopt any resolution, due to argument over section 4. The Covenant has not been considered by Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya, Burundi, Central Africa, Congo, or Ceylon.

[52] See similarly IASCUFO’s “Towards a Symphony” and its recent ACC-16 submission.

[53] LC 1920, “Appeal to all Christian people” (Resolution 9.IV).

[54] Reconciled diversity arose variously in Faith and Order, inter-Protestant, and Lutheran-Roman Catholic discussions. See Yves Congar, Diversités et communion (Paris: Cerf, 1982), pp. 221-32.

[55] David Chapman, “Ecumenism and the Visible Unity of the Church: ‘Organic Union’ or ‘Reconciled Diversity’?” in Ecclesiology, 11/3 (2015), pp. 350-69; here, p. 369.

[56] Rowan Williams, “First Presidential Address,” LC 2008: “a Covenant should not be thought of as a means for excluding the difficult or rebellious but as an intensification — for those who so choose — of relations that already exist. And those who in conscience could not make those intensified commitments are not thereby shut off from all fellowship; it is just that they have chosen not to seek that kind of unity, for reasons that may be utterly serious and prayerful. Whatever the popular perception, the options before us are not irreparable schism or forced assimilation. We need to think through what all this involves in the conviction that all our existing bonds of friendship and fellowship are valuable and channels of grace, even if some want to give such bonds a more formal and demanding shape” (available online: http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/1353/archbishops-first-presidential-address-at-lambeth-conference). Cf. idem., “Communion, covenant and our Anglican future: Reflections on the Episcopal Church’s 2009 General Convention from the Archbishop of Canterbury for the bishops, clergy and faithful of the Anglican Communion” (July 27, 2009); available online: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/jul/27/rowan-williams-anglican-communion.

[57] Anglican Communion Covenant, Introduction, §5. Cf. IATDC, Communion, Conflict and Hope: The Kuala Lumpur Report 2007, §21 (London: ACO, 2008), available online: http://www.anglicancommunion.org/media/107653/Communion-Conflict-and-Hope-the-Kuala-Lumpur-Report.pdf.

[58] Impaired or imperfect communion is communion, but it is partial, not full. The notion has proven richly generative for modern ecumenical theology, as a way of recording both real bonds of accountability in Christ and divisions that remain undeniable and serious. Having helped develop this theology, Anglicans have appropriated it to help make sense of our own familial struggles. See The Windsor Report §50, citing the 1998 report of the Eames Commission on women in the episcopate, the work of the IATDC (especially The Virginia Report), and research by Norman Doe. Cf. LC 1988, res. 18: “The Anglican Communion: Identity and Authority,” which spoke of “the present impaired nature of communion.” See ibid., res. 1, which famously employed the image of “maintaining the highest possible degree of communion”; likewise, LC 1998, res. 3.2, on “the unity of the Anglican Communion.” This concept of degrees of communion was placed at the center of the mandate of the Lambeth Commission: see The Windsor Report (London: ACC, 2004), p. 13, and §19, and is now enshrined within the fifth Guiding Principle of the Church of England: see House of Bishops, “Declaration on the Ministry of Bishops and Priests” (GS Misc 1076), May 2014; available online: https://www.churchofengland.org/media/2011184/gs%20misc%201076%20-%20women%20in%20the%20episcopate%20house%20of%20bishops%20declaration.pdf. For a sophisticated and generous application of this literature, see Communion and Catholicity in the Church of England: A Statement of Principles sec. 3, and A Catholic Life in the Church of England sec. 5, by the Council of Bishops of The Society under the patronage of Saint Wilfrid and Saint Hilda (London: Forward in Faith, 2015); available online: http://www.sswsh.com/statements.php. On imperfect communion, see Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis redintegratio (1964), no. 3; Pope John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint (1995), no. 84. In sum, see “Editorial: Primatial Option for the Covenant,” The Living Church (Dec. 20, 2015), p. 22; available online: http://livingchurch.org/covenant/2015/11/30/primatial-option-for-the-covenant/

[59] Set alongside the communions of all other Christian traditions, to which we are bound in at least analogous if not identical ways.

[60] On full, visible unity, see LC 1998, res. IV.1(a): “This conference reaffirms the Anglican commitment to the full, visible unity of the Church as the goal of the Ecumenical Movement.” Cf. LC 2008, in an expansive elaboration: Indaba Reflections no. 71.

[61] Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “On the Ecumenical Situation” in Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), p. 262. As he continues further on, “in this readiness to keep on searching together and to accept ourselves and each other in our provisional form, there is an assent to the inexhaustibility of the mystery of God; this may be an act of humility by which we accept our limitations and in that very act appropriate for ourselves God’s greater truth” (p. 266).

[62] Cf. ARCIC I, Final Report (1981), Introduction no. 1: “Many bonds still unite us: we confess the same faith in the one true God; we have received the same Spirit; we have been baptized with the same baptism; and we preach the same Christ.”

[63] See again most dramatically and impressively LC 1920, “Appeal to all Christian people” (Resolution 9).

[64] http://www.primates2016.org/articles/2016/01/15/communique-primates/

[65] http://www.anglicannews.org/news/2016/02/presiding-bishop-michael-curry-speaks-on-primates-statement.aspx

©2021 Communion Partners

Communion Across Difference (July 2, 2015)

Communion Across Difference

A Statement of the Mind of the House of Bishops [TEC]

We the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church wish to express our love and appreciation to our colleagues who identify as Communion Partners and those bishops who have affinity with the Communion Partners’ position as stated in their “Communion Partners Salt Lake City Statement.” Our time together in Salt Lake City, in conversation and in prayer, has demonstrated how profoundly the love of God in Jesus binds us together and empowers us for service to God’s mission. As we have waited upon the leading of the Holy Spirit in our deliberations, we have been reminded that the House of Bishops is richly gifted with many voices and perspectives on matters of theological, liturgical, and pastoral significance. This has been shown in our discernment with respect to doctrinal matters relative to Christian marriage. We thank God for the rich variety of voices in our House, in our dioceses, in The Episcopal Church, and in the Anglican Communion, that reflect the wideness of God’s mercy and presence in the Church and in the world.

We give particular thanks for the steadfast witness of our colleagues in the Communion Partners. We value and rely on their commitment to The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. We recognize that theirs is a minority voice in the House of Bishops in our deliberations with respect to Christian marriage; and we affirm that despite our differences they are an indispensable part of who we are as the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church. Our church needs their witness. Further, we appreciate that each of us will return to dioceses where there will be a variety of responses to Resolutions A054 and A036. The equanimity, generosity, and graciousness with which the Communion Partners have shared their views on Christian marriage and remain in relationship is a model for us and for the lay and ordained leaders in our dioceses to follow. We thank God that in the fullness of the Holy Trinity we can and must remain together as the Body of Christ in our dioceses, in The Episcopal Church, and in our relationships with sisters and brothers in Christ in the Anglican Communion. The bonds created in baptism are indeed indissoluble and we pray that we have the confidence to rely upon the Holy Spirit who will continue to hold us all together as partners in communion through the love of God in Jesus.

Global South Support for Communion Partners (2012)

Global South Primates Stand with the Communion Partners

In their communique from the Global South Conference of the Decade of Mission and Networking, the GS Primates included the following paragraphs:

6. We note with great sadness the passing of Resolution A049 at the 77th General Convention of The Episcopal Church which authorized a liturgy for blessing same-sex unions. This action confirms our disappointment that The Episcopal Church has no regard for the concerns and convictions of the vast majority of Anglicans worldwide.

7. We stand in solidarity with our brethren in the Communion Partners who have dissented from this action. We uphold them in prayer and support them in fellowship as they continue in their commitment to the evangelical faith and catholic order of the Church, as expressed in their Minority Report known as The Indianapolis Statement.

Read it all at: http://www.globalsouthanglican.org/index.php/blog/comments/communique_of_the_global_south_primates_bangkok_thailand_20_july_2012