BuiltWithNOF

The Windsor Report of the Lambeth Commission

(a.k.a. “The Eames Commission Report”)

What the Commission did: “Consider ways in which communion and understanding could be enhanced where serious differences threatened the life of a diverse worldwide Church … This Report is not a judgement.  It is part of a process.  It is part of a pilgrimage towards healing and reconciliation.

What the Commission didn’t do: determine whether homosexuality was a sin, or whether gay people should be ordained.

Characteristics of the commission’s unanimous report:

  • Honest: “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.”
  • Moderate: “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 solved.”
  • Even-handed: “We cannot avoid the conclusion that all [ECUSA, Anglican Church of Canada, intrusive bishops] have acted in ways incompatible with the Communion principle of interdependence, and our fellowship together has suffered immensely as a result of these developments.”

Features of our common life:

  1. Theological development
  2. Ecclesiastical procedures
  3. Adiaphora (“things that do not make a difference”)
    1. “Is this in fact the kind of matter which can count as ‘inessential,’ or does it touch on something vital?”
    2. “If it is indeed ‘adiaphora,’ is it something that, nevertheless, a sufficient number of other Christians will find scandalous and offensive?”
  4. Subsidiarity: the principle that matters should be decided as close to the local level as possible
    1. “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.”
    2. “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.”
  5. Trust: “The divine foundation of communion should oblige each church to avoid unilateral action on contentious issues which may result in broken communion.  It is an ancient canonical principle that what touches all should be decided by all.”
  6. Authority

 

Conclusions That Support the “Left”
(i.e., Progressives, Revisionists)

“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.”

“There is no doubt that in terms of its constitutional proprieties, the ECUSA was at liberty to take the steps that it did [in consecrating Gene Robinson].”

 “We do not favour the accumulation of formal power by the Instruments of Unity, or the establishment of any kind of central ‘curia’ for the Communion.”

 “We recommend that the Instruments of Unity ... find practical ways in which the ‘listening’ process commended by the Lambeth Conference in 1998 may be taken forward, so that greater common understanding might be obtained on the underlying issue of same gender relationships.”  (The ECUSA is invited to contribute to this, on the grounds of Scripture, reason, and tradition.)

 “We commend the proposals for delegated episcopal oversight set out by the House of Bishops of the ECUSA in 2004.”

 “We call upon bishops who believe it is their conscientious duty to intervene in provinces, dioceses and parishes other than their own:

  • To express regret for the consequences of their actions
  • To affirm their desire to remain in the Communion
  • To effect a moratorium on any further interventions.”

“We urge provinces to be pro-active in support of the call of Lambeth Resolution 64 (1988) for them to ‘reassess, in the light of … study and because of our concern for human rights, its care for and attitude toward persons of homosexual orientation.”


 

Conclusions That Support the Right
(i.e., Conservatives, Traditionalists)

 “The overwhelming response from other Christians both inside and outside the Anglican family has been to regard [actions of the ECUSA] as departures from genuine, apostolic Christian faith.”

“Those involved [in Gene Robinson’s consecration] did not pay due regard, in the way they might and, in our view, should have done, to the wider implications of the decisions they were making and the actions they were taking.”

“The doctrine of reception[1] … 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.”

Recommendations:

    1. Archbishop should “exercise very considerable caution in inviting or admitting [Robinson] to the councils of the Communion.”
    2. Moratorium on public Rites of same-sex blessings.
    3. Moratorium on consecrating anyone “who is living in a same gender union until some new consensus in the Anglican Communion emerges.”
    4. Bishops who have authorized such rites be invited to “express regret over breaching the proper constraints of the bonds of affection;” pending such expression, those bishops should consider withdrawing themselves from representative functions of the Anglican Communion.
    5. ECUSA be invited to express regret over the consecration and election of Gene Robinson; pending such expression, those bishops who consecrated Gene Robinson should consider withdrawing themselves from representative functions of the Anglican Communion.

[1] Theological debate & discussion; followed by formal action; and finally  increased consultation to see whether the formal action settles down and makes itself at home.

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