In Church of England’s reference of Anglican Covenant, questions abound

Following on voting from General Synod in November, the Church of England this past week referred the proposed Anglican Covenant to its Diocesan Synods.


The reference document itself was accompanied by a transcript of the General Synod debate on the Covenant, the draft act of Covenant adoption, and a briefing paper prepared by the Faith and Order Commission.

Blogger Alan Perry caught some interesting nuances in this great flurry of documentation.

On the background paper:

In the background paper GS Misc 966, at paragraph 38, it says “As the Archbishop of Canterbury has commented, ‘The Covenant text sets out the basis on which the Anglican family works and prays and lives and hopes.'” Actually it most significantly sets out the basis on which the Anglican family will fight in future. And if that process is found wanting then family fights will escalate and spill out beyond the bounds of the process. We should ask ourselves whether we want to establish processes to fight, or would it be preferable to find ways of transcending our differences. Fighting has not proven very satisfactory in recent years.

And as to the reference document itself:

An interesting point with respect to this reference to the dioceses is that it is predicated on Article 8.

Oh – hang on. Article 8 of the Constitution of the General Synod says:

“[A] scheme for … a permanent and substantial change of

relationship between the Church of England and another Christian body,

being a body a substantial number of whose members reside in Great Britain”

may not receive the final approval of the General Synod unless it has first been

approved by the majority of the dioceses at meetings of their diocesan

synods.

Okay, Alan, back to you:

The paper explaining the process states that this is required for [what’s noted above] notably in this case the Church in Wales and the Episcopal Church of Scotland. (I won’t mention here that “scheme” is rarely used in North American English for anything but a nefarious plot!)

This reference to Article 8 is interesting because of the narrative in support of the proposed Covenant that it will not cause any significant changes, other than to fix the whole conflict in the Anglican Communion. But the Article 8 reference suggests in fact that the adoption of the proposed Covenant will be “a permanent and substantial change”. So which is it?

The question facing the diocesan synods is: what, exactly, does this “permanent and substantial change” imply, and is it desirable? All sorts of reasons have been put forward to vote for the proposed Covenant: it’s a way to support the Archbishop of Canterbury; everybody has politely supported it previously; it will fix things without changing anything. What seems to be missing in the sales pitch is a compelling reason to implement this international treaty with a clear explanation of what, precisely, it will accomplish in what manner and at what cost.

(Our special thanks to Thinking Anglicans for helping us relocate or even store these documents following the CoE web site revamp a few days ago.)

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