Nearly 45 people, many of them deputies to the next General Convention, met at Christ Church New Brunswick, New Jersey, to discuss the report that was requested by the primates of the Anglican Communion at their meeting in October 2003 and completed one year later.

The report was the result of a 17-member commission's examination of interrelationships among Anglicans. It offered recommendations on ways in which the Anglican Communion could maintain unity amid strong differences of opinion.

The commission followed the consecration in New Hampshire of a bishop who is in a committed relationship with a person of the same sex, and the Canadian Diocese of New Westminster's adoption of rites for the blessing of same-gender unions.

Saturday's conversations began with a taped presentation from the Very Rev. Paul Zahl, dean and president of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, and in-person remarks from the Rev. Ian T. Douglas, of Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Zahl and Douglas recently co-authored "Understanding the Windsor Report: Two Leaders in the American Church Speak Across the Divide."

The Rev. Titus Pressler, of General Theological Seminary in New York, responded to their remarks. The day also included small-group and plenary discussions.

Zahl said he sees the Windsor Report as "true and good and what is best for the Episcopal Church." He said the report's recommendations create a place in the Church where a people like him, "theological traditionalist and conservative," can stand and have a sense of support. Douglas said that just as there isn't one story in the report, there also isn't one, static Anglican Communion. "The Anglican Communion is always new and we are always trying to discern our way forward as the Body of Christ globally," he said.

They both agree that the report's recommendations would centralize authority in the Anglican Communion in a way that Zahl said is not "broadband enough" to allow for the diversity of the Communion. Zahl said the report focused too much on discipline and not enough on the Gospel's commandment to love one another.

Douglas said that Anglican diversity is radically increasing and is becoming more and more visible. He called this a time of "new Pentecost" that the report's "structuralist" approach can't handle. Such an approach assumes that all the church has to do is get its structures "neat and clean" and determine who is in charge so that it can say who is in and who is out, both in terms of church governance and biblical interpretation.

For instance, while some parts of the Communion might believe that the Bible is to be interpreted "within the believing context" of each community, the report assumes that the final interpretive word belongs to Anglican bishops. That assumption, Douglas said, represents only one stream of Anglicanism and is not the assumption in the United States.

The question given to the Lambeth Commission, Douglas said, was how to live together and share power in that diversity. He said the commission rightly considered questions of ecclesiology, the branch of theology concerned with the Church's nature, constitution, and functions. Zahl disagreed, saying that the report is "long on process and weak on substance" in terms of addressing the human-sexuality issue.

"I think there is an intellectual dishonesty or evasion there," he said. "It's the truth question," he said, adding that "the search for truth was short-circuited and pushed to the side."

During his response time, Pressler said that everyone should understand that the sexuality issue is one of mission, and that all sides have a different view of what impact our disagreements have on the mission of the Church. Some people say this debate is taking the Church away from its mission, a contention Pressler said is "profoundly wrong."

Those on the so-called Left see the issue of full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered persons as one that cuts to the root of the Gospel's call to reach out to and love all people, he said. Those on the Right see such inclusion as unfaithful because it embraces behavior it deems sinful. To embrace such unfaithfulness is to be unfaithful to the Church's mission.

"We need to remember that both sides have very strong feelings about mission," Pressler said. Pressler also suggested that the Anglican Communion needs more conversations of the kind that Zahl and Douglas had, and the one happening that day. People of differing opinions need to listen to each other "and not snigger and disparage and roll their eyes at each other."

Pressler advocates a process he calls the Anglican Conversations Initiative that he said would allow people to experience the diversity of the Communion. He hoped they would replicate experiences he and two conservative ECUSA bishops had last summer in the dioceses of Rwanda, Burundi and Kenya. The conversations were stressful in part because the three were often scolded for the actions of General Convention 2003 but most of the time people asked why they had not come to talk with them sooner, Pressler said.

"I can't explain what it accomplished in terms of an agreement or a statement," he said, "but it built relationships."

SIDEBAR

The Provincial Council of Province II will host a second "Conversations About the Windsor Report" meeting on Saturday, October 1, St. Thomas' Church, Rochester, New York.

The meeting begins at 10 a.m. and concludes by 3 p.m. Lunch will be provided, as well as copies of "Understanding the Windsor Report" and "To Set Our Hope on Christ." To help offset the cost of lunch and materials, there is a $15 registration fee, payable at the door.

-- The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is national correspondent for the Episcopal News Service.