The Lead

A few stray thoughts on the Anglican Covenant and the recent meeting of the Central Committee of the Anglican Communion (I can't bring myself to accept the power-grab-by-name- change that Rowan Williams has affected by calling this thing a Standing Committee, so I am using another name).

I am going to assume, until I learn otherwise, that the Episcopalians on this committee, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, and Bishop-elect Ian Douglas, did the best they could to soften the statement that the Central Committee released calling on us to graciously restrain from repenting from centuries of bigotry until cultures even more bigoted than ours can see their way clear to repenting along with us.

I am also going to assume that I may never learn otherwise because I have been told that the Central Committee members agree not to speak about what happens at their meetings. So any time you see the phrase Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion, remember that this body, which will soon be making essential decisions about the life of the Communion operates in secret.

While I dislike the Covenant as both document and enterprise, I still think the Episcopalians need to answer some hard questions before committing themselves to opposition. I can think of two off the top of my head, and hope commenters will suggest others:

1. Would choosing to not sign the covenant impair our ability to collaborate with other Anglicans? My hunch is that the answer is no. We'd be an associate member (or whatever title the folks who came up with the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion think up for those who refuse to sign). The homophobic provinces bankrolled by Howard Ahmanson and company would continue to keep their distance from us, but would anybody else shun our company? I don't think so. What do others think?

2. Would it be politically damaging not to sign the Covenant? Again, I don't think so, but I am less certain in my answer. The Episcopal Church really needs to emerge from the atmosphere of imminent danger in which it has existed for the last six years. It can be argued that the easiest way to do this is to put ourselves beyond the reach of Rowan Williams and the virulent homophobes whose appeasement is the hallmark of his tenure. If we do not sign the Covenant, the means by which they can intimidate us are significantly reduced. But let me make the counter arguments.

A. The Communion will eventually recognizes the Anglican Church in North America as a full member. Perhaps. But this seems far from a sure thing. If border crossing is an Anglican no-no, then a church composed almost entirely of congregations acquired through cross border interventions (and one that has thus far flaunted its non-compliance with the Anglican application process) has poor qualifications for membership. But let's suppose ACNA does get admitted to the club. What changes on the ground? Not much, in my estimation. These folks have spent six years and millions upon millions of dollars trying to take down the Episcopal Church, and their own numbers suggest that they have lured away somewhere between three and four percent of our membership. And, increasingly, they will find themselves looking for new members amongst a generation that finds homophobia the Church's greatest sin.

B. We will lose influence in the Communion. Maybe, but keep in mind, that the Covenant itself is an attempt to diminish the influence of our moral example in the Communion. What we might (and I say might because membership in the Instruments and even on the Central Committee is not restricted to provinces that sign the Covenant) lose is a seat at the closed-door, horse-trading sessions, like the one that just occurred in London. Would that be a bad thing if we weren't bound by the decisions that were made? One could argue that being free to conduct our affairs as we choose would be the most powerful counterexample to life under the Romanizing disaster (Rowan Williams) that can be affected.

C. The Communion Partner Bishops will attempt to lead their dioceses out of the Church and join forces with ACNA to become a new North American province of Anglicanism. This is the one I worry about, but perhaps more on emotional grounds than practical ones. If this happens, there will be more infighting, some of it with people I'd rather not fight with.

Will the Communion Partner bishops try this? I don't think so, but some of them seem to have fallen under the sway of the Anglican Communion Institute. As we know from those famously mis-sent emails, the ACI has already involved Bishop Mark Lawrence of South Carolina in a scheme to snatch a parish out from under the jurisdiction of Bishop Rob O'Neil of Colorado. And a number of these bishops signed a laughably wrongheaded paper prepared by the institute, which argued that dioceses were independent of the General Convention (and that these bishops therefore had powers that the Church has not actually granted them).

I hope these bishops and the Communion Partner Rectors will renounce the kind of behind-the-scenes machinations in which the ACI specializes, but the leader of the rectors group was also a participant in the errant emails, so I am concerned about how some of these folks will conduct themselves in the future. On the other hand, I am not at all concerned about others in the group, whose loyalty to the Church I think is unquestioned. And I think Bob Duncan’s act wore awfully thin on most bishops a long time ago.

Finally, I think we need to stop thinking of Rowan Williams as a gentle, scholarly soul caught between warring parties, doing his best to make peace. He exacerbated the crisis in the Communion by convening the emergency Primates Meeting in October of 2003; he has coddled and abetted the most virulent homophobes in the Communion throughout his tenure as archbishop, and he has used this crisis to ram through a centralized Communion structure that departs significantly from traditional Anglicanism, places much more power in his own hands, and dramatically reduces the influence of the people in the pews on the policies of the Church. I think he knew what he was doing every step of the way. Get past the beard. Get over the eyebrows. The man knew what he wanted--an Anglicanism that the Vatican would take seriously--and he has moved shrewdly and skillfully to get it.

So what do we do now?

Comments (16)

A short casuistical sidenote to all this:fharrystowe.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-of-what-says-what.html

Posted by F.Harry Stowe | December 19, 2009 12:36 PM

I think even considering seriously this document (it is not a covenant ... imho, covenants involve an agreement with God, not Rowan Williams), gives it a legitimacy it does not have or deserve.

It was designed to slow the repentance of our church of its violence and exclusion towards a significant number of God's creation.

Whether it was designed so or not, it's actual effect is to give cover towards those provinces who, instead of repenting of this sin, are escalating it to unmentionable heights, even including murder.

As such, it is an unmitigated evil, and we should stand firm against it. No profit ever comes from evil.

-Jadvar Johnson

Posted by jj | December 19, 2009 1:37 PM

To reiterate a point Jadvar made: only God can establish a covenant! The fact that +Rowan thinks otherwise makes clear one of Jim's points--the incredible hubris of this whole enterprise. We will have no popes here, thank you very much.

There is now a facebook movement "Against any Anglican Covenant": http://www.facebook.com/#/group.php?gid=20533991232&ref=nf

Jason Cox
Diocese of Los Angeles

Posted by www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=844825690 | December 19, 2009 2:05 PM

Even though we could argue later that our "confession" was made under threat, my opinion is we shouldn't sign anything that (1) condones bigotry and violence, and (2) is theological unsound.

I'm not even convinced we should accept the associate label. Why do we want to hang out with these folks? Thanks for the ethos -- bye bye.

We _can_ forge communions with like-minded members in the communion. That would include a substantial minority (if not slight majority) of the active membership of the Church of England. And then there are provinces: Canada, and Brazil come to mind. Australia is bifurcated, but the present controlling majority would be interested in staying in communion with TEC.

I'll be interested to see the worldwide composition of the no-covenant facebook group looks like.

Posted by John B. Chilton | December 19, 2009 2:09 PM

I am with those who believe it is time for TEC to go on the offensive (although I am sure we are already quite offensive to many!).

It is time to publicly challenge ACNA for its support of churches that are seeking to imprison people because of their gender identity. It is time to brand them for what they are, international human rights violators.

This covenant is nothing more than a tool for mischief and it is sad that Rowan either doesn't see it, or is actually quite away of what he is promoting.

Cut our money to the Administrative arm of the WWAC now, we will need that money to litigate against Communion Partner folks who try to alienate property.

On the other hand, lets sign the covenant and then go after all those Provinces which have violated our territory. Flood the new Star Chamber with complaints, detailing the financial consequences of these Provinces' actions. File peremptory complaints against ACNA as a violator of human rights. If they want section four then, as the Lord said to the people of Israel when they whined for meat in the wilderness, "They want meat? I will give them meat till it comes out your noses and is loathsome to you." (Numbers 11:19) So if they want accountability lets prosecute accountability with such gusto they will be sorry they ever brought it up.

I want a result from the Star Chamber that tell all the interlopers that they cannot be top tier Anglicans while they are suborning theft, and then rejects ACNA for the same reason.

Posted by Michael Russell | December 19, 2009 2:18 PM

It seems to me that we should study this very carefully. We should take all the time we need to do that.

Perhaps the next GC in 2012 could appoint a committee to study this situation and report back in 2015. Or, if the study is not complete or raises more questions, then a report in 2018.

After all, we haven't rushed into matters like the ordination of women or same-sex marriage, so why should we rush into this?

[Thanks for the comment. Sign your name next time. - eds.]

Posted by oldverger | December 19, 2009 2:30 PM

Michael wrote "Star Chamber." He means of course SCAC, "Star Chamber of the Anglican Communion", although I always thought SCAC stood for Sulphur City Anarchists Collective.

http://www.acronymfinder.com/SCAC.html

Posted by John B. Chilton | December 19, 2009 2:36 PM

As a priest in this church who is also gay and who made the decision to join this church because it seemed to be taking a stand for GLBT folks as well as every other oppressed group, I can't imagine how signing onto this document wouldn't be an implicit or explicit decision that belonging to the Anglican Communion and everything it represents is more important than the vision I thought I was embracing.

****That was a very long sentence and I apologize for any venial grammatical sins.****

The idea of belonging at any cost (especially at the expense of those who are already beaten down) scares me a whole lot.

Posted by Peter Pearson | December 19, 2009 5:00 PM

The scales are falling from my eyes. I wanted to believe that Rowan was a head-in-the-clouds academic type bumbling around causing breakage, but not purposefully. But it seems that his eyes are fixed firmly on the Vatican in great hope that he can show and tell the pope of a unified communion, not rivaling Rome, but, at least, coming up second. And he will do what he must to get to that point. If you think about it, he's stayed on the same course from the beginning, when he betrayed his good friend Jeffrey John.

I'm moving on to wonder which Anglican province will be the jewel in the crown of the "Anglican Communion". (I use quotation marks because I'm not sure that such an entity any longer exists.)

June Butler

Posted by GrandmèreMimi | December 19, 2009 11:16 PM

PS: Even if we are not part of the "Anglican Communion", or only an associate, we can still be Anglicans.

Posted by GrandmèreMimi | December 19, 2009 11:21 PM

I do think we need to consider it, out of respect to those national and regional churches that do want to stay connected, even if they don't agree with us. I think, too, that it needs to go before General Convention, even though I don't think we should sign it. As a matter of institutional integrity, if we would need to pass it by our constitutional processes, we should also reject it by our constitutional processes.

Marshall Scott

Posted by Execute | December 20, 2009 1:48 AM

Posted by Execute | December 20, 2009 1:50 AM

I agree with Marshall (twice!) -- I think we should not just ignore or discard the Anglican Covenant, but give it a thorough critique and then officially and constitutionally reject it.

Along with Grandmere Mimi and a number of other good folks, I advocate submitting a substitute resolution, the text of which is found on (1979 American) BCP pp. 304-305.

Posted by Bill Moorhead | December 20, 2009 2:07 PM

Let us just look at the actions of Rowan Williams, rather than his erstwhile mild mannered appearance.
He is pointing the "Communion" into homogeneous oblivion.
NO Covenant.
NO further entanglement with the Bishop of Rome
NO more half truths.
NO central controllers.
NO more hate and bigotry.
As for the "communion partner" Bishops, a big fat NO to them too. That of course includes my own Bishop here in N. Indiana.
YES to freedom of thought and practice.
YES to diversity.
YES to an independent Episcopal Church.

Posted by Vern Sheldon | December 21, 2009 4:32 AM

I'm not convinced that there is going to be such significance either way:
http://www.liturgy.co.nz/blog/anglican-covenant/2171

Posted by Liturgy | December 22, 2009 5:20 AM

I heartily second Bill Moorhead's 12-20-09 proposal to substitute TEC's Baptismal Covenant for the draft put forth by ACC. And I agree with the suggestion that the draft be considered formally by GC 77 and laid to rest by TEC. Let those who insist on a covenant proceed as they will. Frank Bergen, Diocese of Arizona, Tucson.

Posted by Frank Bergen | January 11, 2010 12:06 PM

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