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On 14 October 2007 the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote to Bishop John Howe of Central Florida full text here. There was considerable discussion in the blogosphere. A clarification was issued by Lambeth Palace - which caused yet more debate.
At issue were the ecclesiological assumptions contained in the letter. The Archbishop appeared to remove the national church and province from any significant role in his understanding of Anglican polity. He also seemed to suggest that a 'Windsor-compliant' diocese would be in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, separate from the relationship of the diocese to its province.
In a letter to Bishop Bob Duncan of Pittsburgh, by contrast, Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori makes very clear that the national church and its constitutional structures are a very sharp reality.
Timothy Bartel takes issue with the Archbishop:
The Archbishop's Letter to Central Florida: Scarcely Innocuous
T. W. Bartel
What are we to think of the Archbishop of Canterbury's recent letter to the Bishop of Central Florida, which asserts that ‘any diocese compliant with Windsor remains clearly in communion with Canterbury and the mainstream of the [Anglican] Communion, whatever may be the longer-term result for others in The Episcopal Church'? According to Lambeth Palace, that letter was ‘neither a new policy statement nor a roadmap for the future' of the Communion. It was written simply to discourage conservative clergy and parishes in Central Florida and elsewhere from forsaking a ‘Windsor-compliant' diocesan bishop and seeking refuge in foreign jurisdictions—and it simply repeats ‘a basic presupposition of what the archbishop believes to be the theology of the Church', namely, that ‘theologically and sacramentally speaking, a priest is related in the first place to his or her bishop directly, not through the structure of the national church'.
Much of the Archbishop's letter does indeed focus exclusively on priests and diocesan bishops. But the notion that any Windsor-compliant diocese in The Episcopal Church (TEC) is a member in good standing of the Anglican Communion, even if its province is excommunicated, is anything but an innocuous restatement of traditional teaching on priest–bishop relations. True, on a sympathetic interpretation of that notion, it would not allow a diocese to secede from a province with its identity wholly intact while that province is still a full member of the Communion. None the less, it does permit this when a province is deprived of that standing—no matter what the constitutions and canons of the province might say. Thus, for example, should a diocese in an excommunicated province wish to break away and realign itself with the ‘continuing' Anglican Communion (whether as a free-floating diocese or a member of a new province), that province, regardless of its own legislation, would have no authority to declare the see vacant, depose the bishop/s, or arrange for the appointment or election of new bishops (an authority that the leadership of TEC claims and, at least arguably, possesses).
Let us leave aside the many practical objections that might be urged against this suggestion—not least that it promotes yet more division by offering a strong incentive for dioceses to refuse to cooperate with a province under threat of sanctions from the Communion. What is at least as disquieting is the timing. Since the Jeffrey John affair, if not earlier, the behaviour of the upper echelons of the Communion has steadily undermined confidence in their ability to bring a happy issue out of our afflictions. That process was accelerated last February by two notorious initiatives: the publication of Draft Covenant for the Communion, and the communiqué of the Primates' Meeting at Dar es Salaam.
The Windsor Report, the communiqué of the first Primates' Meeting after Windsor (Dromantine), the Joint Standing Committee, the Covenant Design Group itself, and key Lambeth officials closely connected to the Group, all affirmed that the process of adopting a Covenant would need to be an unhurried, worldwide, comprehensive and truly consultative exercise, with none of the content of the Covenant fixed at an early stage. The final report of the Covenant Design Group, however, urged the Communion to commit itself immediately to the ‘fundamental shape' of the Draft Covenant, with consultation in the provinces limited to ‘fine tuning'. And the fundamental shape of that Covenant demands the surrender of provincial authority to the ‘Instruments of Unity', who are given the full and exclusive authority to rule that a member church is not fulfilling ‘the substance of the Covenant' and therefore requires ‘a process of restoration and renewal' to re-establish its covenant relationship with fellow-churches.
The Dar es Salaam communiqué went even further, exacerbating the trend of the Primates to credit themselves, in the absence of any worldwide Anglican Covenant, with powers over the provinces that have no sound basis in Anglican tradition, canon law or any other source. That communiqué commanded the House of Bishops of TEC, in order to remain a full member of the Communion, to impose a moratorium on the consecration of bishops in same-sex unions, and the authorisation of rites for blessing such unions, until ‘some new consensus on these matters emerges across the Communion'. Last month, the House of Bishops not only agreed to withhold consent to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life would pose a serious problem for other members of the Communion. They also pledged not to authorise public rites for the blessing of same-sex unions until there is consensus in the Communion, or until General Convention approves them (as the House of Bishops has no authority to bind the General Convention)—thereby acceding to the demands of Dar es Salaam.
In the midst of these circumstances, the trustworthiness of the ‘Instruments of Unity' is scarcely enhanced when the Archbishop of Canterbury, in a personal letter to another bishop, takes it as read that the Instruments, in addition to having the power to deprive a member church of full status in the Communion, have the authority to recognise dissident dioceses of that church as retaining that status—so long as their bishop conforms to the strictures of documents and processes with no legitimate binding force on the Communion. And, pace Lambeth Palace, that is both a new policy statement—albeit a natural extension of current policy— and a road map for the future of the Communion—though in the event that TEC is expelled from the Communion, that Communion has no future worthy of the name.