Thinking Anglicans

What is the Anglican Covenant For?

Paul Bagshaw has written What is the Covenant supposed to solve?

…But what problems is the Covenant supposed to solve (now, as opposed to when it was first conceived)?

First, the unity of the Communion. Sadly, I think it’s too late – and perhaps was always too late. In fact it increasingly seems that pushing people to sign will be the last step in the de facto schism. By going for a Covenant that was acceptable to a sufficient majority of the players in Global Anglicanism the Covenant Design Group has failed to bring enough of the Communion on board.

Second, to provide the framework for future disputes. Sadly the Covenant procedures will almost certainly only work for little disputes or issues exclusively between two parties. And they could probably be resolved in any framework.

Or they will work to exclude TEC and Canada – and then everyone will take fright because they could be next. They will move quickly to dismantle the Covenant – it will prove to have been a disastrous one-shell cannon.

The Covenant framework will not be adequate to any significant dispute. It’s back-to-front: what happens is that administrative structures & agreements work because people agree to make them work. In normal times conflicts flow through, and are contained by, the channels of the pre-existing system: people and systems are in continual dialogue. In abnormal (though not uncommon) times disputes overflow the system and leave it in pieces. Then people coming together, pick up the pieces and rebuild. The cycle starts over again: systems cannot be imposed without assent.

Third: as one more step in a long-term programme to reform the Communion by centralising and reducing the differences between provinces. This goal might well be met, in part at least, by the process to arrive at a Covenant as much as by the document itself. In the course of debate, it seems to me, the previously normative idea that the Communion was a federal structure with central consultative bodies seems to have been replaced by the normative idea that the Communion is a single entity whose centre needs to be strengthened because its component parts are too fissiparous.

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Laurence Roberts
Laurence Roberts
13 years ago

YES ! I am sure the Anglican ‘Covenant’ will be able to advise on the use of the amice and the role of the monstrance…

Dr. Don Hands
Dr. Don Hands
13 years ago

Maybe some see the component parts as ‘too hissy-parous’.

Perry Butler
Perry Butler
13 years ago

i suspect Paul Bagshaw is right and the communion is already fragmented. I am interested in his ideas for keeping future communication open.Can we learn anything from other world denominations I wonder? The problem of homosexuality affects not only us, but Lutherans and Reformed. How does the World Lutheran Federation or its Reformed equivalent manage this sort of conflict? Or Poorvoo for that matter. The Nordic Churches have ( increasingly) openly partnered gay clergy/ a lesbian bishop/ same sex blessings etc. Questions are asked in Synod, letters sent by Synod boards but is it likely thet the C of E… Read more »

Suem
13 years ago

fissiparous. That’s one I shall use sometime…

Leonardo Ricardo
13 years ago

The problem of homosexuality affects not only us¨ Perry Butler True, I was impacted greatly by it. I almost killed myself by acting out in a state of drunken self-loathing–but then, quick as can be, zappo/presto, God took the self-loathing away from me…that was 33 years ago in December, and thanks to God, the Episcopal Church (and a few thousand other friends who supported me in my recovery) I became the authentic person God originally wanted me ¨to be.¨ No twisted Soul, afterall–where did it go? I knew intuitively the ¨homosexual problem¨ wasn´t even about ME (me, me, me), it… Read more »

Father Ron Smith
13 years ago

“First, the unity of the Communion. Sadly, I think it’s too late – and perhaps was always too late. In fact it increasingly seems that pushing people to sign will be the last step in the de facto schism. By going for a Covenant that was acceptable to a sufficient majority of the players in Global Anglicanism the Covenant Design Group has failed to bring enough of the Communion on board.” – Paul Bagshaw – If there were to be only one reason for NOT signing up to the Covenant, it would be this one. Schism – big-time – has… Read more »

Laurence Roberts
Laurence Roberts
13 years ago

Wow thanks for sharing that testimony Leonardo. It was almost like reading about myself.

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