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AN OPEN LETTER TO ORTHODOX FRIENDS
January 2005
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
A great compensation for the frustrations of the sexuality controversy has been the friendships formed with colleagues in different parts of the Anglican Communion. I am writing now to many people I have been privileged to get to know during the years I served as primate, when I was more immediately involved in this struggle to hold on to historic Anglican faith and practice.
I should explain that I am not now idle. I am currently ministering as Dean of the Anglican Cathedral in Cairo. In the context of Egypt and the Middle East it is even more starkly evident that if the sexual innovations remain an option for member churches and dioceses in the Communion then Anglican witness becomes fatally flawed. I share too in the awareness that the controversy has again reached a very critical stage. This prompts me to try at this juncture to make a brief contribution to orthodox thinking and planning.
With the publication of the Windsor Report we see a continuation of a consistent pattern. In spite of the best efforts of orthodox participants in the Lambeth Commission, its conclusions fall short of a clear resolution of the conflict. Time and again after Lambeth 98 the terms of reference and chairmanship of study commissions and drafting committees relating to the Primates Meeting have made it difficult or impossible squarely to address the issue of false teaching and unbiblical behaviour. Good sentiments and ideas have not been lacking, but never developed so as to lead into remedial action. Typically the Lambeth Commission was not asked to express any judgement upon the intrinsic rights and wrongs of the innovations that are dividing the Communion. So, without a full diagnosis of the sickness, how can there be an adequate prescription for the healing?
Faced with this situation, I have just two suggestions to make. We can and must work with good elements in the Windsor Report. We can recognise in the proposal for an Anglican Covenant a potential instrument for restoring and maintaining a common orthodox witness among member churches. Between the Global South and the Network / Mainstream / Essentials North there must be agreement on how the proposal for the Covenant needs to be strengthened and implemented, and what more immediate measures need to be taken to minimise the damage from unchecked departures from Christian norms.
A united voice and a clear statement of the orthodox position at the Primates Meeting in February will be vital. Then I dare to suggest that this position should be non-negotiable. To enter yet again into the neutralising procedures imposed since Lambeth ’98 would be disastrous. It would be far better for the primates committed to orthodoxy to issue their own report and their own action plan following the February meeting, than for them to support a compromise, which fails to correct the fault.
It remains for us to pray that a unique worldwide family of churches may at this time be held in Christ’s truth
I send affectionate greetings.
Yours in Christ,
Maurice Sinclair
