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Andrew Goddard writes: Building on my earlier reading of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s contributions about Communion life, this article explores the ecclesiological questions that are important, and currently intertwined with, the questions relating to sexuality that tend to dominate discussion. 

It argues that although all wish for unity and communion there are currently two main competing visions of the end of communion in terms of its goal or purpose: 

the traditional vision of Communion Catholicity which is an ecumenically shared vision;
and a vision of Autonomous Inclusivism where provincial autonomy is central. 
The account of the Communion offered to the Conference by the Archbishop does not articulate that of Communion Catholicity and appears perilously close to that of Autonomous Inclusivism. If this is now the end (in sense of destiny and goal) it would entail the end (in sense of destruction) of the Communion as it has developed and understood itself because it embraces provincially driven pluralism while sidelining or abandoning the quest to be of one mind which I argue is part of the biblical calling of the church. 

By contrast, the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) are firmly committed to Communion Catholicity as well as to traditional teaching on sexuality. The question is whether the Archbishop of Canterbury and IASCUFO can now work with the Global South to enable the current Instruments to be “reset” and return to seeking the historic goal of “Communion Catholicity” or whether we are seeing the end of the Communion as we have known it.

In my previous article I tried to examine what the Archbishop of Canterbury was saying in his letter and speech of Tuesday. I did so in relation to both sexuality as regards the status of Lambeth I.10 and the reality of the Communion’s life. I argued that while there was much of value there were also important areas which lacked clarity. Above all, there was an ecclesiological deficit in each area leaving us with key questions—“what bearing, if any, does the continued “validity” of I.10 have on the ordering of the life of the Communion?” and “is the reality of “a plurality of views” in the Communion no longer the ecclesiological problem it has been in the past and if so what does that mean for our working ecclesiology as a communion and in our ecumenical relationships?”

This latter ecclesiological question is one which, “given Anglican polity, and especially the autonomy of Provinces” (Call on Human Dignity, 2.3, p.15) has hung over the Communion for decades and which Archbishop Robert Runcie clearly set out back at the 1988 Conference:

There are real and serious threats to our unity and communion…The problem that confronts us as Anglicans arises..from the relationship of independent provinces with each other…The New Testament surely speaks more in terms of interdependence than independence…Are we being called though events and theological interpretation to move from independence to interdependence…Let me put it in starkly simple terms: do we really want unity within the Anglican Communion? Is our worldwide family of Christians worth bonding together? Or is our paramount concern the preservation or promotion of that particular expression of Anglicanism which has developed within the culture of our own province?…I believe we still need the Anglican Communion but we have reached the stage in the growth of the Communion when we must begin to make radical choices, or growth will imperceptibly turn to decay. I believe the choice between independence and interdependence, already set before us as a Communion in embryo twenty-five years ago, is quite simply the choice between unity or gradual fragmentation… (The Truth Shall Make You Free, pp. 14-17).

In its current manifestation this challenge brings us back, again, to the question of how different teachings in relation to marriage and sexuality are related to different ecclesiological visions. As I set out in an article earlier in the Conference (drawing on two of my previous and fuller discussions and also two pieces in 2006 and 2008 by Graham Kings) this has been a constant and divisive question since at least The Windsor Report. One way of seeking to understand it is by representing different viewpoints on a quadrant created by axes mapping a spectrum of views on sexuality (the x-axis in relation to I.10) and on ecclesiology (the y-axis relating to support or rejection of the Windsor/Covenant vision of life in communion).