The Anglican Communion Covenant: Where Do We Go From Here?

Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Sunday, January 31st, 2010

The Reverend Canon Professor Christopher Seitz
The Reverend Dr. Philip Turner
The Reverend Dr. Ephraim Radner
Mark McCall, Esq.

We have learned today from Bishop Mouneer Anis that he has submitted his resignation from the former joint standing committee. Following so closely the release in December of the final text of the Anglican Communion Covenant, this resignation underscores the extent to which the Anglican Communion is at a major crossroads. At this decisive moment, however, substantial doubts have been expressed both publicly by Bishop Mouneer and privately by others as to whether this committee, now the standing committee of the Anglican Consultative Council, is the appropriate body to coordinate the implementation of the Covenant. These concerns point to the steps that we believe are necessary to restore the Communion so badly damaged by actions in North America over the last decade. In what follows, we seek first to outline the current structural challenges to the Covenant’s initial implementation. This will involve some important, if technical, analysis. Only then, however, can we make clear what, in our mind, these necessary steps for implementation are.

In summary, and on the basis of our continued conviction that the Covenant itself as currently formulated is a positive, faithful, and necessary basis for the renewal of the Anglican Communion and its member churches, we argue that:

1. The final Covenant text envisions a Communion of responsibly coordinated Instruments, ordered episcopally, that the current ACC-led standing committee is in fact undermining;
2. The current ACC standing committee is not necessarily the “Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion” indicated by the Covenant text, and cannot therefore automatically claim the authority it seems to be assuming;
3. The current ACC standing committee has little credibility in the eyes of a large part of the Communion and ought not to be claiming the authority it seems to be assuming;
4. Those Churches of the Communion who move fully and decisively to adopt the Covenant must work with a provisional and representative standing committee, continuous in membership with the other Instruments, that will direct the implementation of the Covenant in a way that can eventually permit a Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion to be formed as envisioned by the Covenant text.

The Pressing Need for the Covenant’s Adoption

We begin by reiterating our belief that the Covenant is the only means for preserving our endangered Communion. We note with appreciation the recent statements of support for the Covenant from Communion churches that have not fully participated in the Communion’s councils in recent years. If the Communion is even to survive in any recognizable form, much less be restored to thrive with the missionary vigor that once characterized Anglicanism more broadly but now is confined to only certain parts of the globe, the Covenant is the only hope. We are confident that the Covenant if implemented in good faith will bear this fruit.

First Principles: The Central Role of Bishops and Distinct Instruments of Communion

In order to understand fully the concerns about the implementation of the Covenant it is necessary to revisit the fundamental principles of our Anglican identity as expressed in Section 3 of the Covenant:

First:

Churches of the Anglican Communion are bound together “not by a central legislative and executive authority, but by mutual loyalty sustained through the common counsel of the bishops in conference” and of the other instruments of Communion. (3.1.2.)

Second:

[Each Church affirms] the central role of bishops as guardians and teachers of faith, as leaders in mission, and as a visible sign of unity, representing the universal Church to the local, and the local Church to the universal and the local Churches to one another. This ministry is exercised personally, collegially and within and for the eucharistic community. (3.1.3.)

Third:

In addition to the many and varied links which sustain our life together, we acknowledge four particular Instruments at the level of the Anglican Communion which express this co-operative service in the life of communion….It is the responsibility of each Instrument to consult with, respond to, and support each other Instrument and the Churches of the Communion. Each Instrument may initiate and commend a process of discernment and a direction for the Communion and its Churches. (3.1.4.)

These principles can be summarized as recognizing that the Anglican Communion (1) is not tied to a single “central authority”; (2) is one in which its bishops play “the central role” in essential areas of leadership; and (3) is led by four distinct Instruments of Communion, each of which “may initiate and commend a process of discernment and a direction for the Communion and its Churches.”

The new Section 4 reflects these fundamental principles in its provisions for adopting, maintaining and amending the Covenant. It assigns to a “Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion” a coordinating and monitoring role in carrying out these activities. Prior to the release of the Covenant, no such committee had been given that title or assigned the role of performing these functions.

Contrary to a widely shared assumption, Section 4 does not in fact explicitly identify this “Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion” with any pre-existing committee. It does, however, define the Committee’s responsibilities and thereby determines the qualifications for any committee that would fill this role. First, and most importantly, the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion is to be “responsible to the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting.” Its primary role is to “monitor,” “take advice,” and “recommend.” Importantly, “[o]n the basis of advice received from the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting, the Standing Committee may make a declaration that an action or decision is or would be ‘incompatible with the Covenant’.” In other respects, however, its role is that of coordination and recommendation, all the while “responsible to” the two Instruments of Communion. For example, under 4.1.5, invitations to “other churches” to adopt the Covenant are issued by the Instruments, not the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion. Similarly, under 4.4.2, proposed amendments to the Covenant may be submitted either by the covenanting Churches or by the Instruments. They are submitted “through” the Standing Committee, but that Committee’s duties are mandatory, not discretionary: it “shall” send the proposal to the Instruments and Churches for advice, make a recommendation and then submit the proposal to the covenanting Churches for approval.

The working group that revised Section 4 seems to have assumed that the recently reorganized standing committee of the ACC would function as the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion, and the ACC committee itself appears ready to assume the functions of the committee defined by Section 4 of the Covenant. But it is increasingly doubtful that this assumption, which has not yet been explicitly and publicly ratified by any of the Instruments, is consistent with the text of Section 4 or acceptable to a large part of the Communion.

It is important to recognize that the committee that recently met in December to approve the revisions to Section 4 was itself the standing committee of the ACC as defined by the ACC constitution. It was acting pursuant to Resolution 14.11 from the May 2009 meeting of the ACC in Jamaica that asked its standing committee to approve a final form of Section 4 and asked the ACC’s Secretary General to send the revised text of the Covenant to the Churches of the Communion. These actions were not authorized by the Primates’ Meeting.

This point is easily lost and bears repeating: this committee is formally the standing committee of the ACC as defined by the ACC constitution. It is widely regarded as the successor to the former “Joint Standing Committee,” which apparently no longer exists, but that “joint committee” was in fact two committees, each responsible to a different body, that met together for some but not all purposes. That the ACC chose to re-organize its standing committee to include representatives of the Primates and the Primates authorized its representatives to serve on the ACC committee does not change the fact that this committee is constitutionally a committee of the ACC. There is no published report that the Primates have authorized this committee to replace their own standing committee or act on behalf of the Primates. Nor is there indication that the Primates have changed the composition of their separate standing committee.

And as we have noted before, the Covenant is not the property of any one Instrument. It could have been approved and sent to the Communion Churches by any of the Instruments or, indeed, by any of the Churches. The doubts that now arise relate specifically to the extent to which the other Instruments and Communion Churches should defer to the ACC and its assumption of the central role in the implementation of the Covenant.

The ACC: A Time of Transition and Confusion

These matters are greatly complicated by the fact that the ACC is in the midst of a period of legal and constitutional transition. It is not yet clear what the implications of this reorganization ultimately will be for the Communion and the Covenant, but the main elements of this transition are twofold: (1) an ongoing process of incorporating the ACC under UK law and changing its legal structure to that of a charitable company; and (2) contemporaneous steps, controversial in some particulars, to make the ACC more effective and representative of the Communion as a whole.

Becoming a UK Charitable Company

Secretary General Kearon has recently summarized the status of the first of these elements, the legal process, as follows:

The Constitution of the ACC has been through a long process of change, first proposed in 1999, as outlined in the enclosed background statement. Part of this included a change of status from a Charitable Trust to that of a Charitable Company. As a charitable company it requires ‘Articles of Association’. These articles closely reflect the Constitution of ACC but also conform to the requirements of the Charity Commissioners in the UK. These were available at the ACC meeting in Jamaica in 2009 and were discussed at the recent Standing Committee meeting. These were sent to the Charity Commissioners for final approval immediately after ACC in 2009, but we have not yet received a response, and until that happens we are procluded for [sic] publishing them on the website.

…

The main purpose of the change is to give a greater degree of protection to the trustees (the members of the Standing Committee). Some other changes were incorporated into the process, the most significant of which is to make the Primates’ Standing Committee ex-officio members of the ACC and of its Standing Committee(hence the name change of the Standing Committee). (Emphasis added.)

http://blog.deimel.org/2010/01/communion-transparency-take-3.htm

http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/anglican_communion/anglican_constitution_is_what.html

It is clear from Canon Kearon’s correspondence in recent weeks that: the ACC is in the process of being incorporated under UK law; the “main purpose” of this change concerns the status of the ACC standing committee under UK law; this committee will be subject to new Articles of Association, which are still to be approved by UK authorities, under which the committee members will be fiduciaries of and responsible to the ACC and will themselves be governed in the exercise of their fiduciary duty by UK law; Canon Kearon believes the new Articles cannot be made public due to constraints imposed by UK law; those Articles contain changes to the current ACC constitution; and some of the changes relate to procedures for amending the membership schedule of the ACC, which is a provision explicitly referenced in Paragraph 4.1.5 of the Covenant. We will return to the implications of this reorganization below.

Becoming More Representative and Effective

The final Report of the Windsor Continuation Group recently summarized the thinking behind the second of the elements of the ACC transition, the need to reform the ACC to make it more representative and effective:

71. However, there are questions about whether a body meeting every three years, with rapidly changing membership can fulfil adequately the tasks presently given to it. There may be other ways in which the involvement of the laity should be made effective in the discernment and guidance of the Communion and not only at the world level.

72. Related to the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting is the work of the Joint Standing Committee, which is the meeting together of the Standing Committee of the ACC with the Standing Committee of the Primates. It is not a separate Instrument of Communion, but it does contain representatives of all four Instruments – presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury, with representatives of the Primates, of the bishops, and of the clergy and lay members of the Council. The crux is how the committee works and the various parts dovetail. In many senses, it is still in an early stage of development. As it develops, it will be important to stress the links to all four instruments so that it is not just seen as a branch of the ACC. It will also be important to ensure that the membership reflects the breadth of opinion in the Communion. If the membership becomes polarised, it will lose its ability to act effectively on behalf of the whole Communion. It would be strengthened by the Archbishop of Canterbury being present throughout the meeting.

Recommendation:

73. A review should be commissioned of how the Anglican Consultative Council’s effectiveness and confidence in its work can be enhanced. In particular, the WCG would like to see work done on exploring the effectiveness and role of the Joint Standing Committee in the life of the Communion. In order for it to be able to do this, questions need to be addressed about its membership and the extent to which Provinces are prepared to invest in its work. The JSC needs to be constituted in a way which is seen as fully representative; at which the primatial members are fully participating, and at which the Archbishop of Canterbury is fully present throughout its meetings. (Emphasis added.)

The newly-created Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order has been charged with the responsibility for the review recommended here by the WCG and is only now beginning its work.

For its part, the ACC has responded to these concerns by making members of the Primates’ standing committee ex officio members of the ACC and of the ACC standing committee, but this does not in any way change the fundamental legal nature of that committee as a committee of the ACC, with all the duties that status entails. This is a subtle, but important, point: the Primatial members have been made members of the ACC and its standing committee. Their membership may make the ACC more representative, but we assume that as standing committee members their primary and other fiduciary duties will be owed, not to the Primates’ Meeting, but to the ACC and its charitable purposes. Indeed, this points to a profound concern: as trustees or directors of a charitable company (the new ACC) governed by UK law, the members of the ACC standing committee (including the Primatial representatives) will have fiduciary duties to the ACC that are defined by UK law rather than Anglican doctrine at a time of increasingly aggressive secularization in that country.

It should be noted that this concept of adding Primatial members to the ACC standing committee was proposed in the Windsor Report, but that report also concluded:

This would give structural and constitutional reality to the present arrangements of meeting annually, but with unresolved questions of differing responsibilities.

Resolving those questions by placing on the Primatial members, already a minority, the same responsibilities as those of the ACC members diminishes the independent voice of the Primates.

Should the ACC Standing Committee Become the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion?

In this context of transition, uncertainty and doubt, the question necessarily arises whether the constitutional standing committee of the ACC, even as recently expanded, is the appropriate body to do the work specified for the “Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion” in Section 4 of the Covenant. We recognize that most observers consider this a foregone conclusion and that this position is not unreasonable. We are, however, increasingly doubtful that this is in the best interests of the covenanted communion and at a minimum can conclude that an affirmative answer to this question is not automatic as has been assumed up to this point.

First, no Communion Instrument or Church has yet explicitly authorized the standing committee of the ACC to function in this manner. The Primates Meeting has not done so; it has not even met since Section 4 was drafted. Indeed, not even the ACC has expressly authorized its standing committee to function in this way, including in particular any authorization to be “responsible to” the Primates Meeting as required by Section 4.

ACC Resolution 14.39 entitled “Terminology (Standing Committee)”, passed last May, provided that the Council:

a. notes that the former “Joint Standing Committee” is named as the “Standing Committee” under the new constitution;

b. amends the resolutions of this Anglican Consultative Council meeting so that the title “Joint Standing Committee” is replaced with the title “Standing Committee” wherever appropriate.

And in Resolution 14.38, the Council:

a. welcomes the presence of the Primatial members of the Standing Committee as full members of the Anglican Consultative Council, and

b. asks the Primates to include an equal number of non-Primatial members of the Standing Committee as non voting participants in the Primates’ Meeting.

But as already noted, the effect of these resolutions (reflecting an amendment to the ACC constitution) was to expand the standing committee of the ACC by giving the Primates minority representation, not to authorize it to function as the committee that would only later be specified in Section 4 of the Covenant. Notwithstanding the official change of terminology (enacted retroactively), there is no reference in the ACC resolutions even as amended to any “Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion” nor is there any indication that the ACC intends that its own standing committee will be “responsible to” the Primates’ Meeting or act on behalf of any Communion Instrument other than the ACC. To the contrary, Article 8 of the current ACC Constitution (“Powers of the Standing Committee”) makes clear that this committee is still responsible to the ACC: “The Standing Committee shall act for the Councilbetween meetings of the Council and shall execute such matters as are referred to it by the Council.” (Emphasis added.)

In this light it is instructive to compare the role of the ACC’s standing committee to that of its Secretary General. The ACC constitution specifies that this officer is the Secretary General of the ACC:

The Council shall delegate to its Standing Committee the appointment of a Secretary for a specified term who shall be known as the Secretary General of the Council andwhose duties it shall determine. (Article 6.c; emphasis added.)

But at the first ACC meeting, the Council passed Resolution 42, which defined the duties of this office as follows:

(a) to be responsible for all secretarial and other duties for the Council and for the meetings of the Council and of its Standing Committee; and

(b) to serve the Anglican Communion and its member Churches with particular regard to the stated functions of the Anglican Consultative Council and to the recommendations and reports of the Council. (Emphasis added.)

This resolution is noted as a footnote to the ACC constitution and is why the office has been designated since the time of its first occupant as the “Secretary General of the Anglican Communion.”

But note carefully the provisions of subpart (b) of this resolution. The Secretary General is authorized by the ACC to serve the whole communion, but he is appointed by the ACC standing committee and is obligated to pay “particular regard” to the ACC and its recommendations. It is precisely this dual role and possible conflict that lies at the heart of our concerns about the ability of the ACC’s standing committee to perform the functions defined for the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion in Section 4 of the Covenant.

Second, when the legal reorganization of the ACC is completed, the members of the ACC standing committee will have duties and responsibilities to an entity, the ACC, governed by UK law. These duties and responsibilities will be determined by UK law and will be owed to the entity, the ACC, on whose standing committee they serve. Can the members of the ACC’s standing committee function in the way contemplated by Section 4 for the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion? Can the committee be “responsible to” the Primates Meeting? Can it consistent with its legal duties ever act contrary to the advice or direction received from the ACC and accept instead the advice of the Primates or the covenanting Churches? If the legal advice is that this would not be inconsistent with the fiduciary duties imposed under current UK law, how might future court decisions or legislation change this advice? How will substantive provisions of UK and EU law, such as non-discrimination regulations, affect the deliberations of this committee on Communion disputes?

Third, the uncertainty raised by these questions is exacerbated by a lack of transparency concerning the legal status of the ACC and its constitution. ACC Resolution 14.39 refers to a “new constitution” as if one were already in effect. Canon Kearon indicated in his recent correspondence that the new legal entity will be governed, at least in part, by “Articles of Association,” which “closely reflect the Constitution of ACC but also conform to the requirements of the Charity Commissioners in the UK.” It remains unclear whether they replace or supplement either the existing or the “new” ACC constitution. It is said that UK law prevents the posting of these Articles on the Communion website.

And in what is probably the single most contentious paragraph in the Covenant, a change was made to Paragraph 4.1.5 to incorporate a reference to procedures for amending the ACC membership schedule. Canon Kearon’s cover letter disseminating the Covenant to the Communion Churches cited the unpublished Articles of Association to explain these procedures, but the procedures he quoted were different from those that were shown at the time in the published version of the ACC constitution on the Communion website. Canon Kearon subsequently amended his cover letter and the published version of the constitution was changed as well, but the constitution even as changed still does not match what Canon Kearon quoted from the Articles. We do not want to dwell on what might be minor discrepancies and administrative hiccups–although the differences in the procedures are substantive and when ACNA was formed a year ago a Communion spokesman described the procedures as “clear” and cited different ones than are now quoted by Canon Kearon. But transparency on such a contentious issue is essential, especially when more profound questions lie just beneath the surface.

As the websites linked above indicate, concerns about transparency and the changes to the ACC’s legal status are shared across the theological divide in the Communion. We too have addressed this subject previously in our statement of December 22, 2009:

http://www.anglicancommunioninstitute.com/2009/12/committing-to-the-anglican-covenantan-analysis-by-the-anglican-communion-institute/

Fourth, it does not help that the ACC standing committee in purporting to fulfill the role of the committee specified in Section 4 of the Covenant has already assumed authority not in fact given to the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion. In his cover letter, Canon Kearon announced the following decision by the “Standing Committee”:

The Standing Committee has decided that it will neither invite any other Churches (beyond the Schedule of members of the ACC) to adopt the Covenant (Covenant 4.1.5), nor propose any amendments to it (Covenant 4.4.2), until it has had an opportunity to evaluate the situation after ACC-15. (Emphasis added.)

But even a cursory review of Section 4 shows that it is the prerogative of the Instruments, not the Standing Committee, to issue such invitations and it is the right of any Instrument or covenanting Church to propose amendments, which the Standing Committee has a mandatory duty to process.

Finally, and most importantly, this approach fundamentally misconceives the nature of the Anglican Communion. The ACC is not a body that subsumes all other Instruments; nor do those other Instruments get their authority by being incorporated into or recognized by the ACC. And the constitution of the ACC is just that: the constitution of one, but only one, of the Instruments. These principles, as already noted, are fundamental to both the Covenant and the Anglican Communion as traditionally understood. To the extent that any one body plays a “central role” in the Anglican Communion it is the college of bishops, as Paragraph 3.1.3 of the Covenant makes clear. Thus, any notion that Primates must first be made members of the ACC standing committee and thereby legally responsible to the ACC and only then serve as members of a Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion is fundamentally misguided and assumes a foundational priority for the ACC that is inconsistent with both traditional Anglican ecclesiology and Section 3 of the Covenant.

These matters take on greater, not lesser, significance as the ACC subjects itself to an increasing degree to the vagaries of UK civil law. So the notion that the ACC controls the Covenant, that its constitution is the controlling legal instrument of the Communion and that its standing committee, whether enlarged by representatives of other Instruments or not, is the de facto Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion is one to be strongly resisted at this time, not one to be embraced without further thought.

And, it must be noted, this discussion points to the larger issue of whether the ACC as a UK company subject to UK and EU legal requirements will be able to function as an Instrument of the Communion as contemplated by the Covenant. The references in Section 3 of the Covenant to the ACC are, of course, to the ACC as currently constituted, not as it may eventually emerge, legally transformed, when necessary approvals have been obtained from UK legal authorities.

The Standing Committee’s Current Lack of Credibility

We have focused to this point on formal issues that are important in their own right to the Communion. But we must be clear that these complex questions are neither the only nor even the most important reasons for raising concerns about the role of the ACC standing committee as now constituted. Indeed, the urgency to consider these questions now arises because they point to a more profound flaw in the mechanisms currently contemplated for implementing the Covenant. Whatever its legal status, the standing committee of the ACC does not enjoy the trust of a large part of the Communion. The degree of trust, already diminished, was further eroded by the public display of procedural chaos, never appropriately resolved, at the last ACC meeting, out of which the current committee’s make-up emerged. And to repeat a point made above by the Windsor Continuation Group about the ACC: “If the membership becomes polarised, it will lose its ability to act effectively on behalf of the whole Communion.”

This issue has been brought to a head by the election of a non-celibate lesbian as suffragan bishop in Los Angeles, which occurred after the Covenant working group finished its revision of Section Four. Confirmation of this election by TEC as a whole, following the removal of previous restraints at last summer’s General Convention, will be a clear repudiation of the discernment of the Communion on this issue and therefore a repudiation of the Covenant under which each covenanting Church undertakes “to endeavour to accommodate [the] recommendations” of the Communion’s Instruments and “to act with diligence, care and caution in respect of any action which may provoke controversy”. Should the bishop-elect receive the necessary consents for consecration TEC could not maintain in good faith any claim to be “still in the process of adopt[ing]” the Covenant as contemplated by paragraph 4.2.8. The representation—highly disproportionate moreover–of TEC on the standing committee of the ACC in such circumstances would disqualify that body from Covenant decision-making even if the legal issues described above were resolved. Furthermore, although the consent process for the Los Angeles election has not been concluded, the injection of this kind of confusion into the structural initiation of the Covenant’s dissemination and adoption process coupled with the current ACC committee’s transitional status preclude that committee from functioning in a way that the Covenant text itself envisions and about which the Communion at large ought to feel confident.

Necessary and Constructive Steps Forward

Where do we go from here? The Covenant is now in the hands of the Churches of the Communion. This is altogether fitting as it is a Covenant among those Churches. As the Preamble recites, it is the “Churches of the Anglican Communion under the Lordship of Jesus Christ,” not the Communion’s Instruments and committees, that make the affirmations and commitments in the Covenant. It has never belonged to, nor should it ever become, the property of a particular Instrument or committee. The Covenant will be what the covenanting Churches make of it. And we are confident that the final text of the Covenant gives those Churches that do choose to covenant with one another on its basis the principles they need to restore the Communion. It is Scriptural, theological, Anglican and fit for the purpose for which it has been offered to the Communion. Indeed, it is the only hope for restoring a common Communion life that has been all but destroyed. We urge all Churches willing to commit to a life of mutual responsibility and interdependence under the Covenant to sign and adopt promptly and fully. We note with a sense of encouragement that some provinces, like many in the Global South, have already made public assurances that this is their intention. Given the current structural uncertainty, however, we wish to emphasize the need for moving ahead quickly with all due procedural care.

But since there is no body currently recognized, either by the Instruments or the Churches of the Communion, as authorized to exercise the responsibilities of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion in coordinating the implementation of the Covenant, we think it is necessary and appropriate for the covenanting Churches themselves to fulfill this task initially by convening a provisional committee drawn from the Primates and ACC representatives of Churches that adopt the Covenant to coordinate the implementation of the Covenant within the Churches and dioceses wishing to participate.

This concept is hardly novel or radical and is substantially identical to that proposed by the Church of England in its final comments on the Ridley Cambridge draft of the Covenant. It would maintain the legitimate continuity of representation envisioned by the Covenant itself in Section 4.2. And such a coordinating committee would, of course, be provisional and would function only until a Standing Committee as contemplated by the Covenant is established and has the approval of the Communion’s Instruments and covenanting Churches. Indeed, one of the provisional committee’s urgent tasks would be to coordinate with the existing ACC standing committee to develop a body that can function as the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion with the trust of the covenanting Churches as envisioned in the Covenant.

We conclude with the words of our colleague, Philip Turner, who recently addressed this topic in a way that merits repetition:

I believe the Covenant is the only hope we have if we wish on the one hand to preserve a communion that involves more than mutual aid and hospitality; and on the other, in doing so, avoid the creation of an international hierarchy. At this point, I must be utterly clear. From a human point of view our choices are extremely limited. Either we have a covenant with real consequences like the “two track” proposal or the Communion will collapse. Many provinces from the Global South that support a covenant with consequences will simply go their own way, and those who have rejected a covenant with consequences will be left with something that is a Communion in name only. To return to the beginning, I believe the Covenant is our only hope to arrive at our present cross in the roads and meet rather than part forever.

That hope, which derives from, is consistent with, and is sustained and animated by our larger hope in Jesus Christ as the head of our Church, now lies with the Churches of the Communion. We pray that they will seize this moment and use the Covenant to preserve and restore the Communion.

January 31 2010 03:35 pm

Hat tip: Christopher Wells