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On Friday, blogger Christopher Johnson predicted that today's release of the Lambeth Commission on Communion's Windsor Report would be one of the five biggest moments in Anglican Christianity "since Henry VIII first noticed Anne Boleyn."

Conservatives, bolstered by news reports, believed the commission would recommend strong censure of the Episcopal Church USA for consecrating a bishop involved in a homosexual relationship, and would strengthen efforts to reject liberal leadership in the church.

As late as Saturday, The Times of London reported a "scoop" that the commission would create a "star chamber" to rule when Anglican provinces (such as the Episcopal Church USA) have violated church teachings, and would allow conservative parishes in the U.S. to leave their dioceses with their property.

To quote The Daily Show's Jon Stewart, "Eh, not so much."

The 49-page Windsor Report (93 pages with appendices, index, and introductory material) starts with lengthy treatments of the nature of communion (as in unity, not Eucharist), Anglican principles and history, and the Anglican Communion's "instruments of unity"—that is, its global structure.

There's some very good stuff in these sections, particularly the first, where church unity is described as a means to an end (the proclamation of the gospel), and the church's call to "radical holiness." The first few paragraphs are saturated with Scripture (leading some to speculate that they were written by biblical scholar N.T. Wright, one of the orthodox evangelical members of the commission).

After that, Scripture gets quieter and quieter, though its importance does get several nods. "It is by reading Scripture too little, not by reading it too much, that we have allowed ourselves to drift apart," the report says. But how we read it is important, it adds:

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.

This sounds like the commission is telling both conservatives and liberals, "A pox on both your houses," but that would be very un-Anglican. "Morning sniffles on both your houses," perhaps. And, as Weblog will note below, conservatives take bigger lumps than liberals in this report.

So far this morning, media reports are playing up the commission's criticism of the Episcopal Church USA. A few headlines:

Anglicans Criticize U.S. Church on Gays — Associated Press

US Church Scorned Over Gay Bishop — CBS

U.S. Anglicans Told to Apologize in Gay Bishop Row — Reuters

Church report calls for 'moratorium' on gay clergy — Guardian, London

Church wants gay bishop apology — BBC

Indeed, when it comes to recommendations, it might seem at first like Episcopalian liberals got a smackdown. The report does indeed recommend that "the Episcopal Church (USA) be invited to express its regret that the proper constraints of the bonds of affection were breached," and put a moratorium on electing more bishops who are in same-sex unions. (Nothing on gay priests or deacons, however.)

Likewise, Canada's New Westminster diocese, which authorized same-sex union ceremonies, was asked to express its regret and enact a moratorium.

"Pending such regret," the report says, those who took part in these actions should "be invited to consider in all conscience whether they should withdraw themselves from representative functions in the Anglican Communion."

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October (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48