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Authority, Unity, and Mission in the Windsor Report

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2005 by Douglas, Ian T

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The Windsor Report, a compromise document expressing many different voices in the Lambeth Commission, does offer other perspectives on the nature of unity in the body of Christ. The Report opens with a profound missiological affirmation:

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The unity of the church, the communion of all its members with one another (which are the primary subjects of this report), and the radical holiness to which all Christ's people are called, are thus rooted in the trinitarian life and purposes of the one God. They are designed not for their own sake (as though the church's in-house business were an end in itself), but to serve and signify God's mission to the world, that mission whereby God brings to men and women, to human societies and to the whole world, real signs and foretastes of that healing love which will one day put all things to rights. The communion we enjoy with God in Christ and by the Spirit, and the communion we enjoy with all God's people living and departed, is the specific practical embodiment and fruit of the gospel itself, the good news of God's action in Jesus Christ to deal once and for all with evil and to inaugurate the new creation (para. 3).

The Windsor Report specifically states in its opening paragraphs that unity is not of our own making, but of God's. And unity is not for the sake of the church, but rather for the sake of God's mission of reconciliation in the world. Here then is a different understanding of communion in the Windsor Report: communion in Gods mission in the world, communion in and through the missio Dei.

The Windsor Report affirms that relationships in God's mission are basic to any understanding of communion. "This grace-given and grace-full mission from God, and communion with God, determine our relationship with one another" (para. 5). Communion is all about relationships, relationships between churches as well as between individual Christians in service to the missio Dei (para. 45-49). There is no relation-free communion, no relation-free autonomy. Definitions of "autonomy" in the Anglican Communion only make sense in relation to others, particularly in relation to others who serve God's mission-a note that needs to be sounded again and again (para. 76). Thus, for one often overlooked strain of discussion in the Windsor Report, communion is first and foremost about relationship and mission, not about structure and instruments. "This communion is primarily a relationship with God, who is himself a communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and it binds every member of Christ into the whole body. Our communion enables us, in mutual interdependence, to engage in our primary task, which is to take forward God's mission to his needy and much-loved world" (para. 45, 46).

Communion within Anglicanism in this relational and missiological perspective is thus the apostolic universal sharing in the oneness of the body of Christ across the variety of cultural and social contexts through relationships in service to God's mission. Communion is a gift from God that is lived out as Anglicans, empowered by the Holy Spirit, come together across different incarnational realities to serve and advance God's mission of reconciliation and restoration. Communion is thus primarily based upon relationships of mutual responsibility and interdependence in the body of Christ across the differences of culture, location, ethnicity, and even theological perspective to serve God's mission in the world.10

Authority, Unity, and Mission in the Windsor Report

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2005 by Douglas, Ian T

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