The Instruments of unity and communion in global Anglicanism

The Anglican Communion is a worldwide fellowship of 44 churches in communion with the See of Canterbury. The Lambeth Commission on Communion, in its Windsor Report, called for an appraisal of the instruments of unity and communion. The Commission recommended three key normative developments designed to maintain the creative tension between provincial autonomy (locally) and ecclesial communion (globally): a clarification of the roles of the institutional instruments of unity (or communion); the completion of a statement of principles of canon law common to the churches of the Anglican Communion; and the adoption by each church of an Anglican Communion Covenant. This chapter explores the key elements of these developments, as well as the plethora of instruments within these developments and the relations between them