2 of 3

The Windsor Report recommendations fall short of what the primates of the Global South—representing 55 million Anglicans in 18 provinces, including Nigeria, Central Africa, and South America—called for in a joint statement released in April.

The Global South leaders told the Lambeth Commission that the Windsor report should include "a specific call" to the ECUSA to "repent; revoking and rescinding their decision" to consecrate Gene Robinson.

The Global South primates also said in their April 16 declaration that the Windsor report should include a timeline of three months, after which, if conditions have not been met, "suspension and ultimate expulsion" of ECUSA should be enacted.

While the Windsor Report, does "invite" an apology from ECUSA, it does not ask ECUSA leaders to revoke or nullify the actions taken in the Robinson case. Nor does the long-awaited report include a timeline in which the apology from ECUSA must take place.

Several primates representing the Global South are reportedly meeting in London this week to draft a formal response to the Windsor recommendations. It is not clear when that document will be released.

Preventing the Global South from leaving worldwide Anglicanism is a major focus of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, according to Donald Armstrong.

Armstrong is the executive director of the Anglican Communion Institute, a theological think tank that provided consultation for the Windsor Report at the request of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth Commission.

"Our concern from the Anglican Communion Institute—and from the point of view of the Archbishop of Canterbury—is to keep the global south in the Anglican Communion," said Armstrong.

He said he believes the language of the report will be strengthened when the Anglican leaders meet to ratify the document in February 2005.

"The primates will add teeth," Armstrong said. "They will move the language from gracious to decisive."

"(The Global South) don't want to abandon Anglicanism within North America," he continued, "they just want to clean it up."

"If the American church does not repent, then it will have to realign."

Such a realignment could entail "a great migration of churches" shifting into alternative oversight—perhaps from "retired conservative bishops or other provinces," Armstrong said.

Edith Humphrey, associate professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and a member of the Primate's Theological Commission in the Anglican Church of Canada, fears that the vagueness of the report may actually contribute to further fracturing of the Communion.

"There is no required response," explains Edith Humphrey. "It is all couched in invitational or volitional terms."

The strongest language, she notes, is used to reprimand bishops, including church leaders in the Global South, who have crossed provincial and diocesan lines to provide oversight to orthodox Anglicans who have been in conflict with their local leadership over the Robinson issue.

These bishops, according to the report, are called upon to express regret, affirm their desire to remain in the Communion, and effect a moratorium on any further interventions.

The report is "suggesting everybody is at fault and therefore nobody is at fault," Humphrey said.

"I think we need very much to be in prayer," Humphrey concluded. The controversy over sexuality, which has already led to hemorrhaging within Anglicanism in the West, Humphrey said, could lead to a "realignment of Anglicanism in terms of larger Christianity."

next page... |  2 of 3

share this page

October (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48