Episcopal News Service reports that General Convention should not consider Anglican covenant, Presiding Bishop tells Executive Council:
If a proposed Anglican covenant is released in mid-May for adoption by the Anglican Communion’s provinces, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will “strongly discourage” any effort to bring that request to the 76th General Convention in July.
Jefferts Schori briefly discussed the covenant process during her remarks to the opening plenary session October 21 on the second of the Executive Council’s four-day meeting in Helena, the seat of the Diocese of Montana.
Anglican Communion provinces have until the end of March 2009 to respond to the current version of the proposed covenant, known as the St. Andrew’s Draft. The Covenant Design Group meets in London in April 2009 and may issue another draft of a covenant. That draft is expected to be reviewed by the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) during its May 1-12, 2009 meeting. The ACC could decide to release that version to the provinces for their adoption.
If the ACC decides to do that, “my sense is that the time is far too short before our General Convention for us to have a thorough discussion of it as a church and I’m therefore going to strongly discourage any move to bring it to General Convention,” Jefferts Schori told the Executive Council. “I just think it’s inappropriate to make a decision that weighty” that quickly, she added.
The 76th General Convention meets July 8-17 in Anaheim, California…
Make it simpler. Don’t consider it at all.
With her earned doctorate, it’s a given that the PB is intelligent.
But more importantly, ++Katharine is *wise*. God bless her!
I think I agree with Pluralist. The covenant movement is a sidebar to the ill-spirited realignment campaign. Alas. Unless Rowan and the ACC take a big tent stand, and finesse the self-serving clamor for a special conservative province (or two or three crossing all geographies in order to divide and conquer by de facto undoing the big tent fellowship that reaches across believer differences) – the campaign to destroy common prayer, big tent fellowship, and big tent witness – not to mention big tent service? – will indeed succeed. On Rowan’s watch, imagine that. I do not think before this… Read more »
It would seem that, with the best will in the world, TEC – and maybe the Anglican Church of Canada, too – will be chary about welcoming a new Anglican Covenant, which seeks to align each of the Churches of the Anglican Cummunion with the ‘least common denominator’ of the Biblical Literalists and the New Puritans. Most of the national Churches of the Communion want to operate and live out the implications of the Gospel within their own specific context, and for the more conservative churches to expect the prophetic element to be stifled in the exercise of local ministry… Read more »
TEC is already committed by General Convention to considering the Covenant — the suggestion that they should not rush to judgment in considering a new proposal seems a wise one (IMHO).
Fr. Ron:
“In this day and age, when Christian missionaries are (generally) taught to recognise and honour the cultural difference that do exist in other parts of the created world; why are the hierarchy of the Anglican Church insisting on ignoring the theological challenges of contextual diversity?”
At least the African hierarchy does so because that is what they were taught by the 19th century evangelical C of E missionaries! Homophobia was not indigenous:it was introduced by the missionaries.
“We are no longer militant and agressive deniers of the integrity of other faith communities” Oh yes we are! It’s actually a minority, I feel, who fit your description. Cripes, within the Anglican Church there is a very noisy group that frequently denies the integrity of dissenting members of their own faith community. Also, some of those same conservatives have, on this site, spoken very negatively of those Christians who show respect for other cultures and faith communities. It is seen as betraying the “Great Commission”, a reference Evangelicals seem to consider almost automatically recognizable to everyone, but which causes… Read more »
Good on PB. It is a waste of time considering this fantasy which is neither wanted nor needed. I agree with Pluralist.
“Homophobia was not indigenous:it was introduced by the missionaries.”
Given that one of the arguments for persecuting gay people in Africa has been that homosexuality is a white man’s vice imported into Africa to weaken and subjugate the Africans, and given the obvious anti-Western slant of much of the anti-gay rhetoric from the Righteous Christians(tm), I think it’d be funny to watch their response to a suggestion that the vice introduced by white people was actually hatred and oppression of gay people like that that they practice!
As a later thread has commented, GAFCON aren’t going to accept it anyway. So why bother having it if the parties it was meant to placate are no longer there?
Why repress if the repressors are no longer in the game? Or do souls so need to “prove” themselves as repressors? If they so need to repress, why not just go and join GAFCON?
Ford wrote:”I think it’d be funny to watch their response to a suggestion that the vice introduced by white people was actually hatred and oppression of gay people like that that they practice!”
Only, they will never respond.