Hong Kong and the Covenant

I thought I'd have a look back at some earlier official critical comments on the Covenant after a look at the papers from Wales suggested that - despite the fact that Wales has done a volte face - many of their critiques (and suggestions) remained unanswered and ignored. 

Hong Kong rejects the Covenant in 2008.
In January 2008 the Province of Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui submitted its formal response (pdf) to the consultation on the Nassau Draft of the Communion. (All formal responses.) It was the outcome of extensive consultation and debate across the three dioceses of the Province and the Missionary area of Macau and therefore reflected the collective wisdom and opinion of the Province.

In Anglican terms it was scathing:

1.1 A decision to transfer  authority from the autonomous Provincial Churches of the Anglican Communion, together with a dilution of the authority  inherently vested in the historic role of the Archbishop of Canterbury as  spiritual leader  (primus inter pares), to a credal document would be received by many members of HKSKH as incompatible with Anglican  tradition.

The Province valued 'traditional Anglican comprehensiveness and diversity'. It was essential in the plural and international context of Hong Kong to hold majority and minority traditions together. But

1.2 A covenant, if allowed to impose a prescribed, monochrome reflection of received truth, ecclesiastical correctness and  accepted  behaviour, would seriously undermine communal tolerance.

Li Tim-Oi, her mother, Bishop Mok her father,
Archdeacon Lee Kow Yan after her ordination
as Deacon by Bishop R 0 Hall at St John's Cathedral HK. Ascension Day 22 May 1941 

They cited the 'vehement disapproval' that the ordination of Li Tim-Oi had attracted in 1944, pointing out that

What was new and controversial was, within a generation, found to be desirable and legitimate by a large part of the Church around the world.

They leave implicit the inference that things might have been even more difficult for her had the Covenant been in place. As it was the post-war Lambeth Conference, without denying the validity of her ordination, sought to ensure this was no precedent. In an act of sacrificial loyalty,

To defuse controversy, in 1946 Tim-Oi surrendered her priest's licence, but not her Holy Orders, the knowledge of which carried her through Maoist persecution. Li Tim-Oi's Story (1907-1992). 

Section 2 of the Hong Kong paper questioned the practicability of a Covenant.

2.2  A system of punishment, in whatever terms, would need to be established in tandem with a covenant in order to provide a deterrent to systematic violation. It has already been mooted that the judicial authority would be vested in the Primates’ Meeting, which would transform a consultative Anglican-style ‘talking shop’ into an authoritarian Vatican-style curia, which would not be welcome.

Section 3 set out the specific conditions of HKSKH.

During the years between 1984 and 1990, Archbishop Emeritus Peter Kwong, then Bishop of Hong Kong and Macao, worked tirelessly as a member of the Basic Law Drafting Committee. He succeeded not only in greatly contributing to the preservation of Hong Kong’s religious freedoms but also in forging close and enduring relationships with the senior officials of the State Administration for Religious Affairs (directly under the State Council of the PRC) and the leaders of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (the only registered postdenominational Protestant Church in China), including its Chairman for many years, Bishop Ding Guangxun – the last Anglican bishop in China.

St John's Cathedral, Hong Kong

....
There is no doubt that the autonomous governance of our Church, together with the affectionate but non-interfering ties with the See of Canterbury and other churches of the Communion, sit easily with the familiar crystal-clear policies of the PRC government with respect to religious affairs.

HKSKH Anglicans are bound to approach any movement within the Anglican Communion towards the centralisation of power and governance with considerable reluctance and great caution.

That is, given the often difficult attitude of Chinese authorities to religion generally and to Protestantism in particular, and given the sensitivity of the Chinese authorities to any suggestion of outside control, there would be a significant risk that the Covenant could turn the Anglican Church in Hong Kong into an undesirable religious group from the authorities' perspective. This is not a good idea.

(HKSKH was recognised as a Province in 1998 - some of the earlier history is here - search for 'China')

Then what happened?
A year later, February 2009, as a response to the St Andrew's Draft, the Province sent a letter (pdf) making no criticisms of the Covenant.  It said,

Thank you for your letter of 1st September 2008, regarding the responses from the Provinces with respect to the St. Andrew's Draft for the Anglican Covenant.

After consulting widely with the bishops, clergy and laity of the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui in the dioceses and at provincial level, and then engaging in serious discussion and study in the Standing committee of the General Synod, the Committee has resolved to express our support in principle for the progress revealed in the content of the St. Andrew's Draft and our commitment to the continuing progress towards realization of a Covenant acceptable to the Anglican Communion at large.

The contrast is striking. The first document engaged forcefully with the key issues as seen from Hong Kong. The second sounds to me as if the Province was leant on and told that only positive responses were required. If not, then at the very least the letter of the 1st September (from Kenneth Kearon, then General Secretary of the Anglican Communion) had simply ignored their concerns.

Paul Kwong, Archbishop and
 Primate of Hong Kong 

Either way the HKSKH committee could only go as far as supporting 'in principle' (i.e. with no further commitment) such unspecified progress as the next draft had made. The section on the acceptability of the Covenant to the communion at large could be read as acceptance of the will of the Communion expressed through majority vote; it could equally be saying the each province should have a veto.

After that comes complete radio silence. Because much of the website is in Chinese and Google only seems willing to translate certain pages, I can't be absolutely sure. But that's what it feels like: certainly there were no more official responses to subsequent Covenant drafts.

What does it matter now?
Things have moved on and the Covenant has been revised. The threat that the Primates would be all-powerful has been removed.

But I think several aspects of this story are still relevant:

• The willingness to discount the considered views of a province, apparently because they didn't accord with the view of those driving the Covenant project, is indicative of a single-minded, blinkered and institutionally deaf commitment to one particular vision for the Communion.
• The apparent willingness to risk jeopardising any province's relationship with its State or, indeed, to dismiss or marginalise such a real possibility, is unforgivable. 
• The lack of concern for a smaller province indicates that what was important to the Covenant Design Group was not inclusion but Anglican power politics.
• Critical voices were never accorded the respect of an answer. Key criticisms (the Covenant's centralisation, new powers and punitiveness, for example) have been ignored, dismissed as simply wrong, or generalised out of existence, but there has been never been any serious official engagement with critics. 

In the end it will be the words on paper that count if the Covenant is ever passed. Its history will be forgotten by all except a few academics. But the words and their implementation express not only the considered judgment of its drafters but also the manner in which it went about its work. In this case that manner was either bullying or dismissive or both.

Now, I don't know, I wasn't there, and official sources aren't telling. Perhaps I've got this all wrong - I am very willing to be corrected on the basis of better information - and to apologise publicly. But although I'm certain there's a lot more detail and more nuance to the story, I suspect I'm right about the core issues.

Autonomy in a confessional church

The Covenant creates a new basis of relationship between member Churches. It sets out (in sections 1-3) a statement of Anglican faith and order to which every signatory must consent. By whatever route Anglican Churches arrived at this point, from here onwards:

In adopting the Covenant for itself, each Church recognises in the preceding sections a statement of faith, mission and interdependence of life which is consistent with its own life and with the doctrine and practice of the Christian faith as it has received them. It recognises these elements as foundational for the life of the Anglican Communion and therefore for the relationships among the covenanting Churches. (Covenant §4.1.2)

Thus a new foundation stone is to be inserted beneath the existing historical arrangements. Anglicanism will become a Confessional Church grounded on a new fundamental document.

The Covenant sets out mechanisms for 'conflict resolution' which give the corporate organs of the Church - The Primates' Meeting, the Anglican Consultative Council, and especially the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion - powers to adjudicate the decisions of member churches.

Yet Provincial autonomy remains - a remarkable feat of political/legal legerdemain.

The Covenant has apparently squared the circle of autonomy and interdependence. By its terms, to be a member of the Anglican Communion is to sign the Covenant voluntarily. Thereafter each member of the Anglican Communion may continue to act in whatever way it pleases – so long as no other member suspects or believes its actions to be outwith the provisions of the Covenant. The punishment for transgressing the Covenant is ‘relational consequences’: withdrawal from some, many or all of the international structures of Anglicanism (§§4.2.4 – 4.2.7).

Yet there is no difference in reality between being expelled and everyone else turning their backs on you. So a Province may still act in whatever way it pleases, just as before, only now it does so conscious that the other members of the Communion may act against it, forcefully, if it offends. Autonomy becomes a legal fiction. Power has slipped to the centre.

Autonomy is essential for the Covenant - and not merely because of the politics of getting turkeys to vote for Christmas. (Sorry, a cliché, how about: getting Anglicans to vote for a Roman Catholic-lite ecclesiastical structure?) Autonomy is essential because The Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui, The United Churches of North and South India, the Church of England, and maybe more, cannot enter into any treaty or arrangement which grants some other body jurisdiction over them. They are prevented by the national laws of their own countries.

It is a moot point whether the Covenant, even now, will be acceptable to legislators in all these countries - and a judgement will be made on the reality not on the words. Expect law suits to follow as soon as it looks as though push may come to shove and (in India's case) perhaps before.

If I was evaluating the question I would look very closely at the powers of the SCAC, a body which is legally autonomous as Trustees and Directors of a Charitable Company, and at exactly how their powers (so far not made public) interact with the relevant national legislation. I don't think the answer is legally self-evident despite my belief that the terms of the Covenant do effectively curtail Provincial autonomy.

What about Hong Kong?

Archbishop Paul Kwong following his election in 2007
Photo Credit: Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui

I have just read Norman Doe's book An Anglican Covenant: Theological and Legal Considerations for a Global Debate. The cover proclaims The Definitive Explanation and Guide. This may be an overstatement. (Buy it via the MCU site here.)

There is much in it that is useful. For example, Doe's point that a covenant is promissory (amongst other things) leads me to wonder about the nature of promises, and their limitation, in relationships between organizations.

Professor Doe is a canon lawyer who has worked for a single legal framework for the Anglican Communion over 20 years or more. He was a central contributor to the draft covenant in the Windsor Report and has been part of the process ever since. "He made five presentations on canon law and covenant at the Lambeth Conference 2008."

The book works within a predefined theological-juridical framework, with the emphasis on the juridical. Using a framework he developed previously he analyses 'covenant' in three groups of three concepts: (a) foundational ideas: the nature, employment and purpose of a covenant, (b) structure and substance: its form, subject matter and content, and (c) implementation: its process, adoption and effects.

The result is a conceptual analysis with discussion of the questions and opinions within each category. He homogenises the multiple sources he draws on (including some of MCU's papers), picking out comments which support, criticise or add to the point he wishes to address - but missing the overall thrust of any of the sources. Each chapter is given equal weight.

And he wholly misses the political dimension. This is a lawyer's answer to theological, cultural and ecclesiastical dispute: more law.

Hence my question: what about the Province of Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui? In their submission in response to the Nassau draft they strongly oppose the covenant. They do so, first, on the grounds that it would be a diminution of Anglican polity and of the diversity they value. They question its practicality and enforceability. Third, from their particular perspective as the only Anglican body in China,

During the years between 1984 and 1990, Archbishop Emeritus Peter Kwong, then Bishop of Hong Kong and Macao, worked tirelessly as a member of the Basic Law Drafting Committee. He succeeded not only in greatly contributing to the preservation of Hong Kong’s religious freedoms but also in forging close and enduring relationships with the senior officials of the State Administration for Religious Affairs (directly under the State Council of the PRC) and the leaders of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (the only registered post-denominational Protestant Church in China), including its Chairman for many years, Bishop Ding Guangxun – the last Anglican bishop in China.

...

There is no doubt that the autonomous governance of our Church, together with the affectionate but non-interfering ties with the See of Canterbury and other churches of the Communion, sit easily with the familiar crystal-clear policies of the PRC government with respect to religious affairs.

HKSKH Anglicans are bound to approach any movement within the Anglican Communion towards the centralisation of power and governance with considerable reluctance and great caution.

That is to say: the Chinese government remains highly suspicious of all religious organizations and the chance of a sufficiently good working relationship between the HKSKH and the government will be jeopardised, probably destroyed, if the PRC government believe (whatever church lawyers say) that HKSKH is subordinate to foreign control. That perception will also be enough to disrupt, probably destroy, the currently good ecumenical relations.

There is no mention of this dilemma in Doe's work. Is the covenant so important that it is worth sacrificing the HKSKH (or any province)?

Doe says, twice, that only 13 submissions out of a possible 44 were received. He also acknowledged that the United Churches (i.e. in full communion but not Anglican provinces) were ignored in the early stages of the process (the Lusitanian Church also, incidentally, strongly opposed the covenant). Yet the Covenant Design Group felt confident to ignore all submissions except those which helped refine the text. They neither went to each non-respondent province to ensure that they had a reply nor did they put any weight on the fact that 31 provinces abstained from the consultation. Normally, on such a critical question, such non-response would be fatal to the project or at least to its timetable. Yet they spoke as if they had the authority of the Communion to do so and were not going to have their self-imposed timetable disrupted.

The politics would seem to be clear: a small group with the backing of the Archbishop of Canterbury, are determined to drive this covenant through whatever the cost. Small and weak provinces can get out of the way.

Does conclusion is that to adopt the covenant would be 'a major historical development' (p. 213) that opposition is getting less (p. 217) and, last paragraph, that the covenant is no more than a well-trodden Christian path entirely consonant with scripture, tradition and reason and therefore Anglicans may be wholly reassured (pp. 220-221).

Sorry, Pluralist: you may be right about growing opposition but that's not currently killing the covenant. Doe's judgement will be more widely read and regarded as more weighty. The politics are less about numbers than about keeping the plough straight and not looking back at whatever chaos may be left in its wake.