ACNS reports that the Lambeth Commission report will be published on Monday, 18 October, 12.00 midday in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral. The report is named the Windsor Report after St George’s, Windsor, where it was drafted.
ACNS expects a large media frenzy to surround the report, which will also be available online at midday BST (i.e., GMT +1) on 18 October.
Update 18 October — for more reports and comments on the Windsor Report see the main page at Thinking Anglicans
Sexuality (and specifically homosexuality)merely provides the focus for the real debate, which revolves around how one makes use of scripture. The fundamentalist ‘wing’ is trying to take over the Anglican Communion, and they cannot use Levitical law to do so, because that would reveal them for the ridiculous creatures they are: so they choose sex, because they think most people are as puritanical as they are! The Anglican church is already split. Many of us have already left it; and I personally have not attended for thirty years!
There is a lot here (Windsor Report) to digest so will have to come back. But my initail thinking has been that there is a lot more to being an Anglican than “sex.” The presenting issues (homosexulaity, etc.) have pushed me out of my complacency and yanked my head out of the sand on both human sexuality and what it means to be an Anglican. The question I am facing is can I be both an Anglican and open to homosexuality (in a Christian setting)? At this point the answer I’m coming up with is, yes.
If the ECUSA knew that by consecrating an openly gay Bishop would divide the church why did they go ahead? for us the poor in Africa we see this as using the power of money to impose wrong theology on us. We do not have an alternative – after all we are beggers. Anglicanism came from the West and it is only the West that can ammend it.
God bless all Anglicans
OUR Heavenly Father is limitless in his love for each of us. He is Love. That is His nature, as well as being just,compassionate,forgiving…..He is also Holy. So anything He considers sin is sin. Whether we try to rationalize it or not. His love will never be quenched for us. He gives us a choice, we can choose to live the way that He has designed us to live from the beginning of creation or not. We are created by Him and He gives us life…so I think the bottom line is if you believe In God then,we as the… Read more »
As an American Episcopal priest, I want all to remember that we don’t ‘appoint’ bishops – they are elected by the dioceses, in votes by orders (clergy and laity), and the candidates must achieve a majority in both orders. Likewise, the General Convention approved Bp. Robinson’s election by his diocese. We truly believe that the Holy Spirit guides us in this process. My prayer is that we can quit focussing on sexuality and be about the mission and ministry of Christ’s church.
the church has to move forward not backwards after all this is the 21st century not the mid 18th or 19th centuries. As to whom or what you do in a bedroom is no one elses business, One other point is that the Church as a whole is making a huge blunder, by rejecting the gay community and appointing pastors who are gay, they are missing out on one huge section of humanity who could be brought to Christ. Isnt it time the church quit loking at sex and concentrate on the Gospel of Christ which is one of Love,… Read more »
has the anglican communion now become a right wing PRIVATE MEMBERS CLUB. What ever happened to inclusiveness?
Pat, You can throw around smear words like “fundamentalist” all day long, but all you accomplish is to make serious discussion impossible and discredit your own position. I don’t think there’s any reasonable definition of “fundamentalist” that applies to conservative Anglicans. We are not Biblical literalists, and we certainly do not rest our position primarily on Leviticus. On the contrary, we simply can’t see how same-sex relationships can be made to fit the pattern of sexual behavior commended in Scripture and Christian tradition. It isn’t about prooftexts, it’s about what we think the purpose of sexuality is. Of course you… Read more »
In some African communities and certainly mine, sharing of wives and being adulterours is an acceptable behaviour. If I was appointed Bishop and I continued sharing my wife with my agemets and also became adulterous – would I be accepted as Bishop in the Church of Christ?
Enoch Opuka in Mozambique
It will be interesting to see how the conservative wing deals with the issue of what rights an individual that is a dizygotic chimera [url]http://web.archive.org/web/20030416200844/http://www.nature.com/nsu/020429/020429-13.html[/url]
has to get married and to who, and who gets to decide. My guess is they’ll ignore the issue– an equivalent to putting their fingers in their ears and humming. The fact that gender is not an either/or but a continuum, is no doubt going to continue to present them with discomforting facts that will become harder and harder to ignore…
Inclusiveness does not mean we include those who repudiate clearly any idea that homosexuality is acceptable to God. Othewise inclusiveness could mean we include devil worshippers.
I have been a member of a ‘Continuing Anglican Church’ for over ten years and have watched with sadness as the Anglican Communion destroys itself. The Windsor Report 2004 just confirms the lack of Scriptural integrity of the Communion. The Report has failed miserably to deal seriously with the issues that are tearing the Anglican Communion apart. I would strongly suggest that those people who wish to uphold the faith, leave the Anglican Communion Churches and join a ‘Continuing’ Church which retains the Anglican Expression of the Catholic Faith.
It is liberating to have an understanding of the scriptures of the major world faith traditions which allows me to say: “that is what people claimed thousands of years ago to be right or to be the will of their god, but what they believed then does not constrain how I think today “.
To my mind, it is part of the dignity and responsibility of being human that we have to work out our moral conclusions, however provisional, for ourselves. (This quotation is found on my home page http://myhome.iolfree.ie/~andrewfurlong/ )
The discussion of a gender-continuum is misplaced as an argument about sexuality. Although it was a perfect opportunity to use the word continuum. Castigating Anglican conservatives as being anti-gay is specious as well, and a well-known activist trick to slant public opinion against an opponent. Likewise with the labelling of those supportive bishops and laity as liberal, revisionist heathens. The primary goal of the report was to find out if there was enough will in the Anglican Communion to stay together. (probably not, according to both Frank Griswold, the Canadian bishops and the Global South) Now I admit that there… Read more »