An article that I wrote recently has been included in the LGCM Anglican Matters newsletter that was also published as an advertising supplement to this week’s Church Times.
The entire supplement is available online as a PDF file here (900Kb).
The article is a summary of Anglican Communion events during the past six months or so. It was published with the title Has the Covenant already sunk? and an html copy of it is now here.
One can only hope that this is true. A punitive Covenant would be the death of big ten Anglicanism (that is the point, after all).
As Pluralist and others have posted, any covenant which attempts to add something of force to the gracious covenant through which God already holds us all in Jesus of Nazareth as Risen Lord, despite and across all our believer differences, is either redundant or likely to be power driven by some partisan hidden agenda … or two … or three … or four? Those believers who have not the generous heart or mind to dwell comfortably within the Chicago Lambeth Quadrilateral – not to mention the dedication to work out their own salvation without aspiring to power for dominating others… Read more »
I believe the good prior meant “big tent” Anglicanism.
Having graduated from the University of Michigan, part of the Big Ten Conference, Anglicanism is certainly alive and well in its Episcopal chaplaincies and churches. 🙂
We live with hope. So many biblical passages, so many repetitions. Yet still we try Jeremiah 2:8-14 “The priests did not ask, ‘Where is the LORD?’ Those who deal with the law did not know me; the leaders rebelled against me… my people have exchanged their Glory for worthless idols. Be appalled at this, O heavens, and shudder with great horror,” declares the LORD. “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. Is Israel a servant, a slave by birth? Why… Read more »
A straightforward and useful summary of events does tend to show that this thing has not got legs of any use – Fulcrum argued against me very recently that this is where the centre of Anglicanism now is found, which is surely naive given the absence of responses and that they have hardly been an endorsement. Nevertheless until Lambeth, and probably a little after, it may be necessary to keep banging away against it. It has such an effort going into the leaky thing it to pump it up that the argument has to be made to keep the air… Read more »
‘All aboard the motor car!
Are we going very far?
Will the day be bright & sunny?
Don’t you think our car looks funny!’
Rev. Kurt Huber —
ARGH! Spell check fails me! But the Big Ten is overrated! (Brits, et. al. we are referring to American football — like Rugby with “armour” & LOTS of “times out”)
GO OHIO STATE!
I do hope that “The Covenant” becomes a dead letter — like every other big idea from Lambeth (reality really does move along faster than the Anglican bishops every ten years — SHEESH!)
The choice is quite simple, really: the death of the “Covenant” or the death of authentic Anglicanism.
No, not a hard choice at all.
One hopes after the car crash that there will be some sort of open ended review of what constitutes Anglicanism, so that relationships within and between Churches can be understood on this basis, rather than a forced Catholic ideology with evangelical content as is the case now. The emphasis would need to be on a ‘simple Anglicanism’ and not an effort about one lot trying to make the other lot like itself.
Wasn’t there a quiet existence & implicit covenant granted in the creation of the Book of Common Prayer? Oh, so if you don’t get your way, you hound others to get a new written agreement to coerce others to keep the big tent (three-ring circus???) going. ‘Ya think? On another note, it would be so good if a certain American collegiate football team could actually win at the championship games. What’s that choking sound? Is it coming from around the Anglican Communion, or just from the north side of Columbus (Ohio)? From New Orleans six months ago, or from the… Read more »
LOL, Prior Aelred and Rev Kurt Huber.
The Big Ten may be overrated (I can’t say ’cause I’m from elsewhere and don’t keep up with football), but the Big Tent of Anglicanism is not! I am ready to suit up and play for that team at a moment’s notice. Go, team, go!
I’m with you Mary Clara.
I’ll suit up for the Anglicans (in the big tent and Big Ten varieties!).
Our mascot has to be: the “Battling Bishop”
(which is the mascot for Ohio Wesleyan Univ.)
You can find an image of their mascot here:
Kurt, I could happily sign on with the Battling Bishops. And I’ve got the Wesleyan cred to qualify (Southern Methodist, class of ’63).
With or without a Covenant – the last Advent Letter to the Primates confirms to me that the present leadership of the Communion having misdiagnosed the “illness” and almost killed the patient with their treatment remain determined with the appointment of a new “Windsor” group to continue in the poisonous way they have set for themselves. I wince painfully when I read that nice man Graham Kings’ laudatory jingles with regard to the present course – it seems that there are so very few who want this and who believe in this process – I pray that they too will… Read more »
They’ll see the writing on the wall when either the Covenant is no use to anyone (though I suspect there will be some lauding it as another show of eagerness to become the present centre) or when it is rejected by Church after Church and rendered redundant.
An excellent summary, Simon. However, I would like to offer one clarification. Under Canada, with respect to the General Synod meeting of June 2007, you say: “Another resolution providing pastoral provision for same-sex blessings in the Church of Canada was very narrowly defeated by only two bishops’ votes.” The resolution in question was to affirm that diocesan synods have the authority to authorize same-sex blessings, which is rather different from providing a pastoral provision for them. Much ink has been spilled, and many electrons shot about, unpacking the meaning of this defeat, but the most informed opinion is that the… Read more »
The football team at Bishop’s University, Lennoxville, Quebec is known as the Bishop’s Gaiters.