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"The recent resolutions of the General Convention have not produced a complete response to the challenges of the Windsor Report," said Williams in a lengthy statement.

Even as Anglicans "give the strongest support to the defense of homosexual people against violence, bigotry, and legal disadvantage" and "appreciate the role played in the life of the church by people of homosexual orientation," the archbishop wrote, "this doesn't settle the question of whether the Christian church has the freedom, on the basis of the Bible and its historic teachings, to bless homosexual partnerships as a clear expression of God's will. That is disputed among Christians, and, as a bare matter of fact, only a small minority would answer yes to the question."

Williams wrote that he would not act unilaterally to resolve the Anglican Communion's conflicts, and he again endorsed a years-long project of developing a voluntary covenant to unite Anglicans.

"The archbishop of Canterbury presides and convenes in the communion," Williams wrote, "but he must always act collegially, with the bishops of his own local church and with the primates and the other instruments of communion."

Primates from Global South nations will meet in September, and the Anglican Communion's primates will gather as a whole in February.

Williams also stressed that this opt-in covenant may lead to "constituent" provinces, which have voting rights, and "associate" provinces, which function as observers. Williams said associate provinces would relate to the Anglican Communion as Methodists do today.

Robert Prichard, professor of church history at Virginia Theological Seminary, says that Anglicans usually solve conflicts more through changing structures than through theological formulae.

Prichard sees the seven dioceses' requests as one of a few structural options. (Others include a "states' rights" approach favored by liberal bishops, the two-tiered communion proposed by Archbishop Williams, or the "reverse colonialism" of Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola, who has established several congregations in America.)

Prichard believes the deeper debate among Anglicans is a "conflict between two authorities"—the authority of Scripture and the creeds versus the authority of "the experience of the downtrodden."

On another front, the Anglican Church of Nigeria announced on June 28 that its bishops had elected Martyn Minns, rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, as a U.S.-based missionary bishop. Minns will oversee the Nigerian province's Convocation for Anglicans in North America, under the leadership of Akinola.

Episcopal Bishop Peter James Lee of Virginia called Minns's election "an affront to the traditional, orthodox understanding of Anglican provincial autonomy." The Windsor Report asked that bishops "who believe it is their conscientious duty to intervene in provinces, dioceses, and parishes other than their own" effect a moratorium on further interventions.

Minns has been one of the most visible conservative activists in the Episcopal Church. It has become "increasingly clear that we are now confronted with a choice between being Anglican or Episcopalian," Minns wrote of telling his bishop recently. "We have no predetermined outcome, but are committed to seeking the Lord's direction for this parish family."

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August 2006, Vol. 50, No. 8