A release today from InclusiveChurch.net provides insight into how recent actions by African provinces undermine the Anglican Communion. These actions, including the increasing number of bishops providing “‘pastoral oversight’ in North America, the attempts to create a Covenant that defines Anglican doctrine and ethics, and the apparent intention to organise an alternative to the Lambeth Conference in London next year all point towards one thing: The strategy to destabilise the Anglican Communion is moving into another phase.”
Without dialog, they note, there is no way to walk together, and actions that undermine the dialog process threaten the Covenant’s “original intention, which was to affirm the bonds of fellowship which exist”:
There can be little doubt that the [homosexuality] issue is being used by some, mainly conservative, Christians as a lever to try to change the Communion into something it is not; from a conciliar church into a confessional one. From a praxis-based Communion where the bonds between us are the bonds of fellowship and love to a codified Communion where exclusions are legally determined and legally enforced, and where the Communion defines itself not by who it includes but by who it excludes.
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The way in which the draft was received by some at the Primates meeting in Tanzania is indication that, whatever the intention, it will be used to enforce a particular interpretation of the Scriptures to the detriment of the life of the Communion. We do not need a Curia, and the process of drafting a Covenant is already giving more power to the Primates than is justified by our history
Read the whole thing at InclusiveChurch.net‘s blog.