The primates released a communiqué Feb. 24 offering recommendations about next steps towards “healing and reconciliation” and agreeing to create space for one another and preserve unity in the communion.

The five-page communiqué requested that the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada “voluntarily withdraw” their representatives from the Anglican Consultative Council, the communion’s main legislative body, until the next Lambeth Conference in 2008.

It reaffirmed the importance of provincial autonomy and interdependence and committed the primates to the pastoral support and care of homosexuals. It also committed the primates to a promise “neither to encourage nor to initiate cross-boundary interventions,” calling on the archbishop of Canterbury to appoint a panel that could supervise the “adequacy of pastoral provisions” for those in theological dispute with their bishop or province.

Carnley described the weeklong meeting as “a very agreeable process ... because it was clear that we were all of a common mind.” He emphasized that the North American churches are not being asked to withdraw from the Anglican Communion.

“We see the need for a listening process, and we think that the withdrawal of members from the ACC will create a space ... to allow the listening process to happen,” he said. “Just as importantly, we have called on the primates to cease cross-boundary intervention. The intervention of bishops from outside that church is unhelpful, and we have committed ourselves unanimously.”

Within days, however, one conservative primate from South America broke that call when he left Northern Ireland and traveled to the Diocese of New Westminster in British Columbia to visit Anglicans who dissent from their bishop.

Creating space, fostering respect

According to Williams, the primates displayed “a powerful will” to stay in contact and in touch with one another. “The willingness to stay together has been impressive ... but there is a challenge for everyone,” he said. “We are trying to create some space.”

Williams highlighted the fact that that the Primates’ Meeting “is not an executive body, it’s not a synod or star chamber.” It has no authority to set in motion any of this week’s decisions, he added, but made it clear that the primates as a body were committed to uphold the 1998 Lambeth Conference Resolution 1.10 on sexuality.

“The resolution affirms respect for gay and lesbian people,” he said. “This communiqué makes it clear that we have not been very good at this and not very good at fostering respect.”

Describing the Windsor Report as holding up a vision of what Anglican life and work should look like, Archbishop Drexel Gomez of the West Indies said that each province had been challenged to live up to that vision.

“I was impressed with the honesty and civility of the meeting,” he said. “Some of us came to this meeting thinking it could be the last. I was relieved and inspired by the way in which we could be honest with one another and agree to create the space and preserve our unity.”

The primates hold a deep affection for the Anglican Communion, Gomez added. “We are determined to see to it that our communion not only lives, but thrives as well.”

In a good place

In an interview following the meeting, Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold said that the week had been difficult but that the primates had emerged in a very good place.”

“The report seeks to make space in a number of areas for different perspectives to be held with integrity,” he added. “My sense is that the communiqué ... asks for us to slow down a bit, lets us make room for one another, let us reason together, lets us explore more deeply some of the underlying issues that are represented by some of the actions that have recently occurred.”

One thing that became very clear through listening to the voices of other primates, Griswold added, is “how very different the contexts are in which we seek to articulate the gospel and be faithful to the ministry of Christ.”

“This week has given us the opportunity, with great candor and frankness, to explore more deeply and to present to one another more fully the realities out of which we come and the effects on us various actions have had or may have in the future,” he said.
The primates requested the Windsor Report at their meeting in October 2003. It was completed one year later after a 17-member commission examined interrelationships among Anglicans and offered recommendations on ways in which the Anglican Communion could maintain unity amid strong differences of opinion.

The report followed the consecration in New Hampshire of a bishop who is in a committed relationship with a person of the same sex, and the Canadian Diocese of New Westminster’s adoption of rites for the blessing of same-gender unions.

The primates acknowledged that the consecration of an openly gay bishop in the United States and the blessing of same-gender unions in Canada have proceeded “entirely in accordance with their constitutional processes and requirements,” yet agreed that the teaching on matters of human sexuality, “as expressed in the 1998 Lambeth Resolution 1.10, should be upheld.” They raised concerns that this had been “seriously undermined” by the recent developments in North America.

Hearing in Nottingham

The Anglican Consultative Council -- the Anglican Communion’s chief legislative body, comprising more than 100 bishops, clergy and lay representatives -- will receive the Windsor Report and the primates’ communiqué when it meets in Nottingham, England, in June 2005.
One of the Anglican Communion’s four “instruments of unity,” which also include the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primates Meeting and the Lambeth Conference, the ACC is the only body with the authority to act legislatively on the recommendations of the report or the primates’ statements.

In their communiqué, the primates encouraged the ACC to organize a hearing at its Nottingham meeting at which representatives of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada may have an opportunity to set out the thinking behind the recent actions of their churches.