Tag Archives: Anglican Covenant

We don’t need no stinkin’ covenant

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That’s the sum total of the argument to be found on a new site proclaiming “Anglicans for Comprehensive Unity”, a phrase whose oxymoronic message is aggravated by the uneasy proximity of “Anglicans” and “Unity”.

Anglican churches are being asked to adopt a so-called Anglican Covenant that seeks to bind them more tightly to one another and to codify procedures by which future disputes within the Anglican Communion will be resolved.

We believe that this covenant is ill-conceived. In response to the reputed “crisis” in the Communion, drafters of the covenant have favoured coercion over the hard work of reconciliation.

Of course, if it is only a “so-called” Covenant, not a real one and the crisis is only a “crisis” by repute, why even bother to set up a so called No Anglican Covenant Coalition? Must be because we don’t need no stinkin’ covenant.

The Anglican Church of Canada wants to have its cake and eat it

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Rev. Michael Thompson from St. Jude’s in Oakville has written a rebuttal to an earlier article in the Journal which plainly stated that, if the ACoC is honest, it cannot sign the Anglican Covenant and continue its present course.

Such stark Kierkegaardian either/or propositions tend not to sit well with Western Anglicans; they much prefer interminable Hegelian dialectic garnished with Rowanesque waffle-sauce. Rev. Michael is no exception. Unfortunately, he also seems to inhabit an insular suburban world that has little access to news outside Oakville; he hasn’t noticed that the vast majority of the Anglican Communion are seriously considering – many already have – breaking communion with the ACoC and TEC whether the ACoC likes it or not. The whole article is below, but to summarise, Rev. Michael is saying that the ACoC can sign the covenant, go its merry way, hide behind the ludicrous canard that it is contributing to “diversity”, ignore the protests of 70 million Anglicans – whose priests are wicked interventionists anyway – and pretend everything is just fine. The truly grotesque thing is, he appears to believe it.

In the work that bears his name, Gilbert and Sullivan’s wonderfully imagined Mikado purports “To let the punishment fit the crime, the punishment fit the crime.” In their guest opinion column in the Anglican Journal (May 2010, p. 5), Catherine Sider-Hamilton and Dean Mercer have, on the other hand, already decided the punishment– “a second-tier status in the larger Anglican Communion.” It remains only to conjure up the requisite crime.

Their opening gambit is to accuse our church of a “willingness to walk apart from the universal church.” Never mind the long list of Canadian Anglicans who have served and are now serving the life of the Communion. The Anglican Indigenous Network (Donna Bomberry), The Compass Rose Society (Bishop Philip Poole), Theological Education for the Anglican Communion (Archbishop Colin Johnson), the Anglican Covenant Working Group (Dr. Eileen Scully) and Unity, Faith and Order (Alyson Barnett-Cowan) don’t count. And never mind those bishops who have abandoned almost 2,000 years of Catholic ecclesiology to interfere with the integrity of the local church in this and other provinces because they and they alone know how to receive and interpret God’s word revealed in scripture.

In 2004, General Synod heard both the Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Gregory Cameron, and the Bishop of Colombo, Duleep de Chickera. While Canon Cameron counseled caution, Bishop Duleep reminded us that not all voices in the wider Communion spoke as one and encouraged Canadian Anglicans to cherish our contributions to Anglican diversity. In 2007, the General Synod heard both Archbishop of York, John Sentamu and General Secretary of the Anglican Communion, Kenneth Kearon. Last year, Canon Isaac Kawuki-Mukasa of the Faith, Worship and Ministry Department of General Synod established personal contact among bishops and theologians in Canada and Africa, including a February gathering of Canadian and African bishops to build respect and mutual understanding. This is not a church as unable to embrace “a primary commitment to the universal and apostolic church” or as inimical to “the wider voice of the church.”

Next, the writers imply that the current conflict pits those who love and faithfully receive scripture against those who despise it, who find its teaching “oppressive and outdated.” But we know that those who support the blessing of committed monogamous same-sex relationships include many who know and love the Bible as living witness to the living God. And we know that as we receive and interpret scripture, the truth that emerges is often contested truth–as for example, we come to divergent conclusions about the response that the God revealed in scripture invites to a question of sexual ethics and Kingdom ethos in the 21st century. Conflict and contested truth are not unfamiliar to Jesus’ disciples, and need not tear apart the foundational covenant of our common baptism into one body. We could renew a healthier and more faithful discourse by acknowledging contested truth and engaging in honest and charitable conversation about the practices, values and contextual realities that shape our reception and interpretation of scripture.

In the communiqué issued from their 2000 meeting in Portugal, the Primates of the Anglican Communion said this:

We are conscious that we all stand together at the foot of the Cross of Jesus Christ, so we know that to turn away from each other would be to turn away from the Cross.

They went on to draw a bright line distinction as the only basis for a province or diocese being excluded from the Communion:

…the unity of the Communion as a whole still rests on the Lambeth Quadrilateral: the Holy Scriptures as the rule and standard of faith; the creeds of the undivided Church; the two Sacraments ordained by Christ himself and the historic episcopate. Only a formal and public repudiation of this would place a diocese or Province outside the Anglican Communion.

The Anglican Church of Canada has not turned away, either from those provinces whose leadership is visibly, even angrily, distressed by the divergence apparent in the current conflict, or from the Lambeth Quadrilateral. And we have not turned away from those among us whose lives of commitment we experience as vessels of God’s blessing.

Ms. Sider-Hamilton and Mr. Mercer argue that if we won’t turn away from those among us whose lives of intimate fidelity are shared with a person of the same sex, we must turn away from covenant revelation with those with whom we disagree on this singular issue. But in the Anglican Church of Canada, we turn away, not from covenant relationship, but from the sin that binds and blinds us, from the structures that impair justice and right relationship, and from the Adversary who resists the inbreaking kingdom of God. And as we turn to Jesus, we find him standing in the midst of the very community one part of which Mr. Mercer and Ms Sider-Hamilton insist we must abandon. There Jesus stands, in a community of divergent truths, worried suspicion, and fear, and begs us not to turn away from any of his sisters and brothers, but to accept the unity he offers up out of his own breath and blood.

One wonders why Thompson even wants the ACoC to sign the Covenant; it couldn’t be because the ACoC enjoys temporal power too much to be willing to let it go for its principles, could it? Surely not.

The Anglican Covenant at the Canadian GS2010

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The ACoC has a document to help attendees prepare for the General Synod 2010 discussion – or waffle – on the Anglican Covenant. Read it all here. Section 4 of the Covenant is the potentially contentious part, since it seeks to reign in Provinces such as TEC and the ACoC that have decided to go their own way on issues like same-sex blessings. Conservatives complain that section 4 has no teeth and liberals that it interferes with matters that are internal to a Province. It has no teeth.

In Section Four, affirmations and commitments are offered relating to processes and principles that should be followed in situations of conflict between provinces. The particular issues of potential or present conflict are not named, and the processes laid out work within the present structures of the Anglican Consultative Council, with the standing committee of that council serving as the mediating agent. The standing committee’s power is only to recommend courses of relational consequences to the council’s own constitutionally formed processes.

Member churches of the Anglican Consultative Council are invited to enter into this covenanted relationship, which makes tangible affirmations and commitments about our common heritage, participation in God’s mission, and mutual responsibility in the bonds of affection. When a situation of conflict arises, churches are enjoined to seek the mind of Christ, and the affirmations and commitments in Sections One, Two and Three provide tools for discerning dialogue. The possible outcomes cannot be predicted. Common mind may include, for example, the agreement to disagree on a particular issue, but to keep walking together. What is clear is that Section Four does not supplant the existing authorities, the canons and constitutions of provinces, or the constitution of the Anglican Consultative Council.

So to summarise the document’s preparation for discussing section 4:

  • If a Province breaks the Covenant, the consequences are “relational” resulting, no doubt, in a severe scolding.
  • If there is disagreement after signing the Covenant we’ll have some “discerning dialogue”. TEC and the ACoC have had a lot of practise at this: each could single-handedly bore the balls off a buffalo, let alone shrivel the resolve of all but the most hardy opposition.
  • If TEC and the ACoC fail to subdue the enemy by focussed, concentrated magniloquence, then the “common mind” simply changes its meaning to “we disagree”. Black is white, up is down, and so begins another normal day in the ACoC.
  • Who cares anyway because section 4 has no teeth.