"This pernicious proposal of a Covenant"

Press Release:

COALITION ANNOUNCES PROFESSOR DIARMAID MacCULLOCH AS PATRON

 The Revd. Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch 

LONDON – The Revd Dr Lesley Crawley, Moderator of the No Anglican Covenant Coalition, has announced the appointment of Oxford University Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch, DD, as a Patron of the  coalition.

Professor MacCulloch joins the Rt Revd Dr John Saxbee and the Rt Rev Dr Peter Selby, who were appointed last June.

“I’m thrilled that Professor MacCulloch has agreed to accept this appointment,” said Crawley. “As one of the acknowledged experts in the English Reformation, he has a very clear understanding of how the centralization of authority in the proposed Anglican Covenant is at odds with fundamental Anglican ecclesiology.”

“Anglicanism was born in the Reformation’s rejection of an unwarranted and unhistorical over-centralization of ecclesiastical authority,” according to Professor MacCulloch. “This pernicious proposal of a Covenant (an unhappy choice of name if you know anything about our Church’s history) ignores the Anglican Communion’s past, and seeks to gridlock the Anglican present at the cost of a truly Anglican future.”

MacCulloch is Professor of the History of the Church, and Fellow of St Cross College, in the University of Oxford. He is also a Fellow of the British Academy and co-edits the Journal of Ecclesiastical History. He has written several books on Christian history and the English Reformation, including the award winning Thomas Cranmer: A Life and The Reformation: A History. His most recent book, A History of Christianity: the First Three Thousand Years, won the 2011 Cundill Prize. He devised and presented the BBC television series based on that work.

MacCulloch received a knighthood earlier this year for his services to scholarship.