Given this situation, we would make the following points and raise the following questions:<\/p>\n
1. ACI has defended not only a collaborative understanding of the Instruments of Unity, but their integrity as well. The failure of the ABC publicly to state that the Dar es Salaam Communiqu\u00c3\u00a9 is alive and well has been injurious to our common life. It has also been intimated in certain quarters that the adjudication of the Communiqu\u00c3\u00a9 will be undertaken by a Joint Steering Committee of the Primates and the ACC. We trust that this rumor is mistaken. The Primates have worked hard and declared their intention, and their recommendations and requests are fully within their remit as an Instrument with enhanced responsibility, whose present character was requested by other Instruments of Communion. Lacking any clear understanding of the precise fate of the Communiqu\u00c3\u00a9 has left the field open for manipulation and the multiplication of other initiatives, borne of fear, concern, power balancing and so on.<\/p>\n
2. ACI has sought to work with the Windsor Report, the Covenant, and within the US, the Windsor Bishops. One can watch with curiosity and concern the proliferating of various groups within the conservative ranks, most recently, a Common Cause College of Bishops (as proposed), CANA, and others. The Anglican Communion Network would appear to have split into those bishops now headed toward the Common Cause College, and those who wish to continue on the Windsor path. But to the degree that the Windsor Bishops have no clarity about the future of the Primates’ Tanzanian Communiqu\u00c3\u00a9, and hence a comprehensive, ordered response to their Communion life in troubled times, they will collapse altogether. Indeed, one wonders what role they might be expected to exercise in the light of such unclarity.<\/p>\n
3. It is our understanding that the recent issuing of Lambeth invitations was done in the light of organizational concerns and the timing of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s leave. The ways in which the Archbishop has reserved to himself all manner of options, discernment, and counsel regarding the ultimate character of invitations–which is his right to do–means that speculation about the character of the conference is bound to be only that. Still, it is speculation capable of generating unease and reaction that is not always constructive.<\/p>\n