What on earth is a "relatively unique" episcopate? Something is either unique or it is not unique. If indeed we do have a unique episcopate one wonders when it appeared and how it was justified. In "Bishops by Ballot" and +Paul Marshall's recent book on Seabury one reads of an attempt to return PECUSA to "primitive episcopacy" probaby as romantic a notion than any other attempt to recover the spirit of the Early Church.

Except in the Provinces of Canterbury and York, where Establishment remains, every Province in the Communion has sought to develop a form of episcopacy devoid of those accretions which are uniquely part of English history. In some Provinces episcopacy has been seen through Evangelical eyes, "a convenient form of church government" but not necessarily Apostolic. In Anglo-Catholic Provinces a 19t Century version of Apostolic Succession has prevailed. Elsewhere in Provinces in which Low, Broad and High Church elements have existed, as with our cousins to the North of us, a less precise "doctrine" exists.

In each and every Province synodical government exists. That it seems that some Primates commit themselves to policies without synodical consent is rather a commentary on the effectiveness of encouraged representative participation rather than the system in place itself.

We do ourself continued harm by suggesting that we have a more excellent form of government than elsewhere and descriptions like "relatively unique" may be used by extremists to suggest that we claim novelty as a virtue.

The collapse of the Communion would be an unmitigated disaster. Ecclesial breakups take centuries if ever to heal and are dismissive of our Lord's High Priestly prayer.

Tony,
"Relatively unique" can mean just unique in relation to the way other provinces exercise the ministry of oversight.

I think our uniqueness--the degreee to which the exercise of ministry deviates from the norm by being balanced against other orders of ministry--in the Anglican Communion's current context, is not a triviality. In this you and I seem to differ.

Our episcopate was forged against the background of the need to find some way of checking abuse of power--not merely political abuse. For instance, the English Archbishop and Parliament deliberately kept an episcopacy from developing in the colonies, forcing novel developments in governance in Virginia.

We may indeed have an excellence--not simply unqualified to be sure--to share with our Communion.

Why would one say it is a good idea for the Episcopal Church not to challenge the current Archbishop of Canterbury directly? I don't see that the status quo is worth maintaining if justice and equality are abandoned as principles.

I don't get this last paragraph: "Still, this letter is good enough to work with. We would probably do well not addressing Williams' personal idiosyncracies head-on; they are not that important, and we need less wrangling. We already know, for instance, he does not view--even in this letter-- TEC or any province as a real church, he treats Robinson as a scapegoat, and he questions the legitimacy of our episcopate. While it would be tempting to take these views on, we would probably do better ignoring these oddities."

If one disagrees with a church atuhority then one is obliged to stand up and embody different values, as did Luther.

Gary Paul Gilbert