Drawing the Line calls for a clear and publicly recognized distinction between the continuing Anglican Communion and those provinces whose witness diverges from the Communion.

The Episcopal Church must therefore be seen and known to be a quite separate church or denomination from Anglicanism. The consequences of the August votes by the 74th General Convention affirming the election of a partnered homosexual priest as Bishop of New Hampshire and recognizing rites for the blessing of same-sex unions have become too literally, a life and death issue for Churches in the developing world and in Muslim majority countries, the paper averred.

The document states that neither the Episcopal Church nor the Anglican Church of Canada should be permitted to use the label Anglican in a way that identifies them as part of the Anglican Communion. The paper argues that should the two churches desire a continuing relationship with Canterbury, it must be of a qualitatively different kind from that which Canterbury will maintain with (what will become) the continuing Communion.

The signatories ask that a March deadline be given by the primates to General Convention that declares the Episcopal Church has centered a period of restorative discipline, the purpose of which is to provide time for your reconciliation to the larger Communion and its teaching. This discipline will come into force with immediate effect up to 2 years and failure to recant would be seen as a clear and conscious signal that you yourselves are unwilling to continue as constituent members of the Anglican Communion.

As of press time, officials at the Episcopal Church Center had not responded to queries.

The Rev. Christopher Seitz, president of the ACI, told The Living Church, We at ACI were acutely aware that no formal proposal had been submitted by theologians and bishops and others from the Global South. The submission was conceived of as an international statement with a Global South focus.

In addition to facilitating the submission of Drawing the Line, the ACI submitted its own theological statement to the LCC on Sept. 1 titled A Proposal for an Extraordinary Ministry to be Exercised by the Archbishop of Canterbury in Order to Maintain the Highest Degree of Communion Possible in the Life of the Anglican Communion.

Fr. Seitz said the submission was prompted by the mandate of the LCC and draws upon the 1998 Lambeth Conference call for an enhanced ministry for the Archbishop of Canterbury within the life of the Communion in extraordinary situations.

We should all be in no doubt and this is made clear in the statement on enhanced responsibility that the Communion will grind to a crawl or a halt or divide if proper Communion polity is not worked out, he noted. The annual primates meeting requires some rationale for meeting at present, and that is what is in doubt.

If the commission does not plot a way forward, some other way forward will have to be found or the primates will refuse to be gathered.

Fr. Seitz noted that he did not believe the documents to be coercive. The status of restorative discipline, he said, ought surely only be for those whose hearts and minds God has so moved, who see the consequences of acting without consultation with the wider Communion family, and who wish to remain in the Communion and find a way forward in their divided or fractured dioceses.

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