Rule Book? Don’t believe it

Hearts were aflutter in the Anglican blogscape on Sunday when The Telegraph ran a story headlined “Church to impose ‘rule book’ of beliefs.” Here at The Lead the newsteam consulted and concluded the breathlessly told story just didn’t add up so we held off passing it on.

Thinking Anglicans did too, but now has something concrete to say:

Here’s what is actually happening, based closely on the so-called “bishops’ paper” to which the Sunday Telegraph refers.

The House of Bishops met at Market Bosworth in May. At that meeting they were asked to agree to a process for the Church of England to respond to the request made for all provinces of the Anglican Communion to comment by the end of 2007 on The Proposal for an Anglican Covenant.

This is only the first stage in quite a protracted process, involving the 2008 Lambeth Conference, the subsequent meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council and the subsequent submission of a final Covenant text to all Anglican provinces for synodical approval.

Read it all here.

The UK papers seem to have a penchant for jumping the gun. The Times has pulled a story it just posted today underline byline of (drumroll) Ruth Gledhill.

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