Not the same stream

Doll and Covenant

2012-01-27T15:25:00.001Z

Peter Doll, Canon Librarian at Norwich Cathedral, has written a paper supportive of the Covenant. It can be found here (pdf) and Jonathan Clatworthy has written a response to it.

The Archbishop and his guardian angel?

The paper is too long and too general to have attracted notice in the normal way of things. But, at the express request of the Archbishop of Canterbury, it has been sent to all Church of England bishops. This is why it needs a response.

Sadly this would reinforce the criticism that the Archbishop has been partisan in acting against TEC and the perception that the Covenant is a significant part of his antagonism.

Nothing new. So I will add a moan I've made several times before. Doll says,

Also, a word of caution. I don’t offer a detailed apologia or critique of the terms of the Covenant. I’m more interested in its overall implications for the way we live out our lives in Christ.

All too often this seems to be the position of those who want the Communion to adopt the Covenant. Never mind the detail, never mind the actual words, the Covenant is A Good Thing. Vote Now!

But, if the Covenant ever is agreed, it is the actual words, the detail and the way its detail will be interpreted and applied, which will be critical.

So why have those promoting the Covenant not set out this detail? Why have they not engaged with critics who wish to address the detail?

I could speculate that this is a deliberate tactic. Perhaps it is recognised that the consequence of debating the detail will be that voters find all kinds of reasons for saying no or wanting changes. Therefore, if there is to be any chance of getting the Covenant adopted, proponents had better keep their arguments bland and general.

Or, perhaps, avoiding detail reflects an ecclesiology. Perhaps the church is conceived as subsisting in its leadership, with the remainder of its members as mere dependants. In such a church then not only is it unnecessary for leaders inform the rest of the reasoning behind their decisions but, worse still, explanation might an act of condescension that could endanger the concept of hierarchy itself by suggesting that leaders should account to the led. Heaven forfend.

We're all interested in the way we, as faithful Anglican Christians, live out out our lives in Christ. But we don't need a Covenant to control how we do it.

Other comment: Eruptions at the foot of the volcano, Episcopal Cafe, Lionel Deimel, Tobias Haller

The Archbishop's message for Holocaust Memorial Day

2012-01-26T12:42:00.001Z

‘Holocaust Memorial Day brings back to our minds the appalling consequences of a situation where people don’t speak for the neighbour and don’t speak for the stranger; where people are only concerned about their own security, their own comfort zones.’

Time to be a grown up church

2012-01-21T22:50:00.003Z

Diarmaid MacCulloch,

Professor of the History of the Church,

in the Theology Faculty,

St Cross College, Oxford

Compulsory celibacy is wrong and damaging for all clergy – straight or gay

Not everyone called to the priesthood is also called to celibacy

So says Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch in The Guardian. (Further Guardian comment here.)

It's not rocket science - as my continually exasperated Latin teacher used reiterate. It's just common sense. All our understanding of humanity, spiritual guidance, pastoral care and psychology, our understanding of groups and politics says the same thing: a falsehood at its heart corrupts everything.

This particular falsehood - that there are no gay clergy in the Church of England and, if there should be any, then they're all celibate - is so blatantly untrue as to be obvious to anyone.

Perhaps the Church of England is so used to living with internal contradiction, wilful blindness and avoidance of what's right in front of its face that it can maintain this duplicity without batting an eyelid.

But I would much rather have a grown-up church. One that takes sin seriously in all its forms: sexual, relationship, financial, political and otherwise. One that recognises human frailty not only in our visible failings but also in our inordinate desires to be in the right and to bend other people to our conception of what they ought to believe and do. And I'd hope for a church too that looks for, even evokes, the maturity which comes from the continual process of understanding, forgiveness and acceptance of both self and others.

I believe that we are both loved and judged by God. Love is a capacity which, however inadequately, humanity shares with God though it can sometimes seem to be in short supply. But, sadly, we are often all too keen to take the task of judging other people off God's shoulders. Any organization needs rules: but if it is to thrive than it must remember that rules are made for people, not people for the rules.

On the other hand, I never did learn Latin.

So who leaked the Jeffrey John papers?

2012-01-19T08:42:00.002Z

Martin Reynolds

Martin Reynolds has a different and authentic sounding analysis of the Jeffrey John affair - or rather the way the story was leaked, spun and misconstrued. See the comments section of the Thinking Anglicans report of press coverage.

In Colin Coward's view

It seems clear that it was a conservative member of the Southwark CNC, hostile to the candidacy of a gay priest and a man married to a divorcee, who revealed that Jeffrey John and Nicholas Holtam were on the shortlist in an attempt to sabotage the appointment of either.

No names there, then.

And Coward's conclusion seems incontrovertable:

Changing Attitude’s view [is] that senior officials in the Church are attempting to prevent any progress that might result in a change in attitude and practice in the church. They are blocking appointments, inhibiting discussion, overruling General Synod’s right to determine policy and ensuring slow to no progress in reviewing House of Bishops’ policy.

In this catalogue the legal opinion on the appointment of gay bishops is a key document. But a legal opinion is only an opinion. Those acting in the capacity of trustees must take seriously such advice as they are given. They are also entitled to seek another opinion, were they so minded.

But until any such opinion is tested in the courts it remains only advice. It may be persuasive but it is not definitive.

Civil Partnerships in the Church of England?

2012-01-18T22:48:00.000Z

From Inclusive Church:

A limited survey by the LGB&T Anglican Coalition has already revealed that almost 100 Church of England churches would want to explore registering their buildings to offer Civil Partnerships if the Church of England would allow it.

All here.

Covenant, conflict and procedural questions

2012-01-17T14:11:00.000Z

This post argues, first, that the absence of detail means it is impossible to see just how the conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms of the proposed Anglican Covenant will work, or who has what power within its processes.

Nonetheless it is clear that certain structural aspects of the process will work against the Covenant's stated goal of Anglican unity.
A summary of the conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms of the proposed Anglican Covenant is here.

~~~~~~~~

Conflict prevention and conflict resolution are procedures, processes by which politics is channelled away from violence and towards mutual listening, sufficient trust and effective co-operation. Such processes are not simple nor mechanical. The subject is taught in universities and fat manuals have been written on the topic. But you might not think that in reading the Covenant.

(1) Where's the detail?
The main preliminary problem with the procedures of the Covenant is that all we have is an outline sketch. We need a lot more of the picture to be painted in before it will be possible to see exactly how it is expected to work - and just where power lies in the process.

There are good tactical reasons why more details of procedures have not yet been made public - and I am assuming work has been started on the matter:

First, it might make people less willing to vote in favour of the Covenant. The detail set out in the Appendix to the St Andrew's draft was heavily criticised. The process has not gone away, though it has been modified, but hiding it leaves the impression that it is not important.

Second, once a process is outlined it would be possible to cost it (at least to the detail provided). Those promoting the Covenant have consistently sought to avoid any discussion of cost and who would pay. See my earlier speculation; I haven't seen any other discussion of costs, let alone a better informed approach.

This silence may be tactical, it may be indicative of a high level of anxiety that the Covenant will not get sufficient endorsement, it may be dishonourable. Either way such silence reflects the fairly low regard that the Anglican Communion Office, as managing the process of adopting the Covenant, has for those who will vote on the matter. They are to be urged and cajoled, but not informed.

In the absence of such detail people are being asked to vote for pig in a poke.

(2) A confusion of roles
Unless power is to be granted to Canon lawyers, and the fiction that lawyers stand above the fray is sustained, then there is no source of independent scrutiny of either issue or process.

A basic reason is that, unlike secular politics, church structures implicitly assume that we are all basically on the same side, that the natural state of Christian affairs is harmony, and that sufficient prayer, reflection, spiritual maturity and talking will eventually lead all members into Godly agreement.

It is nonsense, of course. Divisions across Christendom and within any Church may be as deep, as fundamental and as bitter as any political division. The worst rows are within families.

The Church of England's General Synod was
deliberately designed to avoid the oppositional
politics, and seating, of parliamentary politics.

Churches might be much better served by learning from democratic secular politics how to build decision making structures on the basic presupposition of disagreement and disharmony (within as much as between parties). The quality of decision making may be no better in secular politics but enemies generally stay in the room for fear of descent into ungoverned violence.

But churches' presupposition of harmony gives no room for structured dissent nor for the separation and balance of powers.

Instead churches create a kind of one-party state with a unicameral government. The Anglican Consultative Council is not separate from the Primates who are not separate from the Lambeth Conference. The Standing Committee is drawn from the ACC and the Primates. The Archbishop of Canterbury is pivotal to every instrument of Communion and thus to all its sub-groups, conferences, committees, working parties and ad hoc enquiries. No-one is outside the loop, no group may effectively hold another to account, and no-one has power to ensure procedural or natural justice.

So, once again, it's all politics. The Covenant restructures the ring in which the politics take place and in two new and key ways. First, it makes much more of the politics global by bringing so much more of the life of each province under the scrutiny of every other province. Second, it creates the capacity to expel a member from the ring.

(3) Short time-scales
Doctrinal debates have historically taken decades or longer to resolve themselves. The various rounds of discussion, consultation and conciliation envisaged in the Covenant will probably take years; this may not be enough.

The very presence of a structured process (even if its details have yet to be worked out) is potentially very damaging to communion.

As each step is taken and the final full stop is approached it will become harder and harder to keep talking. Public pressure through both traditional and new media will intensify. Shared ground between the parties, the mass of people who would prefer any settlement to the experience of division, and alternative routes out of the impasse will all be squeezed out of the equation. The process will itself generate pressure for a definitive answer.

Even if no timeline is set at the start, demands for deadlines will quickly spring up. It will be ever harder to invent delaying tactics, even when this is the wisest thing to do. When the train is already running down its track it will be a brave driver who can park it in a siding till the worst of the storm is over.

(4) Presumption of single offender
The text of the Covenant seems to assume that a single province, or perhaps provinces separately, will be the offender against who 'relational consequences' may be deployed:

The Standing Committee may request a Church to defer a controversial action. If a Church declines to defer such action, .... (4.2.5)

This is most improbable. Issues that divide provinces from one another also run through the middle of provinces. A complaint by one province against another may be met by a countervailing complaint. Provinces are likely to pile into the fray on both sides of the question. The result will not be the tidy application of a conflict resolution process but a free-for-all (conducted, of course, in a seemly, Anglican manner).

The underlying image of this process is the excision of heresy from the church by legal action. As with the prosecution of Bishop King, for example, the process is to choose the most egregious offender and to seek to expel the person, their doctrine and practices from the Church. Once a court had pronounced judgment all those who shared the views of the condemned man would be given a choice: change opinions or allegiance. Either way heresy and heretics would be identified and forced out of the Church.

Divided in worship

It doesn't work, of course. Successful prosecutions change no-one's mind and very few allegiances. Unsuccessful prosecutions may and do (from the perspective of the promoters) back-fire spectacularly: the issue they sought to expunge from the church may thus be given unchallengeable legal assent.

Similarly, if the dreams of Archbishop Drexel Gomez and others come to pass and the provinces of North America are excluded from the Communion, it would not mean that the evils of accommodation to post-modernism would be excluded from the Communion.

To the contrary: predominantly liberal provinces may well side with the North Americans. But no province is peopled entirely by liberals. Conservatives within liberal provinces may be very angry about such an alignment and they may well seek to join conservatives in other provinces. Those not clearly associated with liberal or conservative factions will find themselves lost and looking for a home.

In this scenario the attempt to exclude malefactors from the Communion will threaten the whole house: precisely the outcome the Covenant was supposed to avoid.

Or the Covenant processes could find that the North American provinces have no case to answer. In which case those who sought their exclusion would have established determinatively that the consecration of partnered gay bishops is within the range of Anglican belief and practice. In that case the conservatives would be forced to choose whether or not to leave.

Either way there will be no winners.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

A summary of the conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms of the proposed Anglican Covenant is here.

Jeffrey John story largely speculation?

2012-01-17T10:08:00.001Z

Jim Naughton at Episcopal Cafe has a different story to Sunday's headlines.

I admit, I'm disappointed. I had thought that legal action might force the Church to revise its practice. But I also wish to keep the record straight, so to speak.

Jeffrey John

Naughton cites ~~Andrew Brown's~~ (Correction: Sam Brown's) article in The Guardian. Though this hedges its bets (with a very cautious opening paragraph and, later, 'News of John's apparent decision to challenge his employers') nonetheless it does seem to rest on the presumption that John is preparing to sue.

In The Independent Jerome Taylor goes over the same ground, pointing out that no-one is happy. Neither conservatives nor liberals like the compromise the Church is trying to pursue. The Archbishop of Canterbury and other leaders know its a precarious position to try to hold and would not want put it at the top of the agenda by a law suit.

But some liberals believe now is precisely the time for them to force the issue. "We are determined to campaign for full equality right now," says Colin Coward, director of Changing Attitude, the most prolific, pro-gay lobby within the Church. "There is no sense of urgency among Church leaders. But the Church is sick, it needs to be fixed right away."

The Independent also has a leader article:

The office of a bishop is weighty in the Church. Charged with acting as a focus of unity and with upholding doctrine, the post is supposed to be prayerfully accepted rather than actively sought, which is why reports that the Dean of St Albans may sue the Church of England for discrimination over its refusal to make him a bishop will have shocked the Anglican hierarchy to its core.

Well, possibly, maybe not. But the leader does point out the contradiction of being a state church whilst also trying to avoid the application of the state's legislation. Now disestablishment really would shock the hierarchy.

Naughton's piece has a quote from a different Andrew Brown article in The Guardian to the one cited above. This sets out why John cannot win.

Last year the Church of England published a legal opinion that makes it quite clear that it believes it is legal to discriminate against John, not because he is gay, since he is also celibate, but because he is not in the least bit ashamed of being gay. That is what sticks in the craw of the conservative evangelicals who oppose him. They have moved on from supposing that it is absolutely wrong to be gay. They now believe that it is OK to be gay providing that you are very unhappy about it.

Guardian journalist, Andrew Brown

... the real point is found in the apparently balanced statements of disagreement. "It is clear that a significant number of Anglicans, on grounds of strongly held religious conviction, believe that a Christian leader should not entire into a civil partnership, even if celibate … it is equally clear that many other Anglicans believe it is appropriate that clergy who are gay by orientation entire into civil partnerships." [from the legal opinion on the appointment of gay bishops, para. 26.]

This formulation gives the game away. It is only conservative evangelical opinion which is described as "strongly held religious conviction". The liberals merely "believe it is appropriate", with the implication that their beliefs on this are not religious at all.

This kind of nonsense was dealt with decades ago where women priests were concerned. What needs saying, loud and clear, is that the case for liberalism here is every bit as religious, and as theologically informed, as the case for the conservatives.

Exactly. Liberals are too nice and that is mistaken for a lack of strength of conviction, a lack of passion, and insufficient willingness to clarify fudges.

Zimbabwe: further harassment

2012-01-16T22:05:00.000Z

Police Commissioner-General Augustine Chihuri.
Chihuri was once convicted of corruption,
though this was overturned on appeal.

Two letters of complaint by Bishop Chad Gandiya have been published in the Zimbabwean press. Both are addressed to the Police Commissioner-General Augustine Chihuri about the way the Church has been treated by the police.

In The Zimbabwean the bishop details:

Our joint retreat with clergy from the Diocese of Manicaland from the 2nd - 6th January 2012 at Peterhouse was stopped by the police who told us to disperse because we did not have police clearance to hold the retreat (The laws of the land do not require us to seek police clearance to gather for worship)
Today the 13th January 2012, clergy wives of our diocese were due to start their retreat at the Jamaica Inn not far from Harare along the Mutare Road. They have been informed this morning by the lady running the Centre that they can no longer have their retreat there.She claims that she was visited by members of the CIO last night who instructed her to cancel our women's booking.

The Association of Zimbabwean Journalists have posted a different letter:

17th December 2011 at St. Bernard’s School in Nyatsambo Village, Mhondoro. I had gone there for a Confirmation Service. The local police had been informed about this Church Service even though it is not a requirement that we do this. Over three hundred people turned up for the Church Service and we confirmed 116 people. After the service two local policemen based at Mamina approached me and asked me, the local priest and our Church Wardens to go to Mamina Police Station because their “boss” wanted to ask some questions about our Service.

On this occasion Bishop Gandiya, his wife and the local churchwardens were kept by the police most of the day, though not arrested.

He concludes:

The Zimbabwean Constitution allows for freedom of religion. Why are we being harassed like this? Are we second class citizens in the land of our birth? Like any other citizen of this country we expect equal protection by the law enforcement agents of our Republic.

Tensions in Malawi

2012-01-16T12:55:00.002Z

From George Conger, first published in the Church of England Newspaper, under the headline Arab Spring coming to Malawi?:

Bishop James Tengatenga

The senior Anglican bishop of Malawi, the Rt. Rev. James Tengatenga, has denounced the government of President Bingu wa Mutharika as being out of touch and set on serving its own needs rather than those of the people.

....

In his address, Bishop Tengatenga called upon Malawians to be patient, but also warned that this patience should be predicated on the government accepting its responsibilities to repair the “malfunctioning system” of governance.

“As we enter another New Year on our long journey of waiting for the coming of our Lord, I urge you to be your best and wait with a purpose,” the bishop said, but “any person should be waiting with a purpose and that nobody should cheat another that things in our country are okay when the opposite is true."

This is not the first time the Bishop has expressed his views on the government and its leaders: Malawi Voice, May 2011.

He is also Chair of the Anglican Consultative Council, a role which may help protect him as a high profile critic of his government.

Archbishop Makgoba endorses a Covenant

2012-01-15T20:23:00.002Z

Archbishops in unity - but it looks as though
others have been cropped out
from what was once a group.

The Archbishop of Cape Town, the Most Rev. Thabo Makgoba, has written to the Archbishop of Canterbury to tell him that the Covenant is A Good Thing.

I strongly suspect that Thabo Makgoba was asked to write. I am sure that not every letter from a fellow Archbishop is put on Rowan Williams' own site so promptly. And I see the Anglican Communion News Service gives the letter a sub-head: 'A Necessary Covenant'.

I have a lot of time for the Archbishop of Cape Town from what I've read on his site and heard on the radio. I think the Covenant he is talking about (see an earlier post) is a Covenant he deeply believes in and would long to see enacted.

But it's not the Covenant that's on the table.

1) Archbishop Makgoba cites support for the Church in Zimbabwe and for the Church in South Africa in the days of apartheid. As case studies they make a very powerful case for the unified support of the Anglican Communion, in prayer and practical help.

But, unfortunately perhaps, the Covenant would have made no difference had it been in place. Kunonga has been expelled from the Anglican Church. Most churches stood in solidarity with the church in South Africa. What more could or would a Covenanted Communion achieve?

The reason the Covenant cannot help is because it is designed to fight the last war - a civil war within the Church. It sets out conflict resolution procedures between provinces.

The conflicts in Zimbabwe and in South Africa were, first, within the Church's concerned and, second, conflicts between the church and political forces. Nothing in the Covenant adds anything to the coherence currently in place when it comes to addressing either of these dimensions of conflict.

2) Despite the sub-head on the ACNS posting, in fact the Archbishop's support for the Covenant seems conditional:

Yet such mutuality cannot be taken for granted, and indeed, the way that our disagreements on human sexuality have played out suggests we had already begun to drift from that particular sense of belonging to God and to each other, within the wider body of Christ, which was so strong in Southern Africa’s great time of need. It seems to me that the Covenant is entirely necessary, in recalling us to ourselves. Only in this way can we continue to grow in bearing this rich fruit that comes from living the life which is both God’s gift and God’s calling.

Chad Gandiya
Bishop of Harare

Only if the Covenant recalls the Communion to mutuality, to a reinvigorated 'sense of belonging to God and to one another, within the wider body of Christ' will it meet the good Archbishop's aspirations for it.

Sadly, he has forgotten, or chosen to gloss over, or persuaded himself that it will never happen - that one significant purpose which led to the Covenant was the desire of Maurice Sinclair, Drexel Gomez and others to expel the North American churches from the Communion. Therefore the Archbishop does not comment on the power - which did not exist when the South African and Zimbabwean Churches received global support - to ostracise and exclude a part of the Communion.

Yet, for all the rhetoric of communion, unity and interdependence, the power to divide is built into the Covenant. It is not there by chance but because it embodies some people's desire to divide the Communion.

3) The Archbishop addresses the critics of the Covenant (I've split up his paragraph):

Arguments that the Covenant is ‘not fit for purpose’ (for example through ‘going too far’ or ‘not going far enough’) are too often predicated upon an inadequate model of ‘being church’ and what it means to live as members of the body of Christ.

Implicit, it seems to me, is a diminished view of God’s grace, God’s redemptive power and purposes, and God’s vision and calling upon his people and his Church, and so of Anglicanism’s place within these.

Our sense of who we are, and called to become, should not principally be conveyed through legal prisms, whether of some form of centralising authority, or of Provinces’ constitutions and canon law which must be ‘safeguarded’ from external ‘interference’. Nor should we primarily look to structural or legal solutions to our undeniable difficulties or for regulating our relationships.

I think it's the other way round. An inadequate model of 'being church' is articulated in the Covenant. Specifically, it reflects a model of 'being church' which is driven by the conviction that those who disagree with the majority should be subject to law-like processes with the ultimate sanction of expulsion. This is quite the contrary to the Archbishop's visions (see section 5 below).

The Covenant we have in front of us is not a spiritually or theologically rich tapestry of unity-in-difference. On the contrary, it exalts an ecclesiology of bureaucrats.

The Archbishop's experience, his passionate and spiritual commitment to real unity in God - neither denying our differences nor denying the validity of those who hold different views - is immensely appealing. I long for such a church.

From More in Heaven and Earth

But the fact is that 'structural or legal solutions to our undeniable difficulties [and] for regulating our relationships' is precisely what the Covenant contains. It's very nature is that of a document which sets out the skeleton of conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms.

And, yes, it is an utterly impoverished vision of what the church could and should be. And, yes, it does express a preference for the human preference for relying on their own planning than on God.

So I can't see that signing up to it in the hope that it's something else is a very good plan at all. I embrace the Archbishop's vision - I just can't see why he thinks this Covenant is even in the same line of sight.

And I note that he, like almost all advocates of the Covenant, argue for it in very general terms. I have no quibble with the generalities - but when I look at the detail, the actual words, of what we are being asked to sign up to, I despair.

4) Our failure, he says, as a communion, to fully accept our interdependence is a deeper malaise than the symptomatic conflict over sexuality (again, I've split his paragraph).

Therefore, to ask if the Covenant is ‘fit for purpose’ should be to ask whether it helps us address the foundational question of growing together in faithful obedience within the body of Christ. And it seems to me that, above all else, the Covenant does indeed do this, in the way it places God’s vision for God’s Church and God’s world centre-stage; and then invites us to live into this as our ultimate and overriding context and calling.

It does not create new structures or authorities, nor alters constitutions; and scope for individual action remains considerable (as your letter underlines).

The Covenant does indeed set out ways of 'growing together in faithful obedience within the body of Christ'. It also has ways of forcing some to walk apart. The former I endorse; the latter I repudiate.

The Covenant does create new structures in that 'Each Church undertake to put into place such mechanisms, agencies or institutions, ...' (4.2.9) ensure the Covenant is implemented in its own location and to liaise with the Instruments of Unity.

I also believe it will alter constitutions. In the first place there will be a need to change to the constitution of the Anglican Communion which does not, at present, mention the Covenant nor have any mechanism for excluding members. Scope for individual action does remain considerable.

5) (yes, my dividing up again)

Where we are apprehensive about our ability to ‘lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace’ (Eph 4:1-2), then it is reassuring to note that St Paul is under no illusions as to how difficult it can be to relate to those who are different within Christ’s body.

Members who are otherwise completely mutually incomprehensible (as seeing is to the ear, hearing to the eye – 1 Cor 12:17) can nonetheless hold together, if they can recognise that Christ lives in the other.

This is something we learnt in the past in Southern Africa, and continue to experience across vast ethnic, cultural, political and socio-economic differences. More than this, we have found that, even in painful difference, we are better able to discern God’s truth together than apart.

All this is why we hold together in ongoing debate across the whole spectrum of views on human sexuality – we do not agree, and our differences are sharp and painful, but we will not turn our backs on brothers and sisters in Christ and instead will keep wrestling together. This is why we are proceeding towards adopting the Covenant.

Yes. But why then endorse a Covenant which does envisage turning 'our backs on brothers and sisters in Christ', a course of action propounded by the Chair of the Covenant Design Group?
==========

The Archbishop's letter is a powerful plea for the Covenant and I have no doubt that Rowan Williams was very pleased to receive it. It is a plea as much to the Churches of the Global South as to western liberal critics.

But it is all predicated on the Covenant being something that is not actually present in the text: a unity based on mutual love that transcends our differences, of a love of God greater than our grasp of God's truth.

If the the Archbishop of Cape Town can mould the Covenant in the image of his vision I'd be delighted. I'd vote for him to be Archbishop of Canterbury, if anyone asked. But I fear the reality is far from his generous, loving and wide embrace.

Jeffrey John to sue the Church of England

2012-01-15T17:41:00.004Z

The Very Rev Jeffrey John,
Dean of St Albans

[Update here - a less straightforward story, it seems.]

I think the Sunday Times and the Mail both had this story but, except behind the paywall, the Mail got online first:

'I'll sue Church of England if it bars me from being bishop,' says gay dean

The Very Rev Jeffrey John, Dean of St Albans, has instructed an eminent employment lawyer to complain to Church officials after being rejected for the role of Bishop of Southwark.

It's a very interesting move and I'm happy to bet that the CofE will settle out of court rather than face a full hearing.

The court will, I suspect, have regard to two issues. The first is that of discrimination. Second, the extent to which the Church has followed its own rules.

Inevitably this touches on the clash between the desire of (some in) the Church to place its structural prejudices in front of human rights.

However the view that there is no bar to the preferment of gay people who are celibate was recently set out in a formal legal opinion by William Fittal (Guardian article, the opinion - pdf). It will also do John's case no harm that a memo by Colin Slee was later prepared (and leaked) setting out the appalling manner in which the appointment committee was conducted.

Slee said of the meeting: "We had two very horrible days in which I would say both archbishops behaved very badly. The meeting was not a fair consideration at all; they were intent on wrecking both Jeffrey John and Nick Holtam equally, despite the fact that their CVs were startlingly in an entirely different and better league than the other two candidates …

I would guess that the CofE will be liable for considerable damages.

Assuming John wins his case, whether in the tribunal or outside it, the question then will be: would the Church prefer to keep barring gay people from posts and keep paying compensation, or will it change its recruitment process to ensure that (at least celibate) gay people are not discriminated against?

We shall see.

(Pink News and the Guardian also picked up the story. And I nearly missed MadPriest.)

Secularism and Freedom of Conscience

2012-01-15T12:36:00.000Z

The Rev. Dr. Michael Jinkins,
President of Louisville Presbyterian
Theological Seminary and
Professor of Theology.

There is an interesting review of Jocelyn Maclure and Charles Taylor's essay, Secularism and Freedom of Conscience by Michael Jinkins on his blog Thinking Out Loud.

Jinkins applauds Maclure and Taylor and then makes a couple of points that sound (without having read the original) as though they quite undermine their thesis.

He points to a risk in the essayists' approach that their method could lead to "treating one another's differences of conviction and conscience as mere matters of individual taste and preference." This can only trivialise our real differences.

Instead he suggests two other starting points. First:

that the reason we are confronted with so many ways of accounting for ultimate meaning is not because of our finitude or ignorance, but because there really are a variety of ways to be faithfully and fully human.

And, second:

... as humans we do not disinterestedly choose from among a range of axiological options, but are formed in and through communities that that believe certain things in certain ways and value particular things and ideas in particular ways.

Therefore,

We must learn to speak from within our different cultural and religious communities—the very communities that divide us— if we are to learn and to be heard. The great challenge of our time is to live and flourish together though we are different in important respects, but similar in ways that are just as important. To succeed at this critical endeavor, we must acknowledge how the groups and communities that shape us value certain ends and not others. We will not convince one another of our mutual rights to live and practice our faith (or our right to claim no faith at all) as long as we regard one another merely as atomistic ideological or religious consumers.

Amen. But, as with all liberal-minded approaches, it is not sufficient. How can these starting points, which I would endorse, deal with those who reject Jinkins' tenets? How should we respond to organised groups which would use violence of any kind to destroy groups with whom they disagree?

These are not questions antithetical to the starting points Jinkins lays out. They are questions as to how such liberal values can be taken into alien territory without losing their integrity.

Covenant, conflict and the idea of heresy

2012-01-14T08:44:00.000Z

This post - one of a series of linked posts looking at the conflict prevention and conflict resolution aspects of the proposed Anglican Covenant - focuses on the underlying model

A summary of the Covenant's conflict prevention and conflict resolution mechanisms is here.

~~~~~

The core problem with heresy is that it is not amenable to conflict resolution. Conceptually heresy cannot be negotiated with, merely rejected. Practically those engaged in combating heresy cannot, in good faith, debate with those they regard as heretics.

The heresy model
The model underlying the proposed Anglican Covenant - and the conflict the Covenant is supposed to help us all out of - is the perennial conflict between orthodoxy and heresy.

Historically, heresy may be seen as ideas once within the range of Christian expression which, in retrospect, were judged unacceptable (Alister McGrath, Heresy: A history of defending the truth).

But in the moment of conflict, and without the hindsight of the historian, it is essential for combatants to put the issue in binary and oppositional terms as starkly as possible. The orthodox must be divided from the heretic with a deep gulf or high fences or both: Them or Us; In or Out.

orthodoxy has always sought to maintain
the deep tensions at the heart of the gospel
Michael Jinkins, quoted here

Thus conflicts over doctrine are necessarily presented in simple terms:

I, and those with whom I align myself, are orthodox, godly and good. You, and those you align yourself with, oppose and undermine me in my collective orthodoxy.

Consequently, and much worse, you set yourself up in opposition to God: you are heretics, your notions heretical and you are bad, ungodly, antiChrists.

Therefore I have a compelling duty to act against you: to expunge both heresy and heretic from the church. There is no room for compromise.

Accusation of heresy
An accusation of heresy does not mean that there is heresy. What an accusation does do is:

First, to assert that those making the accusation have the theological competence to determine what is orthodox, whether or not they have the organizational standing to act.

Second, to challenge church leaders to do something. Those making the accusation implicitly (and often explicitly) accuse bishops, theologians and anyone with perceived authority, of connivance with heresy by their inaction. There is seldom anything bishops can do - they are wrong if they act and wrong if they don't. This merely stokes the fire.

Third, an accusation of heresy binds those making the accusation much more closely tightly together with their allies. This is because they share a common enemy, because they must maintain the gulf between themselves and the heterodox, because they are on the side of God and good, and because theological wisdom, strength of argument or spiritual acuity are not enough: success comes from force and numbers.

An accusation of heresy is the most powerful of power plays in a church because it invokes God on one side of a debate and no structure and no-one, not even the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, has authority to dismiss the accusation.

Heresy and governance
An accusation of heresy is not merely a theological matter. It is also inherently a matter of church governance. 'Success' in doctrinal conflict lies in two outcomes: the expulsion of the heresy and heretics and also the realignment of power structures within the church to the benefit of those who made the original accusation.

This is why bishops and church councils are so effectively trapped in the midst of doctrinal conflict. Their impotence is exposed as they fail to resolve irresolvable differences. Therefore, as they have evidently failed, their role they must be changed.

Shifting the focus from the issue in contention to organizational change itself sublimates an intractable issue into something practical and attainable.

The substance of organizational change is critical because it will answer the answer: where does power lie in the new arrangement of seats?

Heresy and Covenant
The Covenant is the outcome of an accusation of heresy. The alleged heresy is that some parts of the Anglican Church have accommodated to postmodernity when the whole Communion should have stood against modern times as critic and judge. The fundamental equality of persons embedded in human rights is the core heresy: it destroys structures of authority.

However this formulation is much too vague. To get the blood running a narrower focus is always needed. Sexuality (the place of women as well as homosexuality) is symbol and substitute for the larger issue. For example:

... it grieves us deeply to observe many Anglican churches in the west yielding to secular pressure to allow unacceptable practices in the name of human rights and equality. Beginning with the undermining of Scriptural authority and two millennia of church tradition, the erosion of orthodoxy has gone as far as the ordination and consecration of active gay and lesbian clergy and bishops, and the development of liturgies for same-sex marriage. (Communiqué of the Global South Primates during their visit to China in September 2011, para 12.)

The key organizational problem faced by those who regarded elements and areas of Anglicanism as heretical was that the Anglican Communion was not a Church. It was, and currently still is, a voluntary association of autonomous churches. Therefore an accusation of heresy by one part of the communion against another had nowhere to go.

Accordingly, first, some Provinces took arbitrary action by disregarding the convention which said that one member of the Communion should not intervene in the affairs of another. (A history of AMIA in its own words.)

Second, some proposed that the Primates meeting together should have effective power over the 'faith and order' of the Communion. But not enough of the Primates were happy with this responsibility.

The Covenant is thus a compromise. Superficially it proposes to leave the elements of the Anglican Communion (Provinces and the 'Instruments of Communion') untouched. But the conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms that it proposes will fundamentally change all the elements of the Communion and their relationships with one another.

The Covenant and excommunication
Apart from the terrible perversion of the Inquisition the sole effective penalty the Church has always had against heretics has been excommunication.

The offender is expelled from the community of the faithful. The church is thus cleansed and restored to holiness and the offender, in the divine economy, will suffer divine judgment.

Hence the central ironies of the Covenant:

First, churches are asked to bind themselves to one another in order to create the capacity to expel one another.

Second, in order to determine orthodoxy a member a church must give up its existing capacity to determine orthodoxy. Anglicans are asked, as churches, to come together to become one Church.

How it all ends
Doctrinal disputes do not end when structures change. Changing structures won't change anyone's mind. Disputes end when people are fed up with them. Then the protagonists can't keep their supporters together, people find better things to talk about and campaign funds dry up.

There is, however, always a legacy of hurt and embittered people: those who participated in the conflict and those unwillingly caught up in it.

Heresy and conflict resolution
The whole conceptualisation and narrative of heresy excludes the basic notion of conflict resolution.

Practice, of course, is another matter. Heresy is about the timeless absolutes of Truth, God's Word, the One Faith. The reality is that fallible human beings in countless committees and councils make the decisions.

Two caveats

I know the proposers of the Covenant insist that there will be no loss of autonomy for participants (explicitly in paragraphs 4.1.2, 4.1.3). But it is a fiction: the engine at the heart of the Covenant works only in one direction - to steadily subordinate churches to world-wide central structures. There is no countervailing structure in the Covenant. The Covenant will usher in extensive change across the Communion the essence of which is that Provinces will not have the capacity to determine their own doctrine. Thus they will lose an essential element of ecclesiastical autonomy.
There are cynics, self-servers and manipulative people throughout the church. However I am not in any way questioning the personal integrity or the faith of those who instigated and pursued the road to a Covenant. On the contrary: I believe that the great majority of those involved in this process are doing so for the most honest and important of reasons - to bring the church back to what they regard as the right relationship with God. I think they are profoundly wrong, but I don't think they are bad.

~~~~~~~~~~

A summary of the Covenant's conflict prevention and conflict resolution mechanisms is here.

Covenant and conflict: definitions

The Lady

2012-01-13T13:02:00.000Z

I know this is outside the normal diet of this blog. But I highly commend The Lady (Wiki). I found the film immensely powerful and moving.

It is a glimpse of how normal brutality is in so many parts of the world and how extraordinary is the sustained dignity of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Primate watching

2012-01-13T12:18:00.000Z

The veteran watcher of nature's marvels has produced another film with stunning graphics and insightful dialogue:

2012-01-12T23:32:00.002Z

Truro Church, Fairfax, Virginia. One of the
churches restored to The Episcopal Church

By Associated Press, via the Washington Post

FAIRFAX, Va. — The Episcopal Church should be restored as the owner of several historic churches in Virginia, a judge has ruled, years after the denomination was essentially evicted by local congregations dismayed with Episcopal leadership’s liberal theology.

In a 113-page ruling issued Tuesday night, Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Randy Bellows reversed a ruling he made in 2008 giving custody to the conservative congregations. The Virginia Supreme Court overturned that ruling and ordered a new trial.

.....

It is unlikely, though, that the Episcopalians in Virginia will be able to return to their churches in the immediate future. The judge still has to construct a final order to put Tuesday’s ruling into effect, which will be complicated: It involves 42 separate deeds, as well as sorting out various personal property within the church. The one minor victory Bellows gave to the conservative congregations was that they could keep any donations and personal property associated with the churches that they acquired since the split.

It's the final chapter of this book, but it's not over yet. More here ...

Covenant and conflict: definitions?

2012-01-11T15:34:00.000Z

This is the second post looking at the conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms of the proposed Anglican Covenant. It suggests that there is significant ambiguity over three key aspects of the Covenant: what constitutes an offence under its provisions, what a 'shared mind' is and how it is obtained, and the underlying purposes of the mechanisms it outlines.

A summary of the conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms of the proposed Anglican Covenant is here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Define: (1) an offence under the Covenant

One prior question is the nature of the potential offence under the Covenant.

I am assuming on reasonable historical grounds that the issues which divide will be doctrinal. And even if the presenting issue is not necessarily doctrinal the arguments will be conducted on those grounds. (Because doctrine - the teaching of the church as both noun and verb - is what binds us together and what divides us.)

A quiz from the Magistrates Association - how many
offences can you see?

The only offence under the Covenant is 'that an action or decision is or would be “incompatible with the Covenant”.' This would seem to cover offences against (a) doctrine: section 1, (b) ecclesiology: section 2, (c) unity: section 3, and (d) proper procedure: section 4.

Thus, in effect, any sins of omission or commission in almost any aspect of the life of a church may potentially be “incompatible with the Covenant”.

It is true that no-one can predict where the next big doctrinal row will blow from. Nonetheless the phrasing of the offence under the Covenant is immensely wide.

Define: (2) A shared mind

Where a shared mind has not been reached the matter shall be referred to the Standing Committee. (4.2.4, see 3.2.4)

This concept has run through the various drafts of the Covenant but it has never been defined, nor has there been any suggestion as to how a definition should be arrived at.

So:

Whose minds have to be shared for the Communion to have a shared mind?
What degree of sharing constitutes sufficient sharing? Should their be a vote? In which case, who should vote? And should there be a super-majority - say 66% - as opposed to 50%+1 in order to establish that minds are shared? Or would there be multiple votes in the different Instruments of Communion?
Would a majority vote of the members of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion be sufficient politically even if it is legally?
And, before any vote can happen, who formulates the question? What degree of precision is necessary?
What happens after the vote? Will failure to come to a shared mind be definitive - or will there be repeated votes till some agreement is reached?
Who has a veto? Could the Archbishop of Canterbury, even in theory, veto something when other Instruments say they have a shared mind? Could the shared mind of the Primates be undone by the unshared minds of the ACC?
Or is the mind of the church sufficiently shared when someone - the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion or the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Primates - declares that it's shared? Or that it's not.

Furthermore:

how long should a matter be considered before anyone can or should say that the moment to determine that minds are shared has been reached?

A shared mind map for eliminating stress

What would be the test or trigger to move from debate to decision?

The people who make this judgment on timing hold the key to the whole conflict resolution process - it will be a point of immense power in Anglicanism.

The mind of Christ?
There is also a slightly worrying touch of hubris in the Covenant:

we seek to affirm our common life through those Instruments of Communion by which our Churches are enabled to be conformed together to the mind of Christ. (3.1.2)

The implication is that Anglican convergence as envisaged by the Covenant may be equated with every closer conformity with the mind of Christ.

So it's both comforting and worrying that this sentence is immediately followed by:

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)

It is comforting in its reaffirmation of a traditional understanding of Anglican relationships supported by a quote from the Lambeth Conference of 1930.

The worry lies in the apparent dissonance between this statement and the reality of the Covenant: that it will usher in a central legalistic structure, create a greatly strengthened global executive, replace loyalty by contractual relationships and marginalise the counsel of (almost all) bishops in conference.

Define: (3) The goals of Covenant processes - what is it really about?
There is a range of potential objectives for the conflict resolution processes envisaged in the Covenant and it would be foolish to limit them from the start. However some sense of what is envisaged - or what would not be included - might help assess the possible reach and consequences of the Covenant.

Doctrinal agreement
There are two possible formulations of doctrinal agreement:

Either there is agreement on what Anglican doctrine is.
Or there is agreement as to what is unacceptable within Anglicanism.

The first is a maximal agreement delineating beliefs and demands a high degree of conformity.

Agreed doctrinal texts are common and often valuable. The extensive ecumenical agreement set out in Baptism, Ministry and Eucharist is a useful example. It is not prescriptive and also outlines those areas where member churches do not agree, sometimes with recommendations for directions of travel. But in its essence it is a voluntary agreement attained with no possibility of coercion.

The Covenant contains the instruments of determining doctrinal difference (conflict resolution). However any Covenant agreement is likely, given its origin in contention between groups with different views, to be used as the basis of coercion - even if it is the passive-aggressive form of coercion envisaged whereby every other member may turn its back on the offending Province.

The second form of agreement - setting out what is unacceptable - is an attempt to set a fence around what may be tolerated. Such an agreement would be more inclusive than the alternative. But the problem is that there is never any clear-cut place to draw any line across the spectrum of belief. Only in retrospect is is possible to say with any confidence what was, and was not, acceptable. Merely making and statement and drawing a line doesn't in fact change anyone's mind. Furthermore, because theology is not an exact science, it is very hard to patrol such a fence given differing emphases and formulations of the same issue.

In an earlier era, John Hapgood, Archbishop of York, argued against an attempt to put a fence round doctrine. Consider cattle farming in Australia, he said, they need no fences despite the vast open spaces - they simply maintain good water holes and the cattle don't stray far. I'm not comfortable with the correlation of Christians and cattle, but otherwise the analogy works for me.

Behavioural agreement
Because doctrine is so difficult to delineate with sufficient juridical precision prospective combatants turn to the behavioural expression of doctrine.

In nineteenth century England the Church Association stopped prosecuting Anglo-Catholics in the courts for their beliefs and turned instead to their ritual. Ritual was governed by law and breach of it was much easier to evidence. Ritual expressed belief and was thus seemed an acceptable substitute route to their main goal of eradicating ritualism and reasserting the unalloyed Protestant nature of the Church of England.

Caxton's printing press:
you can suppress ideas
but not stop them.

At first it worked. Courts declared certain ritualist practices illegal and 5 people were imprisoned. But coercion didn't work. Those imprisoned were regarded as martyrs and, eventually, the courts and bishops simply bent with the wind. The courts did not want to be associated with something that merely exposed their inability to enforce their decisions. Bishops began to veto prosecutions. The Church Association's last fling of the dice in prosecuting Bishop King provided an opportunity to bring prosecutions to an end. Thus the prosecutors achieved the opposite of their objective - the effective legalisation of ritualism within the Church of England.

The same has happened with sexuality. The doctrinal basis that conservatives wish to attack has been expressed in the organizational changes which accept all people as full members of the church - irrespective of their gender or sexual orientation. The attack on the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire was a substitute for a more general attack on the acceptance of modern mores within the Church.

I predict matters will eventually go the same way as the attack on ritualism, but we are not yet at the end of the pain.

Organizational agreement
Organizational change is the goal of the Covenant and will be its inevitable outcome.

If the goal of expelling the North American churches from the Communion is achieved there will be a tectonic shift in relations between provinces. If it is not achieved or only partly achieved (which is entirely possible) there will probably also be a tectonic shift, though in different directions, depending on the actions of the provinces of the Global South.

Either way the next few decades is going to continue to be an Anglican mess. Out of it will, I predict, come a strengthened and reinvigorated church which will not embody what any of the combatants currently desire for it. Such will be the effect of either enforcing a resolution to conflict or of continuing to avoid a resolution in the face of powerful demands to do so.

In the end, it's all politics.

~~~~~~~

A summary of the conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms of the proposed Anglican Covenant.

2012-01-10T20:45:00.001Z

From Zimbabwe's News Day

Ex-bishop Kunonga

Excommunicated Anglican Church Bishop, Nolbert Kunonga, who is now running the independent Anglican province of Zimbabwe has assumed the role of a “Zanu PF commissar and is behaving like a party spokesman”, a political analyst and a Cabinet minister have said.

This follows Kunonga’s open declaration of his support for President Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF in the next elections before describing Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and MDC-T party as an “embodiment of evil”. more...

This will come as no surprise to anyone.

Covenant, conflict prevention and resolution

2012-01-09T12:30:00.000Z

This post is effectively a close re-writing of the relevant sections of the proposed Anglican Covenant. I would encourage you to read the original.

It is the background to a forthcoming series of posts offering a critique of the conflict prevention and resolution proposals. I plan to post these over the next two or three weeks.

~~~~~

Finding ways to resolve conflicts in the Anglican Communion without fracturing the communion in the process was a key objective of the proposed Anglican Covenant.

The Covenant outlines two strands to meet this goal.

First, conflict prevention, is designed to predispose provinces away from conflict by greater mutual engagement, entanglement and understanding. To sign the Covenant is to give a prior commitment to seek constructive and shared routes away from future conflict.

The second strand, conflict resolution, establishes a process to address conflict when it becomes intractable.

(The related issue of how some provinces within the Covenant and others outside it are supposed to operate is too complex to contemplate until all, or almost all, provinces have declared their hand.)

Strand 1: conflict prevention:

Adopting the Covenant itself. Signatories declare their prior willingness to enter a non-destructive conciliation processes should potential conflicts arise (3.1.1 and 3.1.2). In particular signatories' 'common life' will be 'conformed together to the mind of Christ' through the mediation of the 'Instruments of Communion' (3.1.2 and 3.1.4). By inference this would exclude setting up alternative structures in the Global South or anywhere else.
The 'central role of bishops as guardians and teachers of faith, as leaders in mission, and as a visible sign of unity,' is affirmed (3.1.3). This reasserts the episcopal character of Anglicanism and also disavows any super-guardianship of the faith for the Primates' Meeting, contrary to the will of some in the Global South.
Any one of the 'Instruments of Communion' - The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates' Meeting - 'may initiate and commend a process of discernment and a direction for the Communion and its Churches.' (3.1.4)
In the normal course of events, and in the absence of any particular point of conflict, signatory provinces will re-orientate their way of working to be much more integrated with the Communion as a whole.
Specifically, each Province agrees (a) to 'have regard for the common good' of the whole Communion in its internal decision making, (b) to support the Instruments of Communion with personnel and cash, (c) to take on board the 'work' and 'counsels' of the Instruments of Communion, and (d) to have a presumption in favour of accepting its 'recommendations'. (3.2.1) At the same time each province will 'respect the constitutional autonomy' of every other province 3.2.2.
Clauses 3.2.3, 3.2.4 and 3.2.7 together are designed to reduce the occasions of potential conflict by creating Communion-wide processes of debate, reflection, prayer and study as the normal condition of the Communion. This is particularly important when innovations in one place or area may give other people elsewhere cause for anxiety (4.2.3). Where there are 'matters of common concern' Covenant signatories commit themselves to seek a 'shared mind' across the Communion according to the tests of Scripture, 'the common standards of faith', and canon law.
If, however, despite all this communality conflict should arise then each signatory agrees, first, to move with care and caution (3.2.5) and, second, to engage in mediated conversations with a willingness on all sides to 'see the process through' (3.2.6).
The 'functioning of the Covenant' - centrally these conflict prevention and resolution functions - will be monitored by the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion on behalf of the Instruments of Communion (4.2.2).
There will also be a mechanism, agency or institution in each signatory church whose job is to 'oversee the maintenance of the affirmations and commitments of the Covenant in the life of that Church, and to relate to the Instruments of Communion on matters pertinent to the Covenant.' (4.2.9)

The underlying thesis is that greater integration will lead to greater harmony. But, when it doesn't ...

Strand 2: conflict resolution:

Key to the process is the 'question'. There is ambiguity around what exactly constitutes a question in this context but the scale seems to run from 'concern' at one end to complaint at the other. '... questions may be raised by a Church itself, another covenanting Church or the Instruments of Communion.' (4.2.3)
A question (complaint) triggers a process (or, equally likely, leads to an intensification of a process already under way) to find a 'shared mind' across the Communion (3.2.3).
In the absence of a shared mind the matter is referred to the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion. Despite the fact that the SCAC have already been monitoring the matter and, presumably, various of its international groups have already engaged with the issue, responsibility is passed to it directly for a further intensification of negotiations. Considerable discussion between the Instruments of Communion is also envisaged (4.2.4).
Yet the only power granted the SCAC is to ask a province to 'defer a controversial action.' (4.2.5).
Then, should the request to defer be refused, 'the Standing Committee may recommend to any Instrument of Communion relational consequences which may specify a provisional limitation of participation in, or suspension from, that Instrument ...' (4.2.5).
When everything has failed, and no agreement may be found, the SCAC, with advice from the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates' Meeting, may declare that '... an action or decision is or would be “incompatible with the Covenant”.' (4.2.6) As the trustees of the Anglican Communion the members of SCAC cannot be instructed to make a particular decision.
On the basis of the same advice the SCAC '... shall make recommendations as to relational consequences which flow from an action incompatible with the Covenant.' (4.2.7) This is the crunch. Recommendations are to be made to the Churches of the Communion or to the Instruments of Communion (apparently not both). The recommendations will reflect the impact of the action or decision that is deemed incompatible with the Covenant: specifically the extent to which communion is impaired or limited, and the practical consequences which follow.

* * *

The outline given in the Covenant is clearly insufficient. A great deal more work on the detail will need to be done before anything like an adequate structure is created.

I think this will generate a whole new library of Communion-wide rules and procedures that will look increasingly like a unified canon law that will send its tendrils into every part of each Anglican Church. It is quite possible that this work is being done though not yet made public.

Support for Bishop Gandiya

2012-01-08T21:46:00.002Z

The Most Revd Thabo Makgoba,
Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town
and Metropolitan of the Anglican
Church of Southern Africa

Archbishop Makgoba has issued a public call for the police in Zimbabwe to stop persecuting Anglicans.

His press release says,

"I deplore the shocking action of the Zimbabwean police on Tuesday in preventing the clergy of the Diocese of Harare from holding their annual prayer retreat at Peterhouse School.

"I call on President Mugabe to ensure that the religious freedom of all Zimbabweans, and especially persecuted Anglicans, is respected, and to instruct the police to allow the churches freedom of assembly and worship.

"We affirm Bishop Chad Gandiya, his clergy and people at this time. As they share in the sufferings of Christ, may they gain strength from the experience and never give in to a cynical and sinister government. ...

"I also call on our ecumenical friends and our partners in the Anglican Communion to ask their governments to put pressure on Zimbabwe to end this persecution."

The police, of course, reject this interpretation of events,

Police spokesman, Oliver Mandipaka said the meeting had to be broken following concerns members of a splinter Anglican group led by Bishop Nolbert Kunonga, could have tried to meet in the same private school.

“Judging from past experiences, these meetings have turned violent. It was on that basis that we advised them to disperse,” Oliver Mandipaka told the German news agency dpa.

“People must correctly interpret police actions. We were just being proactive.

Report here.

The Nigerian Sunday Tribune says,

Bishop Gandiya told VOA's Ntungamili Nkomo that he is encouraged by the support from the regional primate, adding the police should stop harassing his followers.

"We were told that we were supposed to seek permission for out retreat, and yet under POSA (Public Order and Security Act) that's not the case," Gandiya said.

Political commentator Brilliant Mhlanga of the University of Westminster in London said Mr. Mugabe can not stop Kunonga from harassing his rivals because ZANU-PF sees him as an asset.

What do we get if we get the Covenant?

2011-12-10T12:49:00.001Z

Apologies that the papers under discussion here are somewhat dated. I am grateful to my colleague Leonardo Ricardo for drawing my attention to the paper from the Province of South Asia which (with so much else) I had missed.

I blog it now because it continues to be relevant: the terms of signing the Covenant seen from Singapore are not the terms seen from where I sit.

Michael Burrows, Bishop of Cashel and Ossory,
and promoter of the Covenant in Ireland

Ireland subscribes
In May the Church of Ireland "subscribed" to the Covenant.

In doing so the Irish intended to subordinate the Covenant to the Church in Ireland; they were not willing to subordinate the Church to the Covenant (Press Release). Were they conning themselves? Mark Harris pointed out that they didn't really have the option: the only choice on the table was - take it or leave it.

But was something else going on? Did the Irish (or, at least, those in the know) believe that once the Covenant was in place all that would happen would be another round of negotiations?

To put it another way: what do we get if we get the Covenant?

Here the Church of South East Asia (wiki) has been very helpful.

A history of the Covenant
Their Preamble to the Letter of Accession (also May 2011) set out a history of how the Covenant was created. It stresses the significance of conservative Provinces in the creation of the document dating back to the Second South-to-South Encounter Kuala Lumpur Statement in 1997.

I find the historical narrative largely persuasive when seen through conservative glasses, The story is predicated on the "unscriptural practices in some parts of the Church" and the providential way the 'crisis' enabled the diverse churches of the global south to create a shared identity and structures of consultation

It's not the whole story. (1) It omits contributions from England and other western sources. (2) The Archbishop of Canterbury is mentioned twice (outside quotations): to restate an instruction given to him by the Primates and, second, to disapprove a decision he made. It would seem that the future of Covenanted Anglicanism does not accord primacy to the Archbishop, his heirs and successors. (3) It ignores the listening process that was also agreed at Lambeth 1998. (4) It also leaves the impression that 'border crossing' followed, rather than preceded, the consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson.

(l-r) Bishop Albert Vun, Diocese of Sabah)
Bishop John Chew, Diocese of Singapore
Bishop Bolly Lapok, Diocese of Kiching
Bishop Ng Moon Heng, Diocese of West Malaysia

But for those global south churches which wish to remain within the Anglican Communion it is a persuasive and legitimating account.

The terms of accession

The Preamble "also outlines the raison d'être for the Church of the Province of South East Asia’s agreement to sign the Anglican Communion Covenant.":

Churches that accede to the Anglican Communion Covenant need to subject their common life to the reforming and transforming work of the Holy Spirit, so that the Communion may be built up until all “reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4: 13). The Anglican Communion should adopt more uniform processes in the election and appointment of bishops, to ensure that such processes are not held hostage to local politics and to parochial understandings of the episcopal office.

For the Province of South East Asia, therefore, it is perfectly clear that the Covenant does indeed subordinate provinces to its provisions. Local church order must be changed to fit the programme.

Furthermore:

our accession to the Anglican Communion Covenant is based on the following understanding:
(a) that those who accede to the Anglican Communion Covenant will unequivocally abide by Lambeth 1998 Resolution 1.10 in its spirit and intent;
(b) that those Provinces and Dioceses whose actions violate Lambeth Resolution 1.10 as well as subsequent Primates Communiqué statements that have placed a moratorium on the consecration of gay bishops and the authorization and implementation of public rites for the blessing of same sex unions, are expected to rescind their actions, and bring their public doctrine and practice in line with Lambeth 1.10, before acceding to the Anglican Communion Covenant; and
(c) that Churches that accede to the Anglican Communion Covenant should bear authentic witness to the orthodox faith by an unequivocal commitment to the standards of moral and ethical holiness as set by Biblical norms in all aspects of their communal life. (Mt 19:4-6; Rom 1:21-32; 1 Cor 6:9-11; Gal 5:16-26; Eph 5:3-14; Col 3:5-14; 1 Thess 4:3-12; 2 Tim 3:1-5; Heb 13:1-5; 1 Pet 4:1-11; 2 Pet 2:13-22; Jude v18-21; Rev 18:1-8).
(d) that the Primates Meeting, being responsible for Faith and Order, should be the body to oversee the Anglican Communion Covenant in its implementation (Anglican Communion Covenant Section 3.1.4.IV and South-to-South Encounter, Fourth Trumpet, 21).

Thus they sign the Covenant with one pen and with another write: everyone else must meet the demands of South East Asia.

Martin Reynolds (last comment at TA) also noted that, as part of the National Council of Churches of Singapore, the Anglican Church sought to criminalise lesbianism for the first time in the country's history and to sustain harsh punishments for gay men. There is nothing irenic in this Provinces' Covenant.

So what does it mean to sign the Covenant?
Clearly the Church of Ireland either signed a different Covenant, or it must withdraw its decision if these are the terms, or it expects the Covenant to be merely a staging post to further negotiations.

What would the Church of England be signing up to if it voted in favour?

What is the point of a treaty if we all think we're signing up to different things?

Coalition celebrates success

2011-12-06T15:08:00.001Z

Lesley Crawley, Coalition Moderator

No Anglican Covenant Coalition
Anglicans for Comprehensive Unity
noanglicancovenant.org
NEWS RELEASE
DECEMBER 6, 2011
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COALITION CELEBRATES SUCCESSES, PLANS FOR THE FUTURE

LONDON – After slightly more than a year, the No Anglican Covenant Coalition can point to several successes, according to Coalition Moderator, the Revd Dr Lesley Crawley.

Four dioceses of the Church of England have rejected the Covenant (Birmingham; St. Edmundsbury and Ipswich; Truro; Wakefield). Where synod members were provided with balanced background material (i.e., material that presented both the case for and the case against the Covenant), the synods have voted it down.

Four dioceses, where little or no material was presented other than officially sanctioned pro-Covenant material, have approved the Covenant (Lichfield; Durham; Europe; Bristol). A total of 23 diocesan synods must approve the Covenant for the matter to return to the General Synod.

The Tikanga Maori defeated the Covenant at their biennial runanganui, virtually ensuring the defeat of the Covenant in the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia.
The Philippine House of Bishops has indicated they will not support the Anglican Covenant, likely ensuring the defeat of the Covenant in the Episcopal Church in the Philippines.
Individual dioceses in the Anglican Church of Australia (Newcastle; Sydney) and The Episcopal Church (California; Eastern Oregon; Michigan; East Carolina; and others) have indicated their opposition to adoption of the Covenant.

“In November 2010, we launched the Coalition to ensure that the case against the proposed Anglican Covenant would be given a fair hearing,” said Dr. Crawley. “Today we are seeing our efforts bear fruit. When fair debate has been allowed, the results have been gratifying.”

Critical to the success of the campaign, especially in the Church of England, has been the support of the Coalition’s Episcopal Patrons, Bishops John Saxbee and Peter Selby, who have encouraged diocesan bishops to allow for a full and open debate. In the coming months, 37 more English dioceses will vote on the Anglican Covenant. Only 18 additional no votes are needed for the Church of England to reject the Covenant.

The No Anglican Covenant Coalition continues to provide assistance to those researching the proposed Covenant. The Resources section of the Coalition website is regularly updated with new material and analysis.

In the coming year:

The Episcopal Church will consider the Covenant at its General Convention in July in Indianapolis, Indiana. The Executive Council of the church has circulated a draft resolution to reject the Anglican Covenant.
The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia will consider the Covenant in July at its General Synod/Te HinotaWhanui in Fiji. Given the rejection of the Anglican Covenant by Tikanga Maori, rejection of the Covenant by that church seems assured.
The General Synod of the Church of England is scheduled to consider the Covenant at its July session. However, unless 19 more diocesan synods have approved the Anglican Covenant by that date, the matter will not return to General Synod.

“Anglican Communion Office officials have repeatedly responded to criticism of the Anglican Covenant by suggesting that critics have not read the document,” said the Coalition’s Canadian Convenor, the Revd Malcolm French. “Ironically, we find that the more familiar people are with the document, the more likely they are to reject it. The Coalition is committed to ensuring a proper and balanced debate in churches throughout the Anglican Communion.”

The No Anglican Covenant Coalition is an international group of Anglicans dedicated to protecting the Anglican Communion from the dramatic changes that would be effected by the Anglican Covenant.

2011-11-27T11:01:00.001Z

Alan Perry points out in passing that nothing in the proposed Anglican Covenant is defined.

The implication of this is, that if it is ever passed, there will be immediate pressure from all sides to work out what the signatories have actually signed up for. Lawyers (and Alan's a lawyer) will set to work with forensic relish.

Consequently, rapidly, there will be 'expositions', 'explanations', 'clarifications' of the Covenant. On current practice it is unlikely that much of this will be made public. These documents will effectively change the reading of the Covenant and guide its implementation.

I suggest that the priorities will be:

To clarify the procedures implicit or explicit in the Covenant. (A legal and bureaucratic process.)
To monitor and record the procedures and their results.(A largely bureaucratic process.)
To relate the development and consequences of Covenant procedures to non-signatory members of the Anglican Communion. (A primarily political process.)
To relate the Covenant procedures to the Instruments of Communion, not least to clarify the legal position of the Anglican Consultative Council in relation to decisions made under Covenant rules. (A legal and political process.)

Taken together these will amount to a slow revolution in the Anglican Communion undertaken by the Anglican Communion Office with the support of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Norman Doe has contributed systematically to the Covenant
The procedures to implement and monitor the Covenant procedures will effectively become a new set of constitutional laws - canons - governing Communion relations.
The Communion will be reshaped: the difference of treatment of those inside and those outside the Covenant process will not lead to a two-speed Communion (except, possibly, in a transitional phase). Either all will eventually sign the Covenant or, more likely in my view, the Communion will split apart. (This is setting aside the possibility that some bodies could sign the Covenant despite not being members of the ACC.)
Over time the ACC will be destroyed or assimilated. This is because it is the only Anglican international body currently with a legal constitution and therefore clashes between ACC and Covenant processes cannot simply be finessed away.
The record of consultative processes, and especially their results, will eventually lead to a single statement of the doctrine of the Anglican Communion. When an issue has been decided under the Covenant process no Province could subsequently act independently on that issue without risking eviction. As issues accumulate to the centre haphazardly, as decisions in one area have implications in others, and as anomalies proliferate there will be growing pressure to codify the whole. Doctrinal case law will become doctrinal statute law.

You might have thought that these matters should have been thought through first. After all, signatories should have some idea of the consequences of signing.

But it's a matter of the politics of the possible.

When more detailed procedures were set out as an Appendix the the St Andrews draft of the Covenant they caused an outcry that threatened to derail the Covenant process. Therefore those pushing the Covenant decided to retreat into generalisations in order to get agreement first and set out the detail afterwards. (My 2-page flow chart of the procedure - pdf)

Can you imagine a company or country working this way and surviving very long?

In practice, and if the Covenant is ever passed, the Anglican Communion Office and their lawyers will first go back to the earlier work on the St Andrew's Draft. I make this prediction with great confidence - after all, where else would you start?

That is to say: a procedure that very few people liked, which threatened to stop adoption when it was made public, will in fact (with further amendments and refinements) be the initial basis of Covenant procedures.

As my mother used to say, it'll end in tears.

Seven constitutional questions on the Covenant

2011-11-22T15:17:00.001Z

Apologies that this is a one-off posting - and is much longer than is sensible. I blame 'changed circumstances' for an inability to post regularly.

1) The consequence of signing the Covenant
The Covenant will bring in significant changes to the way the Church of England is governed and there has been no public debate, to the best of my knowledge, about its consequences.

I believe that adopting the Covenant would entail constitutional change in the Church of England at least as great as the Synodical Government Measure of 1969 and the Enabling Act of 1919. Both these steps opened the government of the Church to wider participation by its members. The adoption of the Covenant could - depending on the manner in which it is implemented - enable top-down, possibly unaccountable, decision making on key areas of the Church's life. It could preclude certain areas of discussion from General Synod's agenda. It could lead to a significant concentration of information and power in very few hands.

The Covenant and its defenders insist that signatories would not lose their autonomous status within the Communion. However the Covenant clearly anticipates that Provinces will self-censure and it is not clear that this will be done openly and with full debate. I suggest that the way the Covenant has been introduced to date at the very least gives grounds for suspicion. See my Bouncing the Covenant through the Anglican Communion. It was written in 2004.

Unless strong safeguards are in place it is likely that General Synod will find it has inadvertently come to an agreement which will constrain and distort the conduct of its business in ways it had neither anticipated no intended.

2) Where we are now
So far, if I've got this right, 2 Dioceses have voted in favour (Lichfield and Durham), and 4 against (St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, Wakefield, Birmingham and Truro).

But there's a long way to go yet. So it seems worth raising at this stage a number of questions about the manner in which the Covenant would be implemented in England and, in particular, how it would relate to General Synod.

3) Constitutional change
The two key elements of the Covenant which I believe will change the workings of the Church of England are,

the creation of a 'mechanism' - a person or office - 'to oversee the maintenance of the affirmations and commitments of the Covenant in the life of that Church, and to relate to the Instruments of Communion on matters pertinent to the Covenant.'(4.2.9), and
the right of any signatory to the Covenant, or Instrument of Communion, to raise '... questions ... relating to the meaning of the Covenant, or about the compatibility of an action by a covenanting Church with the Covenant,' (4.2.3)

I put them in this order because I think this will be the order in which the impact of the Covenant will make itself felt.

First an appointment will be made of a Covenant Compliance Officer (or some other less specific title). Undoubtedly the role will be as an intermediary or ambassador: to listen to all participants, to represent the views and concerns of the Church of England to other signatories of the Covenant and vice versa, and to communicate to the wider Communion any action or decision or, critically, proposed action or decision that might cause concern. In all these actions timing will be critical.

Second, questions could be asked under Section 4 of the Covernant. And, when asked, action will need to be taken in response.

Third, between these two points there are two, equally important, stages. The first, implicit in the Covenant (4.2.3) is bilateral or multilateral talks to iron out any difficulties. This avoids reference to the Standing Committee unless no agreement 'shared mind' is reached.

But it is at least as likely that another Province (say) would raises a matter entirely informally, that is without invoking the Covenant procedures.

The massed ranks of Synod in session

In fact, I suspect that this will be the normal mode by which the signatories to the Covenant will work. The majority of Provinces the majority of the time will want to foster good working relations - and this cannot be done by rushing off to the Standing Committee of the Anglican Church on the faint whiff of something undesirable in a far-away land. But a quiet word at a meeting, a private letter or a request for information might well be the way to proceed.

And this may pose a bigger challenge to the constitutional government of the Church than formal proceedings.

4) Constitutional questions
So my questions are:

1) Where will power lie over the Covenant Compliance Officer or Office?

Who will write their terms of reference and specify the boundaries and priorities of their work?
Who will appoint, task and oversee them?
Who will hold them to account?
Who may and who must be informed and consulted on day to day issues?
Who may veto any proposed course of action?

The options, I guess are: the Archbishop of Canterbury, the House of Bishops or General Synod. (Incidentally, I don't think an appointment can be made without further marginalising the elected members of the Anglican Consultative Council.)

2) How willthe Covenant Compliance Officer or Office related to General Synod?

Will Synod have any powers to direct the work, or to direct them not to pursue a particular line of work?
How will communication between the Office and Synod be structured and maintained?
Will Synod appoint a committee to over see the work? Or have a liaison committee? Or, at the other end of the scale, will it merely receive a report on past work and, if so, will there at least be an opportunity for informed questioning?

3) What will happen if there is a bilateral or multilateral expression of concern about any proposed or anticipated course of action which may come before General Synod?

Where will primary responsibility liefor responding to such concerns?
Who will be involved in discussions and negotiations?
How will agreement (coming to a 'shared mind') be ratified? Will it bind General Synod? Will a simple majority suffice?

And, more generally,

Are there areas of decision making which should not be subject to external scrutiny? If so, which areas?
Should there be a means of voting (a Section 8 referral for example) by which the CofE as a whole could over-ride the concerns of the complainant and continue to pursue its own course?

Under the Covenant a single Province can lay a complaint and it is up the the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion to pursue it through further conciliation (4.2.4), by asking a Church to delay a decision (4.2.5), or by declaring the action or decision “incompatible with the Covenant” (4.2.6 - in inverted commas in the original). 'Relational consequences' may then follow.

4) What will happen if there is a formal expression of concern by the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion about any proposed or anticipated course of action which may come before General Synod?

In addition to the previous questions:

Under what circumstances would it be appropriate for the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion to impose sanctions on the CofE (e.g. by requiring members of international consultative bodies to step down because the CofE as a whole is pursuing an unpopular course)?
Who would be responsible for the CofE's response to such a measure?

5) And, much earlier in the process, what will happen if there is an informal expression of concern about any proposed or anticipated course of action which may come before General Synod?

I suspect this is the critical test. Given that the point of an informal expression of concern is to avoid making waves in public:

Who may and who must be informed?
At what point, and by what route, should Synod be consulted? (E.g. would consulting the Standing Committee be sufficient? Will there be provision for the full Synod to debate an issue with press and public excluded?)
Should the expression of concern be made solely to the House of Bishops?

Of course the exact details of the expression of concern will make a difference - my focus is on what constitutional mechanisms are envisaged or would be appropriate. My fear is that the instinct of officers would be to restrict discussion and constrain debate. The consequence could be that accountability will be limited and the role of Synod in the government of the church will be undermined.

6) How would the CofE discharge its duties under the Covenant towards developments in other Provinces?

What areas of concern should the Covenant Compliance Office monitor on behalf of the CofE? And, see (1) above, how will these be reported back, and to whom?
Could any member of Synod initiate a debate expressing concern about actual or potential developments in other signatory Provinces?
If not, what other routes are available to raise an issue of concern? And how can trivial or vexatious complaints be avoided?
Could Synod mandate its Covenant Compliance Office to initiate the proceedings envisaged by Section 4.2.3 of the Covenant? If not, who could?
How will a judgement be made that the response has been satisfactory? Will a further debate be necessary? And who decides?

Times are hard enough already without
signing an open cheque.

If Synod is not involved in this process how will it be possible to avoid damaging tensions within the CofE given the likelihood of a range of views on any issue?

And, last but not least, as I've asked before,

7) What will this all cost?

In the normal course of events Synod is not able to take a decision without examining the financial implications.

Why is the Synod's procedure not being followed in this case?

Now it may be that someone somewhere has drafted answers to all these questions and more. In which case it would be useful to have the proposals public so voters can see some of the ramifications of the options before they make their decision. But if no-one has addressed the constitutional implications then I'm even more worried.

A clear NO

2011-08-04T23:36:00.001+01:00

The Presiding Bishop and Prime Bishop Edward Pacaya:

differences and continued dialogue

It seems that the Philippines is the first Province to reject the Covenant. They do so from a firmly conservative perspective but they are not proposing to turn their back on the rest of the Communion. .

The reported grounds for rejection are ecclesiological - it's unAnglican.

The Bishops of the Episcopal Church in the Philippines have rejected the proposed Anglican Covenant, saying the proposal to centralise authority in London was an “un-Anglican” attempt to “lord it over” the Communion’s national provinces.
...
Bishop Malecdan stated the Philippine Council of Bishops “noted that the document provides for the creation of a Standing Committee that will be the ‘Supreme Court’ as it were, for the Anglican Communion to lord it over all Anglican Provinces. This, to the Council is very un-Anglican because of the autonomous nature of each Anglican Province. Hence, we are not in favour of the document.”

Their way forward is not to follow GAFCON into schism. Rather, as evidenced at the Dublin Primates' meeting:

We recognised that Anglicans have many disagreements as a Communion but we still can be agreeable to one another. We can still move towards reconciliation as sisters and brothers as a gift of God to us by persistently talking about our differences. This is the beauty of Anglicanism.

“Unity in diversity which is a recognized uniqueness of the Communion is preserved,” the prime bishop said.

The logic being that, if the GAFCON churches are to go their own way then there is no need for the Covenant. Therefore the remaining churches are grown up enough to persist in their differences.

It also means that other provinces uncomfortable with the Covenant no longer need to equivocate by finding a form of words which seek to avoid them 'adopting' the Covenant. They can just say no.

Also at The Lead.

Alan's Covenant Questions

2011-07-31T18:10:00.000+01:00

The Anglican Church of Canada

Alan Perry, at Insert Catchy Blog Title Here, has been writing solid, sustained pieces on the Covenant and its detrimental consequences for the Communion and individual Provinces.

In May he summarised the attitude of too many senior people in the Anglican Church of Canada that the Covenant is mostly harmless. He's being told, in summary,

I don't actually believe that the Covenant will accomplish what it is supposed to do. It won't really address the tensions in the Anglican Communion. But I don't believe that it is the Abomination of Desolation, either. I don't think it's going to have any ill effect. Recommendations of Relational Consequences are nothing to worry about.

This is precisely the attitude that ACO business managers have tried to encourage to make the medicine slip down the throats of the Provinces' various legislatures:

Of course it's not harmless. An awful lot of energy, political capital and a publicly undisclosed amount of money has gone into pushing the Covenant through because those who still believe in it believe it will be effective.

It will, its promoters hope, enable the rest of the Communion to expel TEC and ACoC for their wilful and reckless ways in including homosexual people as full members of the Church. Or, more broadly, for not taking the anti-modern stance which the conservative evangelicals have adopted and which they have focused and symbolised in attitudes to homosexuality. Rowan Williams put Archbishop Drexel Gomez in charge of the programme after he had, with Maurice Sinclair, edited a booklet setting out the necessary steps to punish the north American church. That was why Gomez was chosen.

The Covenant will centralise the Communion and give unprecedented powers to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to the Anglican Communion office. It will re-write the Anglican Communion with barely any discussion about whether this is the Communion we want or need. Alan writes more recently about the value of provincial autonomy. Let us hope this will not be of merely antiquarian interest.

The Covenant is not 'mostly harmless'. It's pernicious in its intent and dishonest in its route to adoption. No good can come of it.

Alan goes on to explore Canada's legal analysis of the Covenant and the serious concerns that this document raises. It poses questions which are important for all Anglican Churches, not simply for Canada. His answers to the questions are here.

The first two questions are general ones and should be addressed by all Provinces:

1. Should the imprecision in the definitions of a number of terms used in the Covenant concern General Synod when it considers whether or not to adopt the Covenant?
2. Should the lack of natural justice and procedural fairness in section 4 concern General Synod when it considers whether or not to adopt the Covenant?

There was greater precision and clarity of process in earlier drafts. These were attacked and removed from the text. But if the Covenant mechanism are ever invoked these processes (or something very like them) will have to be created. Only now, because they are not in the text or its appendices, they will be under the control of the bureaucrats and almost certainly not open to scrutiny or challenge. (My 2-page pdf of the suggested process is here.)

The next 4 questions address consultation and the impact on the constitution of the Anglican Church of Canada. In England we are assured that there will be no canonical or constitutional impact. But, even if that is true, does that mean it is proper to seek to force other provinces to fit themselves to our norms? I think that a steady process of homogenisation is built into the Covenant.

I believe the Covenant was deliberately phrased to avoid any clash with the Established nature and legal constraints of the Church of England. That courtesy has not been extended to other provinces. There will, I strongly suspect, be legal and constitutional questions in at least USA, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, and the United Churches of North and South India.

Some version of Question 7 should, I think, be put in each Province:

7. Is the strong synodical place of the laity in the Canadian Church sufficiently upheld in the decision-making processes in the Covenant?

In England, it seems to me, the place of the laity is increasingly marginal and subordinate in constitutional terms - but not in reality. They pay, and they pay an ever increasing proportion of the church's current bills and future liabilities. Perhaps the question here should be:

7. To what extent does the decision making processes in the Covenant enhance or diminish the place of the laity in the synods of the Church of England?

Question 8 asks what would be the difference if the ACoC used some verb other than 'adopt' to accept the Covenant. And the answer is none. You're in or you're out.

Question 9 asks what the consequences would be of not signing. This deserves more exploration. I believe the legal answer is 'not a lot'. The ACoC (and any other church which didn't sign) would still be a member of the Anglican Consultative Council which remains the only legally constituted body of the Communion.

Politically, however, the answer is unclear. The General Secretary and the Archbishop of Canterbury have already taken it upon themselves to deselect members of particular committees on the grounds that that are members of a province which is not complying with one or other of the moratoria that are supposed to be in place - and appoint people too, if they see fit. They have no legal or constitutional grounds for these actions and they are certainly prejudging the outcomes of debates that are not yet concluded. (And, you might ask, why bother with a Covenant if General Secretary and the Archbishop already act as though there is one. It's clearly superfluous.)

The Covenant won't do what it says on the tin. It will reshape the Communion in ways I believe will be wholly deleterious to the Communion. What is the point of passing global powers to a tiny group and then giving them only one power - the power to get rid of people and churches? Isn't the consequence obvious?

Pressure mounts on the Vatican

2011-07-26T12:15:00.000+01:00

From the New York Times:

Ex-bishop William Morris of Toowoomba

More than 150 Roman Catholic priests in the United States have signed a statement in support of a fellow cleric who faces dismissal for participating in a ceremony that purported to ordain a woman as a priest, in defiance of church teaching.

Well, not surprising in the States, perhaps. But the article also cites 300 priests and deacons in Austria signing a 'Call to disobedience' and, in Australia, the bishop of Toowoomba, Willaim Morris, has been forced to resign after saying he would be prepared to ordain women and married men.

According the the GENERAL DECREE regarding the delict of attempted sacred ordination of a woman (2007), any one who

attempts to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the woman who attempts to receive a sacred order, incur an excommunication latae sententiae reserved to the Apostolic See.

But it is not enough to punish actions. The Vatican seeks to expunge even discussion of the idea from the church.

In large part the proposals for ordination reflect an increasing shortage of celibate men training for the priesthood. The 'Call to disobedience' is a call to more extensive reform:

The initiative ... suggested saying a public prayer at every Mass for church reform; giving Communion to everyone who approaches the altar in good faith, including divorced Catholics who have remarried without an annulment; allowing women to preach at Mass; and supporting the ordination of women and married men.

The response, predictably, has been to seek to expel or silence those calling for reform. The lineal descendent of the Inquisition, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, works in secret. Those accused are not allowed to see the evidence against them and may not know they are accused until they are condemned. Attempts to seek a just procedure have been ignored.

There are effectively two possible sentences (and some more minor penalties derived from these). There are expulsion and silencing. The former is the more severe temporal penalty, the latter the more spiritually abusive.

To seek to control the words a person may or may not use, to immure them in silence, to bar them from discussing certain issues are actions which are destructive of the soul, of the person's interior relationship with their own integrity and with God. Power, authority, dictate: and the Spirit is silenced.

I don't suppose the Vatican is too worried, though even they may catch the straws in the wind. One day, another Pope will simply change direction. Then the church will always have believed in the ordination of women and married man - only it had not been fully discerned by the start of the twenty-first century. Along the way no-one will have been burned to death, thank God, but they will have been badly hurt and will carry the scars for the rest of their lives.

The death of a pioneer

2011-07-24T17:10:00.000+01:00

From the New York Times:

The Rev. Mary Michael Simpson, the first Episcopal nun to be ordained a priest and the first ordained woman to preach a sermon in Westminster Abbey, died Wednesday in Augusta, Ga. She was 85.....Even though the Church of England said it had no official objection to women joining the priesthood in the Anglican Communion — which includes the Episcopal Church — lay opinion and the private views of the clergy were often more conservative. By 1978, women had become priests in Anglican Communion churches in the United States, Canada and New Zealand, but not yet in the United Kingdom.

Canon Simpson addressed the issue directly in a sermon at Westminster Abbey on April 2, 1978, in which she asserted that the church treated women like “second-class Christians.”
“Christian creativity for the present age must not depend on male leaders,” she told a gathering of about 700 people. “Woman’s contribution — from women properly trained and authorized — is essential.”

...

And as a male in the church, I say Amen.

Drought is natural, famine is not

2011-07-21T16:15:00.000+01:00

Somalian women wait at a refugee centre in
Mogadishu in July 2011. Reuters

Paul Rogers comments on the famine in the horn of Africa:

Since the previous trans-national famine (1973-74), he says,

There have since been nearly four decades of “development”, with contrasting outcomes: the world has grown very much richer yet the great bulk of the new wealth has benefited the richest 1.5 billion in a global population that the United Nations estimates will reach 7 billion in October 2011. A far wealthier world is more divided, and contains nearly twice as many malnourished people, as was the case in the early 1970s. These facts alone are a damning criticism of the way the world economic system has evolved, and in particular of the neglect of food security for tens of millions of poor and vulnerable people.

Climate change will make things worse.

See also: Brian Stewart's Famine in Africa: Global mismanagement of the first order

One inevitable consequence [I add] is that many more people will be forced to migrate. Yet the rich world's barriers against forced migration from the poorer world have been growing higher and higher.

It is a recipe for greater conflict. How little can the wealthy world pay to keep the poor away from their doors and out of sight?

1-page Covenant introduction

2011-07-19T16:11:00.000+01:00

Coalition Publishes One-Page Covenant Introduction

The No Anglican Covenant Coalition has today published a one-page handout titled “A Short Introduction to the Anglican Covenant.” The document is intended to provide a brief but useful view of the Covenant for those unfamiliar with it. It describes the Covenant, explains where it came from, and offers an evaluation of its possible effect. Anglicans around the world are encouraged to download “A Short Introduction” and to use it to educate their fellow Anglicans.

A news release about the new handout can be found here. A letter-size version of “A Short Introduction” is available here and an A4 version is available here.

A brief summary, honest

============

And while, we're in the area, it seems that there have been no takers of the invitation to make the case for the Covenant.

The probable reason, of course, is that we all live in our bunkers and those in favour of the Covenant are unlikely to want to be seen supporting their opponents.

But at the same time silence does help those who want to bounce the Covenant through the Provincial decision making bodies. From the beginning they have recognised the difficulties of getting it through so many different fora - and have tried to keep publicity to the minimum necessary. In England at least all official documentation is in favour of the Covenant, and none of the difficult issues have been given a public airing. It's a strategy of success by keeping people, voters, uninformed.

It is entirely undemocratic - but, the Church is not a democracy. Therefore a vote of members' representatives is an embarrassment and a problem, not an opportunity to engage people openly and constructively.

And I can give chapter and verse of statements made in the early days of the Covenant process which evidence this approach. More recently the failure of Dioceses and the Church of England nationally to distribute arguments against the Covenant alongside supportive literature bears out that the initial strategy is still in place.

Airbrushing gay people out of the church

2011-07-18T20:16:00.000+01:00

Lesley, of Lesley's blog, has posted another account to a Church's response to the possibility someone was gay:

Homophobia is alive and well in UK churches

Though, to be fair (as some of the comments point out), not in all UK Churches.

Getting worse in Zimbabwe

2011-07-17T13:36:00.023+01:00

You may well have seen these reports, but I'm afraid I missed them until now:

Bishop Gandiya worshipping in the open air in Harare (USPG)

From Titus Mission 26 June 2011, from an open letter from Bishop Chad Gandiya,

Last Sunday a Kunonga priest forced himself into the house of our priest (Rev’d Muzanenhamo) at Mubayira in Mhondoro while he was on trek taking services. He was informed and came back immediately and pushed Kunonga’s priest out of the house. The police came and instead of arresting the intruder they arrested our priest and charged him with assault. He spent the night in cells and we had to bail him out.

That same evening our newly ordained Deacon was evicted from the church house by Kunonga’s people. Police were called and they sided with those evicting our Deacon. In both cases there were no eviction orders as is required by the laws of the land.

From George Conger, 24 June 2011

The Bishop of Masvingo writes from Zimbabwe that Dr Nolbert Kunonga has expanded his depredations beyond Harare and has tried to take control of a diocesan mission hospital in the southeast of the Central African nation.

In an email to the Central African bishops and supporters in the West, Bishop Godfrey Tawonezvi said the breakaway Bishop of Harare “continues to destabilize” the mission hospital in Daramombe “in an effort to forcibly take control of the institution.”

Dr Kunonga’s invasion of the Diocese of Masvingo comes amidst heightened uncertainty in the bitter dispute. On 2 June, Bishop Chad Gandiya of Harare also sent an email to supporters reporting that 16 Anglicans had been arrested by the police after protesting against the invasion of the Rev Julius Zimbudzana’s home by supporters of the breakaway bishop. Several priests were jailed overnight on trumped-up charges, Bishop Gandiya said.

From the New York Times, 29 May 2001,

Nolbert Kunonda sitting pretty

Mr. Mugabe, a Roman Catholic, recently denounced black bishops in established churches as pawns of whites and the West, singling out for special opprobrium Catholic bishops who have “a nauseating habit of unnecessarily attacking his person,” the state-controlled Herald newspaper reported.

But it is leaders of the Anglican Church, one of the country’s major denominations, who have lately faced the most sustained pressure. Nolbert Kunonga, an excommunicated Anglican bishop and staunch Mugabe ally, has escalated a drive to control thousands of Anglican churches, schools and properties across Zimbabwe and southern Africa.

“The throne is here,” declared Mr. Kunonga, who has held onto his bishopric here in the sprawling diocese of Harare through courts widely seen as partisan to Mr. Mugabe. He has also been backed by a police force answerable to the president, whom Mr. Kunonga describes as “an angel.” ....

and on page 2

Mr. Kunonga’s aim, he and his adviser, the Rev. Admire Chisango, said, is for their breakaway Anglican church to control about 3,000 churches, schools, hospitals and other properties in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana and Malawi — a treasure accumulated since Anglican missionaries first arrived in what is now Zimbabwe during the 19th century.

...

Mr. Kunonga, who earned a Ph.D. in religious studies from Northwestern University and Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary outside Chicago, says that his success in controlling church properties is due to the persuasiveness of his legal arguments in court, not Mr. Mugabe’s influence.

“I’m superior intellectually and from a legal point of view,” he said. “I’m very superior to them.”
He vociferously supports Mr. Mugabe, and like many loyalists, he has been richly rewarded. The ZANU-PF government bestowed on him a prized commercial farm confiscated from white owners. Mr. Kunonga argued that his forebears had lived on that very spot for centuries and that he was just repossessing what was rightfully his.

....
One recent Sunday morning, the magnificent Anglican Cathedral in downtown Harare, once thronged by thousands of congregants, was mostly empty. Mr. Kunonga sat among a smattering of parishioners.

Not far away, a thousand Anglicans packed a plain rented church not under his authority. Beneath bare light bulbs dangling from unfinished rafters, they joyously danced and sang to the beat of drums and listened raptly to their charismatic young priest, Barnabas Munzwandi.

As the priest’s voice wafted into the yard outside where the overflow crowd sat on the grass, Victoria Ngwere, a 38-year-old housewife, explained that she had pushed her son, Raymond, miles in his wheelchair to get to services rather than attend a Kunonga church nearer her home.
“Here I can feel free,” she said.

Amen. All here.

Lenin in the Cathedral

2011-07-16T14:48:00.001+01:00

We attended the Durham Miners' Gala last Saturday (pronounced gay-la, not gar-la, if you're not from these parts; it's important). (Wiki, news report, BBC slideshow, Guardian Video)

I took a lot of pictures of the backs of people's heads

It was a tremendous day. We went at the invitation of a retired miner who says he's only missed 1 Gala since he first began at the pit. The brass bands played and over 100 banners marched past for hour after hour in a tremendous display of historic and current solidarity, community pride and a continued determination to fight for the workers against the bosses. There are no deep mines left in the area now.

The rain was on and off. As the very last band played outside the County Hotel the heavens opened and everyone was drenched. There was a band of young women playing (I'm not sure which band) and a police van with lights and barely audible siren pushed passed them. They were soaked to the skin, pushed out of order and never stopped playing - and they deserved and got the longest and loudest applause.

We didn't go the the race course for the fun fair or the speeches. We went, at the urging of our host, to the service at Durham Cathedral. 'Makes the hairs on the back of my head stand up' he said, but not mine.

The Cathedral was packed and there was a tremendous atmosphere. But the service seemed disconnected from the events outside. It felt like a standard Cathedral service tailored for this audience as they might for the Mother Union or Durham County Council Civic Service. Nothing about it echoed the enthusiasm or community feeling of the marchers. It didn't even pick up the religious iconography and slogans of the banners. It certainly didn't pick up the dominant feeling of working class solidarity. Somehow the choir's anthem (Hubert Parry's Hear my words) just didn't cut it in style or content. Many sang the hymns but, where we were sitting at least, a lot didn't.

We also commemorated the deaths of 81 miners at Easington Colliery and 9 at Eppleton Colliery in two disasters 60 years earlier. Memories are long and these events are a constant reminder not only of the dangers miners face (one of the trapped Chilean miners was a guest of honour at the Gala) but also that these dangers and deaths were for the sake of the owners and bosses. (The industry had been nationalised in 1947.)

The sermon was a bit of a disappointment too. The motif was: coal, caused by sustained pressure, aeons later shaped the region and brought wealth and work. This time of pressure will also pass and new hope will grow (see what Sunderland has done).

It missed the note of opposition to pressure, of standing together against the oppressor who is not a force of nature but the beneficiary of an unequal society. It missed the fact that it is people who are crushed, not merely trees, in our inequitable ordering of society. It was, I think, meant to offer people hope despite the present troubles but it felt as though it was just counselling fatalism.

Perhaps I shouldn't have expected any different. After all the Church, epitomised in Cathedrals, embodies hierarchy and status, not nascent egalitarianism.

So I was highly intrigued that, amongst the new banners that the Bishop of Jarrow blessed, was that of Follonsby Lodge. The original had been destroyed in 1938 in a fire.

The banner has Lenin in the place of honour. (Wiki has the advice "Not to be confused with linen, a textile made from flax.")

J. Keir Hardie was a founder and leader of the Independent Labour Party. He was the first independent working class Member of Parliament.

Arthur Cook was leader of the National Union of Miners during the 1926 General Strike and subsequent lockout. (Autobiography)

George Harvey was one of the leaders of the Ruskin College strike,1909, a founder of the Plebs League and the Industrial Union of Britain. He was also the Wardley colliery check weighman.

James Connolly was a founder member of the IWW (the 'Wobblies'), the Irish Transport and General Workers Union and the Irish Citizen Army. He was executed by the British in 1916 after the failed Easter Rising.

What I'd love to know is, what was in the mind of the bishop as he blessed this banner?

A challenge for you

2011-07-15T20:05:00.000+01:00

My colleagues at Comprehensive Unity: The No Anglican Covenant Blog have launched a competition:

Where are the best arguments for the Covenant?

... there seems to be a dearth of argumentation on the other side, and much of what there is comes from Lambeth Palace, the Anglican Communion Office, or people who have had a direct role in producing the Covenant text.

Although there have been many reasons advanced for scrapping the Covenant, reasons that have been carefully laid out and fully explored, arguments for the Covenant seem to rely on the notion that no one can think of anything else—the Covenant is the only way forward we are told—or on what can only be called naïve hopefulness.

So, What do you think are the strongest arguments in favor of the Covenant, and where can the best articulation of those arguments be found?

And there's a prize - you can set out your arguments on the NACC blog (good taste being the only constraint).

Answer in the comments box and the platform may be yours for a day.

NoW and British conservatism

2011-07-08T14:44:00.000+01:00

William Davies in Hack-gate: the latest cultural contradiction of British conservatism? has an interesting take on the News of the World debacle, linking it to the 'unwieldy and self-destructive' character of British conservatism.

The inconsistency and incoherence of the rightwing tabloid press have always been part of its popular appeal and political strength, thereby harnessing the cultural contradictions of conservatism to its own advantage. It has represented the interests of big business and ‘white van man’ with equal gusto; it has portrayed society as decadent and lawless on one page, whilst celebrating hedonistic consumption on the next. It has demanded that the state look after the old and infirm in one editorial, then raged against the ‘nanny state’ in the next. Its exuberance lies in its irresponsibility. The tabloid media might almost have shared the motto of the French social theorist, Michel Foucault when he wrote “do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order” – except that our bureaucrats and our police are now rapidly discovering that their papers are anything but in order.

While the rest of the conservative establishment was tearing itself apart in Thatcher and Reagan’s wake, the tabloid press was benefiting and growing in influence. When Conservative politicians were caught in sex scandals during the 1990s, the tabloids harnessed outrage to sell papers. When investment banks nearly collapsed the global economy in 2008, under the guise of market ‘efficiency’, the tabloids harnessed outrage to sell papers. Whether a teenager had committed murder or been murdered, The Sun and its cohort scarcely cared, so long as it was outrageous. The establishment could be represented as both institutionally racist (the Stephen Lawrence case) and institutionally liberal (the ‘flood’ of immigration), without any concern for consistency.

Free from the constraints of consistency or responsibility, the conservative media has been the great survivor of the ‘new right’ coalition that emerged in the 1970s, and fragmented in the 1990s. One question that hack-gate poses is how much longer it can retain this status.

All here.

And from the Guardian:

Police are investigating evidence that a News International executive may have deleted millions of emails from an internal archive, in an apparent attempt to obstruct Scotland Yard's inquiry into the phone-hacking scandal.

The archive is believed to have reached back to January 2005 revealing daily contact between News of the World editors, reporters and outsiders, including private investigators. The messages are potentially highly valuable both for the police and for the numerous public figures who are suing News International.

Now who would have thought that anyone would could behave in such a way in the days when one 'rogue reporter' and one 'rogue investigator' were held to be the extent of the problem?

No Anglican Covenant Press release

2011-07-08T09:43:00.003+01:00

There has been coverage of the recent NACC press release on Ekklesia and in the Anglican Journal so far, as well as a number of blogs both for and against the Covenant..

There were a couple of paragraphs in the Church Times.

It's also been included in the Church News Ireland lists and Christian News Watch.

Rowan, Beware MitCoE

2011-07-07T20:59:00.001+01:00

Grandmere Mimi

Time to head over to Grandmere Mimi's place to see what message she's bringing to the Archbishop of Canterbury when she visits the UK next week.

You'll never read the acronym MitCoE the same way again.

NoW is yesterday

2011-07-07T18:57:00.000+01:00

The sudden death of the News of the World has been announced.

Of course there are cynical suggestions as to why this step should have been taken. Perhaps it was a token gesture whereby the Sun on Sunday will imply replace it. Or maybe this is a fire break: to protect Murdoch and the rest of his businesses from taint or to evade a legal duty to compensate those the newspaper intruded on. Or both.

Tom Watson MP in full flood

However it is clear that we are not (and never were) talking about 'rogue operators'. The willingness to hack anyone and everyone, from the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to a man who helped a victim of the 7/7 bombing was systemic. A list of known names to date is here but up to 4,000 people may have been hacked and quite possibly more.

But what is clear is the complicity of all involved: the police, the DPP, politicians, David Cameron (assuming he was adequately briefed and if he wasn't he should have been) and his predecessors.

News of the World was effectively running a criminal enterprise (which included paying police officers and, in at least one case, full scale surveillance of a police officer). But it was powerful and no-one, until now, was prepared to take it on and had sufficient power to do so. Nor was it alone either in hacking or in illegally paying for information though it may have been particularly egregious .

Complacency is the least of the accusations. News of the World staff appear to have regarded themselves as above the law. That others tolerated this constitutes corrupt relationships. Insofar as police and other individuals benefited from such relationships they are personally corrupt. Insofar as regulatory and prosecution authorities, including the police, have minimised or turned a blind eye they participate in and further such corruption.

So perhaps it's more accurate to say, the whole media-police-politics nexus is corrupt. But within that nexus not every individual is tainted. Tom Watson MP at least must count as one of the good guys in this matter.

We say peace and they chant War

2011-07-07T10:54:00.002+01:00

From SW Radio Africa

Video footage has emerged showing how police in April this year violently disrupted a church service in Glen Norah that had been organized by a coalition of churches to pray for peace in Zimbabwe. ZANU PF youths are also seen marching around the church chanting 'war, war, war.' ....

....

Under the theme "Saving Zimbabwe, the unfinished journey" the service was initially meant to have been held at St Peters Kubatana Centre in Highfields, but was changed to the Nazarene Church in Glen Norah after police camped in Highfields overnight and sealed off the venue to block access to the grounds.

Ten church goers and four pastors were arrested and taken to Glen Norah police station, where they were denied access to lawyers. One of the detainees, the MDC-T's Shakespeare Mukoyi, was brutally assaulted inside the church building.

Full story here.

Bishops back No Anglican Covenant campaign

2011-07-06T07:00:00.000+01:00

Press release

Bishop Saxbee blessing the gritters in the hope
of reducing the number of crashes. Exactly. (Story here)

The Right Reverend Dr John Saxbee and the Right Reverend Dr Peter Selby have been appointed Episcopal Patrons of the international No Anglican Covenant Coalition.

“The Anglican Communion doesn’t need a Covenant because Anglicanism is a Covenant, predicated
on grace and goodwill,” Dr Saxbee said. “If there is grace and goodwill, a Covenant is unnecessary.

If there is no grace or goodwill, a Covenant will be unavailing.” Dr Saxbee was Bishop of Lincoln from
2001 until his retirement in January of this year.

Bishop Peter Selby

Dr Selby, Bishop of Worcester from 1997 to 2007, has been a supporter of the Coalition since its launch last November. “This proposed Covenant is not the solution to the tensions in the Anglican Communion,” he said. “It will inevitably create a litigious Communion where every serious disagreement will become a possible occasion to seek a province’s exclusion.”

“More and more questions are being raised about the potential pitfalls of the proposed Anglican Covenant,” said the Reverend Dr Lesley Fellows, Moderator of the No Anglican Covenant Coalition.

“We have consistently seen that support for the Covenant tends to collapse in the face of full and fair discussion and analysis. We are very pleased to welcome Bishops Selby and Saxbee as our first Episcopal Patrons. They are well respected in the Church of England and throughout the Anglican Communion. We expect that their views on the Covenant will persuade many more people to take a harder look at the risks inherent in this radical proposal.”

Wippel's new range

2011-07-05T22:43:00.000+01:00

Wippell's are rumoured to have already ordered the new episcopal ensemble for 2014. A source in the buying department also let slip, on consideration of a G&T heavy on the G, that the new colours will be lilac and light blue. The cut will fit their new customers.

On a too well-buried page Women and the Church - WATCH - has set out the results of the first 10 Dioceses to vote on whether women may be consecrated as bishops in the Church of England.

According to Inclusive Church they have all also turned down requests for extra provision for opponents, again mostly by large margins.
The detail gives great hope for the rest of the Dioceses. Only in Europe did the bishop vote against; and in its houses of clergy and laity the proposal just scraped past. In the other 9 dioceses the majorities were unequivocal. In Guildford and Chelmsford the clergy and laity voted roughly 3:1 in favour. In all the other dioceses the majority was much higher - in Birmingham there were just 4 votes against out of 86 recorded votes (including abstentions).

Can we now put the Act of Synod with all its baleful consequences behind us? Probably not. But it is time to say to those who continue to oppose women as full persons within the church that, though they may not like or want it, the church as a whole is moving on.

I'm not sure whether Wippell's, as a commercial enterprise, takes a view on these matters. But it is a shame that, as a cutting edge company in the Anglican firmament since the French revolution, Wippell's website should be almost as old as their origins.

Anglican Mission in England

2011-07-05T18:35:00.001+01:00

Looking away from the mainland from Ynys Enlli

Thinking Anglicans has the CofE's statement on the Anglican Mission in England ( GAFCON announcement and Church Times report earlier).

To summarise Lambeth speak, they're not happy. They can spot a threat at fifty paces on a foggy day.

The statement points to a lack of clarity of relations between the existing episcopal structures and to AMiE's newly appointed 'panel of bishops'. Or, as has been said elsewhere, tanks on the lawn. Pluralist has a clear take on the politics despite a somewhat meandering approach.

It then says "The issue is one of episcopal collegiality." But it isn't, it's a question of jurisdiction.

The difference is crucial. In this context to point to collegiality is to cringe before a bully, to say 'lets talk' even when you know from experience that no talking will suffice. To that extent it's willful self-deception. To be clear about jurisdiction is to make a legal assertion which can be followed by substantive action.

If people wish to leave because they disagree with the majority it is a matter for regret and repentance. But there must come a point where people of goodwill who cannot agree decide that parting is the only acceptable step. Leadership entails recognising and acting on the inevitable no matter how much it goes against the grain.

While he was passing, the Archbishop of Canterbury dropped in on the people in Kenya responsible for AMiE. We don't know what was said but we can deduce that the Archbishop was not persuasive. So the statement has the delicate words,

it seems that there were misunderstandings of the precise requirements of English Canon Law and good practice as regards the recommendation of candidates for ordination and deployment in mission.

Which, being translated, is that they were spitting feathers and using entirely unsacramental language in Lambeth Palace when they first realised what was happening - and then realised their impotence. After all, wasn't all the effort and expense of the Windsor Report and bulldozing through the Anglican Covenant supposed to end all this misbehaviour by giving the Communion to the conservatives?

With the Ordinariat clipping one wing and AMiE the other there is some prospect that the future Church of England will be smaller, more cohesive and happier. By that time the present Archbishop of Canterbury will be serving out his retirement somewhere like Ynys Enlli.

City and church

2011-07-04T21:50:00.002+01:00

It's not enough, not nearly enough, merely to see the city as antithetical to God and churches as places of alternative discourse and practice (See my previous post Church and city).

Nalanda temple, Bihar, India. This ancient seat of learning

flourished between the 5th and 12th centuries CE and is described

as "one of the first great universities in recorded history."

It's also important to acknowledge and celebrate that cities are places of human flourishing. Cities hold a critical mass of people in structures that generate so much more than would be possible in communities with smaller numbers distributed further apart.

Universities are, perhaps, one of the oldest examples of this phenomenon: pack a lot of capable people together and they come up with so much more than any of them would achieve on their own.

The arts, culture, commerce, the intellect, engineering, cooking and, inevitably, crime all flourish in cities in ways that would never be achieved in an agrarian society.

The church has been part of and has benefited from this flourishing. As beneficiary it should thank God. It is enjoined to pray for the peace of Jerusalem (Ps 122:6) and those exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon were told to seek its peace and prosperity. (Jer 29:7). More to the point, the church has no choice. Almost everywhere is city or has been landscaped by the demands of the city (for food, water, power, labour, communications). It is inescapable.

The art or goal, it seems to me, is for the church collectively and faithful Christians individually to be in-and-apart-from the city. For most faithful people, I suggest, holy living is not a search for a world-denying asceticism but is a struggle to be both Christ-centred and engaged in the quotidian business of making a living, sharing family life, growing up and growing old. Christians are normal, but they choose in some way to set themselves apart.

I don't think there are any easy answers to the immediate questions: what might a proper 'apart' be - and what would be the criteria by which to judge - and how can the separateness be a positive element in both personal growth and community engagement? These are questions of identity, to be lived out in practice in changing circumstances, characterised by judgements of value rather than doctrine, and all but impossible to determine in the abstract.

To stand apart can (should) give a critical distance by which Christians may both critique the secular world and contribute constructively to it; to do so while knowing that we are ineluctably part of the secular world should also place a critical brake on the tendency to self-righteousness and complacency.

I guess the only way is to keep practising.

White collar crime in New Zealand

2011-07-02T13:40:00.000+01:00


st matthew-in-the-city, Aukland, petition

The Wardens, Vestry and Parishioners of St Matthew-in-the-City ask you to consider:

For many centuries gay and lesbian Christians have served the Anglican Church in positions of leadership. Most though have hidden their sexual orientation. In recent times however as Western society has become more accepting of difference many gay and lesbian Christians no longer wish to hide their orientation or their relationships. There are now a number of countries that provide sacred and legal opportunities for couples to commit themselves to each other for the long-term.

In 2004 the US Episcopal Church ordained as a bishop a priest in a same-sex relationship. Due to conservative opposition the Archbishop of Canterbury asked the American church and rest of the Anglican Communion to not ordain anyone bishop who was in a same-sex relationship until the entire Communion could find agreement.

As the Archbishop of Canterbury has no authority to impose such a moratorium on another bishop or jurisdiction it had to be complied with voluntarily. Initially it was. Vigorous debate ensued. Responding to these disputes many countries declared a state of impaired communion with the American Church. This was not surprising as most of those jurisdictions were in one of the 46 British Commonwealth countries that still criminalize same-sex relationships. In 2009 the Episcopal Church voted to resume ordaining as bishops candidates in committed same-sex relationships.

...

'the Archbishop of Canterbury has no authority to impose such a moratorium' nor in all the history of the Anglican Communion has he ever had. That lack of central authority - and centralised power - had been seen as a strength on the Communion. Because of it different Communions in different cultures could rub along nicely. There were frequent disagreements and some of these on occasions these became destabilising. Yet at the same time there was a huge amount of communication across differences, plenty of mutual listening, learning and respect. Different culture and spiritual traditions may all enrich the whole.

But the desire for centralised authority and power stems from the perception that difference is the problem and narrower conformity is the answer. Hence the Covenant.

The Covenant is designed (a) to grant the Archbishop authority over the whole Communion (albeit through his overlapping roles in the Communion's consultative structures rather than directly) and (b) to reduce the degree of difference between Churches - and to do so at the bidding of the loudest and most implacable voices.

I don't doubt that the the war over the nature of the church and the substance of its teaching (not least on issues of sexuality) has caused a lot of anger, pain and distress. The answer is not to be found in greater uniformity - the answer is to be found in greater comprehension (in the older Anglican sense) and deeper listening to the varieties of the one Spirit.

And, when I looked, I saw 'God, New Zealand' had recently signed the petition.

Church and city

2011-07-01T10:59:00.001+01:00

I've been pondering on the theme of the Church in the city, specifically the church building, along these lines:

The Cathedral in Bristol, UK

At least in England but probably in the Old World generally: 1) Until mediaeval times the church ordered reality: time (the hours, the seasons), space (parish and polis), politics (against both heretics and the 'infidel'), finance (no usury). It did so to embody and proclaim a God-centred cosmology. Cruciform churches were set at the heart of the city in a conscious representation of the ordering of the universe. Other religious institutions - schools, hospitals, monasteries and convents - also helped form the city around them.

Furthermore churches - to varying degrees - hosted the life of the city physically as well as spiritually: markets, court hearings, daily politics were conducted in their precincts.

2) Nowadays the opposite is the case. Churches exclude the quotidian business of the city and are largely excluded from the places it is conducted except, perhaps and in some places, for ritual and long-since-forgotten historical reasons. Whether they continue to dominate the skyline - or not - churches are now left as largely empty spaces visited by tourists and devotees.

For the most part this is a matter of regret and anxiety, not least financially. The Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England, and no doubt others, still remember in their bones and their ordering the days when they were at the heart of the city and the loss of this position still pains them. Bishops continue to be titled after cities. Cathedrals remind them of the place they have lost. The Pope may still address Urbe et Orbe.

3) But the city is in many ways antithetical to the divine ordering of creation. (This largely from a superficial reading of Jacques Ellul’s The Meaning of the City). Cities order themselves by their own logic: once for warfare and now for commerce. Most profoundly they set themselves against God by their hubris: they are engines of human self-sufficiency and self-legitimation and, like Babel, they aspire to touch heaven by their own efforts (taking heaven here as a secular metaphor).

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Tower of Babel

4) To see churches as empty spaces in the city need not mean the acceptance of defeat or an invitation to despair. If the city is antithetical to the will of God then such empty spaces may have an equally profound role as mirror images to the hubris of the city.

Churches are not, of course, entirely empty (leaving the redundant aside, by definition). They are in fact alternative places: where death is not shunned but articulated, where an alternative to urban self-sufficiency is articulated, where people may receive help because they are in need, where there is quiet and healing and people are valued merely because they are children of God. They are places of prayer and worship through which we continuously re-orientate our relationship towards God.

The deliberate differentness of a church is inherently counter-cultural: the in-group language and concepts, the endorsement of dissentient values, strange ritual behaviour, clerical clothes and odd patterns of singing. It delights and puzzles me that (some) Christians who read newspapers that are deeply, even viciously, antagonistic to immigrants will still give money, food and time to support asylum seekers. The spiritual narrative of Christian faith, of self-giving, of death and the hope of resurrection, is deeply opposed to the narratives of success and value dominant in the city.

Church buildings may also be reversing mirrors of certain specific places in the city. The opposite of a prison or court cell – insofar as Christian practice is the opposite of policing and judgement. The opposite of databanks and the secure vaults of traditional banks – Christian knowing is indestructible (though not immutable), Christian treasures are not of this world and Church doors are (nominally) open to all. Churches are the opposite of secret places in people’s homes where trafficked women are kept enslaved. Churches are places of non-violence.

Christians and church structures are deeply conformist and have a strong tendency towards conservative social and political views and values. Yet the place that they value, because it is a place for prayer, is inherently a subversive space.

Genuine marriages only

2011-06-30T10:44:00.000+01:00

The Church of England's Communication office seems very keen on (heterosexual) weddings (see yesterday's post).

Under the strap line "Join in with us wherever you are!" (why the exclamation?) they have a YouTube marketing video basically telling potential customers, you can get married in any church you like, one way or another. Everyone welcome - baptised or not, church-goer or not, believer or not.

Is the CofE continuing to lose market share? Or is this just a distraction from the question of civil partnerships? Or is it a merely matter of needing the fees?

However the video doesn't mention the CofE's guidance on marriage of non-EEA people. The UKBA have been paranoid about sham marriages. Or, in the more diplomatic words of the Faculty Office,

Strictly speaking the law of marriage and the national immigration requirements are separate. However, there is a contemporary concern that some couples may be contracting marriage solely for immigrations reasons. (here, pdf)

For some time the CofE resisted pressure to conform to secular changes in marriage preliminaries. They have now caved in no doubt following the successful prosecution of Rev Alex Brown for his part in a series of sham marriages. To rub in its victory the UKBA sent its own guidance note along with the Church's.

I don't deny sham marriages take place, and may be arranged by organised criminal gangs, and that they are are a crime to be prosecuted like any other. But I do think the matter has been blown out of proportion. For example, the press release, in support of the need for such a change, says there were 155 arrests in relation to sham marriages - arrests, not convictions, and presumably more than one arrest per putative marriage, and with no time-scale given.

I also know that genuine marriages, contracted by "those who wish to do so to enter into the honourable estate of holy matrimony, intending a permanent and lifelong union, for better for worse, till death do them part." are threatened and, I believe, have been blocked. The reason is that sham marriages are only one of the UKBA's target.

The other target is those asylum seekers or other non-EEA nationals who wish to contract a valid marriage. Such a marriage is likely to strengthen in their a to remain in the UK. To assert or assume that such benefit is the only or primary reason for marriage for every one is as demeaning of the holy estate of matrimony as is sham marriage. It reflects the UKBA's culture of disbelief and disdain towards those it is trying to keep out.

The Case Study in the Faculty Office's guidance, which is less a case study than a statement of dfficult decisions to be made, concludes:

If the relationship is a genuine one and the parties understand the nature and import of marriage, it would be disproportionate to refuse the licence. Although the overriding interest is to ensure that the marriage is based on a genuine intention, such procedures can help to ensure that the position of the Church of England is not abused in a way which could cause it potential embarrassment or damage its position as a national institution privileged and obligated to carry out national duties.

It is the final clause which the Revd Alex Brown flouted.

And I don't see in any of the guidance notes how to appeal the refusal of a licence if the incumbent considers a couple's application to be genuinely founded.

Communications Director: mind the barbed wire

2011-06-29T18:45:00.000+01:00

Colin Coward at Changing Attitude has blogged that the Church of England's next Communications Director had better be pure, heterosexual, never-sinned-and-repented, and probably male.

Should the presumptions behind William Fittall's approach to recruitment be tested I think they would at least border on illegal discrimination. But I also have no doubt that Fittall is a good officer whose views coincide with those of his superiors. The Equalities Act and the egalitarian valuation of people that motivated such legislation (however inadequate in many ways) is a real stumbling block to those whose world view and ecclesiology is engrained with irrelevant discriminatory attitudes.

Peter Crumpler

According the the Communication Office's web page the present Director of Communications, Peter Crumpler, was, for 20 years, "in communications with British Gas". Sometimes it can take that long to sort out a bill.

More on the Bernard Mizeki memorial

2011-06-27T20:14:00.000+01:00

The Bernard Mizeki shrine

Two newspapers reported the attempt to hold a commemoration of Bernard Mizeki at his shrine last weekend. Over 15,000 people were kept away from the shrine itself and met in a nearby showground.

According to the Standard

“We have no complaints, the police were here to protect us,” Gandiya said.

“Our only complainant is about politicians in the background who did not want to see us at the shrine. My question is: Are these police the same police force we know or a rogue force, considering there is a heavy police presence at the shrine?

“Why is Norbert Kunonga commanding the police?

While NewsDay had,

Police details were posted about three kilometres from the shrine and barred Gandiya and his followers from going there.

Gandiya said his people were denied access to the Bernard Mizeki Shrine by the police who said they were working under instructions.

Bishop Chad Gandiya was evidently angry at Kunonga's continued accusations that Bishop Gandiya and the church he leads endorses homosexuality and denied he was meddling in politics (the stock question of journalists the world over).

The troubles of the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe won't be over till Mugabe and his regime is gone. That isn't going to happen anytime soon. Mugabe controls the security apparatus, has the backing of the army and barely pays lip-service to Tsvangirai and the MDC.

Bernard Mizeki, Catechist & Martyr

2011-06-26T21:36:00.000+01:00

Morning Prayer, Bernard Mizeki, Catechist & Martyr, 1896, 16 June

from ACNS

For the second year running, Anglicans in Zimbabwe have been forced to find another place to mark the memorial of African martyr Bernard Mizeki after being denied access to their official shrine.

Last year worshippers, who had travelled from all over the country, were driven away by the Zimbabwe Republic Police despite assurances from the government that they would not be disturbed or harassed.

Bishop of Harare, the Rt Revd Dr. Chad N. Gandiya called on members of the Anglican Communion to pray for the safety of the pilgrims who travel to the Marondera Show Ground this coming weekend.

“The love, courage and commitment of Bernard Mizeki to the Lord Jesus Christ and the Gospel he preached among the Mangwende people is an inspiration to us all as we suffer persecution,” he said.

“Like him our people continue to witness to God's love and grace regardless of arrests, ridicule and harassments. Celebrations this year are particularly meaningful because of what we are going through.”

....

In addition to praying, members of the Anglican Communion are asked to visit and 'like' the Facebook page I'm Standing with Zimbabwe's Anglicans to stand in solidarity with the Anglicans of Zimbabwe. The aim is to show Zimbabwe’s Anglicans that they are not alone in their suffering, that fellow brothers and sisters around the world are praying for their situation.

Just say NO

2011-06-25T11:31:00.000+01:00

When the Covenant was first being discussed a bishop for whom I have considerable respect advised ignoring it. It will, he predicted, go away. It didn't.

Now I hear that some Church of England bishops think the same thing will happen if the Covenant is adopted, that it will just fade into disuse, another Anglican document of historical interest only. It won't.

I see also that some in the US think that sections 1-3 could be endorsed without section 4. Even if this was formally on the table, which it isn't, it would be no better that passing the whole thing. Sections 1-3 presume the enforcement mechanism of section 4.

The reason why the Covenant didn't go away and won't fade away and why sections 1-3 can't be disconnected from section 4 is one and the same:

the Covenant creates a new entity, a centrally governed Anglican Church
the Covenant creates new powers and
grants those powers (and others) to the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion and, critically,
once a new entity is created and new powers placed in people's hands they will never be given up.

I am well aware that the Covenant says it won't change the internal workings of member churches but it will. The internal logic of the powers will drive it in this direction. Some provinces - the US and, I think, Canada, Australia and New Zealand at least - will almost certainly have to amend their constitution to the Covenant. Furthermore the Covenant is addressed to provinces: if dioceses or other units can act in ways the Covenant mechanisms would disapprove they will have to be brought in line - and in many places this would be a direct assault on the autonomy provinces have previously exercised.

The TEC opinion says, and I believe that to varying degrees this will apply to all provinces:

As developed further in this report, the SCCC is of the view that adoption of the current draft Anglican Covenant has the potential to change the constitutional and canonical framework of TEC, particularly with respect to the autonomy of our Church, and the constitutional authority of our General Convention, bishops and dioceses.

I am aware that the powers are phased as advisory. But they're not really. This is just a fiction to get the Covenant passed.

I profoundly disagree with the substance of the Covenant, I abominate its initial motivation of expelling TEC and ACoC from the Communion, I deplore the manner in which it is being driven through, and I despair of the kind of Church that process and product embody and will engender.

And beneath all this I believe that the desire to put coercive force at the foundation of the Anglican Communion is wholly incompatible with a Christian faith founded on a death and a resurrection.

If you have a vote or a voice, just say NO.

Hello again

2011-06-25T10:22:00.000+01:00

I see it was March when I last posted anything. I have drowned in work and other changes in my life. I'm coming up for air now because I'm on holiday - whether I can sustain posting again in the future we'll just have to see.

I'm not going to look back - I wiped 900 accumulated and unread RSS messages - but I do wish to continue to add my voice to the campaign against adoption of the Covenant.

Wakefield says NO

2011-03-16T08:36:00.000Z

The Diocese of Wakefield has rejected the Covenant.

According to email reports (in advance of a formal statement) the vote was:

Laity 10 for, 23 against

Clergy 16 for, 17 against, 1 abstention

Bishops 2 for

A magnum to the house of laity in Wakefield!

Williams, abbreviated

2011-03-10T20:24:00.001Z

Mr Catolick

You just might like to listen to this clip on Mr Catolick's blog.

It appears to be Rowan Williams talking recently about the Covenant and recorded in an echoing church. It certainly seems to have been edited - I can't image that Williams would really say or think that 'it's going to solve all our problems' - but it's not clear how much editing has been done. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that the original contained considerably more caveats and cautions.

As it is Rowan talks about the Covenant as a 'constitution', with 'punishments and sanctions'. Some of us have been saying this for some time but as a bad thing.

But I would like to see (or at least hear) the original before putting too much weight on it.

===========
Added later from email correspondence:

It is from the speech to the General Synod in November, with the ‘nots’ removed!

All the same, it makes a point.

Disestablishment?

2011-03-05T22:10:00.000Z

A British Humanist Society press release (Feb 28) pointed to the clash between the Church and the State over gay marriage as a reason for disestablishment.

‘The Church is established in England and so it is constitutionally part of the state. While it retains that status, and while it runs a third of our state-funded schools, and for as long as it has seats as of right for its Bishops in our parliament, its own internal policies are significant to the rest of society. If Dr Williams wishes to protect freedom for his Church, including freedom from any future possible interference from the state in the Church’s policies which oppose democratically made equality laws, he should be working with others, including humanists, for disestablishment.’

The National Secular Society made the same point later. This is, of course, a hook for the BHS & NSS to repeat a proposal it has long made. And pretty well whenever there is public tension between the Anglican Church and the government over policy the same solution is proposed.

But just because this is a repeated point made by usual suspects does not make it trivial and it should not simply be dismissed.

As a point of fact disestablishment won't stop interference by the state in the affairs of any church where there are public policy considerations. Nor would (or should) the CofE stop trying to influence public policy simply because its legal status had changed. But this also is secondary.

The Church's desire
Since the 1850s a remarkably consistent programme has been pursued by the leadership of the Church. It has been largely successful, though it's not yet finished.

The programme has been:

To ensure that control over the church's affairs is wholly in the hands of the church leadership. The matters of particular concern (once called the 'spiritual' aspects of governance) are: doctrine, worship and the discipline of clergy.

But, critically and at the same time:

Not to lose the privileges of Establishment; and, at least as important,
not to lose the money gifted to the Church by the state since Queen Anne's day (disendowment).

Bishop Charles Blomfield

The Church's success
In 1832-33 Bishop Blomfield (London) was part of committee which agreed to dissolve the Doctor's Commons and make the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (then being set up) the final court of appeal on doctrinal matters. It was almost incidental; doctrine cases were perceived to have died out. By the 1850s doctrine cases had sprung back into life and Blomfield now deeply regretted his earlier decision and tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to place the legal adjudication of doctrine into the hands of the senior clergy.

Over a long period and many issues powers were ceded to the church : the re-establishment of Convocation, the trial of Bishop King, the creation of Church Assembly, the 'deposited' prayer books, General Synod, 1974 Worship and Doctrine Measure. And, of course, much more; all of it fought over within the church and much of it fought between church and state.

Despite the bumpy road the trajectory has been consistent: patriate powers of governance to the church and avoid disestablishment and disendowment.

The key outstanding issue is the appointment of bishops. No matter how much rope is given to the church if bishops are still part of the legislature the government will ever quite let go of the reins.

The Church's problem
No-one likes to lose privileges, though they are fewer than they used to be. They include reserved seats in the House of Lords and thus membership of the legislature. I suspect, however, that the vital privilege, the one which would be fought most fiercely, is closeness to the monarch.

The money may be significant - between a quarter and a third of all the Church's central assets may be at risk. No-one knows how much, and there would have to be court proceedings to find out (expensive, but worth it because of the amount concerned). Though there could be a deal with the state - after all, consider on the other side how much of the nation's physical heritage is maintained out of the purses of current and historic worshippers.

I suspect that disestablishment would cause another, more fundamental shift. It would finally consummate the process of changing the church which began in 1828 with the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. From that moment on membership of the Church of England was voluntary.

So, for those of the old order left holding the baby when disestablishment came, this would be their problem:

A Church without proximity to the monarch would be forced to change its present culture of constitutional monarchy - and its emphasis on the monarchical (by contrast with the state). Its engrained aristocratic structures and instincts, its culture of deference, would creak and tear at the seams.
Any loss of money would be significant (the impact of the Church Commissioners' disastrous decisions in the 1980s is still being felt). It would have the symbolic impact of becoming a poor church and the real impact of reminding the laity that they are the paymasters.
The process of disestablishment would strip the church back to its bones. Those of its working presuppositions which are merely historic, those which have no justification in faith or function, would be exposed to a highly sceptical gaze.
Another step may follow: the voluntary nature of the church would be realised, the laity might wish to lead the way, a different kind of church may emerge. But this may just be day-dreaming.

Since the Suppression of the Clergy Act, 1533, the Church of England has been the state church. What could it be if it wasn't?

Saxbee on the Covenant

2011-03-05T13:12:00.000Z

Bishop John Saxbee, retired

And on Lesley's blog John Saxbee's speech against the Covenant - Video here.

Why do we need another covenant?

2011-03-04T18:44:00.000Z

Shamelessly ripped off from Eruptions at the foot of the volcano

“The Windsor Report,” he said. “It's just a report. When did it become like The Bible? The Covenant. Why do we need another covenant? We have the Baptismal Covenant. We have the creeds. What else do we need?”

Archbishop Martin Barahona, Bishop of El Salvador, Primate emeritus of Iglesia Anglicana de la Region Central de America

Pray for the Church in Zimbabwe

2011-03-03T21:18:00.000Z

From the website of the Diocese of Harare:

My dear Chad

This is simply a short message to let you know of our continuing prayers, and our shared thanksgiving that the Bernard Mizeki celebrations were so deeply blessed by God, despite the tough circumstances. We prayed in chapel this morning for all of you and for the police and security forces in Zimbabwe, that justice would be done in all things.

We give thanks in every remembrance of you. God bless you and all your colleagues and your people.

With love in Christ

+Rowan

=============
Beneath all the bitterness and anger of schism is the deeper sorrow of being cut off from mutual prayer. The Church in Zimbabwe faces its troubles on its own but not alone.

Any chance of a fair debate?

2011-02-28T09:14:00.000Z

I had been preparing a post in praise of soft power in the church.

The 'soft' power I have in mind is opposed to coercive power: education, discourse and debate as opposed to command and enforcement.

But the post became stuck and just seemed naive. Soft power is still power: how can anyone ensure it is used well? Is coercive power needed to guarantee that soft power is not misused? What checks and balances are possible? (Curiously checks and balances seem easier to describe and implement for coercive power.)

The recent press release from the No Anglican Covenant Campaign - Call for fair process and honest debate - illustrates the problem.

It's not just that NACC has been sidelined. It's that debate as a whole has been sidelined:

November 2010 — When the Church of England debated the Anglican Covenant, official materials prepared for General Synod members made no reference to the concerns of critics or to the case against the Covenant. This was in marked contrast to what happened in 2007, when the House of Bishops agreed that an additional briefing document presenting opposing arguments should be circulated to all General Synod members in advance of the debate.

(Note: I had some part in the 2007 paper. In fact this was a last minute concession and we were not allowed to submit a paper on the recently published Draft Covenant, but only on the principle of a Covenant and on the paper Towards An Anglican Covenant which was already redundant by then.)

November 2010 — When Modern Church and Inclusive Church placed advertisements critical of the proposed Covenant in the church press, and when the No Anglican Covenant Coalition was launched, Covenant sceptics were criticized by senior church officials for going public and "campaigning" instead of remaining silent.

December 2010 — When the draft Covenant was formally referred to English dioceses, the referral document provided a random list of quotations from the last General Synod debate, with pro‐and anti‐Covenant remarks mixed up together, followed by a purely pro‐Covenant presentation.

January 2011 — A request by Covenant opponents to the Business Committee of General Synod to circulate material setting out the case against the Covenant was rejected.

February 2011 — The Anglican Communion Office issued an official study guide and list of questions and answers for international use that neither provide a balanced look at the issues nor fairly represent the views of those critical of the Covenant.

And yet: power is needed in any structure - it's what makes the thing go.

So how can the leadership of the Communion be brought to book for their wilful misuse of power? At the moment they can't. Blog posts may annoy them and campaigns may provoke an inappropriate put-down but neither is more than a momentary annoyance.

And the Covenant will make things worse. It is designed to create new central powers and to grant the Communion coercive powers against its members under certain circumstances (to be 'effective and forceful').

Furthermore the lesson for those in power is that this form of soft power works. The Covenant will be achieved without any need for people in the pews or in clerical collars to worry their heads about it.

It is a self-reinforcing process. If keeping all but a tiny minority out of the loop leads to substantive change and more powers accrue to those inside the loop then, doing it again will only give the few even more powers, and again ...

What is lost is perfectly evident to those outside the loop: the effective engagement of the membership.

Each time we go round the loop those on the inside identify themselves more strongly as knowing what's best for the Church, as actually being the Church, to the ever greater exclusion of those outside. Criticism (never mind a campaign) is not merely annoying, it is disloyal. No-one need listen to disloyalty.

Nor will this culture remain within the elite circles of the Communion's central command. In the hierarchy of the Church each successive ring will follow the centre's lead, learn its lessons, and shape itself to fit the circle above.

My response is to seek a more open and honest discussion on the nature and proper exercise of power in the church. It is to call for a church in which every member is valued. But what I fear is more likely is that those at the centre of the Communion are in fact creating a highly unstable and potentially dysfunctional structure wholly inadequate to the needs of an interconnected world.

As facebook and twitter enable some to bring down governments the leadership of the Communion has built up a bunker mentality. It cannot be to the good.

See also: my recent blog posts Players and audience, a look at the pitiful official Study Guide, Q&A, C-, and a paper from 2007 Bouncing the Covenant through the Anglican Communion (.pdf) which identified the strategy of avoiding any serious debate.

An African theme

2011-02-26T09:42:00.000Z

I have returned to posting occasional pieces on the Anglican Church in Africa, and especially in the Central African Province - mostly culled from news reports.

Since Anglican Information disbanded, this blog has become much more narrowly fixated on the Anglican Covenant and the structures of the Communion. These are important issues and will no doubt continue to predominate.

But it is too easy to put the blinkers on and see matters wholly from a Church of England, or even white-western, perspective and to forget that things can look very different from other parts of the world.

Priorities are different in Zimbabwe compared to London. Lake Malawi is a very different from the diocese of Oxford. It's time I lifted up my eyes again and looked further afield.

Troubles in lake Malawi

2011-02-26T09:23:00.001Z

At the consecration of Bishop Francis Kaulanda

The Diocese of Lake Malawi continues to be an troubled place.

Zodiak Malawi reports that the Bishop, Francis Kaulanda, has once again suspended again Father Dennis Kayamba. He has been suspended twice before. On this occasion he is accused of refusing to report for duties to an assigned station at Wimbe in Kasungu.

However Dennis Kayamba has effectively counter-sued. He has lodged an paper with the District labour office demanding his dues from the Diocese covering the period 2003 to 2011.

Kayamba was suspended in 2003 on allegations that he joined a 'Forward in faith Movement' and misappropriating funds at St Annes Hospital.

In 2006 he was a prosecution witness alleging that Fr Rodney Hunter had been poisoned by his cook, Leonard Mondoma. (In December 2010 a court found that Canon Rodney Hunter had in fact been poisoned though it acquitted Leonard Mondoma.) (Added later: see comment below for correction)

In 2007 Kayamba was suspended for granting an interview to a Nation Newspaper reporter as part of his opposition to the appointment of Nick Henderson as Bishop.

Bishop Kalunda's appointed had been challenged in court.

The objections, which allegedly included an affidavit with 150 signatures, claimed that Kaulanda had “failed to account properly for money meant for church projects which he was supervising as archdeacon of Nkhotakota between 2000 and 2001.”

A BBC 'from our own correspondent' account of the consecration of its new Bishop is here. (July 2010)

Non-partisan in Zambia

2011-02-24T22:19:00.000Z

Bishop William Muchombo with worshippers in Zambia

Zambia is facing elections in 2011. The Church is trying to tread a careful line of encouraging debate - but debate that is neither partisan nor acrimonious.

Bishop Muchombo said,

“The clergy are free to speak on any issue concerning the running of the country but what we advise against is being partisan at any time,” he said.

Recently, some outspoken Anglican clergy have been quoted in sections of the media denouncing the Government and speaking on lines bordering on partisan inclination.

From the Times of Zambia

The church (not just in Zambia) has always had to have a careful relationship to the state - not least because churches are state-like structures which have within them an inherent threat to the sovereignty of any secular state.

The Anglican Church has been on the side of the ruling power ever since Henry VIII enforced the submission of the clergy and the church had to make the best of a bad thing.

On the other hand the expression of Christianity and its implications is inherently political or it's vacuous - yet stepping from Christian generalizations to endorsing specific policies or parties is always hazardous. Supporting the government in the name of being non-partisan is not necessarily any better than taking sides against the government.

Let us hope that the Church in Zambia can find the right balance.

Modern Church against the Covenant

2011-02-24T21:58:00.000Z

Jonathan Clatworthy

Jonathan Clatworthy of Modern Church has produced resources to support those in the Dioceses who want to argue 'Vote No to the Covenant'.

There is a long paper The Case against the Covenant

There are 10 reasons to vote against, with a brief explanation of the background

and there is a 3-point summary.

All papers are in Word or pdf format.

These are the three points:

We’d lose freedom

The CofE would surrender its right to decide for itself how best to serve the people of England: it would have to limit itself to what was acceptable in all countries and cultures.

It’s hugely over-centralised

Under the guise of recommendation, the 15-person Standing Committee would have great new powers: if the Standing Committee went against decisions of our PCCs & Synods, the CofE could be excluded from the Communion’s main bodies.

New developments would be shackled

Changes such as remarriage in church after divorce, and women’s ordination, might never have happened with this Covenant in place: our Church would lose its ability to develop and to respond to new situations or fresh insights, and could find itself forced to exclude ideas and people it wanted to include.

Thank you for all your help - more needed

2011-02-24T17:56:00.000Z

There is another article in the Newcastle Chronicle today about Leonie and Stacey.

Leonie said she was lured into coming to the UK in 2008 with promises of a better life. But when she arrived she was forced into prostitution.

The UK Border Agency and Immigration Tribunals turned down her application to stay in the UK. Now we are campaigning to ask the Home Secretary to use her discretionary powers to allow Leonie to remain.

The response to the campaign has been wonderful:

Campaign organiser Chris Carroll, from the Brunswick Methodist Church in Newcastle city centre, said: “The response has been fantastic.

“We’ve just posted another 100 letters to the Home Secretary to ask her for compassion with more being sent every day.

If you would also like to help letters and petition forms are available here.

Thank you - every voice counts.

New Archbishop for Central Africa

2011-02-22T23:22:00.001Z

Archbishop Albert Chama

ACNS and Episcopal News Service

Not a surprise, perhaps, but Albert Chama, Bishop of the Diocese of Northern Zambia, has been elected Archbishop of the Province of Central Africa.

Although officially Dean of the Province, Chama has previously described himself as the 'Acting' Archbishop. He has been seen as a protégé of the previous Archbishop Bernard Malango.

Chama attended the Primates' Meeting in Dublin in his role as Dean, thus dissociating himself from the GAFCON absentees despite his earlier attendance at last year's Global South Encounter.

The Province has a troubled and divided history. The Church in Malawi is not a happy place - and Chama has history in relation to that unhappiness.

The Anglican Church in Zimbabwe is still subject to systematic harassment and violence:

It is believed the violence against the clergymen is being orchestrated by the controversial faction of the Anglican Church led by Dr. Nolbert Kunonga, an ardent ZANU PF supporter.

On Monday, the Right Reverend Chad Gandiya, who is the current Bishop of Harare, told SW Radio Africa: “One of my fellow bishops was approached by two people who told him that they had come to kill him and that the mission is to kill all the Anglican bishops; and that is why I said we are an endangered species because from that conversation with my colleagues we are all to be killed.”

“All he was told was this had something to do with the church and that we were stumbling blocks to Dr. Kunonga’s ambition of running the whole Anglican church in Zimbabwe,” Gandiya said.

Just days after the threats a member of the mainstream church headed by Gandiya was brutally murdered last week.

“People came at night on a Friday. They raped her, they cut her mouth and genitals, and pierced various parts of her body,” Gandiya explained, “we were told it is something to do with the fact she belonged to our church, and so that leaves us to speculate.” The Zimbawean 22 Feb.

A loud voice against the Covenant

2011-02-21T13:47:00.000Z

From yesterday's Anglicans Online editorial:

The world is becoming nimbler, fleeter, more connected, and more volatile. Structures are being rethought and certainties are crumbling. There will always be bonds and boundaries, but they will be perforce more elastic and more transparent. The rigid structures that have characterised church governance and legislation will change as a result. How can they not?

The very looseness of the Anglican Communion (at least until the Tedious Years of the Anglican Covenant Discussion) is what will give it strength to move with relative ease in this new world. The gentle, unlegislated bonds of affection and the tolerance for variances of custom, behaviour, churchmanship, hymns, divorce, prayer books and the like are far more aligned with the way we live now. The old-speak of the proposed Covenant hearkens back to a world that is passing away, one of rigidity, structure, and complex mechanisms of governance.

Exactly.

AO has always, they say, sat above the politics of the Communion to provide a service to all. On this, though, they have come off the fence and decided to oppose the Covenant.

More violence in Zimbabwe

2011-02-21T13:39:00.000Z

Anglican Priest Found Dead As Bishops Seek State Protection

From the Zimbabwe Mail (and thanks to Mad Priest for spotting it).

HARARE,- The on-going fighting between rival factions of the Anglican Church has claimed the life of an elderly female priest who was found dead in her house by fellow parishioners.

Bishop Chad Gandiya

This was revealed to other church members and the media by Bishop Chad Gandiya who leads the Harare Diocese of the Church of the Province of Central Africa (CPCA).Bishop Gandiya said there were strong suspicions that the 89-year-old priest Jesca Mandeya was murdered by security operatives.

“ As a Bishop I am concerned that some of my people are going to be killed for the simple reason that they belong to a certain denomination, ”said Bishop Gandiya.

He added that both the church members and Bishops were living in fear of being killed as some of them continued to be followed by suspected operatives of the spy agency. Bishop Gandiya's Diocese is currently locked in a fierce legal battle for the church's assets with self appointed and Zanu (PF) backed Arch Bishop of the Church of Zimbabwe Nolbert Kunonga.

Since the dispute started, parishioners from the CPCA have been barred by police from using buildings belonging to the church even after the courts had ruled that the two factions should share the church premises. Bishop Gandiya,s followers are being forced to worship in hired buildings, in the open and in some churches. They also face regular threats from state agents.

Who is the Anglican Communion Office working for?

2011-02-21T10:00:00.000Z

It seems that the Evangelism and Church Growth Initiative of the Anglican Communion had a good meeting in Kuala Lumpur earlier this month - ACNS press release.

Evangelism and Church Growth Initiative Group - ACNS

But Mark Harris has been asking: who is the North American representative, Rev Dr Julian Linnell of the Anglican Frontier Mission.

Turns out he's not from the Episcopal Church at all but from the schismatic Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) and also a priest in the Province of the Southern Cone.

So what is the Anglican Communion Office playing at?

Was this an embarrassing error, and they really thought he did belong to TEC? Seems unlikely given the care they usually take with appointments.

I suppose it is possible that the invitation went to the Anglican Frontier Mission and Dr Linnell was their choice. But all the same you'd have thought they'd check out his acceptability with TEC first. Maybe they did, and this man was the person in the whole of the US for the job, and available for the meeting. In which case, fair enough.

Are they deliberately courting ACNA? After all ACNA has always seen itself as the province-in-waiting against the day that TEC is thrown out of the Communion under the Covenant mechanisms.

Or is this the straw in the wind which shows that the Anglican Communion Office has already discarded TEC altogether?

And, either way, have they forgotten who pays a large percentage of their bills?

I wonder whether the Standing Committee are also a scrutiny committee and, if so, where we can get a complaint form from and ask for an investigation?

Hundreds back asylum seeker to stay on Tyneside

2011-02-20T15:51:00.000Z

Leonie and Stacey in their flat

Under the headline Hundreds back asylum seeker to stay on Tyneside the local paper, the Evening Chronicle, had a full page feature on Leonie and Stacey and their fight to stay in the UK. Lots of petition forms and a good number of letter have already been sent.

From the article:

The 29-year-old was fleeing her African homeland when she was lured into coming to the UK in January 2008 with promises of a better life.

But when she arrived penniless and unable to speak English, she says she was forced into prostitution, locked up and raped repeatedly.

Smuggled into the country on a false passport, Leonie says she was imprisoned and abused – her child being the result of one such incident.

After escaping, Leonie, from Cameroon, claimed asylum.

The claims she made were investigated by an immigration judge, who ruled against Leonie. However, her supporters on Tyneside, including specialist counselors, have backed her story.

If you have been one of those who have given your support, thank you very much. Please continue to pass on the information to anyone you know who might also be able to help.

Players and audience

2011-02-20T15:31:00.000Z

A persistent aspect of the debate on the Covenant is that there has barely been a debate about it - at least, not in public.

On the Comprehensive Unity - No Anglican Covenant blog JimB makes the point that

No one is advancing serious arguments for it: instead one hears about "holding the communion together." How that is to happen when as is likely a great many provinces refuse to endorse and some have effectively withdrawn now it is never explained.

There seem to be three assertions in favour of the Covenant: we need these rules and structures [comment], it's the last chance to hold the communion together [comment], there is no alternative [comment]. In England at least there's a fourth: please support Rowan Williams in doing a difficult job [comment].

Archbishop Drexel Gomez, driving force of the Covenant

I've addressed all these in a number of posts before and I'm not going to do it again here (but if you wish to follow the links, please be my guest).

Here I want to follow up Jim's point that, on the one hand, these are assertions and not arguments and, on the other, those pushing for the Covenant have utterly failed to engage their critics.

First, the superficial nature of the study guide, the refusal of the the CofE authorities to allow the other side of the case for the Covenant to be sent to Dioceses and the persistently bland official material are all part of one strategy.

Second, that in this game very few people are players. The role of the audience is to assent to the decisions of the players and not to think that they can interfere.

The strategy - part 1
One of the earliest papers I wrote on the issue was Bouncing the Covenant through the Anglican Communion (July 2007) which set out the strategy. This was a conspiracy theory. But because the Anglican way seems to be to hide things in full view it is also referenced.

The timing has slipped a little since 2007 and some of the details have changed but the strategy remains. The most substantial change is that the Instruments of Unity have not been asked to endorse the Covenant - it is now solely a matter for the provinces.

The difficulty of gaining assent was identified in the Windsor Report. Thes subsequent Towards an Anglican Covenant spoke of a decade to persuade the Communion to 'own' it but Drexel Gomez was having none of that. In February 2007, at the Primates' meeting in Tanzania, his drastically shortened timetable was agreed. Apart from the ACC's refusal to accept Section 4 as then drafted, which caused a six-month delay, the Tanzania timetable has been followed.

To labour the point: there was a deliberate decision not to encourage the Communion to 'own' the Covenant. The formal assent of the provinces was deemed sufficient, and it had to be done quickly.

Each province then had to find the most efficient way of passing the Covenant. In England in 2007 that meant debate on the principle of a Covenant but discussion of the Nassau draft (available before Synod met) was excluded. Whilst the business managers had little choice but to refer the matter to the Dioceses in 2011 it was decided that the Covenant would only need a simple majority to be accepted.

The strategy - part 2
The second half of the strategy has been to keep discussion of the Covenant separate from discussion of other changes in the Communion. These changes have taken place largely out of the public eye. This is not the same as in secret: once again, they were largely hidden in public view. (The exception was the excessive secrecy around changing the ACC's constitution.)

No document is self-sufficient. The Covenant is the coping stone of a series of changes to the structures of the Communion which have been fought over for almost a decade. It is because they lost this battle (over the role of the Primates' Meeting rather than the Covenant) that the leaders of the Global South have taken their bat and ball and gone home.

The Covenant is intended to grant significant powers to the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion. In practice this group has influence but little power. I believe that power is presently concentrated with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the General Secretary of the Anglican Communion and their respective staffs.

If you're not in the game, you're out

Players and audience
Who have been the players who created the Covenant? I guess the inner ring would include:

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the General Secretary of the Anglican Communion, and their personal advisers.
Archbishop Drexel Gomez and the members of the Covenant Design Group (inevitably unevenly)
Certain other primates (not sure who, but I'd certainly include Philip Aspinall and John Chew).

Around which there would be another ring:

Advisers to the CDG
The remaining Primates to the extent that they chose to be involved
Members of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion (which includes the elected officers of the ACC)
The key officers in each province who relate to the ACO
A very few lobby groups, mostly of the conservative American genre

But this is all general speculation based on watching the process from high in the gods through poor quality opera glasses. I'd welcome contributions to sharpening the picture.

Everyone else is audience.
Their only role is to vote through what has been decided elsewhere. The largest part of the official structures of the church are audience.

For those who knew they were merely audience persuasive argument has seemed to be the only way into the debate. But argument, no matter how cogent, is not enough.

It's not enough because the politics has been about organizational change of which the Covenant is but a small detail, however significant. The struggle over reshaping the Communion's structures has happened elsewhere.

Arguments about the Covenant, howsoever persuasive to their authors, have been entirely peripheral to the key question of the Covenant: will enough provinces sign up to consolidate the new structures in the Communion. That has overwhelmingly been the factor which has led to changes in the wording of the Covenant.

Arguments about the Covenant have been insufficient because they presumed that they would be heard if they were good enough. Those that were submitted to the ACO were duly circulated to the Design Group. There is no evidence that they had any impact.

Finally, those presenting critical arguments assumed they did so as players. Minnows, maybe, but at least in the same pool. In fact the one thing they did not address was that they - we - were largely talking to ourselves. The pool was elsewhere. We had no influence because we had no influence.

The study guide, Q&A, literature supporting the Covenant in the English Dioceses has to be bland, unchallenging, and solely supportive of the Covenant. Their only task is to ease the passage of what has already been decided. It's barely worth the time of those that prepared the papers. It is just a process that has to be gone through.

Structural deafness is the flip side of centralisation: people are listened to because of the position they occupy, not because of the quality of their contributions. People are listened to because what they say harmonises with the dominant opinion and rhetoric.

The leaders are the church, not the people. It is not news. Nor is it good for the future of the Communion.

Study Guide, Q&A, C-

2011-02-19T20:52:00.001Z

On the No Anglican Covenant site there are a couple of new resources (amongst quite a lot of material). The official Covenant study material [official site] has been posted as well as the series of four talks by Caroline Hall which are well worth reading (they're a bit scattered but start here).

I've only skimmed the official material and my immediate response is not that they're partisan, that was only to be expected, but that they're so bland.

The Study Guide (pdf) can be summarised, not unfairly I think, as the text of the Covenant headed by the rubric Read each section. What do you think? It's certainly no aid to critical thought.

The Q&A paper is more help to study. But I got cross in the opening section with a quote from Rabbi Jonathon Sacks in a call-out box. In it he recommends a covenantal approach as an alternative to power or money - as though it will be possible to dispense with either.

Imagine, for a moment, you have total power, and then, in the fit of craziness you decide to share it with nine other people. How much power do you have left? You have 1/10 of what you began with.

Study guide

Stuff and nonsense! Power is not a zero-sum game. Never has been.

The whole concept of 'empowerment' embodies the perception that power distributed is power expanded - and the cynicism about the ways 'empowerment' is used embodies the practical reality that those who share power don't give it away. In Sacks' mathematics what you are actually left with is 9 people feeling better because they have 1/10th of a unit of power and 1 person feeling smug because he (of course) still has 10 tenths.

The Sacks' quote adds,

... love, friendship and influence are things that only exist by virtue of sharing them with others. And those are the goods I call covenantal goods ...

Leaving aside the fact that power also fits this description, placing this quote in a Q&A about the Anglican Covenant is deeply cynical. What has the Anglican Covenant to do with love and friendship? The Covenant was created because love and friendship had shriveled away. A key motivation of the Covenant was the desire to expel provinces from the charmed circle of friends - not to love them into submission. Its function is to replace 'love, friendship and influence' with a treaty-like document and law-like processes. It is the obverse of what 'I call covenantal goods'. This is a crude attempt to spray around some nice, soft, cuddly words to see if the underlying corpse can be made to smell a little sweeter.

Question 4 is interesting, and may not be exactly on the script:

How will the Covenant deepen our Communion?

The Anglican Communion is more than a federation of churches. It is a ‘Communion’ with a shared life, not simply a shared set of beliefs. The Anglican Communion Covenant is not therefore only a doctrinal statement. It reminds us of the practice of Christian life in the form of certain virtues and disciplines (openness and patience; prayer, study and debate – section 3.2.3). ... (emphasis in original)

More than a federation. Virtues and disciplines. To my mind that's a different emphasis to Question 9 Will the Covenant strengthen central control within the Anglican Communion? There the answer is: look at the text and see that autonomy is explicit. But even in Q9, with its 'however' and 'although' there are hints of a desire to qualify what the words actually say. Perhaps the problem is that for every critic who points to centralising powers as a bad thing there's another who looks at autonomy (and therefore the absence of the power to penalise errant provinces) as a bad thing. They can't win. And they won't.

10. Why might people be nervous about the Covenant?

... Some are concerned that the Covenant makes new and considerable demands on the Instruments of Communion. Much may depend on how the Covenant is received and used.

Others suggest that the Covenant will make tensions and divisions within the Communion even more visible.

At present, the Anglican Communion has no way of collectively identifying which disputes might potentially lead to the fracture of our Christian body, and which are less damaging and divisive. If we are to enhance the unity of the Communion and work towards the healing of the Church, we need a way of identifying which are the really serious problems.

We also need a description of how we are going to set about dealing with those problems. The Covenant tries to do just that. The Covenant describes and clarifies the nature of our mutual commitments and the form of life required to begin the process of discernment towards deeper communion and a more intense participation in the life of God made known in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. (my paragraph breaks and emphases.)

Of course how the Covenant is received and used is critical - so why is there no public discussion of it?

The second point, the visibility of disputes, is odd. I find it hard to believe that our leaders cannot tell which disputes are serious without a Covenant, and I don't see how a Covenant will help. When provinces outside the US started to ordain people to act as Anglican missionaries in the US, did no-one think 'this could be serious?' Would a Covenant have helped polish their glasses?

The fact is that, when it comes to disputes, there is no a priori division between what is serious and what is adiaphora. You can only tell afterwards: who would have thought that the Methodist Church would split over putting an organ into a Church? Or that a meeting of missionaries in mid-Africa would spark the Kikuyu crisis?

And Q7 What will happen if the Covenant is broken? doesn't address the criticism that the Covenant will create means to split the Communion which do not currently exist.

A centrally import element has been missing from all the discussion of this question of potentially Communion-fracturing matters: that no issue is sufficient to split the Communion.

What can split the Communion is a combination of four things: (a) pre-existing divisions in the Church (the fuel), (b) a clear focal point (the issue), (c) organization - of battalions within the church (the will) and also the prior organization of the church which establishes the lines along which any conflict will flow (the battlefield), and (d) one or more parties' willingness to declare this is the will of God.

Disputation is the normal condition of the Church, and church. It is the declaration of an absolutist stance which is destructive of communion - and you don't need a Covenant to hear that.

Order and Chaos, 1950 M C Escher

Finally, in the same section, the chaos card. Do you remember Hosni Mubarak, once of Egypt, who kept repeating that he must stay in power or else there would be chaos? It seems a popular argument, if entirely self-serving:

It is important to stress that there are already ‘relational consequences’ of certain decisions made by particular provinces of the Anglican Communion. Those consequences are frequently chaotic in nature.

These resources are feeble. That they come in the name of the Inter-Anglican Standing Committee on Unity Faith and Order is embarrassing. I can only deduced that nothing else was politically acceptable. And if that's the case then embarrassment is the least of the problems.

Help save Leonie and Stacey Mendo

2011-02-18T08:29:00.001Z

I know this is inappropriate for this blog but today I choose to allow my working world to intrude into conversations of the Anglican Communion.

And this is only for UK readers, really, though all publicity will help.

Would you help keep Leonie Mendo and her daughter Stacey in the UK?

This is just a brief summary - there is more information in the letters.

Leonie Mendo is from Cameroon. She came to the UK at the invitation of a man she met over the internet. He locked her up, abused her and forced her into prostitution. When she became pregnant she was discarded. Only then was she able to ask the police for help.

But she had no papers. She asked to stay in the UK on the grounds that she deserved humanitarian protection. The immigration court did not believe her account, nor has it accepted the expert witness reports of a midwife, a psychologist and a rape crisis counsellor.

I have known Leonie for over two and a half years. She is a devout Christian and a woman of deep integrity. There is no reason why she should invent a story which is, in practice, so self-denigratory and so harsh as a history for her daughter. She has been entirely consistent in her account since I have known her and I believe her entirely.

Leonie wanted to leave Cameroon because, after her father died, other members of her family took her father's properties by violence. Recently her mother has been killed by these family members. Leonie only learned her mother's death when a friend saw an article in a local newspaper.

She is terrified about being sent back to Cameroon - because her family will find her and are likely to attack her too, because she is a single mother, because she has a visibly mixed-race child who has no father.

Theresa May, MP, Home Secretary

With the help of specialist counsellors Leonie is beginning to recover from her ordeal and to build a life for herself and her daughter, Stacey. Leonie is able, hard working, honest and purposeful. She would like to be a pharmacist and would only be an asset to this country. Her daughter is a delightful and intelligent two-year old.

But now Leonie has been told she will not get humanitarian protection in the UK. She must go back to Cameroon. All legal routes have failed not least because each one has built on the judgement of the first hearing that Leonie was not credible - and by the nature of things there is no way to get evidence of when she arrived in the UK or of her abuse when she got here.

The Home Secretary has the discretionary power to allow a person to stay. That is now what we are asking for.

Would you help? There is more information in these letters below and we are hoping for local media coverage this weekend. If you email me at work I would be happy to address any further questions you may have.

If you can, please sign and send these letters, and ask people to sign the petition and send it to the Home Secretary:

Letter to the Home Secretary (email) ~ Letter to the Deputy Prime Minister (email) ~ Petition to ask for permission to stay

thank you very much in advance.

It would also help if you let us know the actions you've taken.

The view from Japan

2011-02-17T16:10:00.000Z

Archbishop Nathaniel Uematsu

Sorry, this is an old story. I've only just picked it up after it was posted on TitusOneNine. There is nothing about it on the ACNS site.

The Global South site has an account of the address of the Primate, Archbishop Nathaniel Uematsu, to the 58th General Synod of the Nippon Sei Ko Kai (NSKK) meeting. The meeting was in May 2010, published in English in November 2010 and CEN in December.

The article's headline 'Japan gives covenant backing' is misleading. It could as easily have been 'You are All at Fault'.

The text says that the Archbishop commended the covenant. However this was despite:

the NSKK House of Bishops’ Theological and Doctrine Committee “have expressed their opinion that such a Covenant should not be necessary, as it provides restrictions and exclusions”.

and

The bishops’ theological committee was not convinced that all Anglicans could or should be “ruled by this one agreement,” and balked at section IV. “One of the major characteristics of the Anglican Communion has been that in its long history the richness of diversity has been widely appreciated,” the Japanese Primate explained.

The Archbishop asked the Synod to support the Covenant in the present confusion and because the probability of it being accepted was increasing. In other words, we don't agree with the medicine but please swallow it any way. If he made any other arguments they weren't reported.

The Archbishop blamed the North American Anglican churches for having caused the war. He also distanced himself from the Global South leaders saying that they were acting in ways liable to create a new Anglican Communion which not only excluded The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada but also the Archbishop of Canterbury.

What this report does not say is that the 58th General Synod backed the Covenant. Perhaps it did, but I will wait for a clearer statement first.

And if the NSKK does back the Covenant, after such clear earlier statements that they disliked and disagreed with it, what hope is there for the rest of us? 'Back the Covenant because other people back the Covenant' is barely an argument, it's more like bullying.

Ascent of the Primates

2011-02-16T08:31:00.000Z

Savi Hensman, writes in the Guardian's Comment is Free, on the 'Ascent of the Primates'.

She also points out that in 1968

Lambeth Conference recommended "that no major issue in the life of the church should be decided without the full participation of the laity in discussion and in decision".

Still, that was the end of the '60s and such democratic tendencies have been firmly ignored, marginalised and squashed since then. See my previous post.

The voice of the laity has almost no place in the centralised and curial world envisaged in the Covenant, as was evident from its inception. This is from a report to General Synod in 2007, responding the the Nassau draft which Jonathan Clatworthy and I wrote with John Saxbee, Bishop of Lincoln:

4.8 The absent laity

Apart from a brief, factual, mention in §5 para. 6 the laity are invisible in this Draft Covenant. If the Draft’s processes were to be implemented the voice of the laity would be utterly peripheral and rendered inaudible. This is a contradiction of an ecclesiology in which the Church is ‘the blessed company of all faithful people’ (Book of Common Prayer, 1662). To marginalise the laity in decision making would be to hobble the body of Christ, to undermine the faithful work of the people of God, and to diminish the quality of ecclesial life.

More prosaically the structures of the Communion rest on the shoulders of the laity. From local missions to international gatherings the Church relies on the finance overwhelmingly provided by lay people. If they are to be asked to pay for new or greatly expanded distant international structures they must first be persuaded of their value.

The only response has been silence. Not merely on the place of the laity but specfically on the finance. Why will no-one address the question of what implementing the Covenant will cost?

The Synoptic Covenant

2011-02-15T09:22:00.000Z

Tobias Haller has done sterling work for Covenant geeks, setting out a textual comparison of 3 versions of the Covenant.

The earlier Windsor Report draft was significantly different, coming from a legal perspective rather than the model of an international treaty.

Haller also sets out the framework of procedures for conflict resolution (end of his text). These were generally regarded as overly legalistic and removed from the subsequent versions. (I made a flow-chart of the process available here as a pdf)

I believe that Professor Norman Doe was the principle author of both the Windsor draft Covenant and the conflict resolution framework. The first helped give birth to the process, even if the child changed shape as it grew, the second has simply slipped into the wings for a while.

If the Covenant is adopted it will need mechanisms by which it will be implemented. Just how does a signatory raise 'questions' about the actions of another, and how does the ACO respond? Even before the Covenant has been adopted there are already signs that answers are being worked out, at least in practice, and these answers will inevitably look remarkably like Doe's earlier proposals.

The Covenant is a treaty-like document which will need legal-like mechanisms to be implemented and enforced. The fact that these have been set aside for now is merely a matter of the politics: if too much of the mechanism was visible it would have been harder to get churches to sign up.

But the mechanisms remain. For my money removing them from sight and giving them the the ACO to work out away from public view, with no duty to consult on them or make them public, is the worse option for the future of the Communion.

I repeat my thesis: the Covenant simply transfers power to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the General Secretary of the Communion, and their respective staffs. It enables them to take all the crucial detailed decisions of implementation behind closed doors with no effective scrutiny, no checks and balances, and needing no-one else's assent.

I think this is wrong in principle. I think it will be wrong in practice. I do not question the motives of those who pursue this line but doing the wrong thing for good reasons is no defence.

Doors slammed shut! Windows blown open?

2011-02-12T10:05:00.005Z

Observer chided me after my End game post not to be defeatist about the coming shape of the Communion and suggested I focus again on opposition to the Covenant.

I take both points. But first,

The war is over. Really.

Archbishop Fred Hiltz making a point

My basic assertion in that post, that the war is now over, was reinforced by an interview given by Fred Hiltz, Primate of Canada, who said,

But I have to say that this meeting was not in any way dominated by discussions around sexuality. In fact, you actually would have to pull very hard to find references to it in our plenary conversations, which is amazing…The last few primates’ meetings have just been dominated by that issue, [the] actions of certain provinces and the reactions of other provinces to those actions, people not going to the Eucharist. None of that happened, everybody participated fully in every aspect of the meeting…People were together at the Eucharist, they were together at tea, they were together at plenary, they were together for prayer, for meals. There was a real sense of community there… The blessing of same-sex unions was just not a big ticket item, not a topic of discussion at this meeting. Not only was it not a big ticket item but nobody was saying, “When are we going to get to this issue?” which was quite profound.

Likewise, with the [proposed Anglican] Covenant…there was a general feeling that…we need to let the provinces have the conversations…and we’re not going to enter into a big conversation about it until our provinces have spoken.

The point was made that a number of the people present would share GAFCON's attitudes on the key divisive issues. But for the first time for a long time the Primates' focus was on working together - a focus only made possible by those who were absent.

I stand by my description of how I see the Communion shaping up (centralised in the Archbishop of Canterbury, the General Secretary of the Anglican Communion and their respective officials, clericalised, women and laity further marginalised, the distance from centre to edge getting ever greater).

But I will make a significant qualification.

A kairos moment
The end of the civil war gives a brief moment for debate on what the Communion might look like. The idea of changing it has been very widely accepted. Significant changes have already been made. But we no longer need to look at the Communion through the lens of civil war or the foci of sexuality, biblicism and accusations of colonialism. These remain important issues but, fairly abruptly, the steam has gone out of them and the engine driving them has departed on a side-line.

So the qualification of my previous post is this: now is a brief moment for ecclesiological speculation which could lead to a different kind of understanding of the Communion.

What I have described as happening now is only one possible future. There are always alternatives.

An every member church
I would like to see a church in which every member is valued as a fully adult person and constituent of the church. That is, valued as members of the church per se, consciously setting aside what have recently been prior questions of gender or sexuality (or, for that matter, any other irrelevant consideration).

In the Church of England lay members are not valued particularly highly.

I am sure it is different in other parts of the Communion though I don't know any of them well enough to know how it works in practice. One possibility in the new Communion might be debate on the place of laity-clergy-bishops and the different ways in which members are involved in and excluded from aspects of church life in different parts of the Communion.

The Church of England's General Synod in session

In the Church of England, for example, lay people do not directly elect their representatives on the Church's governing bodies. Those on a parish's electoral roll elect members of deanery Synods. They are the constituency which elect members of Diocesan and General Synod. In the 1960s when the synodical structures were being created there was much discussion of the cost of universal suffrage in the Church. To put it another way, it was decided that the laity weren't worth the money - even though it was also pointed out that it was the laity who provided the money.

(A sidelight to illustrate my point. I did a Google search for pictures for this post. In the first few pages of each search there were lots of pictures of General Synod, one or two of a Diocesan Synod in session, none of a Deanery Synod meeting. Not even worth the record.)

You can also see members' (lack of) importance in the way information is collected. No Diocese can communicate directly with its members because it does not have a list of them. Dioceses collect the numbers of people on electoral rolls (because numbers are important) but not names and addresses, except for parish officers and elected representatives.

The whole ethos of the CofE is monarchical. The further from the monarch - princes, to be more accurate - the less important people are. Deference remains rife. Like the British state the Church is a constitutional monarchy but, unlike the state, the Church puts relatively little emphasis on the constitutional half of the equation.

There was once a previous opportunity to debate these issues
Fifty years ago there was a brief flowering of publications and debate about the laity in the church spurred and supported by the World Council of Churches' Department of the Laity and the sense that the times they were a'changing. It didn't last.

Bishop John Robinson

Bishop John Robinson was a prominent participant. In A New Reformation? he promote a new vision of an ‘accepting church’ which met people where they were and accepted them for who they were. This church would comprise small nuclei of people scattered like seeds through the world. By contrast church structures, which sustained barriers of clericalism, professionalism and sexism were potentially heretical. They would have to be overcome by a truly lay theology which would find ‘... its creative source to be the engagement of the laos in the life of the world.’ (p. 63). This lay-centric church, by contrast with what it inherited, would be a reinvigorated community, true to its nature as an instrument of God’s Kingdom.

The enthusiasm didn't survive and more conservative voices won the day. In 1959 Robinson proclaimed that great things were afoot in the Church of England, the tide had turned. In 1969 he wrote in On Being the Church in the World that the tide had indeed turned, but 1960 had proved to be the high water mark, not the beginning of a new ecclesiastical order.

General Synod was first proposed in 1953. In 1965 its structures might have been agreed but were sent back for more work. By 1969, when finally agreed, the place of the laity had been further weakened. For example, one of the roles of the Deanery Synod is to debate matters which are debated in Diocesan Synod. In the earlier draft they were to do so 'beforehand'. To debate issues before the debate at Diocesan Synod would have given Deaneries a significant influence in the affairs of the Diocese. To debate matters after a decision is irrelevant. In 1969 the word 'beforehand' had been removed - and I don't believe that change was ever publicly acknowledged or discussed.

The Covenant
My desire for an every member church is one root of my continuing opposition to the Covenant.

Even if the unsavoury and punitive aspects of Section 4 were removed the Covenant would still serve to reinforce the centralising of power and strengthening of hierarchy. It will make the distance from pew to decision-making even further than the miles that already divide them. It will further marginalise ordinary members of the church. It is time to look again at the base on which the whole organization of the church stands. Now is, I think, a brief opportunity to do so.

Doctrine, ethics, spirituality, worship, polity are all essential and constitutive - and are all meaningless unless they are embodied in the daily lives of ordinary faithful Christians. So, act for every member of an every member church and

Vote against the Covenant

Funny old world

2011-02-10T09:07:00.002Z

It's an odd thing, the blogosphere. Posts that leave me feeling smugly pleased with myself attract no comments at all.

I thought 'End game' was stodgily written on a weekend spent ploughing through porridge. But it seems to have been picked up and to have annoyed Philip Turner of the ACI, of all people, and for what it didn't say, of all reasons.

I admit to being quite chuffed.

Addressing the Primates in Dublin

What's even more odd is that I agree with Dr Turner, if only to a limited degree. I agree that the concentration of monarchical powers in bureaucratic structures is wholly undesirable and deleterious to the well-being of the Communion.

But for Turner to suggest that 'Clearly a bureaucratically structured federation of autonomous churches meets with his [my] approval.' on the basis of what I have not said is going well beyond the evidence. He could not be expected to look further at my blog but I sincerely hope no-one reading it would deduce that I am at all pleased or satisfied with this turn of events.

On precedent
Turners' complaint that 'It would appear that precedent now means nothing.' is an interesting point. He may mean the term legalistically but I hear it in historical terms. Historical precedent used to be a significant argument (at least in the councils of the Church of England) but it was an expansive concept: to find an historical precedent for some development you wished to make in the present was a strong, but not sufficient, supporting argument in your favour.

I agree that there has been a general dismissal of precedent, but not in Turner's terms. The elevation of biblically-based arguments to be the sole and sufficient grounds for justification of change in the church has very largely driven out historically-based debate and argument. I would like to reassert the importance of historical method and understanding alongside biblical, theological, ecclesiological and other grounds in faithful Christian argumentation.

Historically (at least in the Anglican Communion) the concentration of monarchical powers is indeed unprecedented. But we didn't arrive at it all at once - it has emerged from a series of steps, each a small precedent, taken over the last few years without (I believe) conscious design at the beginning of that process. It is as though the tide has withdrawn and we can suddenly see what is left after the storm has reshaped the beach. Though, just to be clear, I don't think that makes it right.

But I do think it's a bit disingenuous of Turner to generalise quite so far from the disavowal of one particular precedent, the

“enhanced responsibility” Lambeth requested the Primates assume nor to subsequent actions by the Primates intended to exercise that responsibility.

This was substantively rejected sometime ago. And there are other, more collegial and less domineering, descriptions of and statements about the Primates' Meeting that are also precedents.

The coming Communion
I am amused that Dr Turner attributes so much to me on the basis of what I don't say. So such, in fact, that 'Bagshaw’s view of an Anglican future gives the lie to all that God is up to ...' Really? Maybe he's right but all I thought I was doing was describing what I saw happening. I wasn't seeking either to praise or bury it.

Perhaps (and I've done this myself) he's merely using my post as a mirror, conveniently positioned so as to reflect his own views back to him, albeit reversed. In his writing I see a desire for one particular future for the Communion, in mine he sees no particular future at all. Perhaps both are caricatures?

I am, however, more narked than entertained by one aspect of Turner's article. He accuses me of describing the people in GAFCON as 'minor irritants'. If he'd read the piece more carefully he'd would have seen this was not so. I predicted that GAFCON would 'undoubtedly lay claim to the Anglican brand' and this would be confusing. The confusion, not the people, is the minor irritant.

He and I have been on opposite sides of the trenches in the late civil and although I cheerfully oppose all that the ACI and GAFCON stand for and propound I have never doubted nor impugned their personal or collective conviction, faith or integrity and I hope (and will apologise if I have) that I have never written so casually.

I think Dr Turner agrees with my basic point that we are now looking at the end of the conflict and the beginning of a new pattern of Anglicanism. Yet he does so from the unsuccessful side. He says (and he seems to specialise in being horrified),

amongst those absent from the Primates' Meeting ....

I am horrified by the future Bagshaw foresees because in it he appears to find no meaningful place for those who absented themselves from the Dublin meeting.

Turner's missed the meaning of the word 'absent'. Those who chose not to be present have chosen not to participate in the councils of the Communion. They were accorded meaningful respect at the meeting but the terms on which they might have attended were not acceptable to the majority. They may be in the right but they are not in the driving seat. Perhaps Turner should explain what meaning (and, presumably, influence) those who absent themselves should have, and why.

Anyway,
All told I'm tickled to have niggled the good Dr Turner. As to my own views, there's already a half-written post on the way I would like to see things change, though I don't think I'll be able to finish it before the weekend. It would no doubt horrify Dr. Turner should he chose to read it.

* * *

And thanks, I think, to Pluralist

Whereas ...

2011-02-07T20:23:00.000Z

The Diocese of East Carolina has voted against the Anglican Covenant.

The 128th Diocesan Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of East Carolina

Whereas, as they say a lot, the Covenant

sets out a statement of faith, mission and interdependent life for the Communion
raises the Instruments of Unity to 'governing bodies with unprecedented power'
states that questions may be raised about another provinces' actions but gives no process for doing so
has the stated purpose to aid proclaiming the gospel, offering God's love, maintain the Spirit in the bond of peace and enable 'all God's people to attain the full stature of Christ' - and yet 'yet can be read as creating a Church of full members, second class members and former members.(ACC 4.2.7)', and
despite the democratic structure of TEC they would be asked to 'submit our processes of discernment to the will of an ill-defined body without checks and balances'

They are happy to keep talking, but do not approve the covenant.

THEREFORE BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED that this 128th Convention of the Diocese of East Carolina requests that the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church to express our desire that any future Covenant presented to this The Episcopal Church represent more truly, and with greater clarity and full recognition of voices of laity and clergy, our Anglican tradition and Christian faith.

Good for them. It's a small voice against the noises of those who want a covenant and it's very welcome.

End game

2011-02-05T13:32:00.002Z

I am now confident that, at last, we have finally come to the beginning of the end of the schism in Anglicanism, though not in a way I had anticipated.

In the US (and Canada?) court cases over property are being settled in favour of the official church and to the dismay of the schismatics. For example: Pittsburgh, Fort Worth and British Colombia. Legal actions are not finished, of course, but the end of the tunnel grows closer.

It seems that, in some places at least, this is leading to a shaking out of those who really want to go on ideological grounds and reconciliation with those who simply wanted to stay in the places they had always worshipped. The suspension of normal business inevitable with unresolved cases is now over and people can start to get back to normality - even though the landscape has changed. The senior leadership of a Diocese can concentrate on their primary tasks of leadership, nourishing and dealing with the normal headaches of any organization.

Internationally, the GAFCONites now have sufficient internal cohesion and decision making structures to enable them to be a self-sufficient separate body. They will undoubtedly lay claim to the Anglican brand, at least for a while, but while this may be confusing it is just a minor irritant.

The Primates in the Dublin sun

I prefer the French: Réunion des Primats
Which leaves the rest of us and the extraordinary Primates' Meeting.

Days 1 & 2, once the preliminaries were over, focused on the substantive issues that Primates face in their own Provinces, not on the Communion itself.

Day 3 began with 'Primacy'. I suspect this is a hot issue now for two reasons. First, the Primates (who, being more elevated, see further than most) were trying to articulate their role in a Church that they can see has already changed - much ecclesiological reflection is post hoc self-justification. The second reason was evident in their method. They took a detailed look at the differences between their roles, activities and powers in the different provinces. This is about the polity of the church, not theology, about preparing to work better in the new Anglican Communion, whatever shape that will have.

The ecclesiological emphasis was also predominant on Day 4. The Archbishop of Burundi, Bernard Ntahoturi, presented the reflections of The Inter-Anglican Standing Commission for Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO), a merger of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations and the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission. Snappy.

He told fellow Primates that the December meeting of IASCUFO in South Africa saw the members work in four groups: one studying the definition of ‘church’. Archbishop Bernard said, “We are asking: ‘Is the Anglican Communion a Church or a communion of Churches?’” The second group is looking at the Anglican Communion Covenant and resources for studying it. The third group is studying the Instruments of Communion, their theological meaning and how they relate to one another. The fourth group is considering the topic of ‘reception’, that is how the work of the Instruments and of ecumenical dialogues is communicated and understood at all levels of the Anglican Communion.

Day 5 concluded this ecclesiological thread with discussion of the Primates' Standing Committee. It then moved to other matters: gender-based violence and 'a range of [other] issues of international concern'.


	Archbishop Bernard Ntahoturi & Primus David Robert Chillingworth Press Conference: Photo ACNS

The briefing for Day 6 opened with a somewhat defensive note that 'These briefings have been prepared on a daily basis by Anglican Communion Office staff with oversight from a variety of Primates representing different parts of the Communion.' They tidied up a number of documents for promulation and held a press conference (podcast - I listened but could barely hear most questions and wasn't much enlightened by the answers). They concluded with Communion.

The official papers are available here.

Primatology
I think George Conger is right: it is the end of the Communion we once thought we knew.

The Primates' meeting is to be a consultative forum with no powers of instruction or direction. Powerful and influential, certainly, but these stem from the role of participants within their own Provinces, not across provinces. As the Primus said in the press conference, this is a Communion of independent provinces.

Gonger is also right about the concentration of powers in the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Standing Committee is to be the Archbishop's 'consultative council'. In effect the Diocesan structure of the English Church is writ global: the monarchical Archbishop rules and courtiers advise. They have no veto.

A Communion for the twenty-first century
So this would now seem to be the shape of the Communion:

Each province is autonomous.
There is a stronger recognition of the differences of structure, decision making and distribution of powers within each province. Pressures towards harmonisation have been rebuffed.
The motif of 'family' has resurfaced, specifically in its aspect of 'blood is thicker than water', i.e. we disagree but continue together. Clearly this is only true for those family members who are prepared to stay together.
There is a renewed emphasis on regionalism, facilitated by the Primates' Standing Committee. This will be a difficult trick to pull off effectively: on the one hand the centralising agenda will still pull matters towards the Archbishop of Canterbury and, on the other, the defence of autonomy will pull people apart. However, if successful, regional groupings could well supply an intermediate layer of debate and discussion which will enable better co-ordination of a looser Communion to the benefit of all.
It is an ever more clerical Communion. Unless regional meetings include the laity as full participants they will reinforce the dominance of bishops.
The more deliberative nature of the Lambeth Conference (if continued) and Primates' Meeting will leave a vacuum. Some people will always want clear and authoritative statements despite and because it's a murky and ambiguous world. There will still be a demand for the equivalent of Lambeth Conference Resolutions - but these should remain of moral and persuasive authority, given force only when incorporated in each separate province following their own distinct procedures .
Power will flow to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Leadership of global deliberation will flow to the international consultative bodies. Thus power will flow to the Anglican Communion Office. Information and administration is power and it will all go though the ACO & Lambeth Palace staff.
The Anglican Consultative Council will be marginalised. Like an English Deanery Synod it will make work for itself but its primary function now is merely to vote for (some of the) members of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion.
The SCAC itself, which briefly looked as though it would hold the Communion's strings, will become a rubber stamp to endorse decisions made between the Archbishop of Canterbury, the General Secretary of the Communion, the ACO & Lambeth Palace staff.

The place of the Covenant in this is not clear. Clearly the Covenant is not dead. The logic of this shape of the Communion would marginalise it, perhaps draw any teeth, but the question remains: will the Covenant be an effective document or will it now join the honoured ranks of documents with little or no consequence?

I'm still afraid it's the former. If passed the Covenant contains so many powers-in-embryo that it will inevitably be used.

[Slightly amended 6/2/11]

A different Church

2011-01-31T12:40:00.002Z

What kind of church?

Washington National Cathedral

The question of whether homosexuals should be full members of the church has been the occasion of conflict or, more exactly, it became the focal point of a much deeper and pre-existing conflict.

The underlying compliant has always been that the western church, of which TEC is seen as the forerunner and epitome, has subordinated itself to secular mores, values and agenda.

Instead, say the conservatives, a church should ground itself wholly in scripture and thence oppose the secular world and its values.

In-and-against
I think this is a false dichotomy.

I would assert that every church is inevitably and inescapably in-and-against the state (both secular society and government). The walls of a church are porous, they allow in secular ways of thinking whether those taught in universities at one end of the spectrum or those held privately beneath the public radar at the other end. Their walls also hold their distinctiveness: the Christian faith (as inherited and as lived), special buildings, clear leadership and most important, communal worship.

Ecclesiology
I suggest that more fundamental questions are: in the context of in-and-against the state, what is the church itself? What could it be?

The critique from conservatives is that the church should be against the state (both secular society and where they fall short of Christian values, secular governments too). A church should proclaim a redemptive critique of the society in which it is set. I note, for example, the statements of the Church in Nigeria criticising corruption and other aspects of the Nigerian State as well as Western morals.

For these conservatives, the authority, content and imperative with which to make such a critique lies wholly in Scripture.

Liberals are not merely perceived to have failed in this redemptive proclamation but to have taken a spiritually fatal step further. They have embedded secular values and structures in the church itself, displacing scriptural values. Thus liberal democratic notions have been allowed to reshape (some of) Anglicanism along secular lines which are antithetic to the things of God. Conservatives regard this as an ecclesiological impossibility, hence the rhetoric of a ‘new’ faith or religion.

Their alternative is an ecclesial monarchy: as God is Lord of the Church so too archbishops and bishops should be lords within an episcopal church.

Ironically this is particularly important for those who put so much weight on the authority of scripture. The authority of scripture is essentially anarchic: everyone who can read the Bible is their own interpreter and, in citing scripture, everyone has the authority of God.

Therefore those who believe that Christians should come together in ordered communities of any sort and who believe that scripture is the sole and sufficient source of authority for that community have a problem. The problem is solved by making church leaders authoritative and authoritarian.

Thus the Word of God was liberated from the control of the Catholic Church and Protestants then imprisoned the reader.

Mouneer Anis
I believe Bishop Mouneer Anis to be a devout and honest conservative and a good spokesman for that strand of Anglicanism. He is utterly convinced of the exclusive authority of scripture and yet still wants to hang onto the importance of Anglican tradition as far as, and so long as, it accords with his valuation of scripture.

He gives examples of the Church of England, and the Anglican Communion, repeatedly reasserting the centrality and authority of scripture. Be because these statements are not binding they are insufficient. As a result the Church has fallen away from the rectitude it once held into its present morass.

He forgets the deeply Erastian nature of the Church of England from the honestly named 1533 Submission of the Clergy Act onwards. He forgets the legacy of conformity to state and society which the CofE bequeathed to much of the Communion – the CofE rejoiced in being the ‘national’ church in as many meanings as it could sustain. He uses statements from the past, like proof-texts, selectively and in a wholly ahistorical manner.

Anis’ remedy is a conciliar-command structure for the church. Difficult or contested questions should be debated by those with the authority to do so (primarily bishops and primates). Once a decision is reached it would then be binding on all believers. Again, he omits to mention that such powers currently reside in a province (depending on its own constitution) and that to grant these powers to the Communion would be a significant innovation.

He also, incidentally, wishes to ‘start Biblical literacy programs’ - to encourage people to read the Bible and, no doubt, to ensure they do so correctly.

A different church
Mouneer Anis is talking about a different church from the one he has inherited.

Conservatives want a command structure where there never was one. They want a church which is wholly and exclusively scripture-based, though Anglicanism never was. They long for a church whose function is to oppose the standards and values of the society in which it is set, forgetting that the Church of England has always been willingly subordinate to the state.

And this is why schism is inevitable.

Undoubtedly some kind of modus vivendi over homosexuality could have been worked out, given time, not least because the vast majority of people are bored with the fight and want to get on with life. We could all learn to agree to disagree over degrees of in-or-against the state practised in the different national settings of the church. The re-assignment of power in the Communion as a result of the conflict is being worked out through the Covenant at the moment.

But conservatives want much more. They want a new church, one never before seen in Anglicanism. Their ecclesiology will not fit into the same shoe as the majority ecclesiology of Anglicanism. Therefore there must be division. Working things out is not an option.

Only this won’t be another Great Ejection, more like a dribbling apart.