About Communion Partners

Communion Partners is an episcopally led fellowship of individuals in the provinces of the Anglican Communion devoted to promoting deeper communion in the faith of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church. With evangelical fervor, we pursue and support the proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed. In a spirit of mutual love, we commit ourselves to honoring the authority and boundaries of our local churches, working in concert with them to pursue that unity for which our Savior prayed: “That they all may be one … so that the world might believe” (John 17:12).

Our Mission

“We give particular thanks for the steadfast witness of our colleagues in the Communion Partners. We value and rely on their commitment to The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. We recognize that theirs is a minority voice in the House of Bishops in our deliberations with respect to Christian marriage; and we affirm that despite our differences they are an indispensable part of who we are as the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church. Our church needs their witness.”
“Communion across Difference,” a Statement of the Mind of the House of Bishops, at the 78th General Convention of the Episcopal Church. More support for CP…

As Communion Partners, we seek to act within the context of a shared commitment to prayer and to regular meetings for the purposes of learning, fellowship, encouragement, and common action. We actively encourage the historic bonds of affection across the Anglican Communion, as well as new networks and links between dioceses, parishes, and individuals. We also provide pastoral and theological resources for the churches of the Communion by supporting study and teaching.

Membership is open to all clergy and lay people who are prepared to endorse and uphold the traditional teaching of our several Books of Common Prayer and the principles of The Windsor Report and The Anglican Communion Covenant. Based primarily in the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church (spanning the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America), we seek to maintain a visible link to the whole Anglican Communion on the way to resolving important questions of faith and order.

We are committed to transparent communication with all of our colleagues, including the primates of our churches and the Archbishop of Canterbury as a focus of unity (Covenant 3.1.4), and to patient participation in the councils of the Communion.

History

  • 2003: Anglican Communion enters current period of crisis.
  • 2004: The Windsor Report responds to strained bonds of affection.
  • 2006: Windsor Bishops group formed after the Episcopal Church’s General Convention.
  • 2008: In advance of the Lambeth Conference, Windsor Bishops formalized anew as Communion Partners, committed to abiding by the moratoria of The Windsor Report and to remaining in the Episcopal Church.
  • 2010: Gracious Restraint formed after the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada, to provide encouragement and space to discuss the Anglican Covenant.
  • 2008-2015: Communion Partners and Gracious Restraint continue to meet, support the Anglican Covenant, gather conferences on mission and ecclesiology, and dissent from decisions of successive General Conventions to authorize services blessing same-sex unions and solemnizing same-sex marriages. Consultations held with successive Archbishops of Canterbury.
  • 2015: Communion Partners begin coordinating more closely with Gracious Restraint bishops in Anglican Church of Canada.
  • 2018: Communion Partners and Gracious Restraint create a single organization and incorporate new members from TEC’s overseas dioceses.

Communion Partners began as an informal gathering of bishops in the Episcopal Church around the principles of The Windsor Report, published in 2004 by the Lambeth Commission on Communion. The primates of the Anglican Communion called for the report, and it was issued in response to a crisis of relationship among the churches of the Communion. Along with developments in dioceses of the Anglican Church of Canada, the consecration of Gene Robinson as a bishop in the Episcopal Church in 2003 strained the “bonds of affection” between the churches; as a partnered gay man, Bishop Robinson presented the Anglican Communion with a challenge to its common life, especially after the heated debate over same-sex relationships at the 1998 Lambeth Conference, and the assembled bishops’ overwhelming support for resolution I.10.

Following the 2006 General Convention of the Episcopal Church, and its perceived inadequate response to the calls of The Windsor Report for moratoria on the election and consecration of same-sex partnered bishops and on authorizing public rites for same-sex blessing, a group of Episcopal bishops gathered at Camp Allen in the Diocese of Texas

to arrive at a common response to the current circumstances of the Episcopal Church — one that will insure an unimpaired relation between bishops who uphold the requests of the Windsor Report and the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other Primates of the Anglican Communion. (“Windsor-Compliant Bishops Meeting has Archbishop’s Blessing,” ENS [Aug. 11, 2006])

The group, which came to be known as the Windsor Bishops, gathered several times in 2007 for consultation. Inspired in part by Archbishop Rowan Williams’s 2006 pastoral letter, “The Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican Today,” they were joined occasionally by bishops from the Church of England and a number of primates from other churches in the Communion.

In 2008, in preparation for the Lambeth Conference that summer, the gathering of Windsor Bishops began to formalize its relationship as Communion Partners. In his concluding presidential address to the conference, Archbishop Williams commended work within the churches of the Communion that would help to mend relationships between the churches. He mentioned in particular the Communion Partners initiative.

2007 and 2008 also saw the departure from the Episcopal Church of a number of bishops and clergy with parishioners and the beginning of the formation of the Anglican Church in North America. From its beginning, Communion Partners was committed to remaining a part of both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.

Encouraged by the archbishop’s commendation, and with the blessing of the Communion Partners’ bishops group, a Communion Partners’ rectors group was organized and gathered in November 2008 at St. Martin’s Church in Houston. A second gathering was held there in April 2009, which included bishops and primates from other churches in the Communion. Communion Partners also sponsored a conference held in Orlando in November 2010, “Partnering in Communion,” on ways to strengthen missional relationships between the churches of the Communion.

Around the same time, the Gracious Restraint group of bishops was formed in the Anglican Church of Canada, for the purposes of providing encouragement and fellowship for those who supported the Anglican Covenant and wished to remain within the ACoC.

The Communion Partner bishops continued to meet from 2009 to 2012, gathering with the Archbishop of Canterbury in London in September 2009 to discuss the Anglican Covenant, proposed by The Windsor Report and endorsed by the archbishop. The Communion Partner bishops sponsored and supported a resolution calling for a process of adoption of the Covenant by the Episcopal Church at the 2012 General Convention.

The Communion Partner bishops issued statements following both the General Conventions of 2012 and 2015 (see here and here) dissenting from the adoption of liturgies for the blessing of same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage. In 2014, the Gracious Restraint bishops issued a response letter in 2014 to the Anglican Church of Canada’s Commision on the Marriage Canon, urging that no steps be taken to threaten the unity of the ACoC or the Anglican Communion. After the Synod’s vote in 2016 to begin the process of changing the canon, the bishops “publicly dissented” from the Synod’s decision and called on “our Primate and the Archbishop of Canterbury to seek ways to guarantee our place within the Anglican Church of Canada and the Anglican Communion.”

The Communion Partner bishops in recent years have gathered annually for consultation with other bishops from across the Communion and with representatives of the rectors’ group. Since 2015 their meetings have been coordinated with the similarly-minded and -committed Gracious Restraint bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada. On occasion (as in November 2012 and March 2016), the Communion Partner bishops have addressed the church at large on particular issues bearing on the unity of the Church and the preservation of fellowship between the churches of the Communion.

Statements of Support for the Communion Partners