Wakefield says NO

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

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?

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

Bishop John Saxbee, retired

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

Why do we need another covenant?

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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-

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

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.