From The Living Church:
Posted on: July 25, 2008
If the Anglican Communion is to survive, another Instrument of Unity may need to be created, according to a paper prepared by the Windsor Continuation Group.
“We commend the suggestion for the setting up of an Anglican Communion Faith and Order Commission that could give guidance on the ecclesiological issues raised by our current ‘crisis’,” the group wrote in a working paper distributed on July 25.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams established the six-member group earlier this year to help implement some of the longer-term recommendations made in the Windsor Report. Archbishop Williams said the plan was a very preliminary one, but that it seemed to have broad support among bishops during a Lambeth Conference media briefing this afternoon.
“There is a strong feeling that we need another kind of structure in the Communion that will be a ‘clearinghouse,’ as I want to put it, for some of these issues, and I think there is quite a head of steam behind that,” he said. “I’m actually quite enthusiastic about that.
“It’s not as if we can just coexist without any impact on one another as Anglican churches,” Archbishop Williams continued. “There have to be protocols and conventions by which we recognize one another as churches. The difficulties that we currently face have a lot to do with that recognition.”
Archbishop Clive Handford, former primate of Jerusalem and the Middle East, is the chair of the group. During a July 22 Lambeth Conference media briefing, Archbishop Handford described a three-stage role that the Windsor Continuation Group is expected to play during the Lambeth Conference, which ends Aug. 3.
“It is rightly said that we are an inclusive Communion,” he said. “‘All are welcome’ is not the same as ‘anything goes’.”
After the conclusion of the bishop’s retreat, the Windsor Continuation Group distributed a four-page paper, which was described to the press as a background “reflection” on the state of the Communion. The paper was meant to spark a discussion, which occurred on Wednesday afternoon. More than 20 bishops spoke, including Bishop John Chane of Washington.
During a July 23 media briefing, Bishop Chane said he cautioned other conference participants “not to throw the baby out with the bathwater” and raised concerns about the way that the primates’ meeting had functioned recently. He also said the number of Episcopalians uncomfortable with The Episcopal Church’s to perform same-sex marriages and consecrate a partnered homosexual as bishop was a very small but vocal minority.
The paper proposing the Faith and Order Commission arose out of the July 23 hearing. In addition to proposing a new instrument of unity, the provisional paper released today also questioned the usefulness of the Anglican Consultative Council as it is currently configured.
“There are questions about whether a body meeting every three years, with a rapidly changing membership, not necessarily located within the central structures of their own provinces, can fulfill adequately the tasks presently given to it,” the paper stated. “Not all believe that a representative body is the best way to express the contribution of the whole people of God at a worldwide level. There are many ways in which the voice of the whole body can be heard: diocesan and provincial synods, networks, dialogues and commissions.”
The concluding work of the Windsor Continuation Group will involve trying to come to some consensus about where the bishops as the Lambeth Conference think the Anglican Communion should be headed. Archbishop Handford cautioned against expecting an immediate solution by the end of this conference.
“This isn’t a quick fix,” he said. “Dialogue is [the] key.”
Steve Waring
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