Thank you for these three pieces, Simon. All are well worth reading.+Tom Dunelm et hoc genus omne now seem to be wanting the C of E to sign up to this Covenant speedily. But surely we cant do this just on the strength of a General Synod debate/vote? Or have i got it hopelessly wrong?Surely for something so important, altering our relationship with the Anglican Communion with implications for our own polity, it ought to be sent down to the diocesan synods and even the deaneries. Or is the whole Church now at the mercy of that "Great Leviathan" as Professor Roy Porter was wont to call it? I'm increasingly glad retirement is now just 3 months off!! The more I read of all this the more I think "Icabod". Though of course it all has little resonance at the parish level as Giles Fraser has reminded us.The laity fortunately make up their own minds.....though I suspect rather more of them are will be voting with their feet in the next few years.

The problem with the 'Two Tracks' model is that the Communion resembles a bowl of multicoloured soggy spaghetti. Try separating out the strands into two neat piles, each one with a different set of colours.

Then there is the issue with trying to force through the Covenant before it's even finished being drafted, let alone agreed by the Communion. In a way, the haste to get it done quicker weakens it further. The Covenant in its current form is quite clear that the decision whether or not to sign is made by each constituent Church. Then there are processes to be followed if one Church is deemed to be in breach.

But if individuals, parishes and dioceses in TEC can sign, it just becomes another Jerusalem Declaration. This then raises the question of whether individuals, parishes and dioceses wanting to belong to Track Two in the Church of England and other provinces can opt out of signing, or sign a progressive's version instead: the Chicago-London Declaration?

I'm quite convinced that future resolutions on the Covenant at General Synod will pass easily. This is because only a minority are in favour of progressive reform such as we've seen at Convention. Everyone knows that the Covenant is related to this issue and no one can envisage anything else the Communion might fall out on. Most of the mundane matters Synod normally concerns itself with are generally of no interest globally.

The debate to watch will be the one on ACNA. Expect it to be heavily amended and watered down as it seems unlikely to be approved in its current form. Added to the melee will be the treatment of the Anaheim signatories when some of these voted in favour of one or both of the resolutions.

It's useful to progressives that Convention have gone for full inclusion before the Covenant is officially ratified. This also has the effect of reducing its usefulness (to conservatives) and hopefully kick it into the long grass.

Oh my goodness gracious, if ACI is drafting Wright's essays; we should immediately let Lionel Diemel take over writing ALL of Rowan Williams from this time onwards.

...Just sign, your Grace, no need to bother your pretty academic catholic head about what is best for everbody, provided they viciously hate queer folks inside the church and don't give a farthing outside the church? ...

Fav quotes?
1. "...After arguing, in paragraph 5, that Anglicans should not be “reinforcing prejudice against LGBT people,” however, he illustrates what such prejudice looks like in his use of language in paragraphs 8 and 9. If the Archbishop of Canterbury is thinking of gay bars and one-night stands, he is missing the point of what The Episcopal Church has been saying all these years. One fears that he is using code words to pander to certain members of his audience."

2."...not to dismiss the importance of marriage, but things have to be kept in perspective. In a church that allows divorce, one should not press the marriage-like-Christ-and-his-Church idea too far."

3. "...what Williams and other primates have been doing is portraying themselves as conservatives, preservers of the Anglican status quo. In reality, they are revolutionaries, trying to hoodwink the naïve and the over-courteous into abandoning the fellowship that has been the Anglican Communion in favor of a radical centralization intended to enforce doctrinal uniformity."

4. '... “cast into outer darkness.” (Actually, I rather doubt that that is the image that many Episcopalians have of their church’s not being in the Anglican Communion. I personally am beginning to think of it more as being released from the asylum ...'

5. Ah, LD, to be released from the Asylum that our global communion will readily become, once the new covenant takes effect. Meanwhile, I hope that we second trackers can strengthen those bonds of big tent affection, and let the first trackers eat each other for breakfast-lunch-dinner in their drive to conform and control and devour. Once they've driven the queers and the progressives out; who will they eat next?

Jonathan Hagger is one of those who has always understood what the Covenant means, and this whilst others have said they should try and make it more like the Anglicanism that they represent.

Well people are realised with some shock the 'clarity' this time about Rowan Williams and his view that faithful relationship gay people cannot represent the faith in any ministry, and that it is for the centre to decide what issues should be decided at the centre and what in the Churches themselves.

These organisations and these pressure groups should perhaps at last wake up and simply oppose the Covenant. Stop it in the Synod or anywhere it can come off the rails. It would also help if Rowan Williams did a Rochester and went early, because he is attempting to push through something that is an innovation in Anglicanism.

This apostolic authority again is at play, as if people never say anything against what the next chap up thinks. It is time for those bishops with any balls to say no to this thing, but they won't until the whispering against it is no longer good enough - and then it is too late.

The Covenant has been kicked through a succession of little goals for a while now, and no one will stop the ball. When it gets to the big goal they'll say - well it went through all those, surely you won't stop it now. So it has to be stopped before that arm twisting takes place.

Rather than posting objections quickly in the blogosphere, it is time for an organised opposition to the Covenant to be convened, and the old fashioned letter (to ABC and Bishops etc.) resurrected. And preferably by a new leadership - not simply a 'cause' fought by an existing group like Changing Attitude or Inclusive Church.

Affirming Catholicism and FCP would be no good either - a lot of them are career General Synod people and people like Jonathan Clark (as an example, pace Pluralist, of one who has never understood the implications) voted for the Covenant.

I would ask that people go back and read the Ridley draft again - I had quite a shock.

Deimel touched on one of the modern myths of Christianity. Namely that it's views on marriage and monogamy have been consistent for 2000 years. In fact, they are different to even within Jesus' own times.

For example in Mathew 22:25 when the scribes tried to catch Jesus out with the question about brother who died and left his wife to another brother. Jesus reply makes no rebuke of this arrangement, and he merely notes that earthly relationships do not necessarily carry forward into heaven (souls become their own and not the chattel of another). "When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.", as Jesus said in Mark 12:19

In the Jewish tradition, a brother was actually obligated to take care of his deceased brother's wife e.g. Deuteronomy 25:7 "However, if a man does not want to marry his brother's wife, she shall go to the elders at the town gate and say, "My husband's brother refuses to carry on his brother's name in Israel. He will not fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to me.""

Personally, I like monogamy as it can reduce conflict and provides a safe haven such as promised in Isaiah 32:18 "My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest."

Much of Jesus' priests' attitudes towards relationships border on sociopathic (e.g. hating own family which is the opposite of God's calling in Malachi 4:6). This planet was formed to have life and relationships, not to be shunned and rejected.

There is a lack of awareness that God is a relational being and capable of experiencing every single human emotion. One major problem with Christianity is it denies God's desire to be in relationship with another. The masculine (the father and his spoilt only son) might be content to be remote islands unto themselves, that does not mean the mother or daughter share their opinion or desires. It is also why the feminine despises tyranny and abuse, whilst the masculine seems to think there is such a thing as acceptible sacrifices.

"The name of the Anglican Consultative Council is surely suggestive: it is a body for consultation, not for authoritative legislation. It is at least notable for including laypeople and ordinary clergy; outside of the United States, Anglican churches are much too dominated by bishops, at least from the American democratic perspective."
- Lionel Deimel -

What a brilliant response to the ABC's reflection on GC 2009's definitive statements! Lionel Deimel responds specifically to all of the controversial point made by Archbishop Rowan; each one, to my mind, giving a cogent and compelling reason for discounting the good Archbishop's contentions.

Perhaps this particular paragraph most clearly illustrates the difference between the American and Canadian Churches' understanding of 'being Church' in the local area from that of the Church of England - or at least the ABC's view of the C. of E.'s responsibility for leadership in the Communion. It must be remembered that when the colonial Churches came into being, they had no legal connection to the establishment of the Church of England. They were pioneer churches which flourished in their own environment, tied only by bonds of love and friendship to the
parent Church. None of them are 'Established Churches in the way that the C.of E. is the Established Church of England, and none of them is bound canonically to that Church. For the ABC then to imagine that the local Provincial Churches owe a dept of allegiance (other than the filial ties of friendship) to the Church of England is to sadly underestimate the extent of their independence.

Furthermore, As Deimel here states, the 'Prince Bishops' style of Church government has little sway in the independent Anglican Churches around the world - except perhaps in parts of Africa and the Global South, where such policies are largely retained from the English colonial era. This, of course, is one reason for the very conservative and puritanical views of such Churches which were inculcated in Victorian morality values, which are simply unsustainable in the emancipated Church of our day and age.

I would like to take issue with the Abp’s statement that no Anglican has any business questioning the dignity of LGBT people or ‘their place within the Body of Christ.’ What exactly is our place in the Body of Christ, the church? It seems to me that this is precisely what the is questioned. If indeed our partnerships cannot receive a blessing that would carry the authority of the Church Catholic, and –I carefully note his use of the conditional mood—if this is the case, a person living in such a union is in the same case as a heterosexual person living in a sexual relationship outside the marriage bond, then none of the sacraments are available to us safe arguably the last rites for the already baptised. We should not receive Holy Communion lest we see our relationships as a sin that must be repented of, just as an adulterer should keep away from the Eucharist if unrepentant. If we are so spiritually blind as to consider our relationships to be good, in defiance with current Church teaching, neither should we be deemed capable of receiving absolution, since we have no wish to turn away from our sin. Though most parishes would never dream of turning us down for baptism, it remains true that, to the question: ‘Do you repent of your sins?’ we can offer no adequate answer. Just as parish priests should refuse baptism to a violent man who sees beating his wife as good, unless he changes his ways, so should they refuse a gay person, unless he or she deems her ‘lifestyle’ to be sinful. Last, we may of course not be ordained, since such incongruity between our lifestyle and Church teaching remains. If there is indeed no identity characterised by sexual preference which then generates a set of rights as Durham seems to think. If indeed the problem with homosexuality is merely about sexual activity, provided we abstain of such activity, we are heterosexuals in all but name. If we do not abstain, our place is in the Body of Christ is that of apostates and public sinners. The glass is not half full; it is utterly empty.

I meant 'excommunicates and public sinners', sorry.

I remember the progressive Roman Catholics who were my parents' friends when I was growing up. Thoughtful, well-read liberal Democrats in the manner of Eugene McCarthy, with a deep admiration for Dorothy Day, they greeted Vatican II with enthusiasm and joy, and hung on, with increasing grimness, thereafter. In the larger cities of the Northeast, there was always a non-territorial parish set aside for them, with a priest sympathetic to their views (and usually in trouble with his bishop), where they could wait in hope that someday, perhaps, the Church would reconsider its ban on women priests.

Meanwhile, everywhere else in the Seventies and Eighties, the Roman Catholic Church in America was becoming the Church of the White Backlash, the harshly punitive preserve of white working-class ethnics. Abortion was the only social issue it recognized; the poor (especially the black poor) deserved their fate and worse.

My parents' friends were slowly squeezed like toothpaste out of their Church. Their children left the Church and their grandchildren were never Roman Catholics. (Interestingly, some are Episcopalians.)

Well, my friends in the Church of England, this is what is going to happen to you.

Dr. Deimel's analysis is absolutely brilliant and all should read and digest it. I too have been an Episcopalian for a long time, and the following words from Dr. Deimel sum up beautifully what we have always been taught about the Anglican Communion:

"He (The Archbishop of Canterbury) assumes that the Anglican Communion is and should be hierarchical and tightly bound together. He portrays this as the “self-understanding of our Communion,” particularly in the last half-century. I was taught, however, that Anglican provinces are autonomous, that the Lambeth Conference is just for discussion and without legislative function, and that the Archbishop of Canterbury is the “spiritual head” of the Communion but without any real power.

In fact, what Williams and other primates have been doing is portraying themselves as conservatives, preservers of the Anglican status quo. In reality, they are revolutionaries, trying to hoodwink the naïve and the over-courteous into abandoning the fellowship that has been the Anglican Communion in favor of a radical centralization intended to enforce doctrinal uniformity. This is the underlying purpose of the Anglican Covenant. Terms such as “mutual responsibility” are thrown about by the archbishop as a kind of spiritual blackmail intended to intimidate churches such as our own into giving up their birthright of ecclesiastical autonomy. Williams derisively dismisses “mere federation” as though it were not what the Communion has been these many years."

Thanks to Dr. Deimel for this stunning analysis.

The Silence of the Lambs

Today two persons lie dead, murdered in an attack by a gunman at a Tel Aviv LGBT Center. One of the victims seems to have been a counselor and the other a teenage girl. Approximately eleven other persons, mostly teenagers are injured, several of them seriously. It seems the attack took place during a support group meeting for LGBT teens.

Many in the local gay community are blaming the antigay faction in the religious community for inciting violence and hatred towards LGBT persons. Does anyone wonder why this is so, when even we in the Anglican Communion must hear several of our prelates hatred and condemnation against LGBT persons and the Archbishop of Canterbury caters to the most hate-filled factions in our Churches in the interest of "unity" and "acceptance by our ecumenical partners." It seems that the love relationships between LGBT persons are not acceptable signs of the Gospel and cannot represent the Church that these prelates wish us to live in.

Today, LGBT teens know who their friends and allies are. And, for the most part they are not to be found in our pulpits or our churches. Who will offer Mass for the intention of these souls today?

The silence coming from Canterbury, Durham, Rochester, Pittsburg, Fort Worth, the Southern Cone, Sydney, Abuja, Uganda, etc, is deafening! Who will speak for our children?

Sadly the recent tragic shootings in the gay youth club in Tel Aviv give RW and other touted high Anglican leaders yet another, opportunity to speak and act on their alleged, self-proclaimed utter lack of animosity towards queer folks, anywhere, any time.

Let RW and other global figures now speak out forcefully against the specific occasions of antigay violence in Tel Aviv and elsewhere; let them encourage their brother bishops of the region in speaking out, and taking action in society; together with other believers whenever such alliances are possible in those regions.

On the other hand, perhaps being shot and intimidated is not after all, any insult to one's basic human dignity or those human rights now pronounced utterly trivial and insignificant by one of our very own, highest Instruments of Communion?

Hint? Don't hold your breath, waiting for it. Thanks, Canterbury, now we really know exactly where we stand globally? Could it really be any clearer, it's all cheap talk? Nobody up high means it, means anything at all by it?

Clearly, sufficient holiness reason then, for letting all those high up folks have complete control to assign local churches that do or might or could possibly care and take local actions - to a second track which has no representation, no voice? This is the new fangled Anglican holiness.

Alas, Lord have mercy.

I don't understand what the liberal crowd is so afraid of. What is wrong in having a reference document like the Covenant? Those against the Covenant seems to me to be promoting chaos and disorder. Who wants a chaotic and disorderly Anglicanism. A house divided against itself soons falls apart.

Mr. Diemel's essay should be reqired reading for anyone who cares to understand where the mainstream of TEC lies, or where its fulcrum may be found; brilliant in all respects.

Why have I not observed ++ Rowans use of the word
phrase " Lifestyle " in paragraphs 8 & 9 beforehand..?
Are we to think that he truly believes that same
sex proclivity is a "lifestyle" choice ? Forsooth .
In this far more enlightened age , being "Gay" is
rather a "being" , or genetic manifestation...
The Ikers and Akinolas of the present generation find this "lifestyle" choice a much easier concept to voice as they mishandle the concept of free choice to their swwming benefit .
as they manuever

Things are moving fast after the 2009 Gen. Conv. Today, Aug.2, the Dio. of LA announced the slate of candidates for bishops suffragan of LA. One candidate is openly Gay, another a Lesbian. That follows on the heels of Minnesota's announcement yesterday of the candidacy of a Lesbian, Dr. Bonnie Perry. All these developments must raise the blood pressure of +Rowan Cantuar and +Tom Dunelm, especially after their written responses to the Anaheim convention. The Anglican Covenant is dead on arrival. There are already too many Gay bishops and clergy in the C of E to be removed from office. A noted Oxford church historian, Dr. Diarmaid MacCulloch, revealed in his stellar account of The Reformation: A History (2003) that we even had a more or less openly gay ABC in the person of +William Laud, who was martyred by the 17th c. Puritans. TEC is not the innovator!

"Who wants a chaotic and disorderly Anglicanism."

One person's chaos and disorder is another person's liberty. Who wants a centralized and authoritarian Anglicanism?

The Anglican Communion, such as it was, did just fine before the idea of a covenant came along. What upset the apple cart was not the actions of ECUSA, but the inability of the GS crowd to deal with an arrangement where everyone isn't in lockstep.

A Covenanted Anglican Communion™ does not save the Anglican Communion, which is effectively being killed by the GS. Instead, it gives you something entirely different, and something I want less and less of the more I learn of it.

(One idea I think needs killing is the myth that the Anglican Communion came before the different Churches that make it up, or that it somehow is the "parent organization" and the different Provinces subservient to it.)

Why am I against the covenant, Ralph? Well, I sent a 900 word e-mail to a friend who would be a 'moderate conservative' Anglican here this evening setting out the theological reasons. Basically, it's all about the nature of authority and the process of theological development. I'll try to post somewhere online (not that the thoughts of a theologically illiterate layperson are necessarily worth much amongst all this learned opinion).

But there are also practical reasons. It gives prelates in places like Nigeria the right to tell me how to order my church. People who not only enthusiastically support me being made a criminal, but want to send to jail anyone who says that I shouldn't be made a criminal.

We've got enough problems in my own part of the world, which is hardly the acme of enlightened tolerance, without importing more from abroad.

Oh, and Ralph, you really need to break out the church history. Anglicanism has always been a house divided against itself, but mostly without falling apart. That's the genius of it. Or at least it was.

"I don't understand what the liberal crowd is so afraid of. What is wrong in having a reference document like the Covenant? Those against the Covenant seems to me to be promoting chaos and disorder. Who wants a chaotic and disorderly Anglicanism. A house divided against itself soons falls apart." - Ralph (on Sunday) -

'Chaos and disorder' seems a pretty strong statement for what the 'liberals' in the Church are seeking to establish within the sodality of Anglicans around the world, who only want peace and justice for women and gays in the Church.

It seems to me that the 'chaos and disorder' elements were actually presented when certain Anglican Primates decided to invade the local territory of other Provinces for the purpose of undermining the Gospel initiatives of the local Church towards the inclusion of gays and women.

More 'Chaos and disorder' has been invoked by intitiatives such as GAFCON and ACNA and FOCA, whose sole purpose seems to be to impose their own moral imperatives upon the Church at large - not only in their own territory, but around the world of the Communion. Such 'chaos and disorder' has given birth to the idea of a disciplinary Covenant which nobody else wants, but which the puritanical minority is intent on imposing on the rest of us.

The inclusivity of the Anglican Communion, based on its founding upon the principles of Scripture Tradition and Reason, seems to be tragically at risk with the introduction of a Covenantal ethos. This reversion to a centralised form of political gatekeeping mentality seems to be just one more barrier to the inclusivity of the Gospel itself, and therefore it behoves those who embrace the liberality of Christ in the Gospel to resist it.

Ralph needs to ask himself who it is that has separated itself from the Anglican community.
Not the liberals, but those who have already put themselves outside of the Church's ethos - by (1) their refusal to receive the Eucharist at the Councils of the Church, and (2) their withdrawal from their parental provincial bodies in which they were originally contributing partners in faith. Prelates who have encouraged these acts of schismatic breakaway have, in fact, been the principle cause of 'chaos and disorder'.

Are not these specific schismatic actions which have already brought 'chaos and disorder' to the Church? Think again, Ralph, before you protest.

Anglicanism has been chaotic and disorderly from the day that Anglican bishops were established outside of England. Up until now, Ralph, it has done us just fine.

As an ecclesiastical body, we first came to be from the rejection of the idea that national churches should be governed by foreign bishops. Rowan's Covenant is problematical because it seeks to overturn this.

On another note, I would like to let the editors know how honoured I am to have been the lead link in the current entry. Thank you.

Progressive believer concerns about the new covenant are obvious, three fold. One concern is that the enforced lines of doctrinal conformity - not just Elizabethan Settlement in their careful ambiguities which would continue to allow believers to subscribe to transubstantiation or consubstantiation or both in some ways or neither - should most likely result in intentionally displaying unity by collapsing the traditional global Anglican big tents.

A second concern is obvious, too. The new covenant will almost certainly be weaponized by conservative realignment forces, as has nearly everything else in modern church life so far once the great dumming call for conformity and realignment arose. It is not encouraging either, that the restraint shown for three years in electing gay bishop candidates who were otherwise highly qualified was met from Anglican rights with utter scorn, lots of regular trash talk against non-conservative Anglicans, and above all with violations of the boundary crossings which supposedly the Windsor Rpt described as violations.

Two strikes, then.

A third deep concern is obviously that keeping Anglicans together in relationship is supposed to be accomplished by a new top-down, centralized power arrangement that has never really before existed in the fellowship of Anglican Churches we know as the current Anglican Communion. That the early vision of this new covenant communion already prides itself on its antigay virulence, occasionally saying that human rights is trivial (especially for queer folks and their friends/family), compared to the antigay notions of traditional church - these are hardly hopeful markers, if not completely discouraging.

Those Anglicans who have noted none of these three sets of alarm bells ringing may have been preoccupied with other music, other noises, or even in some instances have blessedly deaf ears - particularly when it comes to the cries and sufferings of the planet's queer folks who often lie assaulted in so many ditches along our global highways.

I'm puzzled at the question, frankly. Ever read the news and pay attention?

"Things are moving fast after the 2009 Gen. Conv. Today, Aug.2, the Dio. of LA announced the slate of candidates for bishops suffragan of LA. One candidate is openly Gay, another a Lesbian. That follows on the heels of Minnesota's announcement yesterday of the candidacy of a Lesbian, Dr. Bonnie Perry"

In both cases, the nomination process will have begun before General Convention, according to the canons of each diocese. Candidates presented for possible election will have been subject to a rigorous background check, including financial dealings, any criminal record, interviews with people whom they have worked for and with etc.

I suspect these slates were in fact readied before gencon and announced only after it concluded its business and the passage of the two major pieces of legislation regarding glbt issues.

Now the election process in each diocese will proceed, again, according to the canons of each diocese. If anyone wants to read the canons, they may well be posted on the web sites of each diocese.

Having just this morning heard NPR, which is usually well informed, refer to the election of 'assistant bishops,' call Jon Bruno of LA 'the presiding bishop' and twice refer to 'appointing' bishops and Gene Robinson's 'appointment,' I caution all to read with care!

A prayer for the youth killed or injured in the Tel Aviv center shootings?

At: Bradley Burston, Haaretz:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1104635.html

PS be sure your antivirus is running; this site seems to have some odd pop ups? Caution?

There is a logic to Lorenzo's post (And kudos to you, Lorenzo, that I really can't tell if you're pushing a thought experiment to its logical conclusion, or if you really believe the initial premise---God have mercy on you, if the latter!)

This "glass half-full" business IS an unequal yoke, a house divided against itself.

Now I don't expect places like Nigeria to come out and say "We know same-sex partnerships are blessed by God".

I DO expect them to humbly say "We don't know" . . . and then LEARN from those Anglican churches which have learned of their blessing (in both senses of "blessing": how the churches have blessed the partnerships and, more importantly, how those partnerships have BLESSED THE CHURCHES!) Then, perhaps, Nigerians (et al) can learn from their *own* LGBT members.

[NB: Just as certainly, Anglican churches which enjoy safety amidst religious liberty, have MUCH to learn from persecuted churches. Prayers ascending for those Christians killed in Pakistan last week!]

"LGBT teens know who their friends and allies are. And, for the most part they are not to be found in our pulpits or our churches. Who will offer Mass for the intention of these souls today?"

Exactly. However, many of those conveniently ignoring that it was behaviour just like theirs that led to this also don't believe in offering Mass for these poor souls. Many if them, truth to tell, don't even believe they are poor souls at all. They don't like to admit it, of course, but many of them don't see this as tragic at all, in their eyes it is nothing more than the wages of sin, and if their words brought it about, well, they were just doing God's work. Some others of them will say that if these "poor souls" had been jailed the way they should have been, this wouldn't have happened, or if these "poor souls" had just kept their mouths shut and hidden away, it wouldn't have happened. Some others of them will say that it doesn't matter, because those who died were not made by God anyway. The fact is, they really don't care what happens to us, they don't care what responsibility they have in creating violemce against us, they even deny that this kind of vuiolence even exists, and they are glad to see a few less homos in the world. They can hide that all they want behind righteous sounding words when they speak, or when they post here, but it's all just window dressing. Our lives don't count to them because they have spent years tripping over themselves to invent new perversions to condemn us with, they have slandered us, they have lied about us, they have propagandized against us, and they refuse to take responsibility for this abandonment of the Gospel.

BillyD, do you really believe that a chaotic and disorderly Anglicanism is a good price to pay for what you term your "personal liberty"? Even nations and organizations have constitutions and codes of conducts. Why would you want Anglicanism to be different? I get the feeling that you and the rest of the liberal crowd want a religion based simply on personal feelings and not on revealed truth and common belief.

"Thus a blessing for a same-sex union cannot have the authority of the Church Catholic, or even of the Communion as a whole. And if this is the case, a person living in such a union is in the same case as a heterosexual person living in a sexual relationship outside the marriage bond"
- Abp. Rowan Williams -

What the good Archbishopp is missing here, when he says that blessing a same-sex relationship would be no different from blessing a sexual relationship of heterosexuals 'outside the marriage bond'. Where then does he put the status of heterosexual persons whose marriage has been contracted civilly but not inside the Church?

These people are legally married, Would he then withold the blessing of the Church from them? This is not a good argument for withholding a blessing from a civilly-contracted same-sex relationship. The legal situation of both relationships is the same, Why should the Church withold its blessing from either of them, except to perpetuate the attitude of homophobia?

At this juncture, the only way we really could be in any sort of "covenanted communion" with the AC Rowan envisions is to completely remove all gay people, and those who teach the compatibility of homosexual relationships with Christianity, entirely from the church - pews and pulpits.

His statement was:

". . a person living in such a union cannot without serious incongruity have a representative function in a Church whose public teaching is at odds with their lifestyle..."

Though this was prefaced by a statement about *ordained* ministry, this statement is the poison on the barb. Every one of us, when we stand up for confirmation, makes a public declaration of membership and faith and takes on a representative function.

Every one of us.

Does the Covenanter crowd really expect its reference document to put an end to Anglican chaos and disorder? "A house divided against itself" may indeed fall apart, but as others have pointed out, not necessarily soon. What a Covenant will do however, is ensure a lengthy and energetic and convoluted Communal spin. It already shows signs of becoming a new scripture, to be read, marked, learned and inwardly digested - and misinterpreted and wrangled over ad nauseam. Williams' insistence on Covenant is surely taking the long, historical and perhaps cynical view, counting on weariness to ultimately prevail - within decades, or longer if needed. “All manner of things will be well”. Eventually, I suppose, even this bun fight.

Covenant is merely Williams' route to the highest possible degree of Anglican unity. And any fall-out can be handled, smoothed over, as long as the institution survives. In due course, there may even be a period of calm. Then time will have another go at changing things, anyway. As Archbishop of Canterbury, it's no longer about righteousness; it's about politics of empire - however empty the empire.

Meanwhile Jesus, in whose name and influence and meaning-for-the-world all of this is supposed to find purpose, gets conveniently, if temporarily, shelved. And the real trick will be for more pastoral minds to invent ways of making this piece of theatre play well to the pew. You can just bet that the people Williams listens most to are counting on a gullible, fickle and apathetic and fundamentally conservative audience.

Well a range of Jewish faith communities are already involved in candle light vigils - remembering the LGBTQ Youth killed or injured in the recent Tel Aviv shootings. These brave souls include an Orthodox Rabbi, Shmuel Herzfeld of a local Washington congregation.

What said? Did Herzfeld preach that all this was overall just another sign of deteriorating society? Did the rabbi say that if gay youth centers are going to be open then understandably people will feel violent feelings, and sooner or later do violent things? Nope-sies.

Herzfeld speaks: ' "It's time to do some internal accounting" as to whether such "rhetoric has created this climate" that allows for violence and "vilification" of gays and lesbians, Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of the Ohev Sholom Talmud Torah Congregation said Monday night at the candlelight vigil. '

At: http://jta.org/news/article/2009/08/04/1007018/dc-san-francisco-hold-vigils-to-mourn-israelis-lgbt-kilings

Note, he speaks and he shows up - actually participating - gasp - with both the much despised LGBTQ folks, and - gasp - standing with a range of Jewish religious leaders including the Jewish middles and lefts.

Rowan Williams? Nazir-Ali? Wright? Akinola? Oromobi? Duncan? Schofield? Iker? Harvey? FiF? Fulcrum? AngMainstream? Not yet?

Perhaps since God gave us Tutu, the others have all gone on vacations?

"BillyD, do you really believe that a chaotic and disorderly Anglicanism is a good price to pay for what you term your "personal liberty"? Even nations and organizations have constitutions and codes of conducts. Why would you want Anglicanism to be different? I get the feeling that you and the rest of the liberal crowd want a religion based simply on personal feelings and not on revealed truth and common belief."

I have no doubt that those loyal to the British crown in 1776 in my own country firmly believed that the patriots were instituting disorder and chaos by splitting from the mother country. I equally have no doubt that the loyal Roman Catholics of the 16th Century thought Cranmer et al were instituting disorder and chaos by splitting from the mother church.

Those who insist on the status quo always are sure that any change is the beginning of destruction. They are usually wrong.

Ralph said:
Even nations and organizations have constitutions and codes of conduct[]. Why would you want Anglicanism to be different?

I would reply:
Because "Anglicanism" is not a unitary nation or organization. It is a group of separate churches that trace their lineage from the Church of England, but long ago severed lines of ecclesial authority to Canterbury.

So, for example, The Episcopal Church parted organizational company with the Church of England in the 1780s, as a consequence of the Revolutionary War. In doing this, The Episcopal Church acted in the best tradition of both Anglicanism and English parliamentary democracy.

No control of a local church by foreign bishops. This is a bedrock principle of not only The Episcopal Church, but also the Church of England.

The day The Episcopal Church signs up for some Canterbury-based curia is the day I start looking for another church home.

Pat O'Neill "I have no doubt that those loyal to the British crown in 1776 in my own country firmly believed that the patriots were instituting disorder and chaos by splitting from the mother country..."

...although in that they were quite correct, of course; not that I would wish to detract from the general thrust of the rest of your argument.

Just cannot let this easy trope, that inclusion represents a royal road to choas and disorder, go by unchallenged.

Families hear this sort of thing all the time, the second anybody talks about inviting gay Tom or Lesbian Alice to the family do, together with partner and children of course. Somebody near or far, family or not, will loudly cry, You are going to destroy the family if you do that.

Lots of family people and friends get very nervous, very concerned. In many families, people decided to do a test. We will invite the queer folks and kids once, then see how it went.

Test results? In many families the test was moderately to very good in outcomes. In moderate cases, everybody discovered that the sky did not fall down, nor did everybody in sight suddenly become a rutting beastie, helplessly imitating ancient near eastern pagan sex worship orgies. The most rigidly conservative religious family member is not even always as offended or paralyzed as the stereotype often goes during the high alarm phases of contemplating the invitation.

In success outcomes, a great sigh of relief passes through the family networks. Nobody needs to sweat the small stuff, any longer. Aunt Zoe and your lesbian spouse turn out to have brilliant needlework in common, so that did not blow everybody up like a terrorist bomb. One of the kids organized a soccer game, and that was that was that. Cousin Frank was cool and frosty - but he treats everybody else cool and frosty.

PS. William Laudes, gay? Geddouttahere. Bring it.

"They are usually wrong."

But they usually make better tea:-) Sorry.