From The Living Church:<\/p>\n
It\u2019s popular in conservative circles to say that our identity is anchored to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Bishop Jeffrey Steenson wrote a forceful apology for a Canterbury magisterium in the Anglican Theological Review (\u201cThe Unopened Gift,\u201d\u009d Vol. 87), various Windsor bishops\u2019 statements have said as much, and the Windsor Report itself seems to give the archbishop such a place of honor.<\/p>\n
But with great respect for Bishop Steenson and the Windsor bishops, just to say something doesn\u2019t make it true, and to say it often doesn\u2019t make it less false. The Archbishop of Canterbury has never been the focal point of unity in the Anglican Communion. Instead, the focus of unity has always been a theology, what the prayer book calls \u201cthe substance of the Faith,\u201d\u009d of which the archbishop is obligated to uphold. To give Canterbury control over our identity gives him far more power than he was ever meant to have.<\/p>\n
According to Ian Douglas (Understanding the Windsor Report, coauthored with Paul Zahl), the four \u201cinstruments of unity\u201d\u009d described in the Windsor Report were never identified as such before 1987. The Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Singapore in 1987 considered a paper that brought the four together for the first time. Yet, in reading the Windsor Report, one would get the feeling that these four \u201d\u201d the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglican Consultative Council, the primates, and Lambeth Conference \u201d\u201d have always been authoritative.<\/p>\n