We, the Bishops and Members of the Provincial Standing Committee of the Church in the Province of the West Indies, meeting at Bamford House, Barbados, from March 8th -10th, 2005, extend greetings to you, the faithful, in the name of the Triune God.
We welcome the Communiqué issued by the Primates of the Anglican Communion at their meeting in February, 2005, especially their support of Sections A & B of the Windsor Report and its statement of the principles by which communal “life in the Anglican Communion is governed and sustained”. “These sections speak to the central place Anglicans accord to the authority of scripture, and of “autonomy-in-communion” as the balanced exercise of the inter-dependence between the thirty-eight Provinces and their legitimate provincial autonomy”.
We note the request from the Primates that “all provinces consider whether they are willing to be committed to the inter-dependent life of the Anglican Communion” as understood in the terms set out in Sections A & B of the Windsor Report’. We, the Bishops and Members of the Provincial Standing Committee, whole-heartedly make that commitment.
We also join the Primates in re-affirming the 1998 Lambeth Conference Resolution 1:10 as the present position of the Anglican Communion in respect of homosexual practice and same sex blessings. As such it represents the acceptable standard of teaching and practice for the Church in the Province of the West Indies. Consistent with that resolution (Lambeth 1:10) our Provincial Synod at its 35th Triennial Synod resolved to “condemn all forms of violence directed at gay and lesbian persons; and urge the governments of the region to ensure the protection of gay and lesbian persons from all forms of violence as is the entitlement of all citizens.”
We continue to note with sadness that the developments that have taken place in the Episcopal Church of the United States of America and the Diocese of New Westminster in the Anglican Church of Canada do not accord with the standard of teaching and practice shared by the majority of the Provinces of the world-wide Anglican Communion.
As stated in our Statement issued by the House of Bishops and the Provincial Standing Committee in Antigua in November, 2003, these actions by these two sister churches have created a state of impaired communion between themselves and the “overwhelming majority of the Provinces within the Communion, including the Province of the West Indies”. This state of impaired communion continues while we and the rest of the Communion await the formal responses from the Episcopal Church of the United States and the Diocese of New Westminster in the Anglican Church of Canada to the questions specifically addressed to them in the Windsor Report.
During this period, our ongoing relationship with representatives of these two churches must be predicated on a respect for the standard of teaching and practice which this Province shares with the majority of Provinces within the Anglican Communion. In this regard, we request all Bishops of this Province to take such measures as to ensure that permission to function within this Province will be restricted to those persons who accept our standard of teaching and practice as set out in the Lambeth Conference Resolution 1:10. We also request the Bishops to share this policy position with their clergy and the church at large.