A Note on the Role of North America in the Evolution of Anglicanism

The history of the Anglican Communion indicates that North America has been a peculiar laboratory for developments the entire Communion has come to embrace. Contrary to the assertions made in the Windsor Report, the colonial churches in North America were not the object of Canterbury's special concern, and no contact between the churches can be found for thirty years after the new church's launch. The movement for what became the Lambeth Conference began in the General Convention of 1853, and was later echoed by the Canadians. Much of what the churches of the Communion value in governance and ecclesiology originated in North America, as both Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical voices in England testify. Purely spiritual episcopacy, synodical government, and the sending of missionary bishops lead North American contributions to Anglican life. While history does not guarantee the rightness of the Canadian and Episcopal decisions, it suggests that they continue to be of significance for the evolution of the Communion. It is impossible not to respect the care and thoroughness with which the Windsor Report was prepared. Its point of view is consistently and thoroughly applied to the task the committee understood itself to have. At the same time, it is possible to have reservations about some aspects of the Report, and I have expressed my own theological concerns elsewhere,1 as has Professor Andrew Linzey of Oxford in a similar vein.2 We both see in its recommendations the seeds of a curial church of a kind foreign to Anglican tradition. We both stand amazed that the Report does not examine the entire sweep of the scriptural story to contemplate the phenomena of prophecy and conscience, denial and resistance. The present reflection, however, is concerned with how we in North America may understand our own story as a part of the Communion. Given the Anglican emphasis on precedent, the Windsor Report's reading of history is more critical than the comparative heat of the current sexuality debate may suggest. Linzey has shared his observations on the Report's history of the ordination of women, pointing out that purported methods of consultation and procedure were established after ordination of women was already here to stay. Others have emphasized the Report's silence on whether or not a woman bishop could be elected, as she would not be acceptable to all members of the Communion.3 Further, the Windsor Report nowhere reveals that the Virginia Report, to which it so often appeals, was denied recognition by the Anglican Consultative Council, so it is in reality nothing other than a very interesting proposal from the previous century. The Windsor Report suggests the development of canon law for the whole Anglican Communion, but Norman Doe has already pointed out that in present structures there is no group or individual competent to impose law on the membership.4 What has not received much attention is how the Report reads Anglican history on its way to proposing a new relationship among member churches and a new role for the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Report begins its proposal with the suggestion that because the Archbishop of Canterbury has actively cared for the entire Anglican world throughout its history, he or she therefore ought to be its chief magistrate, and the spirit of the English church ought to shape the life of the Communion worldwide. From the beginning, the Archbishop of Canterbury, both in his person and his office, has been the pivotal instrument and focus of unity; and relationship to him became a touchstone of what it was to be Anglican. It was to the Archbishop of Canterbury that American Anglicans first turned to seek consecration of new bishops after the American War of Independence. Thereafter it was successive Archbishops of Canterbury who consecrated bishops for Canada, the West Indies, India and the developing English colonial territories, and it was to Archbishops of Canterbury that these churches tended to turn for assistance both in spiritual and political matters when problems arose (para. …