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Authority, Unity, and Mission in the Windsor Report
Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2005 by Douglas, Ian T
All too often today, in the midst of difficulties and the desire to resolve them, the possibilities of communion in mission relationships are overlooked or neglected. Yet common efforts to serve God's mission of reconciliation and restoration across differences offer glimpses into the possibilities for the unity and future of the Anglican Communion. We need only consider the united witness of Anglicans around the world-in overcoming apartheid in South Africa, proclaiming the good news of Christ during the Decade of Evangelism, passing significant international debt-relief legislation, and combating the scourge of HIV/AIDS-to be reminded that our Communion is indeed a gift from God made real when we serve God's mission in the world.11
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The Windsor Report s emphasis on communion in relationships dedicated to God's mission is the hope and future of the Anglican Communion. The Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Mission and Evangelism (IASCOME), in their report to the 2005 Anglican Consultative Council, builds upon the work of the Windsor Report and underscores the profoundly relational and missiological nature of the Anglican Communion today. Their report, "Communion in Mission," offers specific examples and suggestions of what these relationships in mission are in the contemporary Anglican Communion.12 Would that the Anglican Communion study IASCOMEs report and its recommendations and take it to heart as much as it has the Windsor Report. For it is only through our relationships in service to God's mission that questions of authority and unity in the Anglican Communion are put in their proper perspective and find their meaning.
1 For a model of relationships across difference, with specific attention to the Windsor Report, see Ian T. Douglas and Paul F. M. Zahl, Understanding the Windsor Report: Two Leaders in the American Church Speak Across the Divide (New York: Church Publishing, 2005).
2 There is at the same time a not-too-subtle critique of biblical scholars in the paragraph. From the perspective of a seminary faculty person, the caution against "academic researchers" seems a little off-putting.
3 See Ian T. Douglas, "An American Reflects on the Windsor Report," forthcoming in Journal of Anglican Studies.
4 It could be argued that the four Instruments of Unity are not adequate to represent the life and witness of the Anglican Communion in that the Instruments are approximately 95 percent male and 95 percent episcopal or archiepiscopal.
5 "Unity and Diversity within the Anglican Communion: A Way Forward." In Anglican Consultative Council, Many Gifts, One Spirit, Report of ACC-7: Singapore, 1987 (London: Anglican Consultative Council, 1987), 129-134.
6 "The Virginia Report" in The Officiai Report of the Lambeth Conference of 1998 (Harrisburg, Pa.: Morehouse Publishing for the Anglican Communion, 1999), 56-63.
7 "The Virginia Report," 398-399.
8 Journal of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, 2000 (New York: The General Convention, 2000), 2 vols., 256-257.
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