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Thoughts on the Windsor Report: What Went Wrong?
Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2005 by Zahl, Paul F M
Now the Windsor Report backs this very proposal, the proposal of ECUSA's House of Bishops dated March 2003. This remains a huge stumbling block for conservatives. Similarly, the Report equates the crossing of geographical boundaries, which some overseas bishops and primates have done to protect and support dissenting Episcopal parishes in the USA and in Canada, with the trespass, in Gene Robinson's consecration, to which that crossing was the response.
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The "orthodox" don't see it this way at all! We never will. To us, the crossing of boundaries, while regrettable, is in no way on a par with the departure from faith and morals represented by the consecration of a gay bishop. The former is not good, the latter is catastrophic. So we felt-and I think you would find this across the board among "conservatives"-that the Report did not sustain us in any real way. There even seemed to be a slap, specifically, at Network bishops in ECUSA, when they were portrayed as being "dismissive" of the Communion they had pledged to uphold.
Thus the last part of Section D, on the care of dissenting minorities-which is the key section for us-fell short of what we had hoped for. I would say that the Report fell about twenty percent short of what we had hoped for. Like the last strikeout in the close of the ninth inning, that twenty percent makes all the difference.
Those were my initial thoughts on the findings of the Report. And I think they were and are held quite widely by people on the "traditional" side of the Communion. But after reading and rereading the work of the Commission again and again in recent months, I think the problem is deeper than simply the last section. The problem relates to the Anglican project as a whole, a project to which I still feel committed and one which many of us, "liberals" and "conservatives" alike, have served for decades now.
There are two serious concerns I continue to have with the Windsor Report. These concerns have deepened with time and reflection.
The first concern is the manner in which the Report seems to take away with the left hand what it gives with the right. This is especially true in its treatment of biblical hermeneutics or interpretation. On the one hand, the Report treats the Letter to the Ephesians, as well as First Corinthians, in quite exalted fashion. The metaphysical churchmanship of Ephesians and the "Body of Christ" theology in First Corinthians are given forceful expression. At the same time, however, much is made of the distinction between verbal word and Incarnate Word. In other words, the Bible is not allowed to hold the value of binding verbal assertion but is rather the "bearer" of a vital force beyond it. Now I agree with that distinction in principle. (The Reformers made it, so it must be right!) But I fear it can be deployed deleteriously in the case of homosexuality, in order to detach our interest from the overwhelming evidence of a plain case. In the case of homosexuality, the Bible is just too unanimous. It declares itself in too weighted and powerful a way. It cannot be explained or otherwise interpreted. So I am afraid that the awesome view of scriptural weight with which the Report announces itself at the start is weakened considerably, and somewhat special-pleadingly in this context, by the emphasis on "nuance" (that politically correct noun) which follows it.
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