The Lambeth Commission on Communion The Windsor Report 2004 Published by The Anglican Communion Office, London, UK Copyright © 2004 The Anglican Consultative Council 2 Contents Paragraphs Page FOREWORD by the Most Reverend Dr Robin Eames Archbishop of Armagh, Chairman of the Lambeth Commission..............................4 The Lambeth Commission on Communion - Mandate ...................................8 The members of the Lambeth Commission.......................................................9 THE REPORT Section A : The Purposes and Benefits of Communion The communion we have been given in Christ : Biblical foundations ................................................................... 1 - 5.................11 The practical consequences of a healthy communion................... 6 - 11.................12 Recent mutual discernment within the Communion................... 12 - 21.................14 Illness: The surface symptoms.................................................... 22 - 30.................16 Illness: The deeper symptoms..................................................... 31 - 42.................20 Theological development........................................................ 32 - 33.................20 Ecclesiastical procedures ........................................................ 34 - 35.................20 Adiaphora................................................................................ 36 - 37.................21 Subsidiarity ............................................................................. 38 - 39.................21 Trust ........................................................................................ 40 - 41.................22 Authority.........................................................................................42.................23 Section B : Fundamental Principles General points ............................................................................. 43 - 96.................24 The communion we share ........................................................... 45 - 51.................24 The bonds of communion ........................................................... 52 - 70.................27 The authority of scripture........................................................ 53 - 56.................27 Scripture and interpretation .................................................... 57 - 62.................29 The episcopate ........................................................................ 63 - 66.................30 Discernment in communion and reception ............................. 67 - 70.................32 Diversity within communion ....................................................... 71- 96.................34 Autonomy ............................................................................... 72 - 86.................34 Adiaphora................................................................................ 97 - 96.................38 Section C : Our Future Life Together The Instruments of Unity.......................................................... 97 - 104.................41 The Archbishop of Canterbury .......................................................99.................41 The Lambeth Conference.................................................... 100 - 102.................42 The Anglican Consultative Council..............................................103.................43 The Primates’ Meeting..................................................................104.................43 Recommendations on the Instruments of Unity...................... 105 - 112.................44 The Archbishop of Canterbury ........................................... 108 - 110.................45 A Council of Advice ........................................................... 111 - 112.................46 Canon Law and Covenant....................................................... 113 - 120.................46 3 Section D : The Maintenance of Communion General findings....................................................................... 121- 123.................50 On elections to the episcopate................................................. 124 - 135.................51 On public Rites of Blessing of same sex unions..................... 136 - 146.................54 On care of dissenting groups................................................... 147 - 155.................58 Conclusion .............................................................................. 156 - 157.................59 Appendix One : Reflections on the Instruments of Unity The Anglican Consultative Council.........................................................................61 The Lambeth Conference.........................................................................................61 The Primates’ Meeting.............................................................................................62 The Anglican Communion Office ...........................................................................63 Appendix Two : Proposal for the Anglican Covenant .............................. 65 Appendix Three : Supporting documentation........................................... 72 1. Extract from ‘The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral’, 1886/1888 .......................73 2. Lambeth Conference 1978: Resolution 10 Human Relationships and Sexuality......................................................................................................73 3. Lambeth Conference 1988: Resolution 64 Human rights for those of homosexual orientation.......................................................................................74 4. Lambeth Conference 1988: Resolution 72 Episcopal responsibilities and diocesan boundaries ............................................................................................74 5. Ten Principles of Partnership..............................................................................74 6. Lambeth Conference 1998: Resolution I.10 Human Sexuality ..........................77 7. Lambeth Conference 1998: Resolution III.2 The unity of the Anglican Communion.........................................................................................................78 8. ACC-12 Resolution 34 Province-wide and Communion-wide consultation......79 9. Episcopal Church (USA) General Convention 2003 Resolution C051 Liturgy/Music: Blessing of Committed Same-Gender Relationships ................79 10. A Statement by the Primates of the Anglican Communion meeting in Lambeth Palace, 16 October 2003......................................................................80 11. Caring for all the Churches: A response of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church to an expressed need of the Church, March 2004 .................83 12. Anglican Church of Canada General Synod 2004: Resolutions concerning the blessing of same sex unions .......................................................86 Appendix Four : List of published works referred to in the Report ............ 88 Selected Thematic Index ............................................................................. 90 4 FOREWORD The Most Reverend Dr Robin Eames Archbishop of Armagh, Chairman of the Lambeth Commission What do we believe is the will of God for the Anglican Communion? That question has never been far from the minds of the members of the Lambeth Commission during the exacting work they have undertaken in the past year. Since the 1970s controversies over issues of human sexuality have become increasingly divisive and destructive throughout Christendom. Within the Anglican Communion the intensity of debate on these issues at successive Lambeth Conferences has demonstrated the reality of these divisions. The decision by the 74th General Convention of the Episcopal Church (USA) to give consent to the election of bishop Gene Robinson to the Diocese of New Hampshire, the authorising by a diocese of the Anglican Church of Canada of a public Rite of Blessing for same sex unions and the involvement in other provinces by bishops without the consent or approval of the incumbent bishop to perform episcopal functions have uncovered major divisions throughout the Anglican Communion. There has been talk of crisis, schism and realignment. Voices and declarations have portrayed a Communion in crisis. Those divisions have been obvious at several levels of Anglican life: between provinces, between dioceses and between individual Anglican clergy and laity. The popular identification of ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’, and ‘the west’ as opposed to ‘the global south’, has become an over-simplification - divisions of opinion have also become clear within provinces, dioceses and parishes. Various statements and decisions at different levels of leadership and membership of the Church have illustrated the depth of reaction. Among other Christian traditions, reactions to the problems within Anglicanism have underlined the serious concerns on these issues worldwide. Comparison has been made with the controversies on women’s ordination years ago. But the current strengths of expression of divergent positions are much greater. Questions have been raised about the nature of authority in the Anglican Communion, the inter-relationship of the traditional Instruments of Unity, the ways in which Holy Scripture is interpreted by Anglicans, the priorities of the historic autonomy enshrined in Anglican provinces, and there are also issues of justice. Yet the Lambeth Commission has been aware that consideration within its mandate of any specific aspect of inter-Anglican relationships overlaps and relates to others and has a clear bearing on the sort of Anglican Communion which should enhance the life and worship of our diverse worldwide church family. What could be termed ‘the human face’ of these divisions has become clear to the Commission. Within provinces, dioceses and parishes, where individual Anglican Christians have experienced degrees of alienation and exclusion due to differences of opinion between leadership and members, there has been much pain and 5 disillusionment. Further questions have surfaced about episcopal oversight within a diocese where significant groups of Anglicans have become alienated from their bishop. The Commission has seen and heard those emotions. During its work the Lambeth Commission has recognised the existence within the Anglican Communion of a large constituency of faithful members who are bemused and bewildered by the intensity of the opposing views on issues of sexuality. This group embraces worshippers who yearn for expressions of communion which will provide stability and encouragement for their pilgrimage. At times they have felt their voices eclipsed by the intensity of sounds on opposing sides of the debate. The Lambeth Commission was established in October 2003 by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the request of the Anglican Primates. The mandate spoke of the problems being experienced as a consequence of the above developments and the need to seek a way forward which would encourage communion within the Anglican Communion. It did not demand judgement by the Commission on sexuality issues. Rather, it requested consideration of ways in which communion and understanding could be enhanced where serious differences threatened the life of a diverse worldwide Church. In short, how does the Anglican Communion address relationships between its component parts in a true spirit of communion? As the Commission has addressed its mandate the atmosphere in the Anglican Communion has continued to reflect the depth of feeling on these issues. Indeed during the past year events in the Communion have prompted observers to conclude that our work was so overtaken by decisions of some provinces and by words of individual Church leaders that any conclusion reached would be irrelevant. The Anglican Communion appears to such observers to be set on a voyage of selfdestruction. I acknowledge the willingness of large sections of the Anglican Communion to permit this Commission space to complete its Report. However, in some instances the request by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates for an absence of developments or pronouncements which would make the work of the Lambeth Commission more difficult has been ignored. The depth of conviction and feeling on all sides of the current issues has on occasions introduced a degree of harshness and a lack of charity which is new to Anglicanism. A process of dissent is not new to the Communion but it has never before been expressed with such force nor in ways which have been so accessible to international scrutiny. Not all the opinions voiced have been expressed in ways which are conducive to dialogue or the encouragement of communion. Modern methods of communication and in particular the internet have become powerful means of expressing and influencing opinion. This fact requires careful note by the Anglican Communion when consideration is given to its traditional decision-making processes. The ‘bonds of affection’ so often quoted as a precious attribute of Anglican Communion life, as well as the instruments of communion and unity, have been threatened by the current divisions. While attention in this regard turns to the developments in the Episcopal Church (USA) and the Anglican Church of Canada it is clear that this threat has been increased by reactions to them. 6 This Report is not a judgement. It is part of a process. It is part of a pilgrimage towards healing and reconciliation. The proposals which follow attempt to look forward rather than merely to recount how difficulties have arisen. A large majority of the submissions received by the Commission have supported the continuance of the Anglican Communion as an instrument of God’s grace for the world. Throughout the work of this Commission many different views have been expressed by its members. These opinions have been shared openly. We have come to a position which takes our differing views seriously and yet we are able to offer this Report together for the Communion’s consideration. A process for the study of this Report is being established and there will be opportunity for the Communion as a whole to consider its findings. However, if realistic and visionary ways cannot be agreed to meet the levels of disagreement at present or to reach consensus on structures for encouraging greater understanding and communion in future it is doubtful if the Anglican Communion can continue in its present form. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of our current difficulties is the negative consequence it could have on the mission of the Church to a suffering and bewildered world. Even as the Commission prepared for its final meeting the cries of children in a school in southern Russia reminded us of our real witness and ministry in a world already confronted by poverty, violence, HIV/AIDS, famine and injustice. As Chairman of the Commission it has been my privilege to lead and co-ordinate the work in fulfilment of this mandate. I pay a warm tribute to the involvement of all members of the Commission who have worked with such commitment at their difficult task and enjoyed genuine Christian fellowship in their work. This task has involved three detailed plenary meetings, two at St George’s, Windsor, England and one at the Kanuga Conference Centre, North Carolina, USA, in addition to months of intensive research, debate and prayer as the Commission has considered the problems and reviewed the many submissions from throughout the Anglican Communion and beyond. In addition to oral presentations the Commission is grateful for many written submissions which have been available to all of its members. There has been a genuine search for the will of Almighty God for the Communion. Each meeting has commenced with worship and Bible study. The Commission has been much encouraged by the expressions of prayerful support for its work. I acknowledge the service and immensely detailed work of the Secretary of the Commission, Canon Gregory Cameron, Director of Ecumenical Affairs and Studies at the Anglican Communion Office in London; the assistance of our legal consultant, Canon John Rees; the secretarial staff at the Anglican Communion Office at St Andrew’s House, London; and the Revd Brian Parker, who acted as Media Officer. Dr Albert Gooch, President of the Kanuga Conference Centre in North Carolina, facilitated a full meeting of the Commission and has given much practical assistance in the costs involved on that occasion. The Dean and Chapter of St George’s College, Windsor, England, hosted two of our meetings: I express our sincere appreciation to them and the staff at Kanuga and Windsor. The Lambeth Commission has been conscious of the trust placed in it by the Anglican Communion and, despite the difficulties it has faced, offers this Report in the 7 prayerful hope that it will encourage the enhanced levels of understanding which are essential for the future of the Anglican Communion. Above all I pray it will be viewed as a genuine contribution to what communion really means for Anglicans. +Robert Armagh October 2004 8 The Lambeth Commission on Communion Mandate The Archbishop of Canterbury requests the Commission 1. To examine and report to him by 30th September 2004, in preparation for the ensuing meetings of the Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council, on the legal and theological implications flowing from the decisions of the Episcopal Church (USA) to appoint a priest in a committed same sex relationship as one of its bishops, and of the Diocese of New Westminster to authorise services for use in connection with same sex unions, and specifically on the canonical understandings of communion, impaired and broken communion, and the ways in which provinces of the Anglican Communion may relate to one another in situations where the ecclesiastical authorities of one province feel unable to maintain the fullness of communion with another part of the Anglican Communion. 2. Within their report, to include practical recommendations (including reflection on emerging patterns of provision for episcopal oversight for those Anglicans within a particular jurisdiction, where full communion within a province is under threat) for maintaining the highest degree of communion that may be possible in the circumstances resulting from these decisions, both within and between the churches of the Anglican Communion. 3. Thereafter, as soon as practicable, and with particular reference to the issues raised in Section IV of the Report of the Lambeth Conference 1998, to make recommendations to the Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council, as to the exceptional circumstances and conditions under which, and the means by which, it would be appropriate for the Archbishop of Canterbury to exercise an extraordinary ministry of episcope (pastoral oversight), support and reconciliation with regard to the internal affairs of a province other than his own for the sake of maintaining communion with the said province and between the said province and the rest of the Anglican Communion. 4. In its deliberations, to take due account of the work already undertaken on issues of communion by the Lambeth Conferences of 1988 and 1998, as well as the views expressed by the Primates of the Anglican Communion in the communiqués and pastoral letters arising from their meetings since 2000. 9 The members of the Lambeth Commission ¨ Archbishop Robin Eames, Primate of All Ireland, Chairman ¨ The Revd Canon Alyson Barnett-Cowan, Director of Faith, Worship and Ministry, Anglican Church of Canada ¨ Bishop David Beetge, Dean of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa ¨ Professor Norman Doe, Director of the Centre for Law and Religion, Cardiff University, Wales, ¨ Bishop Mark Dyer, Director of Spiritual Formation, Virginia Theological Seminary, USA ¨ Archbishop Drexel Gomez, Primate of the West Indies ¨ Archbishop Josiah Iduwo-Fearon, Archbishop of Kaduna, the Anglican Church of Nigeria ¨ The Revd Dorothy Lau, Director of the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui Welfare Council ¨ Ms Anne McGavin, Advocate, formerly Legal Adviser to the College of Bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church Ms McGavin resigned for personal reasons after the first meeting of the Commission. ¨ Archbishop Bernard Malango, Primate of Central Africa ¨ Dr Esther Mombo, Academic Dean of St Paul’s United Theological Seminary, Limuru, Kenya ¨ Archbishop Barry Morgan, Primate of Wales Archbishop Morgan was unable to be present at the first meeting of the Commission. ¨ Chancellor Rubie Nottage, Chancellor of the West Indies Mrs Nottage was unable to be present at the second meeting of the Commission. ¨ Bishop John Paterson, Bishop of Auckland, and Chair of the Anglican Consultative Council 10 ¨ Dr Jenny Te Paa, Principal of College of Saint John the Evangelist, Auckland, New Zealand ¨ Bishop James Terom, Moderator, the Church of North India ¨ Bishop N Thomas Wright, Bishop of Durham, the Church of England. Staff ¨ The Revd Canon Gregory Cameron, Director of Ecumenical Affairs and Studies, Anglican Communion Office, Secretary to the Commission ¨ The Revd Canon John Rees, Legal Adviser to the Anglican Consultative Council, Legal Consultant to the Commission Administrative Assistants ¨ The Revd Terrie Robinson, Anglican Communion Office ¨ Mrs Christine Codner, Anglican Communion Office Media ¨ The Revd Brian Parker, Church of Ireland Press Office 11 THE REPORT Section A : The Purposes and Benefits of Communion The communion we have been given in Christ : Biblical foundations 1. God has unveiled, in Jesus Christ, his glorious plan for the rescue of the whole created order from all that defaces, corrupts and destroys it. The excitement and drama of that initial achievement and that final purpose pervade the whole New Testament, and set the context for understanding why God has called out a people by the gospel, and how that people is to understand its identity and order its life. 2. In particular, as the letter to the Ephesians puts it, God’s people are to be, through the work of the Spirit, an anticipatory sign of God’s healing and restorative future for the world. Those who, despite their own sinfulness, are saved by grace through their faith in God’s gospel (2.1-10) are to live as a united family across traditional ethnic and other boundaries (2.11-22), and so are to reveal the many-splendoured wisdom of the one true God to the hostile and divisive powers of the world (3.9-10) as they explore and celebrate the astonishing breadth of God’s love made known through Christ’s dwelling in their hearts (3.14-21). The redeemed unity which is God’s will for the whole creation is to be lived out within the life of the church as, through its various God-given ministries, it is built up as the Body of Christ and grows to maturity not least through speaking the truth in love (1.10, 22-3; 4.1-16). The church, sharing in God’s mission to the world through the fact of its corporate life, must live out that holiness which anticipates God’s final rescue of the world from the powers and corruptions of evil (4.17-6.20). 3. The unity of the church, the communion of all its members with one another (which are the primary subjects of this report), and the radical holiness to which all Christ’s people are called, are thus rooted in the trinitarian life and purposes of the one God. They are designed not for their own sake (as though the church’s in-house business were an end in itself), but to serve and signify God’s mission to the world, that mission whereby God brings to men and women, to human societies and to the whole world, real signs and foretastes of that healing love which will one day put all things to rights. The communion we enjoy with God in Christ and by the Spirit, and the communion we enjoy with all God’s people living and departed, is the specific practical embodiment and fruit of the gospel itself, the good news of God’s action in Jesus Christ to deal once and for all with evil and to inaugurate the new creation. The unity (specifically celebrating the diversity within that unity) to which Christ’s body is called, which is brought into being by the work of the Spirit through the gospel, is sustained and maintained through the apostolic, prophetic, evangelistic, pastoral and teaching ministries which the Spirit enables. All that can be said about unity and communion assumes this foundation in the gospel itself. It assumes, likewise, that this unity and communion are meaningless unless they issue in 12 that holiness of life, worked out in severely practical contexts, through which the church indicates to the world that a new way of being human, over against corrupt and dehumanising patterns of life, has been launched upon the world. In other words, unity, communion and holiness all belong together. Ultimately, questions about one are questions about all. 4. These themes are worked out dramatically in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. In writing to the very troubled faith community there, he begins his pastoral and restorative ministry (following on from his apostolic and evangelistic ministry, already exercised) by reminding them of the true gift of God that is their identity in Christ. He writes to them in the grace and peace that is “from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (1.3). The Corinthians, he maintains, are a people who have been “sanctified in Christ Jesus” and are “called to be saints” (1.2). In Christ they are “enriched in every way in speech and knowledge of every kind” and “are not lacking any spiritual gift as [they] await the revealing of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1.5-7). Paul reminds them that a faithful God has “called them into the fellowship [koinonia, ‘communion’] of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1.9). Whatever problems there are in the community – and Corinth had more than its fair share, from personality cults and social divisions to immorality and unbelief – Paul begins by addressing them as those who are, despite some outward appearances, already set apart by and for the love of God. This does not hold him back from administering severe discipline in the case of scandalous behaviour (ch.5); but this too, as 2 Corinthians 2 indicates, is held within the larger context of pastoral and reconciling intent. At the climax of this letter, after dealing with all these problems, we find Paul’s longest exposition of what it means to live as the Body of Christ, united in diversity (ch.12), with that unity characterised not by a mechanistic or formal structure but by that all-demanding and all-fulfilling virtue which the early Christians called agape, love (ch.13). 5. As we Anglicans face very serious challenges to our unity and communion in Christ - challenges which have emerged not least because of different interpretations of that holiness to which we are called, and different interpretations of the range of appropriate diversity within our union and communion - Paul would want to remind us of the unique source of that unity, our common identity in Christ, and its unique purpose, the furtherance of God’s mission within the world. We too have certainly been gifted with the grace of fellowship with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We are, by God’s gift, in communion with the Persons of the Holy Trinity, and are members of one another in Christ Jesus. We are, in the power of the Spirit, sent into all the world to declare that Jesus is Lord. This grace-given and grace-full mission from God, and communion with God, determine our relationship with one another. Communion with God and one another in Christ is thus both a gift and a divine expectation. All that we say in this report is intended both to celebrate that gift and to answer that expectation. The practical consequences of a healthy communion 6. Ephesians insists that the Body of Christ, taking Christ, its Head, as the source of its life, grows and builds itself up in love as each part plays its proper role 13 (4.15-16). It is appropriate that we ground our report in some reflections on how this has been worked out within the Anglican Communion up to now. 7. Life in the Anglican Communion, as a communion of churches, is indeed nourished by the presence and work of the Holy Spirit, building up the body in love. Throughout its history, the Anglican Communion has been sustained by a common pattern of liturgical life rooted in the tradition of the Books of Common Prayer; shaped by the continual reading, both corporate and private, of the Holy Scriptures; rooted in its history through the See of Canterbury; and connected through a web of relationships – of bishops, consultative bodies, companion dioceses, projects of common mission, engagement with ecumenical partners – that are the means and the signs of common life. This continues to flourish in a myriad of ways at the local as well as national and international level. 8. This was given formal expression at the third ‘Anglican Congress’1 in 1963. Anglican life in communion was there described as “mutual interdependence and responsibility in the Body of Christ”. From that affirmation ten Principles of Partnership were developed by the Mission Issues and Strategy Advisory Group II, which form a valuable foundation to the life of the Communion.2 9. When these principles have been lived out and honoured, there have been practical consequences which have advanced the mission of the church and enhanced the life of the people of the Communion and of the world it exists to serve. Though we remain painfully aware of our many failures, we should not ignore the great achievements of our unity and communion. Over the centuries Anglicans have lived out the gift of communion in mutual love and care for one another. We have at times embraced costly grace in standing together in opposition to racial enslavement and genocide. We have reached out and offered aid to one another in combating famine, disease and the chaos caused by natural disasters. In the struggle against apartheid, in common efforts of evangelism and mission, in acts of solidarity with indigenous peoples, in bringing dioceses together from diverse parts of the globe through the communications network and partnership arrangements, in the development of centres of excellence in theological education, in common prayer for those facing persecution, in disaster relief and development projects grounded in the local reality and assisted by the resources of all – in all these things, Anglicans have shared their gift of communion for the building up of the whole and thereby for the advancement of God’s mission. 10. All these examples and many more spring from the organic reality that is life in communion. They are signs of a healthy attentiveness to the needs of other parts of the body and, moreover, of respect for the insights, hopes, beliefs and convictions of others within the Communion (1 Corinthians 12:25-26). We take courage from these signs of God’s blessing upon our common life. 1 These occasional gatherings have been held from time to time. The first Congress was held in London in 1908; the second in Minneapolis in 1954; the third in Toronto in 1963. An ‘Anglican Gathering’ is currently in preparation for 2008 in Cape Town, South Africa. 2 The ‘Ten Principles of Partnership’ are set out in Appendix Three/5. 14 11. What has been less clear in Anglicanism is exactly how this organic body should be sustained. In acknowledging Jesus Christ as our one and only Head, we are aware that at no point have we found the need to clarify the ways in which, through particular ministries, that Headship is brought to expression within the local and international leadership of the Communion. In recent years, there have been attempts to develop a common mind about how this great Communion might actually function together in those situations in which mutual discernment is necessary to sustain the life of the body. Those attempts form part of the context of our work. Recent mutual discernment within the Communion 12. The story of ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate provides us with a recent example of mutual discernment and decision-making within the Anglican Communion. 13. The background to the story was a period of debate and disagreement both before and after the ordination to the priesthood of Florence Li Tim-Oi in 1944. The story gathered pace in 1968, when the Diocese of Hong Kong & Macao brought the question of women’s ordination to the priesthood to the Lambeth Conference. The Conference was not ready to respond because, as it stated in Resolution 34, “The Conference affirms its opinion that the theological arguments as at present presented for and against the ordination of women to the priesthood are inconclusive”. The Conference recommended that before any regional or national church or province made a final decision to ordain women to the priesthood they should consider carefully the advice of the Anglican Consultative Council. 14. The Bishop of Hong Kong & Macao sought out the advice of the Anglican Consultative Council at its first meeting (in Limuru, Kenya) in 1970. After lengthy debate the Anglican Consultative Council advised the Bishop of Hong Kong & Macao that if, with the approval of his Synod, he were to proceed to the ordination of a woman his action would be acceptable to the Council, and that the Council would use its good offices to encourage all provinces of the Communion to continue in communion with that Diocese. The resolution passed (for: 24; against: 22). 15. What needs to be noted is that Hong Kong did not understand itself to be so autonomous that it might proceed without bringing the matter to the Anglican Consultative Council as requested by the Lambeth Conference 1968. Furthermore, action was only taken with the co-operation of the Instruments of Unity. 16. The 1978 Lambeth Conference addressed a situation where Hong Kong, Canada, the United States and New Zealand had all ordained women to the priesthood and eight other provinces had accepted the ordination of women in principle. In response, the Conference passed Resolution 21: Women in the Priesthood, which in part stated, “The Conference also recognises…(3a) the autonomy of each of its member Churches, acknowledging the legal right of each Church to make its own decision about the appropriateness of admitting 15 women to Holy Orders”. The Resolution also noted that such provincial action “has consequences of the utmost significance for the Anglican Communion as a whole”, and that “The Conference affirms its commitment to the preservation of unity within and between all member Churches of the Anglican Communion”. This resolution passed with 316 for, 37 against, and 17 abstentions. 17. In 1985 the General Convention of the Episcopal Church (USA) expressed the intention “not to withhold consent to the election of a bishop on the grounds of gender”. Aware that such a possible action would indeed affect the whole Anglican Communion, the then Presiding Bishop brought the question to the newly established Primates’ Meeting in Toronto, Canada.3 The Archbishop of Canterbury and the primates requested the Primate of Australia, John Grindrod, to head a committee to prepare a paper for the 1988 Lambeth Conference after requesting the opinions of the provinces of the Communion. This report’s first chapter was entitled ‘Listening as a Mark of Communion’. 18. The Grindrod Report presented two options to the Lambeth Conference: first, to counsel restraint in the hope that the moral authority inherent in a gathering of all the bishops of the Communion would find a response at the provincial level. Second, if a province went ahead, persuaded by compelling doctrinal reasons, by its experience of women in the priesthood and by the demands of mission in its region, and with the overwhelming support of the dioceses, such a step should be offered for reception within the Anglican Communion. 19. In response, Resolution 1 of Lambeth 1988 stated: “That each province respect the decision and attitudes of other provinces in the ordination or consecration of women to the episcopate, without such respect necessarily indicating acceptance of the principles involved, maintaining the highest possible degree of communion with the provinces which differ”. This long resolution went on to recommend courtesy and respect and open dialogue with those who differ, and asked the Archbishop of Canterbury, in consultation with the primates, to appoint a Commission to ensure the process of reception, to monitor and encourage consultation and to offer pastoral guidelines for the churches of the Communion. This resolution passed with 423 for, 28 against, and 19 abstentions. 20. The Commission on Women in the Anglican Episcopate (‘The Eames Commission’) worked throughout the period between the Lambeth Conferences of 1988 and 1998. A monitoring committee of the Commission made a report to Lambeth 1998. 21. Anglicans can understand from this story that decision-making in the Communion on serious and contentious issues has been, and can be, carried out without division, despite a measure of impairment. We need to note that the Instruments of Unity, i.e. the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting, were all involved in the decision-making process. Provincial autonomy was framed 3 A description of the nature and work of the Primates’ Meetings is given below at paragraph 104. 16 by Anglican interdependence on matters of deep theological concern to the whole Communion. Illness: The surface symptoms 22. The precedent that could have been set by this procedure has not, unfortunately, been followed in the matters currently before the Communion. This, we conclude, lies at the heart of the problems we currently face. Before we offer some diagnosis of our situation, we must summarise the presenting symptoms. 23. Two sets of interrelated questions have arisen in several provinces of the Communion: whether or not it is legitimate for the church to bless the committed, exclusive and faithful relationships of same sex couples, and whether or not it is appropriate to ordain, and/or consecrate to the episcopate, persons living in a sexual relationship with a partner of the same sex. These matters are highly sensitive and emotionally charged, and come in the wake of various other related debates in the Communion, in relation (for instance) to polygamy and to the remarriage of divorced persons. Experimentation with blessings of same sex relationships had begun as early as 1973 within North America. Granted that local churches are often best placed to respond to pastoral needs within their own context and to understand the issues that arise in their particular culture, no part of the church can ignore its life in communion with the rest. What is done in one place can and does affect all. In March 2003, the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church (USA), when considering the question of the ordination of unmarried, non-celibate persons, heterosexual or homosexual, offered for study and reflection by the Episcopal Church (USA) these words from the report of its Theology Committee: “Sexual discipline and holiness of life must be very serious considerations for bishops, Standing Committees, and Commissions on Ministry as they discern what constitutes “a wholesome example to all people” (BCP 544). We affirm the responsibility of Dioceses to discern and raise up fit persons for the ministry of word and sacrament to build up the body of Christ in that place. We call on bishops and Standing Committees to be respectful of the ways in which decisions made in one Diocese have ramifications on others. We remind all that ordination is for the whole Church.”4 24. The strong reaction across the Communion to synodical decisions taken in the Episcopal Church (USA) and the Canadian Diocese of New Westminster has confirmed the Episcopal Church’s fears, and undercuts any argument that such decisions are purely local. 4 The Gift of Sexuality: A theological perspective, Report of the Theology Committee of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church, offered for study and reflection by the House of Bishops, 18 March 2003, paragraphs 7.0 and 7.1. See http://arc.episcopalchurch.org/presidingbishop/ pdf/theologycomreport.pdf. 17 25. In the context of continuing debate, the Lambeth Conference discussed matters relating to homosexuality and issued resolutions in 1978 and 1988.5 At the Conference of 1998, extensive study and discussion by one subsection produced a report, following which a resolution was debated and eventually passed by the vast majority of bishops as Resolution 1.10.6 There has been some controversy about the way in which this resolution was arrived at and voted upon. But the primates unanimously upheld the resolution as the standard of Anglican teaching on the matter in their statement of October 16, 2003: “We also re-affirm the resolutions made by the bishops of the Anglican Communion gathered at the Lambeth Conference in 1998 on issues of human sexuality as having moral force and commanding the respect of the Communion as its present position on these issues.”7 This statement was in harmony with the position adopted by the primates to issues of human sexuality in their Pastoral Letter following their meeting in Gramado in May 2003.8 This commitment to Lambeth Resolution 1.10 as the current position of the Anglican Communion was also reflected in a letter written to the primates by Archbishop Rowan Williams on the announcement of his nomination to the See of Canterbury.9 In the years following the Lambeth Conference the Archbishop of Canterbury invited a small number of bishops from around the Communion for International Conversations on Human Sexuality, which set a high standard for how these matters could be discussed in charity and with reason. 26. It should be clearly understood that this Commission has not been asked to continue this conversation, nor comment on or reconsider either the Lambeth Resolution or the Primates’ Statement. Further serious Communion-wide discussion of the relevant issues is clearly needed as a matter of urgency, but that is not part of our mandate. 27. Nevertheless, the primates singled out synodical actions that have been taken in one diocese and one province which have gone against both the letter and the spirit of the resolutions of the Lambeth Conference, reiterated, as they are, by the Primates’ Meeting. The synod of the Diocese of New Westminster has requested the Bishop to provide and authorise a public Rite of Blessing for same sex unions; the Bishop has complied, and such services have gone ahead. The Episcopal Church (USA) has given its consent to, and proceeded with the consecration of, the person elected as Bishop of New Hampshire, a divorced man openly acknowledged to be living in a sexually active and committed same 5 Lambeth 1978, Resolution 10; Lambeth 1988, Resolution 64 – reproduced in Appendix Three/2&3. 6 The text of the 1998 Resolution 1.10 is included in Appendix Three/6. 7 The full text of the Primates’ Statement is included in Appendix Three/10. 8 The relevant section of the Pastoral Letter is reproduced at paragraph 142. 9 “… the Lambeth resolution of 1998 declares clearly what is the mind of the overwhelming majority in the Communion, and what the Communion will and will not approve or authorise. I accept that any individual diocese or even province that officially overturns or repudiates this resolution poses a substantial problem for the sacramental unity of the Communion.”, Letter to the Primates, Archbishop Rowan Williams, 23 July 2002. 18 sex relationship, despite the primates describing that forthcoming consecration as one which might “tear the fabric of our Communion at its deepest level”.10 The same General Convention which gave consent to this election also decided to allow experimentation with public Rites of Blessing for same sex unions.11 Many of those which have begun to be celebrated are similar to those authorised in New Westminster. We should also note that, after this Commission had already been set up, the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada passed a resolution affirming “the integrity and sanctity of committed adult same-sex relationships”.12 Further details of these developments are given later in this Report at paragraphs 137-139. 28. The overwhelming response from other Christians both inside and outside the Anglican family has been to regard these developments as departures from genuine, apostolic Christian faith. Granted, some churches in other denominations have made provision, or are considering making such provision, for the ordination of persons in sexually active same-sex relationships, offering arguments based on modern scientific proposals about sexual attraction, and corresponding, in their proposals, to changes and innovations in civil law in some of the relevant countries.13 But condemnation has come from the Russian Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches, as well as a statement from the Roman Catholic church that such moves create “new and serious difficulties” to ecumenical relationships.14 Within our own Communion, some eighteen of the thirty-eight provinces of the Anglican Communion, or their primates on their behalf, have issued statements which indicate, in a variety of ways, their basic belief that the developments in North America are “contrary to biblical teaching” and as such unacceptable.15 29. Unfortunately, reaction has not been confined to statements of disagreement and opposition. Three elements of the reaction need to be noted as they themselves are now part of the problem we face: (1) Several provinces and dioceses in the Communion have included in their reactions to developments in New Hampshire, either by primatial announcement or by synodical vote, a declaration that a state of either impaired or broken communion16 now exists between them and those who 10 From the statement by the Primates of the Anglican Communion meeting in Lambeth Palace, 16 October 2003, reproduced in Appendix Three/10. 11 Resolution C051 Liturgy/Music: Blessing of Committed Same-Gender Relationships, reproduced in Appendix Three/9. 12 The full texts of Resolutions A134 Blessing of Same Sex Unions and A135 Blessing of Same Sex Unions - Resources are included in Appendix Three/12. 13 Such developments or debate can be found in the United Church of Canada, the Lutheran Church of Sweden, and some Old Catholic dioceses in Europe. 14 Pope John Paul II’s address to the Archbishop Of Canterbury, October 2003 15 A summary of some of the earlier statements may be found in footnote 19 of ‘What is the Anglican Communion for?’, a submission made to the Lambeth Commission by Canon Chris Sugden of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, available on the Commission website at http://www.anglicancommunion.org/ecumenical/commissions/lambeth/documents/200402whatisitfor.pdf 16 For discussion of the meaning of these terms, see paragraph 50. 19 have taken the actions in the Episcopal Church (USA) described above.17 Whilst these declarations may express natural frustrations and conscientious reactions to abnormal circumstances, they have left many Anglicans without a clear sense of who is now in communion with whom (personally and ecclesially). In addition, there are question marks over their ecclesiological legitimacy (for many, they represent an exercise in unilateralism counter to the communion principle of interdependence) as well as the constitutional authority under which some were issued (impaired communion is not a generally recognised canonical category). (2) Within the Episcopal Church (USA) and the Diocese of New Westminster themselves, several moves have been made by dissenting parishes and groups to distance themselves, in a variety of ways, from the dioceses, bishops and provinces within which they are geographically located. In some cases this has involved them in appealing for help to the Archbishop of Canterbury; in others, in seeking episcopal oversight by bishops or archbishops from other dioceses and/or provinces. In many cases, it has simply meant bewilderment and uncertainty as to the present and future Anglican status of those who dissent to the innovations. (3) Some Archbishops from elsewhere in the Communion have, both by taking initiatives, and by responding to invitations from clergy purporting to place themselves under their jurisdictions, entered parts of the Episcopal Church (USA) and the Anglican Church of Canada and exercised episcopal functions without the consent of the relevant diocesan bishop. This goes not only against traditional and often-repeated Anglican practice (as reaffirmed most recently by, for example, resolutions at Lambeth 1988 and 199818), but also against some of the longest-standing regulations of the early undivided church (Canon 8 of Nicaea). These actions are not purely reactions to recent events, though that has been their main character. In some cases they build on earlier attempts at unilateral action against bishops whose theology and/or practice was perceived to be out of line with traditional Anglican and Christian teaching, or even to set up would-be “orthodox” structures or “mission churches” for their own sake, e.g. the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA). 30. By whatever route, all these developments have now contributed materially to a tit-for-tat stand-off in which, tragically in line with analogous political disasters in the wider world, each side now accuses the other of atrocities, and blames the 17 See, for example, the declaration by Nigeria of 15 November 2003, “We continue to stand solidly behind the leadership of the Church of Nigeria in breaking relationship, not only with the Diocese of New Hampshire, but with all bishops and dioceses in ECUSA that have joined in this divisive and unscriptural act.”, and the declaration by the House of Bishops of the Church of Uganda on 20 November 2003, “The Church of the Province of Uganda (Anglican) cuts her relationship and Communion with the Episcopal Church of the United States of America (ECUSA) on their resolution and consequent action of consecrating and enthroning an openly confessed homosexual Gene Robinson as the bishop of New Hampshire Diocese in the Anglican Communion, and with any other province that shall follow suit.” 18 Lambeth Conference 1988 Resolution 72 Episcopal responsibilities and diocesan boundaries; Lambeth Conference 1998 Resolution III.2 The Unity of the Anglican Communion – reproduced in Appendix Three/4. 20 other for the need to react further in turn. These are the problems which have presented themselves to the Communion as a whole; which necessitated a special meeting of the primates in October 2003; and which have resulted in the establishment of the Lambeth Commission. We must now probe deeper to discern the symptoms underlying these problems. Illness: The deeper symptoms 31. There are six underlying features of our common life which, interacting on one another, together make up the key strands in the story of what has happened and the reasons why the Anglican Communion arrived at the impasse which caused the primates to request the Archbishop of Canterbury to set up this Commission. Theological development 32. There is, first, theological development. Virtually all Christians agree on the necessity for theological development, including radical innovation, and on the fact that the Holy Spirit enables the church to undertake such development. Primary examples include the great fourth-century creeds, which go significantly beyond the actual words and concepts of scripture but which have been recognised by almost all Christians ever since as expressing the faith to which we are committed. At the same time, all are agreed that not all proposed developments are (to put it mildly) of equal weight and worth. Some, in fact, do not develop the Christian faith, but distort or even destroy it. A recent example might be the heresy of apartheid. Healthy theological development normally takes place within the missionary imperative to articulate the faith afresh in different cultures, but (as has become notorious) this merely pushes the question a stage further back: how is the line between faithful inculturation and false accommodation to the world’s ways of thinking (note Romans 12.1-2) to be discerned and determined? Christians are not at liberty to simplify these matters either by claiming the Spirit’s justification for every proposed innovation or by claiming long-standing tradition as the reason for rejecting all such proposals. The church therefore always needs procedures for discussing, sifting, evaluating and deciding upon proposed developments; in particular, they need to honour the process of ‘reception’, described in Section B below. 33. The first reason therefore why the present problems have reached the pitch they have is that it appears to the wider Communion that neither the Diocese of New Westminster nor the Episcopal Church (USA) has made a serious attempt to offer an explanation to, or consult meaningfully with, the Communion as a whole about the significant development of theology which alone could justify the recent moves by a diocese or a province. Ecclesiastical procedures 34. Such a process would require appropriate ecclesiastical procedures. Such procedures that do exist have developed within the Anglican Communion over a period of time and in response to particular earlier problems. We have described in the previous section the ways in which they were followed quite carefully in the run-up to the consecration of women to the episcopate. Several recent 21 Anglican documents, notably The Virginia Report (1997), have spelled out explicitly and in detail what procedures could be applied and the way in which they could function, making it clear (among other things) that these procedures are not merely pragmatically determined but express the theology they seek to serve. Furthermore, a special resolution of ACC-12,19 meeting in Hong Kong in September 2002, called for the observance of such procedures in the introduction of any controversial policies which touched on the wider life of the Communion.20 True, Anglican structures have sometimes posed problems by their dispersed nature, but this has normally been regarded as a small price to pay for the flexibility for mission which they permit, whilst nurturing the increased sense and strength of koinonia that they invite and sustain. 35. The second reason we have reached the present impasse is that neither the Episcopal Church (USA) nor the Diocese of New Westminster, in deciding and acting as they did in 2003, went through the procedures which might have made it possible for the church to hold together across differences of belief and practice. Adiaphora 36. Such holding together across differences within Anglicanism has made use of the vital doctrine of adiaphora (literally, “things that do not make a difference”). This is explained further in section B. For the moment, we simply note that Anglicans have always recognised a key distinction between core doctrines of the church (remembering that ethics, liturgy and pastoral practice, if authentically Christian, are all rooted in theology and doctrine) and those upon which disagreement can be tolerated without endangering unity.21 Paul urged Christians in Corinth and Rome to recognise some matters in this way (what to eat or not to eat being a prime example). When something is seen in this way, an individual church, at whatever level, can make its own decisions on the matter. 37. The third reason therefore why the present crisis has arisen is that many within the Episcopal Church (USA) and the Diocese of New Westminster hold to the opinion, at least by implication, that the questions they were deciding were things upon which Christians might have legitimate difference, while large numbers of other Anglicans around the world did not regard them in this way. Subsidiarity 38. This highlights a fourth key strand of our common life: subsidiarity, the principle that matters should be decided as close to the local level as possible. Subsidiarity and adiaphora belong together: the more something is regarded as ‘indifferent’, the more locally the decision can be made. It does not take an Ecumenical Council to decide what colour flowers might be displayed in church; nor does a local congregation presume to add or subtract clauses from 19 i.e. the twelfth meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council. 20 Resolution 34 Province-wide and Communion-wide consultation, reproduced in Appendix Three/8. 21 See, for example, the line of argument developed in the discursus ‘Of Ceremonies’ in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. 22 the Nicene Creed. In part this belongs with the missionary imperative: the church must give its primary energy to God’s mission to the world, not to reordering its internal life. 39. The fourth reason for our present problems is thus that it was assumed by the Episcopal Church (USA) and the Diocese of New Westminster that they were free to take decisions on matters which many in the rest of the Communion believe can and should be decided only at the Communion-wide level. Trust 40. All this points up a more general feature which ought to characterise life within the Communion: a relationship of trust. Mutual trust generates, and is in turn reinforced by, mutual responsibility. Ideally, the Communion puts its trust in each province to exercise its autonomy appropriately within our mutual fellowship.22 This commits each church to a fiduciary duty to honour, and not to breach, that trust. However, where trust has broken down in many areas of life in our contemporary world, it is perhaps not surprising, though it remains regrettable, that trust has been eroded in many areas of church life as well. The language of debate has become adversarial, not to say abusive; recourse has been made to secular courts of law in place of Christian forbearance and charity; undertakings have been ignored; protagonists have acted out of spite rather than the demands of proper administration, and facts have been manipulated to serve party spirit. The major cultural divisions in today’s world, not least between the rich nations of western Europe and north America and the poorer nations in other parts of the world, have left their ugly mark on our ecclesial life. Likewise, the deep divide in contemporary American political life has led both to an oversimplification and a polarisation of many issues, as though ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ opinion were simply a pair of uncomplicated pre-packaged bundles. Despite several wonderful counter-examples, each side has increasingly come to distrust the other, and to accuse the other (not least) of using inappropriate models and methods of reading scripture and reaching decisions. 41. This is the fifth unhappy circumstance (itself catastrophic in terms of our mission which, as we have seen, includes the call to model before the watching world the new mode of being human which has been unveiled in Christ) that has brought us to the present difficulty. We clearly need more mutual exploration and explanation of our theological beliefs, our understanding of the Bible, and of many aspects of our common life and witness. The Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission, established following the 1998 Lambeth Conference, has made a good start, but much remains to be done.23 Theological commissions within provinces need to be made more conscious of, and conversant with, Communion-wide dimensions of theological discourse. In particular, we need to develop the habit, and thence the virtue, of that charity 22 On the relation of communion and autonomy, see below, Section B : Fundamental Principles, paragraphs 67-96. 23 For the work of the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission, see http://www.aco.org/ecumenical/commissions/iatdc/index.cfm. 23 which listens intensely and with good will to widely different expressions of sincerely held Christian theology, at the levels both of method and of content. As a Communion, we need a common forum for debate, a common table to which we can bring our questions for a proper family discussion. Authority 42. All of this can be summed up in a word which, though often misunderstood, denotes an elusive sixth element which might hold the key: authority. The Anglican Communion does not have a Pope, nor any system which corresponds to the authority structure and canonical organisation of the Roman Catholic Church. The Anglican Communion has always declared that its supreme authority is scripture. Later in the report we examine what this claim might actually mean, not least the way in which living under scriptural authority is principally the grounding for the church’s mission.24 In that context, scriptural authority demands, and we believe that in our Communion structures it has begun to receive, appropriately sensitive and fine-tuned systems of decisionmaking which allow both for the full participation of all members and for an eventual way of making difficult decisions which can enhance, rather than endanger, the unity and communion of our richly diverse family. It is because we have not always fully articulated how authority works within Anglicanism, and because recent decisions have not taken into account, and/or worked through and explained, such authority as we all in theory acknowledge, that we have reached the point where urgent fresh thought and action have become necessary. 24 See paragraphs 53-62 below. 24 Section B : Fundamental Principles 43. The mandate of this Commission has been to examine, and make recommendations in relation to, the formal results, in terms of our Communion one with another within Anglicanism, of the recent events which have been described. We repeat that we have not been invited, and are not intending, to comment or make recommendations on the theological and ethical matters concerning the practice of same sex relations and the blessing or ordination or consecration of those who engage in them. Having outlined the problems, and sketched the deeper symptoms we believe to lie beneath them, it is time to examine more fully, in this Section, the nature of the Communion we share, the bonds which hold it together, the ways in which all this can be threatened and how such threats might be met. This will enable the report to offer, in Section C, the ways in which we believe our Communion needs strengthening for its future mission and life, before finally, in Section D, offering our recommendations to the Archbishop of Canterbury and his fellow primates on the ways in which our present crisis ought to be resolved. 44. This section of the report considers in more detail the nature of our communion with God and with one another; the specific elements of our common life which bind us together and thus equip us for God’s mission in the world; and the ways in which, within our common life, diversity produces tension and difficulty. In so doing, the section sets out the principles against which recent events and actions may be measured. The communion we share 45. The communion we enjoy as Anglicans involves a sharing in double ‘bonds of affection’: those that flow from our shared status as children of God in Christ, and those that arise from our shared and inherited identity, which is the particular history of the churches to which we belong. This is a relationship of ‘covenantal affection’; that is, our mutual affection is not subject to whim and mood, but involves us in a covenant relation of binding mutual promises, with God in Christ and with one another. All those called by the gospel of Jesus Christ and set apart by God’s gift of baptism are incorporated into the communion of the Body of Christ. This communion is primarily a relationship with God, who is himself a communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and it binds every member of Christ into the whole body.25 46. Our communion enables us, in mutual interdependence, to engage in our primary task, which is to take forward God’s mission to his needy and muchloved world. As a means to that end, it is also necessarily the expression of the worldwide, i.e. ‘catholic’, nature of the Church. In both these respects, communion remains God’s gift as well as God’s command. 25 Extended treatment of these themes can be found in Eames, ch.2, 14-24 and The Virginia Report: the report of the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission (1997), ch.2. 25 47. When “the Anglican Communion” describes itself as such, it is self-consciously describing that part of the Body of Christ which shares an inheritance through the Anglican tradition, that is, from the Church of England, whose history encompasses the ancient Celtic and Saxon churches of the British Isles, and which was given fresh theological expression during the period of the Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Reformers of that time looked back explicitly to the Bible and the early Fathers, and had every intention that their theology would be ‘catholic’ in the sense of sharing the faith of the universal Church. The very fact that the family of churches which traces its roots back to the ancient churches of the British Isles should call itself an Anglican Communion is itself indicative of the twin fundamental concepts on which the community is built: our shared inheritance (‘Anglican’) and our worldwide fellowship as God’s children (‘communion’). That shared inheritance has itself included a developing understanding of communion, which has been expressed, for instance, in some of our ecumenical dialogues. It also makes us aware of a responsibility, not only to our contemporaries within the Communion, but to those with whom we share in the Communion of Saints. 48. Various different but interlocking descriptions of the Anglican Communion exist amongst us. The Lambeth Conference has described the Anglican Communion as a fellowship of churches in communion with the See of Canterbury.26 Individual provinces express their own communion relationships in a variety of juridical forms, as: bipartite (in communion with Canterbury);27 multipartite (in communion with all Anglican churches);28 or simply through the idea of “belonging to the Anglican Communion”.29 Communion is therefore a relationship between churches (institutional or ecclesial communion) as well as between individual Christians (personal communion). 49. Communion is, in fact, all about mutual relationships. It is expressed by community, equality, common life, sharing, interdependence, and mutual affection and respect. It subsists in visible unity, common confession of the apostolic faith, common belief in scripture and the creeds, common baptism and shared eucharist, and a mutually recognised common ministry. Communion means that each church recognises that the other belongs to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ, and shares in the mission of the whole people of God. It involves practising a common liturgical tradition, and intending to listen, speak and act alongside one another in obedience to the gospel. In communion, each church acknowledges and respects the interdependence and autonomy of the other, putting the needs of the global fellowship before its own. Through such communion, each church is enabled to find completeness through its relations to the others, while fulfilling its own 26 Lambeth Conference 1930 Resolution 49. 27 e.g. “The Church of Ireland will maintain communion with the sister Church of England”: Ireland, Constitution, Preamble and Declaration, III. 28 e.g. “The Church of Nigeria shall be in full Communion with the See of Canterbury and with all dioceses, provinces and regional Churches which are in full Communion with the See of Canterbury: Nigeria, Constitution, Chapter 1.3(1). 29 e.g. “The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America ... is a constituent member of the Anglican Communion”, a fellowship of churches “in communion with the See of Canterbury”: ECUSA, Constitution, Preamble. 26 particular calling within its own cultural context. This does not mean, of course, that each church must accept every theological opinion, or follow every sacramental devotion or liturgical practice, characteristic of the other. Such a distinction, between the essentials in which we agree and the non-essentials which do not inhibit communion, is a vital part of life within the Anglican Communion, and is explored further elsewhere.30 50. When people use the normally imprecise language of ‘impaired’, ‘fractured’, or ‘restricted’ communion, or speak of there being ‘degrees’ of communion between one church or group of churches and another, they commonly mean that only some of the characteristics outlined in the previous paragraph now obtain. Communion is now “less full than it was”.31 Which characteristics are affected (perhaps a failure in complete mutual recognition of ministries, as has happened since the ordination of women to the priesthood and their consecration to the episcopate) will vary from case to case, contributing to the confusing nature of such terms.32 Such a condition of impairment is not merely sad, and detrimental to our common mission and witness. It could in principle call into question the constitutional position of several member churches of the Anglican Communion, since many, as we have just seen, mark out their identity in terms precisely of being in full communion either with Canterbury or with all other churches in communion with Canterbury. But there has been little consensus within the Anglican Communion on how precisely to identify, beyond a bare assertion, that such impairment, fracturing, and so forth, has taken place, let alone how such a situation might be remedied.33 51. Communion clearly makes demands on all within it. It involves obligations, and corresponding rights, which flow from the theological truths on which the life of the Christian community rests. The Lambeth Quadrilateral commits Anglicans to “a series of normative practices: scripture is read, tradition is received, sacramental worship is practised, and the historic character of apostolic leadership is retained”.34 The commitments of communion provide objective criteria by which to understand the rights and responsibilities that go with the relationship and which promote and protect the common good of the worldwide community of churches. Many obligations are implicit in the foundation, purposes, forms, subjects and substance of communion, and thus relate to matters of critical common concern to the global Anglican fellowship. For instance, the divine foundation of communion should oblige each church to avoid unilateral action on contentious issues which may result in broken 30 See paragraphs 36-39, 87-96. 31 Women in the Anglican Episcopate: theology guidelines and practice, The Eames Commission and the Monitoring Group Reports, IV:57 (Toronto, 1998). 32 See generally The Virginia Report and the work of the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission (IATDC) which develop longstanding ideas enunciated by successive Lambeth Conferences. 33 For analysis of the declarations of impaired communion, see N. Doe, ‘Communion and Autonomy in Anglicanism: Nature and Maintenance’, pp.20-24, Lambeth Commission website http://www.anglicancommunion.org/ecumenical/commissions/lambeth/documents/200402whatisitfor.pdf 34 See Summary Argument from the IATDC’s ‘Communion Study’, p.3; see also IARCCUM Subcommission submission, p.18. Both documents are set out on the Commission’s website http://www.anglicancommunion.org/ecumenical/commissions/lambeth/kanuga/index.cfm 27 communion. It is an ancient canonical principle that what touches all should be decided by all. The relational nature of communion requires each church to learn more fully what it means to be part of that communion, so that its members may be fulfilled and strengthened in and through their relations with other churches. Communion obliges each church to foster, respect and maintain all those marks of common identity, and all those instruments of unity and communion, which it shares with fellow churches, seeking a common mind in essential matters of common concern: in short, to act interdependently, not independently. The bonds of communion 52. These broader considerations lead to reflection in more detail on the specific bonds which hold the Anglican Communion together. Communion, after all, does not simply happen. Even at the human level, it is not left to chance and tacit goodwill. There are several aspects of our common life which, as well as fulfilling the primary purpose of enabling the Church to fulfil its gospel mission in and for the world, serve to draw us together and hold us in fellowship. The authority of scripture 53. Central among these is scripture. Within Anglicanism, scripture has always been recognised as the Church’s supreme authority, and as such ought to be seen as a focus and means of unity. The emphasis on scripture grew not least from the insistence of the early Anglican reformers on the importance of the Bible and the Fathers over against what they saw as illegitimate mediaeval developments; it was part of their appeal to ancient undivided Christian faith and life. The seventeenth and eighteenth century divines hammered out their foundations of “scripture, tradition and reason”; in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries we have seen the ‘Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral’, in which scripture takes first place.35 The Bible has always been at the centre of Anglican belief and life, embodied and exemplified by the fact that the reading and singing of scripture has always been at the centre of Anglican worship. 54. However, the common phrase “the authority of scripture” can be misleading; the confusions that result may relate to some of the divisions just noted. Scripture itself, after all, regularly speaks of God as the supreme authority. When Jesus speaks of “all authority in heaven and earth” (Matthew 28.18), he declares that this authority is given, not to the books that his followers will write, but to himself. Jesus, the living Word, is the one to whom the written Word bears witness as God’s ultimate and personal self-expression. The New Testament is full of similar ascriptions of authority to the Father, to Jesus Christ, and to the Holy Spirit. Thus the phrase “the authority of scripture”, if it is to be based on what scripture itself says, must be regarded as a shorthand, and a potentially misleading one at that, for the longer and more complex notion of “the authority of the triune God, exercised through scripture”. The question of how this 35 This ‘Quadrilateral’ was first adopted by the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church (USA) meeting in synod in Chicago in 1886. It was subsequently adopted as a fundamental basis for ecumenical reconciliation in Resolution 11 of the Lambeth Conference 1888 – reproduced in Appendix Three/1. 28 ‘exercised through’ works in practice is vital to understanding the kind of authority which scripture possesses and hence to the nature and exercise of actual authority within the Church. It may be, historically, that the phrase ‘authority of scripture’ has characteristically emerged in contexts of protest (when one part of the Church appeals to scripture against something being done by another part). When we attempt to apply it more widely, to an entire understanding of the Church’s mission and common life, it quickly becomes apparent that its implications need to be thought out more fully. 55. For Jesus and the early Christians, ‘authority’ was not conceived as a static source of information or the giving of orders (as the word ‘authority’ has sometimes implied), but in terms of the dynamic inbreaking of God’s kingdom, that is, God’s sovereign, saving, redeeming and reconciling rule over all creation. This saving rule of God, long promised and awaited in Israel, broke in upon the world in and through Jesus and his death and resurrection, to be then implemented through the work of the Spirit until the final act of grace which will create the promised new heavens and new earth. If the notion of scriptural authority is itself to be rooted in scripture, and to be consonant with the central truths confessed by Christians from the earliest days, it must be seen that the purpose of scripture is not simply to supply true information, nor just to prescribe in matters of belief and conduct, nor merely to act as a court of appeal, but to be part of the dynamic life of the Spirit through which God the Father is making the victory which was won by Jesus’ death and resurrection operative within the world and in and through human beings. Scripture is thus part of the means by which God directs the Church in its mission, energises it for that task, and shapes and unites it so that it may be both equipped for this work and itself part of the message. 56. How then does scripture function in this way? This is not the place for a detailed consideration of the respective authority of the Old and New Testaments, important though that discussion is. The early Christians understood themselves to be both beneficiaries and agents of the saving sovereignty of God, the ‘kingdom’ which had been accomplished in Jesus Christ. The ‘authority’ of the apostles – a concept worked out with great pain and paradox by Paul in 2 Corinthians – was their God-given and Spirit-driven vocation as witnesses of the resurrection, through whose announcement of the good news God was powerfully at work to call men and women to salvation (Romans 1.16-17) and thus to create the Church as the sign and foretaste of new creation (Ephesians 1-3). It is within this context of apostolic witness, drawing its ‘authority’ from the victory of Jesus Christ and the power of the Spirit (Matthew 28.18-20; 2 Corinthians 3.1-4.6, 13.3-4), that the writings we call the New Testament came to be written, precisely to be vehicles of the Spirit’s work in energising the Church in its mission and shaping it in the holiness of new creation. Thus, as scholarship has emphasised, the writers of the canonical gospels (despite all the obvious differences between them, and the multiple sources upon which they drew) were conscious of telling the story of Jesus in such a way as to demonstrate its fulfilment of the story of Israel and its foundational character for the mission and life of the Church. From the first, the New Testament was intended as, and perceived to be, not a repository of various suggestions for developing one’s private spirituality, but as the collection of books through 29 which the Spirit who was working so powerfully through the apostles would develop and continue that work in the churches. This is why, from very early in the Church, the apostolic writings were read during worship, as part of both the Church’s praise to God for his mighty acts and of the Church’s drawing fresh strength from God for mission and holiness. This, rather than a quasi-legal process of ‘appeal’, is the primary and dynamic context within which the shorthand phrase “authority of scripture” finds its deepest meaning. Scripture and interpretation 57. This means that for scripture to ‘work’ as the vehicle of God’s authority it is vital that it be read at the heart of worship in a way which (through appropriate lectionaries, and the use of scripture in canticles etc.) allows it to be heard, understood and reflected upon, not as a pleasing and religious background noise, but as God’s living and active word. The message of scripture, as a whole and in its several parts, must be preached and taught in all possible and appropriate ways. It is the responsibility of the whole Church to engage with the Bible together; within that, each individual Christian, to the fullest extent of which they are capable, must study it and learn from it, thoughtfully and prayerfully. Within this context, the Church’s accredited leaders have a responsibility, through constant teaching and preaching, to enable the Church to grow to maturity, so that when difficult judgements are required they may be made in full knowledge of the texts. 58. The place of Christian leaders – chiefly within the Anglican tradition, of bishops – as teachers of scripture can hardly be overemphasised. The ‘authority’ of bishops cannot reside solely or primarily in legal structures, but, as in Acts 6.4, in their ministry of “prayer and the word of God”. If this is ignored, the model of ‘the authority of scripture’ which scripture itself offers is failing to function as it should. The authoritative teaching of scripture cannot be left to academic researchers, vital though they are. The accredited leaders of the Church – within the diocese, the bishop(s); within the Communion, the primates – must be people through whose prayerful teaching ministry the authority of God vested in scripture is brought to bear - in mission within the world and in wise teaching to build up the Church. 59. As this task proceeds, questions of interpretation are rightly raised, not as an attempt to avoid or relativise scripture and its authority, but as a way of ensuring that it really is scripture that is being heard, not simply the echo of our own voices (though our own responsive hearing is necessary) or the memory of earlier Christian interpretations (though we must always take them into account: ‘tradition’ consists primarily of the recollection of what the scripture-reading Church has said). Historical interpretation, from ongoing lexicographical work (to make sure the nuances of ancient words are properly and precisely heard) to large-scale historical reconstruction (to ensure we are not making anachronistic assumptions), remains vital. It can be deeply challenging to entrenched views of what scripture is thought to be saying, not least where it has been read within an unchallenged philosophical or cultural matrix. 60. This applies equally, in our own day and setting, to the assumptions and entrenched views of the Enlightenment (which have often resulted in 30 unwarranted negative judgements on much biblical material), as well as to the assumptions and entrenched views of a pre- or anti-critical conservatism. Biblical scholarship needs simultaneously to be free to explore different meanings and to be constrained by loyalty to the community of the Church across time and space. It cannot pretend to a detached ‘neutrality’. Such pretence (as in phrases like “the objective results of scholarship”) is often, and rightly, seen as either a grab for power or a mere protest against alternative interpretations. Where a fresh wave of scholarship generates ideas which are perceived as a threat to something the Church has always held dear, it is up to the scholars concerned, on the one hand, to explain how what is now proposed not only accords with but actually enhances the central core of the Church’s faith. And it is up to the Church, on the other hand, not to reject new proposals out of hand, but to listen carefully, to test everything, and to be prepared to change its mind if and when a convincing case is made. 61. The current crisis thus constitutes a call to the whole Anglican Communion to re-evaluate the ways in which we have read, heard, studied and digested scripture. We can no longer be content to drop random texts into arguments, imagining that the point is thereby proved, or indeed to sweep away sections of the New Testament as irrelevant to today’s world, imagining that problems are thereby solved. We need mature study, wise and prayerful discussion, and a joint commitment to hearing and obeying God as he speaks in scripture, to discovering more of the Jesus Christ to whom all authority is committed, and to being open to the fresh wind of the Spirit who inspired scripture in the first place. If our present difficulties force us to read and learn together from scripture in new ways, they will not have been without profit. 62. A mention of scripture today can sometimes seem actually divisive, so aware are we of the bewildering range of available interpretative strategies and results. This is tragic, since, as with the Spirit who inspired scripture, we should expect that the Bible would be a means of unity, not division. In fact, our shared reading of scripture across boundaries of culture, region and tradition ought to be the central feature of our common life, guiding us together into an appropriately rich and diverse unity by leading us forward from entrenched positions into fresh appreciation of the riches of the gospel as articulated in the scriptures. This is characteristically and appropriately accomplished through the various ministries of the Church, not least the next of the bonds of unity now to be considered. The episcopate 63. The unity of the Communion is both expressed and put into effect among other things through the episcopate. At the Reformation, the Church of England maintained the threefold order of ministry, in continuity with the early Church. As the events of the seventeenth century bear witness, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that the Church of England would end up with a continuing episcopacy. But in the event “there was no attempt [during the sixteenth-century Reformation] to minimise the role of bishops as ministers of word and sacrament or to stop a collegial relation between bishops and presbyters in the 31 diocese or bishops together at the level of Province.”36 Within a short period of time, in fact, this retention of episcopacy as the foundational form of government within the Anglican churches became the distinctive mark of its claim to be both Catholic and Protestant; and, reflecting the practice of the very early Church, the ministry of bishops as chief pastors and teachers of the faith, as the focus of unity and source of ministry, became central. The principle of Anglican episcopacy was fought over and defended in the life of the Scottish Episcopal Church. It was retained in the life of the Episcopal Church (USA). It was subsequently, and carefully, preserved in the life of all thirty-eight provinces of the Anglican Communion, including the United Churches of South Asia. As recognised in the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, an episcopate at once local and universal is therefore an essential element of the life of the Anglican Communion. And, to link once more with scripture as the central fact of unity within the Communion, it is the bishop’s role as teacher of scripture that is meant, above all, to be not merely a symbolic but a very practical means of giving the Church the energy and direction it needs for its mission and therefore the motivation and the groundwork for its unity. 64. It has always been maintained within Anglicanism that a bishop is more than simply the local chief pastor.37 Bishops represent the universal Church to the local and vice versa.38 This is why individual churches have developed ways of confirming the election of bishops, signifying their acceptability to the wider Church. Without such attention to general acceptability, the episcopate, instead of being in its very existence one of the bonds of unity in the Communion, quickly becomes an occasion and focus of disunity. 65. The work, and symbolic unifying value, of the local episcopate is matched at the transprovincial level by the four Instruments of Unity (described more fully in paragraphs 98-104), and especially by the Archbishop of Canterbury himself as the chief pastor of the entire Communion. Their role and work is not a substitute for the mutual accountability of the rest of the Church, but is rather a means of expressing it, drawing it together, and enabling the whole Church to listen to each member and each member to listen to the whole. It is with this in mind that successive Lambeth Conferences have urged the primates to shoulder the burden of enhanced responsibility for the unity of the Communion, a request echoed by the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission at its meeting in September 2003.39 This request draws on that theology of wider apostolic and episcopal leadership which is expressed in the New Testament by the apostles themselves (e.g. Paul, writing with authority to various churches including some he had not himself founded), by such writers as Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus 36 The Virginia Report, paragraph 3.25. 37 See also Section D : The Maintenance of Communion, paragraphs 124-132. 38 “We have seen that a Bishop’s ministry is ‘representative’ in several different senses. A Bishop represents the local church to the wider, but also the other way round. Bishops represent Christ to the people, but also bring the people and their prayers to God. Finally, they often represent God and his Church in the world at large.” Dr Michael Nazir-Ali in Working with the Spirit: Choosing diocesan bishops, CHP (2001), p.107. 39 ‘Reflections offered to the Primates of the Anglican Communion by the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury’. See http://www.aco.org/ecumenical/commissions/iatdc/20031015primates.cfm 32 and Cyprian, and in subsequent centuries by the recognition of the role of the great sees of Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, Rome and Jerusalem. 66. The very existence of the Instruments of Unity points to the desire of the Communion to work together, with bishops, clergy and laity all involved as fully as possible. This is where the ongoing synods, at all levels of the Church, express by their existence, as well as (it is to be hoped) by their actual work, the unity-in-diversity which characterises our life in communion. In 1988, Archbishop Robert Runcie put the challenge this way: “…are we being called through events and their theological interpretation to move from independence to interdependence? If we answer yes, then we cannot dodge the question of how this is to be given ‘flesh’: how is our interdependence articulated and made effective; how is it to be structured? ... We need to have confidence that authority is not dispersed to the point of dissolution and ineffectiveness … Let me put it in starkly simple terms: do we really want unity within the Anglican Communion? Is our worldwide family of Christians worth bonding together? Or is our paramount concern the preservation of promotion of that particular expression of Anglicanism which has developed within the culture of our own province? … I believe we still need the Anglican Communion. But we have reached the stage in the growth of the Communion when we must begin to make radical choices, or growth will imperceptibly turn to decay. I believe the choice between independence and interdependence, already set before us as a Communion in embryo twenty-five years ago, is quite simply the choice between unity or gradual fragmentation.”40 What this bears witness to is the understanding that 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. It is by listening to, and interacting with, voices from as many different parts of the family as possible that the Church discovers what its unity and communion really mean. Synodality as a characteristic of the Anglican Communion finds expression in Lambeth Conferences as early as 1867 (Resolutions 4, 5, 8 and 10) as well as in the Lambeth Conference of 1897 (Resolution 24). Discernment in communion and reception 67. As the whole Church, corporately and individually, gives attention to the reading and pondering of scripture, we are called to the specific unifying task of a common discernment in communion. We come from a rich variety of cultures, and each of us is called to read scripture within, and apply it to, our own particular setting – and to respect the fact that other churches face the same demands within their own contexts. We cannot, therefore, confine our readings of scripture to our own setting alone (as scholarship, sometimes claimed as the preserve of the western academy, has often done). On the contrary, one of the 40 R Runcie, Opening Address, reproduced in The Truth Shall Make You Free, The Lambeth Conference 1988, CHP (1988), p.16. 33 ways in which we discern the limits of appropriate inculturation is by our rendering account to one another, across traditional boundaries, for the gospel we proclaim and live and the teaching we offer. One of the hallmarks of healthy worldwide communion will be precisely our readiness to learn from one another (which by no means indicates an unquestioning acceptance of one another’s readings, but rather a rich mutual accountability) as we read scripture together. To the extent that this has not been a major feature of our common life in recent decades, we should not be surprised that major divisions have opened up amongst us. It is by reading scripture too little, not by reading it too much, that we have allowed ourselves to drift apart. 68. Within our common life, one way in which unity has been maintained is by subjecting fresh developments within the Anglican Communion to a test of reception. In classical theological terms, ‘reception’ was the process by which the pronouncements of a Council of the Church were tested by how the faithful ‘received’ it. The consensus fidelium (‘common mind of the believers’) constituted the ultimate check that a new declaration was in harmony with the faith as it had been received. More recently, the doctrine has been used in Anglicanism as a way of testing whether a controversial development, not yet approved by a universal Council of the Church but nevertheless arising within a province by legitimate processes, might gradually, over time, come to be accepted as an authentic development of the faith. This offers a clear threefold sequence: (i) theological debate and discussion (ii) formal action, and (iii) increased consultation to see whether the formal action settles down and makes itself at home. This process of consultation, designed to strengthen Communion, is the very opposite of confrontation, and leads to a shared discernment of God’s truth. It is a key way of maintaining the unity of the Church through a time of experiment and uncertainty.41 69. We should note, however, that the doctrine of reception only makes sense if the proposals concern matters on which the Church has not so far made up its mind. It cannot be applied in the case of actions which are explicitly against the current teaching of the Anglican Communion as a whole, and/or of individual provinces. No province, diocese or parish has the right to introduce a novelty which goes against such teaching and excuse it on the grounds that it has simply been put forward for reception. In such a case, if change is desired, it must be sought through the appropriate channels, which we describe elsewhere. 70. The Anglican Communion is thus bound together in a variety of ways, with scripture as the constant factor, the historic episcopate, the Instruments of Unity, and the synodical life of the Church as the practical means of living together 41 Consideration of the process of reception is well developed in The Virginia Report, ch.4 ‘Levels of Communion - Subsidiarity and Interdependence’ 4:14-4:21. 34 under scripture, and with discernment and reception as the modes in which the Communion operates in relation to new proposals and the emergence of differences. It is important to note that these Bonds of Unity are different in kind from those which operate in the Roman Catholic Church, in which the Pontiff, with the support of the Curia, enjoys “supreme, full, immediate and universal ordinary power”, which he can always freely exercise.42 The Anglican way, theological, symbolic and practical, is diffused among the different aspects of the life of the Communion precisely in such a way as to give supreme authority, in the sense outlined above, to scripture as the locus and means of God’s word, energising the Church for its mission and sustaining it in its unity. Diversity within communion 71. The nature of unity within the Anglican Communion necessarily includes the rich diversity which comes from factors such as local culture and different traditions of reading scripture. Diversity is a great strength; without care, however, it can also be a source of great tension and division. Within the Communion we have developed theological and practical ways of working at this problem and of distinguishing acceptable and unacceptable forms of diversity. Autonomy 72. This diversity is enshrined in the autonomy of the individual provinces. This is fundamental to Anglican polity. But ‘autonomy’ is a much-misunderstood concept and, not least because it is often referred to in current disputes, it is important to examine it in more detail. 73. Although there is a sense in which the Church of England’s break with Rome in the sixteenth century was an assertion of that Church’s ‘autonomy’, in more recent times the concept of ‘provincial autonomy’ in Anglican thinking was developed in its early twentieth century context to signify ‘independence from the control of the British Crown’. The established Church of England of the Reformation was, and remains, subject to the royal supremacy, and many overseas Anglican churches at one time or other had been similarly subject; speaking of their ‘autonomy’ came to refer to their disengagement from that supremacy. 74. A further development in meaning then occurred: as provinces received or devised their own constitutions, autonomy (itself acquired or derived, not inherent) came to be interpreted more in terms of “the right of each church to self-determination”, expressed in the possession of extensive powers over the determination of local issues.43 Thus, some provincial constitutions formally grant to their principal synods extensive jurisdiction over a wide range of matters including faith, order and discipline. At different times, this right to selfdetermination has been expressed by Anglicans variously as: autonomy (of 42 Code of Canon Law, canon 331. 43 Examples - see The Virginia Report 3.26, 3.27, 3.28. 35 province or diocese),44 independence as a limited freedom,45 and, recently, within a more nuanced context of interdependence and subsidiarity.46 These autonomous structures create a context in which the unity of the Communion, described above, can be expressed in diverse ways. This inevitably raises the key question of how much diversity is to be allowed or encouraged, on what matters, and under what conditions. 75. The word ‘autonomy’ represents within Anglican discourse a far more limited form of independent government than is popularly understood by many today. Literally, ‘autonomous’ means ‘having one’s own laws’ (auto - self, nomos - law), and the autonomy of a body or institution means “[t]he right of selfgovernment, of making its own laws and administering its own affairs”.47 In the secular world it is well settled that ‘autonomic’ laws are those created by a body or persons within the community on which has been conferred subordinate and restricted legislative power. Autonomy, therefore, is not the same thing as sovereignty or independence; it more closely resembles the orthodox polity of ‘autocephaly’, which denotes autonomy in communion. 76. A body is thus, in this sense, ‘autonomous’ only in relation to others: autonomy exists in a relation with a wider community or system of which the autonomous entity forms part. The word ‘autonomous’ in this sense actually implies not an isolated individualism, but the idea of being free to determine one’s own life within a wider obligation to others. The key idea is autonomy-in-communion, that is, freedom held within interdependence. The autonomy of each Anglican province therefore implies that the church lives in relation to, and exercises its autonomy most fully in the context of, the global Communion. This idea of autonomy-in-relation is clearly implicit in the laws of some churches: for instance, South East Asia describes itself as “a fully autonomous part of the Anglican Communion”.48 77. As the right to self-government, autonomy is a form of limited authority. Ordinarily, an autonomous body (unlike a sovereign body) is capable only of making decisions for itself in relation to its own affairs at its own level. Autonomy, then, is linked to subsidiarity (see paragraphs 38-39, 83, 94-95). 78. Understood in this way, each autonomous church has the unfettered right to order and regulate its own local affairs, through its own system of government and law. Each such church is free from direct control by any decision of any ecclesiastical body external to itself in relation to its exclusively internal affairs 44 Lambeth Conference 1930, Resolution 48 on the principle of autonomy; Lambeth Conference 1978, Resolution 21.3 - recognises “the autonomy of each of its member Churches, acknowledging the legal right of each Church to make its own decision…” 45 “The Churches represented [here] are indeed independent, but independent with the Christian freedom which recognises the restraints of truth and love. They are not free to deny the truth. They are not free to ignore the fellowship…”, Lambeth Conference 1920, SPCK (1920), Evangelical Letter, p.14. 46 See The Virginia Report, ch.4. 47 Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, (Oxford 1989). 48 South East Asia, Constitution, Fundamental Declarations, 5. 36 (unless that external decision is authorised under, or incorporated in, its own law).49 79. However, some affairs treated within and by a church may have a dual character: they may be of internal (domestic) and external (common) concern. Autonomy includes the right of a church to make decisions in those of its affairs which also touch the wider external community of which it forms part, which are also the affairs of others, provided those internal decisions are fully compatible with the interests, standards, unity and good order of the wider community of which the autonomous body forms part. If they are not so compatible, whilst there may be no question about their legal validity, they will impose strains not only upon that church’s wider relationship with other churches, but on that church’s inner self-understanding as part of “the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church” in relation to some of its own members. 80. In our view, therefore, ‘autonomy’ thus denotes not unlimited freedom but what we might call freedom-in-relation, so it is subject to limits generated by the commitments of communion. Consequently, the very nature of autonomy itself obliges each church to have regard to the common good of the global Anglican community and the Church universal. 81. These ideas are shared by other Christian traditions. At the present time, we sense that these ideas are also well understood in terms of the autonomy of an individual diocese in relation to the province of which it forms part, and perhaps also an individual parish in relation to the diocese of which it forms part, since they have been given strong institutional expression. They seem much less well understood when it comes to the autonomy of a province in relation to the global Communion. 82. Since autonomy is closely related to interdependence and freedom-in-relation, there are legitimate limits (both substantive and procedural) on the exercise of this autonomy, demanded by the relationships and commitments of communion and the acknowledgement of common identity. Communion is, in fact, the fundamental limit to autonomy. In essential matters of common concern to the worldwide fellowship of churches (affairs, that is, which touch both the particular church and the wider community of which it forms part), we believe that each church in the exercise of its autonomy should: ¨ consider, promote and respect the common good of the Anglican Communion and its constituent churches (as discerned in communion through the Instruments of Unity) ¨ maintain its communion with fellow churches, and avoid jeopardising it, by bringing potentially contentious initiatives, prior to implementation, to the rest of the communion in dialogue, consultation, discernment and agreement 49 In saying this, we are aware of course that, as a matter of civil law, a narrowly secular approach is likely to be adopted by the courts which would emphasise the strict legal autonomy of each church. See, for example, R v Ecclesiastical Commissioners of both Houses of Parliament ex parte The Church Society (1994), 6 Admin, LR 670. 37 in communion with the fellowship of churches (through the Instruments of Unity), and ¨ be able to depart, where appropriate and acceptable, on the basis of its own corporate conscience and with the blessing of the communion, from the standards of the community of which is an autonomous part, provided such departure is neither critical to the maintenance of communion nor likely to harm the common good of the Anglican Communion and of the Church universal (again, as determined by the Instruments of Unity). 83. ‘Autonomy’ in this sense is thus closely linked to subsidiarity, discussed above.50 This is clear in The Virginia Report which was presented to the Lambeth Conference 1998. It argued that “a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level.” (4:8). “However,” the Report continues, “when decisions are taken by Provinces on matters which touch the life of the whole Communion without consultation, they may give rise to tension as other Provinces or other Christian traditions reject what has been decided” (4:13). In this same section on subsidiarity The Virginia Report makes reference to the Report of the Eames Commission (III, 43-44), noting that where such decisions are concerned, there is need for consultation with appropriate agents of Anglican interdependence prior to action. 84. Autonomy and Communion therefore belong together, as many Christian traditions have stressed and as, indeed, emerges from our ecumenical dialogues. They are thoroughly compatible, interdependent and directed to the same goal, namely the mission of the Church. Each draws from the other in creative tension. Each church has a corporate ecclesial personhood and exists in and for its fellow churches. Each church has for itself the greatest possible liberty which is compatible with the unity and good order of the Anglican Communion, in governance, ministry, doctrine, liturgy, rites, ecumenism and property. 85. Autonomy gives full scope for the development of authentic local living out of the Christian faith and mission, in what has come to be known as inculturation. This is an essential part of the Christian mission: each church must find fresh ways to proclaim the Gospel of Christ into the context of the world in which it is living. The eternal truth of the gospel relates in different ways to the particulars of any one society, as we see already within the life of the earliest church as described in Acts. This combination of faithfulness to the gospel and inculturation into different societies will inevitably produce a proper and welcome diversity within the life of the Church. Such diversity sometimes raises the question as to whether faithfulness has been abandoned (think of the shock to some devout Orthodox worshippers at observing western Christians crossing themselves the wrong way round); but diversity, as we have seen, is in principle to be welcomed and celebrated as normal and healthy. As the 1988 Lambeth Conference put it: 50 In paragraphs 38-39, 75-83. 38 “It is right and proper that the one faith and discipline of the Church should be ‘incarnate’ in varied cultural forms … the Gospel of Jesus does not come to people in the abstract, but to specific men and women.”51 This means that the much discussed problem of ‘Christ and Culture’ is in large part a problem of how to communicate the gospel effectively in widely differing cultural situations. 86. There are, however, limits to diversity. In the life of the Christian churches, these limits are defined by truth and charity. The Lambeth Conference of 1920 put it this way: “The Churches represented in [the Communion] are indeed independent, but independent with the Christian freedom which recognises the restraints of truth and love. They are not free to deny the truth. They are not free to ignore the fellowship.”52 This means that any development needs to be explored for its resonance with the truth, and with the utmost charity on the part of all – charity that grants that a new thing can be offered humbly and with integrity, and charity that might refrain from an action which might harm a sister or brother. Adiaphora 87. As the Church has explored the question of limits to diversity, it has frequently made use of the notion of adiaphora: things which do not make a difference, matters regarded as non-essential, issues about which one can disagree without dividing the Church. This notion lies at the heart of many current disputes. The classic biblical statements of the principle are in Romans 14.1-15.13 and 1 Corinthians 8-10. There, in different though related contexts, Paul insists that such matters as food and drink (eating meat and drinking wine, or abstaining from doing so; eating meat that had been offered to idols, or refusing to do so), are matters of private conviction over which Christians who take different positions ought not to judge one another. They must strive for that united worship and witness which celebrate and display the fact that they are worshipping the same God and are servants of the same Lord. 88. This principle of ‘adiaphora’ was invoked and developed by the early English Reformers, particularly in their claim that, in matters of eucharistic theology, specific interpretations (transubstantiation was particularly in mind) were not to be insisted upon as ‘necessary to be believed’, and that a wider range of interpretations was to be allowed. Ever since then, the notion of ‘adiaphora’ has been a major feature of Anglican theology, over against those schools of thought, both Roman and Protestant, in which even the smallest details of belief and practice are sometimes regarded as essential parts of an indivisible whole. 51 The Truth Shall Make You Free: The Lambeth Conference 1988 (London: CHP, 1988), ‘Dogmatic and Pastoral Concerns’, p.87(23). 52 Lambeth Conference 1920, SPCK (1920), Evangelical Letter, p.14. 39 89. This does not mean, however, that either for Paul or in Anglican theology all things over which Christians in fact disagree are automatically to be placed into the category of ‘adiaphora’. It has never been enough to say that we must celebrate or at least respect ‘difference’ without further ado. Not all ‘differences’ can be tolerated. (We know this well enough in the cases of, say, racism or child abuse; we would not say “some of us are racists, some of us are not, so let’s celebrate our diversity”). This question is frequently begged in current discussions, as for instance when people suggest without further argument, in relation to a particular controversial issue, that it should not be allowed to impair the Church’s unity, in other words that the matter in question is not as serious as some suppose. In the letters already quoted, Paul is quite clear that there are several matters – obvious examples being incest (1 Corinthians 5) and lawsuits between Christians before non-Christian courts (1 Corinthians 6) – in which there is no question of saying “some Christians think this, other Christians think that, and you must learn to live with the difference”. On the contrary: Paul insists that some types of behaviour are incompatible with inheriting God’s coming kingdom, and must not therefore be tolerated within the Church. ‘Difference’ has become a concept within current postmodern discourse which can easily mislead the contemporary western church into forgetting the principles, enshrined in scripture and often rearticulated within Anglicanism, for distinguishing one type of difference from another. 90. The question then naturally arises as to how one can tell, and indeed as to who can decide, which types of behaviour count as ‘adiaphora’ and which do not. For Paul, the categories are not arbitrary, but clearly distinct. For instance: that which would otherwise separate Jew and Gentile within the Church is ‘adiaphora’. That which embodies and expresses renewed humanity in Christ is always mandatory for Christians; that which embodies the dehumanising turning-away-from-God which Paul characterises with such terms as ‘sin’, ‘flesh’, and so on, is always forbidden. This, of course, leaves several questions unanswered, but at least sketches a map on which further discussions may be located. 91. To this end, we note that, though Paul’s notion of ‘adiaphora’ does indeed envisage situations where particular aspects of lifestyle are associated with particular cultures, he never supposes that human culture in the abstract is simply ‘neutral’, so that all habits of thought and life within a particular culture are to be regarded either as ‘inessential’ or for that matter ‘to be supported and enhanced’. When we put the notion of ‘adiaphora’ together with that of inculturation (see above in paragraphs 32, 67, 85), this is what we find: in Paul’s world, many cultures prided themselves on such things as anger and violence on the one hand and sexual profligacy on the other. Paul insists that both of these are ruled out for those in Christ. Others prided themselves on such things as justice and peace; Paul demonstrated that the gospel of Jesus enhanced and fulfilled such aspirations. The Church in each culture, and each generation, must hammer out the equivalent complex and demanding judgements. 92. Even when the notion of ‘adiaphora’ applies, it does not mean that Christians are left free to pursue their own personal choices without restriction. Paul insists 40 that those who take what he calls the “strong” position, claiming the right to eat and drink what others regard as off limits, must take care of the “weak”, those who still have scruples of conscience about the matters in question – since those who are lured into acting against conscience are thereby drawn into sin. Paul does not envisage this as a static situation. He clearly hopes that his own teaching, and mutual acceptance within the Christian family, will bring people to one mind. But he knows from pastoral experience that people do not change their minds overnight on matters deep within their culture and experience. 93. Whenever, therefore, a claim is made that a particular theological or ethical stance is something ‘indifferent’, and that people should be free to follow it without the Church being thereby split, there are two questions to be asked. First, is this in fact the kind of matter which can count as ‘inessential’, or does it touch on something vital? Second, if it is indeed ‘adiaphora’, is it something that, nevertheless, a sufficient number of other Christians will find scandalous and offensive, either in the sense that they will be led into acting against their own consciences or that they will be forced, for conscience’s sake, to break fellowship with those who go ahead? If the answer to the latter question is ‘yes’, the biblical guidelines insist that those who have no scruples about the proposed action should nevertheless refrain from going ahead. 94. Thus the notion of ‘adiaphora’ is brought back into its close relationship with that of ‘subsidiarity’, the principle that matters in the Church should be decided as close to the local level as possible.53 A distinction is drawn between trivial issues about which nobody would dream of consulting the great councils of the Communion, and more serious matters which no local church has the right to tamper with on its own. The two notions of ‘adiaphora’ and ‘subsidiarity’ work together like this: the clearer it is that something is ‘indifferent’ in terms of the Church’s central doctrine and ethics, the closer to the local level it can be decided; whereas the clearer it is that something is central, the wider must be the circle of consultation. Once again, this poses the question: how does one know, and who decides, where on this sliding scale a particular issue belongs? In many cases an obvious prima facie case exists of sufficient controversy, both locally and across the Communion, to justify, if only for the reasons in the previous paragraph, reference to the wider diocese or province, or even to the whole Communion. 95. Not least because of the recurring questions about ‘who decides’ in these matters, the twin notions of ‘adiaphora’ and ‘subsidiarity’ need to be triangulated with the questions of authority, and particularly the authority of scripture on the one hand and of decision-makers in the Church on the other. This brings us back from consideration of the nature of diversity within communion to the bonds of unity which hold that communion together, and so to complete the circle of this account of what our communion actually is and how it functions and flourishes as it seeks to serve the mission of God in the world. 53 See above in paragraphs 38-39, 77 and 83. 41 96. Having offered a description of both the nature of the problems that confront us in the Anglican Communion and the theological principles within which they must be addressed, we turn our attention to the future. In what direction is God now calling us as the Anglican Communion as we seek to fulfil our mission and, through our unity and communion, live out the gospel of Jesus for the sake of the world’s redemption? Section C : Our Future Life Together The Instruments of Unity 97. One matter that has struck us forcefully is the way in which the views of the Instruments of Unity have been ignored or sidelined by sections of the Communion. This has led the Commission to revisit the question of authority of the Instruments of Unity and their inter-relationship and we will make recommendations later in this report. The Virginia Report spoke of Anglicanism’s core structures as “a complex and still-evolving network” of authority.54 In many ways, such dispersed authority is a great strength, but in relation to the issues that have recently confronted the Communion, its inherent weakness has been illustrated only too clearly. 98. Very early on in the life of the emerging Anglican Churches, it became clear that there would need to be mechanisms by which the Churches could take common counsel. These have become the core structures of the Anglican Communion, together known as the Instruments of Unity. When we speak of the ‘Instruments of Unity’, we are referring (in historical order) to: ¨ The Archbishop of Canterbury ¨ The Lambeth Conference ¨ The Anglican Consultative Council ¨ The Primates’ Meeting. The Archbishop of Canterbury 99. From the beginning, the Archbishop of Canterbury, both in his person and his office, has been the pivotal instrument and focus of unity; and relationship to him became a touchstone of what it was to be Anglican.55 It was to the Archbishop of Canterbury that American Anglicans first turned to seek consecration of new bishops after the American War of Independence.56 54 See The Virginia Report, ch.3, p.42. 55 Thomas Cranmer, as the first Archbishop of the Reformation period and author of the first Book of Common Prayer, set the tone and provided the model for his successors as primus inter pares; the primacy within both the Church of England and within the wider Communion has always been essentially a “primacy of honour”. 56 Although Archbishop Moore declined to consecrate Samuel Seabury himself for legal and political reasons, he considered Seabury’s consecration by the Scottish Anglican Bishops in 1784 to be valid. Meanwhile, he pursued his own discussions with the English Government, enabling him to consecrate William White and Samuel Provoost as soon as the law had been changed in 1786. The story is helpfully described in PM Doll Revolution, Religion and National Identity (London 2000), ch.6. 42 Thereafter it was successive Archbishops of Canterbury who consecrated bishops for Canada, the West Indies, India and the developing English colonial territories, and it was to Archbishops of Canterbury that these churches tended to turn for assistance both in spiritual and political matters when problems arose.57 The Lambeth Conference 100. It was a natural development from this that the Archbishop of Canterbury should be the person to call the bishops of the Anglican Communion together to take counsel. Although the first Lambeth Conference was called amidst considerable controversy and resistance as to its significance,58 its inception was very much the brainchild of Archbishop C T Longley.59 The question of controversial teaching by a bishop of the emerging South African Church, William Colenso, the Bishop of Natal, was manoeuvred on to the agenda by pressure from participating bishops; in some ways, this was to be a foretaste of what would follow in international gatherings of Anglicans, when controversial topics arise.60 Intercommunion was at the heart of its concerns:61 perhaps unsurprisingly, its resolutions prefigure many of the issues which would recur (over a range of topics, decade by decade) in the succeeding century and a half.62 101. Given the understanding of the episcopal office within Anglicanism (see paragraphs 63-66 above), the Conference seemed the appropriate body to express a view on issues of doctrinal purity and orthodoxy. Prompted by the Colenso affair, it suggested that “... a committee [of bishops] be instructed to consider the constitution of a voluntary spiritual tribunal, to which questions of doctrine might be carried by appeal ...”63 102. It had been a precondition of its calling that the Conference should not regard itself as a pan-Anglican Synod, with legislative powers, but rather as an 57 For a readable account of the developing Communion, see W.M. Jacob, The Making of the Anglican Church Worldwide, SPCK (1997). The earlier role of the Bishop of London (which had developed from the commercial expansion of the chartered companies of the City of London, and the work of their chaplains) was almost entirely eclipsed by the early nineteenth century. 58 See AMG Stephenson, The First Lambeth Conference, SPCK (1967) especially ch.10; the Archbishop of York was the most prominent among those bishops who refused the summons to the 1867 Conference (for reasons based partly on Church-State issues, relating to questions about the status of the Conference as a “General Council”, in contravention of Article XXI). 59 “It is remarkable to observe how Longley managed to be present at each of the events which proved to be milestones in the early history of ‘pan-Anglicanism’” (p. 91). Stephenson contrasts Longley’s ‘pan-Anglicanism’ with his predecessors’ ‘pan-Protestantism’ (the latter could be illustrated by the passage some years earlier of the Jerusalem Bishopric Act 1841). 60 For the full story, see Stephenson op cit chapter 11. 61 ‘Intercommunion’ issues took up approximately half of the time the bishops spent together (see Stephenson, op cit ch.12). 62 Their Resolutions covered the process of episcopal appointment, establishment of new sees, intercommunion, synodical authority, and doctrinal and geographical boundaries ; for the full text of these and other resolutions up to 1988, see R Coleman, Resolutions of the Twelve Lambeth Conferences 1867-1988 (Toronto, 1992). 63 Lambeth Conference 1867, Resolution 9. 43 advisory body;64 though in the event it emphasised that “unity in faith and discipline will be best maintained among the several branches of the Anglican Communion by due and canonical subordination of the synods of the several branches to the higher authority of a synod or synods above them”.65 Whatever its intended significance, as Owen Chadwick has noted, “Meetings start to gather authority if they exist and are seen not to be a cloud of hot air and rhetoric. It was impossible that the leaders of the Anglican Communion should meet every ten years and not start to gather respect; and to gather respect is slowly to gather influence, and influence is on the road to authority”.66 From its inception, the Lambeth Conference has proved to be a powerful vehicle for the expression of a concept central to Anglican ecclesiology, the collegiality of the bishops. The Anglican Consultative Council 103. The first Lambeth Conference was called before the advent of widespread lay participation in formal synodical government. The 1867 Conference had set up various committees, to undergird the work the bishops had begun. In 1897, it resolved to establish a permanent consultative body.67 It developed over the years,68 coming to fruition with the final establishment in 1968 of the Anglican Consultative Council. The Anglican Consultative Council was to give a voice to lay people who were now fully participating in the governance of their provinces across the world; although the Council, like the Lambeth Conference, has always disavowed any intention to develop a more formal synodical status.69 The Primates’ Meeting 104. Finally, in 1978, the Lambeth Conference called upon the Archbishop of Canterbury to work with all the primates of the Anglican Communion “to initiate consideration of the way to relate together the international conferences, councils and meetings within the Anglican Communion so that the Anglican Communion may best serve God within the context of one, holy, catholic and apostolic church”.70 Archbishop Coggan advocated “meetings of the Primates of the Communion reasonably often, for leisurely thought, prayer and deep 64 In his letter of invitation, Longley had made clear (anticipating the Archbishop of York’s misgivings) that “Such a Meeting would not be competent to make declarations, or lay down definitions on points of doctrine…” (See Stephenson, op cit p 188). 65 Lambeth Conference 1867, Resolution 4. The meaning and intention of this statement have been the subject of continuing debates, up to the present. 66 O Chadwick, Introduction, in Resolutions of the Twelve Lambeth Conferences 1867-1988, ed, R Coleman, (Toronto 1992), p.xvii. 67 Lambeth Conference 1897, Resolution 5. 68 See Lambeth Conference 1908, Resolution 54, which defines the membership of the Consultative body, and Lambeth Conference 1920, Resolution 44, which makes clear th