Thinking Anglicans

GS: more on the covenant debate

The complete audio recording of the debate is linked from the official report page here.

The full text of the opening address by Archbishop Drexel Gomez can be found here.

Also, the speech of the Bishop of Rochester here.

News reports of the debate:

Church Times Synod: Sunday 8 July

BBC Church agrees plan over disputes

Update And Robert Pigott also has Nervous support for Church rules.

Guardian Stephen Bates Synod agrees deal over discipline to head off church rift over gay clergy

The Times Ruth Gledhill Church takes a step back from schism with gay expulsion plan

Update And now also Ruth’s blog comments on this at: Synod Days 2,3 & 4.

Daily Telegraph Jonathan Petre Anglican covenant ‘will halt slide to a schism’

Press Association Synod try to avoid schism over gays

Church Society has this version of what happened.

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Pluralist
16 years ago

When I went via that audio link, I got the Anglican-Methodist Covenant debate even though it was under the Anglican Communion Covenant report, and the link under the Anglican-Methodist Covenant debate went nowhere.

Pluralist
16 years ago

The BBC report in its last paragraph states: _Dr Williams has suggested the Communion could be divided into “associated” and “constituent” provinces as a way round problems._ But on 30 September, for many a deadline for such action, the Covenant will still be in its early construction stages, and presumably the completed Covenant be the basis for inclusion or exclusion of Churches and provinces. So TEC cannot be excluded then, 1 October, and any exclusion will depend on the Covenant as completed, and thus the invitations to TEC and Gene Robinson’s consecrators will surely continue (plus ongoing discussions), and, therefore,… Read more »

Cheryl Clough
16 years ago

Having grown up in a house hold where there was clear authority and no dissent was tolerated, I don’t think much of the being able to live under the one roof as a motivator. It appears that the price of being allowed into their patriarchial house is an endless reciting of why women were God’s failures and thus destined to be breeding and cleaning drones, entitled to crumbs if and when the men don’t want them. It also means loving our children conditionally, and where the Potter’s spectrum affronts our sensibilities to cast them out into the streets. They can… Read more »

Pat O'Neill
Pat O'Neill
16 years ago

I’d like to see the GS primates and their supporters explain exactly how the Anglican Communion is going to replace all the income that flows from the Episcopal Church once they oust it from the Communion…and how they expect to maintain the AC’s many programs–including the ones that benefit the African provinces–without that cash.

JCF
JCF
16 years ago

“gay expulsion plan”???

God forgive that woman, and I’m trying.

Lord have mercy!

Erika Baker
Erika Baker
16 years ago

“I am going to the streets to catch the ones that their hearts are too small to care for.”

I’m coming with you!

Mary Clara
Mary Clara
16 years ago

I am trying to give Ruth Gledhill the benefit of the doubt and assume that someone else (maybe a summer intern) wrote that headline, which is about the worst one I have ever seen. The Times’s coverage of Anglican and Episcopal news has descended to the level of yellow journalism.

Lois Keen
Lois Keen
16 years ago

Bless you for your post, Cheryl. I’m joining you and Erika on the streets. And I’m memorizing your post.
Lois

John Simmons
John Simmons
16 years ago

JCF wrote ‘ “gay expulsion plan”??? God forgive that woman, and I’m trying. Lord have mercy!’

I have read the article carefully both online and in the paper edition and I cannot find the phrase, or even the idea of “gay expulsion” within the text that “that woman” wrote. As we all know journalists are not responsible for the sub-editors’ headlines. So I think that man should withdraw his criticism of Ms Gledhill.

Anglicanus
Anglicanus
16 years ago

Is it possible to get the voting details from this debate in General Synod, much the same as you can with voting in Parliament? I would be interested in seeing how many women voted for this having been warned that the admission of women to the priesthood might have been blocked by such a measure. In the Church of England it could still be used to block the admission of women to the episcopate. Perhaps this might account for the strange coalition of vioces crying for the reception of a Covenant?

Laodicean
Laodicean
16 years ago

I’m not sure I get the point. It seems to me that to stand much chance of being accepted by every province, a covenant would have to be so vacuous that nothing much would change. If it has “teeth”, it will almost certainly be thrown out by a number of them. What happens then? Do the covenanters go ahead with a two-tier communion or with expulsions of the refuseniks? Either way, I can’t see the point in the expenditure of time, paper and money. Surely there are more pressing calls on the time and energies of our chief priests. If… Read more »

The Rev. Dr. C. Eric Funston
16 years ago

The BBC report includes: “The liberal US Episcopal Church’s ordination of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003 marked the start of the divisions.” Bad reportage! The stresses and strains in the Communion go back way before the New Hampshire election and ordination. Gene Robinson’s episcopate and the same-sex blessings proposed in New Westminster (Canada) are simply an excuse, a place for the schimsatic conservatives to put their fulcrum and attempt to move the Communion to the “right”. If it hadn’t been the “gay issue”, it would have been something else. Synod’s support of the “covenant process” is… Read more »

Ford Elms
Ford Elms
16 years ago

“it would put in place a curial-type structure that would mean other doctrinal innovations would also be jeopardised.” Interesting wording. Too bad Rome didn’t have such a covenant 500 years ago, the “doctrinal innovations” of the Reformation could have been avoided too. And we wouldn’t need to re-establish a curia if we hadn’t been so foolish as to do away with it 500 years ago! What were thsoe reformers thinking? (sarcasm, people!) “An appropriately considered and drawn covenant might help us to love one another more.” I believe we were given a Convenant that was supposed to make us love… Read more »

Charlotte
Charlotte
16 years ago

John Simmons: I do not find the idea of “gay expulsion” in the reporting on the Covenant debate at General Synod, not even in Ruth Gledhill’s article, and still less in those written by more reliable journalists. Yet many fear that “gay expulsion” is exactly the direction persons such as ++Drexel Gomez want the Communion to take, the Covenant being merely a device to force it to do so. As the Times headline confirms our worst fears, it is a very unfortunate one. Ruth Gledhill should instruct her sub-editor to change it forthwith and apologize for this bit of inflammatory… Read more »

Pluralist
16 years ago

Trouble is, Joe Public doesn’t all know.

JPM
JPM
16 years ago

>>>The Times’s coverage of Anglican and Episcopal news has descended to the level of yellow journalism.

Well, the Times is a Murdoch paper now.

C.B.
C.B.
16 years ago

Pluralist – “if true to their words, the Rwandans, Ugandans and Nigerians will be walking, and Sydney should hold something else nearby to Lambeth.”

I imagine there is going to be a lot of talk about the covenant in the next six months as a way of keeping the GS interested in not making a complete break with the AC. Even if they don’t go to Lambeth and have something else on their own, it doesn’t mean they are “walking.”

I expect something much messier than a clean break right now. At least until the covenant is settled.

Prior Aelred
16 years ago

OT? good article from Canada on the actual consequences of the confused voting on SSBs

http://tinyurl.com/2kew2k

Currently the Proposed Covenant IS a gay expulsion plan, but it sets in a place an unelected & imposed curia which has no purpose other than the expel churches from the WWAC — “First they came for the gays…”

Bishop Tom Wright’s comment “It simply will not do to live with differences,” is really astonishing & about an “un-Anglican” as anything imaginable!

Anglicanus
Anglicanus
16 years ago

Mr Simmons might note that ‘gay’ and ‘expulsion’ are used in the same sentence by Ms Gledhill. If you remove the phrase that she has placed between commas it is even more striking. So perhaps it is the writer of the headline who should be judged less harshly as Ms Gledhill sowed the seeds in his mind.

Simon Sarmiento
16 years ago

No, the voting details are not available, as it was done by a show of hands. Archdeacon Mansell, the chair of the debate, estimated that it was about 2:1 in favour. And that is all we know. No roll call exists.

Simon Sarmiento
16 years ago

On the subject of headlines, the Telegraph website has now changed the headline on Jonathan Petre’s story linked above to
Gay clergy to be banned in Synod deal
JP is sitting near me in the press gallery, and had no knowledge of this change, nor any idea why this has been done. It certainly isn’t justified by his story, in my opinion.

Chris
Chris
16 years ago

Anglicanus – that’s a laughable stretch in parsing as there are not commas in the sentence you mention.

drdanfee
drdanfee
16 years ago

Thanks much, PriorA, for the Beresford/AST linked article. Trenchant commentary, as I read it. Thanks, too, very, very much to CherylC and all for the remarks about taking the gospel to the streets where the rest of us will eventually live and work and worship, so far as the new realigned Anglican Communion is no doubt intended to put us out. Conservative believers talk and act as if they can completely do without queer folks expertise, thank you very much. It remains to be seen if they can also do without inquiry, research, and the often condemned innovations upon which… Read more »

Simon Sarmiento
16 years ago

I think there are two such sentences and that Anglicanus was referring to the second one. Thus, if the excision were to be made, the relevant sentence would then read:

The covenant would prevent any province from consecrating an openly gay bishop … without risking expulsion.

Prior Aelred
16 years ago

Perhaps the Proposed Covenant discussions really are moot — if Archbishop Akinola is being honest in his interview with Ruth Gledhill:
http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2007/07/peter-akinola-w.html#more
it looks like Nigeria won’t be at Lambeth unless Martyn Minns is invited & the American bishops diocesan whose consented to the election of Gene Robinson are disinvited — odds?

Garth
Garth
16 years ago

Whoever wrote the headline should perhaps be commended for calling it like it is. Is there really any other agenda behind the covenant than the exclusion of Gays and Lesbians and the Churches that welcome us? This action of synod is truly disheartening. I agree with Ford Elms, we already have a Covenant, given by Jesus. That’s the one I’m sticking with.

Chris
Chris
16 years ago

Simon,

Thanks for the clarification.

Anglicanus’s parsing is still a stretch as the sentence is dealing with provinces and bishops and not individual members. Further, Gledhill is simply reporting the potential effects of the covenant.

Pluralist
16 years ago

_I expect something much messier than a clean break right now. At least until the covenant is settled._ Posted by: C.B. Quite indeed possible. As for the rest of the debate on these discussion boards, it is as if practically speaking the Covenant makers want a kind of cut off point of diversity and difference that will apparently satisfy the bulk of Anglican Churches. It is just not available. Talking about Christian theology being redone, a linked idea of a neat cut off is a neat sacrifice – who can be cut out that satisfies the wrath of the some… Read more »

Curtis
Curtis
16 years ago

Take heart everyone! American missionaries are coming to found the Episcopal Mission in England, or something. Boundaries are falling with impunity and I’ve wanted to get to know youz guyz better. It’s only a matter of time until we figure out where the affinities are.

Cheryl Clough
16 years ago

Ford’s bringing forward of this passage is priceless: “An appropriately considered and drawn covenant might help us to love one another more.” An emotionally dead sociopath asks to be given the attributes of what love does, so they can take on the form of love. They might do the deeds, and the fear of God is useful for these souls, as it is only the fear of God that get some of these monkeys to behave properly. God sometimes annoys souls as they realise that some offerings are more pleasing to God than their own. If they don’t control their… Read more »

Pluralist
16 years ago

The best approach is this – keep in while this Covenant thing goes on until is fails by its contradictions. Should it get forced through – via some speech like “it has been approved by big majorities before, you’re letting the Archbishop down, what about less fortunate Anglicans, we cannot live with these differences” – then finally see what it is like, and possibly even sign up to it: to then act in accordance with autonomy anyway, subject to the Covenant process, and possibly then go. But by then you can bet that the sectarians will be so boiling over… Read more »

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