The day after release of the Windsor Report, parish clergy were conducting Bible studies, funerals and other business of the church, but a number of them took time to offer their comments to The Living Church.

The Rev. Arthur Hadley, rector of St. John’s Church, Worthington, Ohio, began to think about the parish’s day care center as he read the report. “It’s almost to the point of being childish,” he said. “It seems to me what the report says to the Episcopal Church is ‘go to your room and stay there until you can play nice’ and to those in Africa, ‘go to your room and don’t play with other people’s toys’.”

The Rev. John Talbird, Jr., rector of Church of the Good Shepherd, Lookout Mountain, Tenn., said the report addresses the Anglican Communion as a large, extended family as opposed to a legislative body and believes it may help to “at least have the family talk to each other in some civil way. It stresses the importance of unity of spirit, if not unity of thinking.”

He continued, “If we’re going to call this the Anglican Communion, we need to agree on some commonality, while recognizing the immense diversity. “

Fr. Talbird lamented being in a church where the via media seems to have been lost. “Conversation is difficult to find anymore,” he said. “Mostly people are making speeches at each other.” Meanwhile, “the mission and ministry is still out there, folks.”

Like many others, the Rev. George Gray, Jr., rector of St. Christopher’s, Spartanburg, S.C., published a copy on the parish website. He described the report as “guarded and prayerful” and urged his congregation to read it and keep the Anglican Communion in prayer.

The Rev. Ron Peak, rector of Trinity, El Dorado, Kan., was also encouraging the congregation to read the report prayerfully and said the parish was holding a forum Oct. 24 to talk about the ways it will touch the life of the parish and beyond.

“The report seems to offer opportunities for the Anglican Communion to work toward finding a way in which the many different cultures involved may be able to live together in a supportive society of sisters and brothers in Christ,” Fr. Peak said.

“Many (in this parish) are concerned about some of the decisions made in the Episcopal Church, and throughout the Anglican Communion. However, I think that most, if not all, are willing and enthusiastic to join with our bishop as we all work at remaining focused on our primary mission — to know Christ and to make Christ known. “

At press time, the Rev. Kenneth Kroohs, rector of St. Christopher’s, High Point, N.C., had read summaries of the report and some of its sections. “I’m searching for time to hide and read the entire report,” he said. “Generally the people I have spoken with are relieved to have the report issued, and to have a process underway.”

Fr. Kroohs said several of his parishioners were waiting to read the report. “I have done a considerable amount of informal teaching about church polity, and few people realized how little power the Presiding Bishop has,” he said. “Even fewer realized how little authority the Archbishop of Canterbury has. I have spent a considerable amount of time using the `we are family and not an organization’ image for the Anglican Communion.”

He said the parish offered discussion times when Bishop Robinson was elected last year, but there was little participation in those offerings.

“I have sent out a brief email highlighting what I understood to be the

[report’s] summary,” Fr. Kroohs said. “In my explanation of Anglican Communion as family, I predicted that there would be a movement to add formal structure and authority to the Anglican Communion.”

Fr. Kroohs said that he saw similarities to changes the Southern Baptist Convention went through decades ago. “In many ways their journey parallels what appears to be happening with the Anglican Communion. Previously, as I understand it, the Southern Baptist Convention had a very strong emphasis on local autonomy. Then they began to add belief statements that congregations must accept if they wish to be Southern Baptist. My point is not that we will go through the same process, but only that the movement toward more centralized authority is similar.”

Fr. Kroohs said he was “intrigued” by a recent quote from Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold [TLC, Oct. 31] that Bishop Griswold thinks that ordinations and blessings of active homosexual persons will not continue. “That statement, if true, could be a small opening to reconciliation,” he said.

The Rev. Charles Hoffman, rector of Grace Church, Old Saybrook, Conn., downloaded the Windsor Report within an hour after its release and distributed copies to his vestry the following day. Fr. Hoffman said the parish has been considering joining the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes, and the vestry will now study the Windsor Report as part of that discernment process.

Fr. Hoffman saw the report’s call for a moratorium on same-sex blessings and the ordination of homosexual persons in same-sex partnerships as a positive element, but felt that the report should have called for repentance, rather than regret, from those who participated in the consecration of Bishop Robinson. “Repentance means asking God’s forgiveness and taking a new direction,” Fr. Hoffman said. Instead, he sees participants “apologizing not for the action, but for its effect. It’s as if [participants] are saying, `If you people were more informed and enlightened, our actions wouldn’t have caused you this much pain.’”

Grace Church has suffered a 10 percent drop in attendance and giving since General Convention, from people on both sides of the contentious issues. Fr. Hoffman said that as a result, one parish employee has been laid off, other staff salaries have been frozen, and in what he called “a double embarrassment and sadness” to him personally, the parish will for the first time in his tenure not be able to meet its diocesan stewardship commitment.

The weekend following the Windsor Report’s release, Fr. Hoffman submitted a resolution to the Connecticut diocesan convention that the report be commended for study throughout the diocese.