The Eames Commission: The Official Reports

A.J. Pell is the rector of Holy Trinity Cathedral, Diocese of New
Westminster, British Columbia.

This is the report by and about a worldwide group of Anglican bishops,
pastors, and scholars who were called together as the Archbishop of
Canterbury’s Commission on Communion and Women in the Episcopate.
Named after the Archbishop of Armagh (Ireland), Robert Eames, the
Commission was asked to deal with the challenges to worldwide unity
within the Anglican Communion posed by the possible ordination of women
as bishops in some part of that Communion.

The first report is the theological statement on the church, unity, and
the ordination of women bishops drawn up at Commission meetings in
November 1988 and March 1989. The second report, from meetings in
October 1989 and March 1990, deals with responses to the first report
and the Commission’s reflections in the light of these responses. The
third report outlines the thinking and conclusions of a follow-up
meeting in December 1993 after the election of three women as bishops in
the United States and one each in Canada and New Zealand. Finally, there
are four appendices, one of which is an exchange of letters between the
Archbishop of Canterbury and Pope John Paul II. What lifts this book
from being dismissed as yet another dry report is the very completeness
of the materials. The reader can trace the line of theological argument
as developed by the Commission, the manner in which the responses of
others were considered, and the shaping of the final theological and
pastoral guidelines offered to the Anglican Communion by this working
group. Such thoroughness allows the reader to learn how, on a very
contentious issue, a process was carried out to include all the
differing positions within Anglicanism on the issue and to arrive at a
final position that honored those differences while preserving unity.
There is a lesson here in dealing honestly with divisive issues without
destroying a church.