While REFORM members are fully supportive of initiatives to bring about reconciliation between Anglicans worldwide, the unity of the church depends on shared convictions about the authority of God’s Word and our calling to be faithful. Where this has been so overtly challenged – as it has in ECUSA and the diocese of New Westminster in Canada – the threat to unity must be addressed firmly.

The report’s recommendations, that those who have ignored the mind of the Anglican Communion by their actions express regret and impose moratoria on further divisive actions, leave us a long way short of our target of church unity. To be content now with a ‘limbo period’ of prolonged discussion and debate would simply be to connive at Biblical unfaithfulness. Our prayer, therefore, is that when the Primates meet in February, they will see the need to go further than the Windsor Report, and take firm and urgent action in order to avoid the present fractures in the Anglican Communion from deepening.

In the meantime, REFORM is urging its members, and encouraging orthodox churches worldwide, to remain committed to their gospel work and where their own diocesan bishops hold to unbiblical teaching and practice, to seek oversight and guidance from faithful bishops wherever they may be found in the Communion.

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